This course gives bookkeepers, accounting professionals, small business owners, and CPD candidates a complete, hands-on walkthrough of the customer (revenue) cycle in QuickBooks Online 2026. Working inside the free QuickBooks Online sample company file, you'll follow a structured workflow that mirrors how a real bookkeeper would set up, analyze, and process customer transactions — with both the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement open side-by-side so you can see, in real time, exactly what every form does to the books.

The course opens by mapping out the full customer cycle and helping you decide, cycle by cycle, whether your client should be on a cash or accrual basis — because that single decision drives which forms you'll actually use. You'll then tour the Sales Center (the customer hub for communicating with customers and chasing outstanding AR balances) before drilling into each individual form: the invoice, receive payment, and deposit sequence that defines the full accrual workflow; the sales receipt for cash-register-style businesses; the barter transaction for cashless exchanges; and the three "reversal" forms — credit memo (for bad debt and sales returns), refund receipt (when the customer has already paid), and delayed credit (a pending credit applied to a future invoice).

For every form, you'll learn the same three things: when you should use it (and when you shouldn't), how to enter the data efficiently, and the precise impact on the financial statements — so by the end, you can look at any customer transaction and know instantly which form to reach for and what the journal entry behind it really looks like. Throughout the course, you'll also pick up practical guidance on choosing your bookkeeping niche, where bank feeds fit into the customer cycle, and how industry type changes the way you manage customers and track revenue.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to confidently process the entire revenue cycle in QuickBooks Online — from the moment a sale is earned to the moment the deposit clears the bank — and handle the trickier reversal scenarios that trip up most new bookkeepers.

Topics Covered

1. Customer Accounts Receivable / Revenue Cycle Overview — Mapping the full sales cycle, cash vs. accrual decision-making, and how the customer cycle differs from the vendor and payroll cycles
2. The Customer / Sales Center — Navigating the customer hub, reviewing AR balances, and using the center to communicate with and collect from customers
3. The Invoice Form — Full data input walkthrough, sales tax and inventory considerations, and the impact on AR, sales, inventory, and COGS on the financial statements
4. The Receive Payment Form — Applying customer payments to open invoices, the role of undeposited funds, and the resulting changes to AR and the balance sheet
5. The Deposit Form — Moving funds from undeposited funds to the checking account, plus alternate uses of the deposit form (owner contributions, loan proceeds, non-customer deposits)
6. The Sales Receipt Form — Recording cash-basis sales at the point of transaction, when sales receipts replace the invoice/receive payment/deposit sequence, and the financial statement impact
7. Barter / Trade Sale Transactions — Recording cashless exchanges where neither vendor cash nor customer cash is involved, and how to keep both sides of the trade on the books correctly
8. The Credit Memo — Bad Debt and Sales Returns & Allowances — Reversing a sale before payment, writing off uncollectible accounts, recording sales returns, and the inventory and COGS implications
9. The Refund Receipt Form — Reversing a sale after the customer has already paid, when to use a refund receipt vs. a credit memo, and the cash impact
10. The Delayed Credit Form — Recording a pending credit to be applied against a future invoice, and how it differs from the credit memo in timing and financial statement impact