Wiley QuickBooks 2008 For Dummies 978-0-470-18470-7 Benutzerhandbuch

You should try to do this if you can. You’ll save yourself untold hours of
headache by having someone who knows what she or he is doing provide 
an itty-bit of personalized training.

Use both the profit and loss statement

and the balance sheet

And now, my final point: You want to really use your profit and loss statement
(which measures your profits) and your balance sheet (which lists your
assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity) as part of managing your business. In
other words, get used to producing a QuickBooks profit and loss statement
each week or month or whatever. Then use that statement to determine your
profitability. In a similar fashion, regularly produce a balance sheet to check
your cash balances, the amounts customers or clients owe, and so on.

Maybe this seems like obvious advice, but there’s a semihidden reason for
my suggestion. If you or you and the bookkeeper are doing the accounting
right, both the QuickBooks profit and loss statement and the balance sheet
will show numbers that make sense. In other words, the cash balance number
on the balance sheet — remember that a balance sheet lists your assets,
including cash — will resemble what the bank says you hold in cash. If the
QuickBooks balance sheet says instead that you’re holding $34 million in
cash, well, then you’ll know something is rotten in Denmark.

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