When COVID-19 hit, millions of office workers were forced to trade in their spacious dual monitors and crisp HD screens for more portable laptops that could squeeze into a spare corner at home. For those whose jobs require frequent travel or working outside of an office environment, the annoyance of working on a tiny 13-inch laptop screen is nothing new. Ultra-portable laptops make it possible to work from anywhere – your kitchen table, an airport, even a campground or the back of an RV – but the limited screen space can make certain computer tasks frustrating and awkward.
QuickBooks Online is no exception. While the cloud-based technology of QBO allows you the convenience of accessing your financial records from anywhere in the world, that doesn’t mean it’s always comfortable to navigate on a teeny-tiny screen. If you’re constantly scrolling up and down or flipping between tabs, try these simple tricks to maximize your screen space and increase your productivity.
Collapse the sidebar
In QBO, you’ll often see a sidebar on the left-hand side of your screen with a menu of various pages and accounting tasks (Banking, Expenses, Payroll, etc.). While this sidebar allows you to quickly jump between different pages, it also takes up a lot of precious screen space. To temporarily collapse or hide this sidebar, simply click the triple-line “hamburger” icon at the top. This will hide the sidebar and expand the usable space on your screen. To restore the sidebar, click the hamburger icon again.
Click the “hamburger” icon to collapse the sidebar
Change the display density of reports
Fit more text on your screen by changing the density of your QBO reports. From your reports click the gear-shaped settings icon then select the “Compact” display density. This will reduce the amount of space between each line, allowing you to see more information at once without having to scroll.
Normal display density
Compact display density
Adjust your browser zoom settings
Technically, this is a browser trick, not a QBO trick – but we won’t argue with efficiency! Since QBO is a web-based application, you can change your view of QBO by adjusting your browser settings. Zoom out to make things smaller; zoom in to make them bigger. The steps to change your browser zoom level depends on which browser you’re using (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.), but you can often ¬use the Ctrl key (or Command key on a Mac) and “+” or “-“ to quickly zoom in or out. Be careful not to zoom out too far, or you might find yourself squinting! But zooming out just a bit can provide the extra visibility that’s tough to get on a super-small laptop screen.