When you go to enter a date in Quickbooks, the format of the date (ex: dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy) may not the format you would like it to be. How do you change this?

The date format is all based on your computer’s regional settings.

Changing regional settings on a PC

Go to Control Panel > Region and Language. Under the Formats tab, you will see the Short Date. If you look towards the bottom of the window, you will see the example of how your date will look.

Changing regional settings on a MAC

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Language & Text. Click on the Formats tab and you will see how the dates are displayed. Click on the customize button to the right to change the date format.

What format to use?

You can choose whatever date format style suits your preference. I personally use yyyy-MM-dd format so that September 26, 2011 would show up as 2011-09-26. A format that is year, month, date sorts better on computers as a computer sorts in that fashion.

Do it Faster Tip

When you enter the date, you don’t have to type in the separator (/ or -). Simply type in the date, such as 20110926 and Quickbooks will add the appropriate separator for you.