I was using the offline version obviously, in a VM with no network access. I do recall some wizards for setting up accounts, but they weren't applicable to my business. It also didn't feel like such wizards would have changed the UI into operating at a higher level.
It may not be useful to you, but I will add that Quickbooks desktop has a "Home" window that includes a fairly detailed flow chart of most small business processes (e.g. send an invoice, pay a bill, make a deposit, run payroll, make a refund, and so on and so on), and the nodes of the flow chart are interactive links to various input and reporting windows in the program.
Yes it seemed like it would be valuable if you need to send lots of invoices, pay lots of bills with checks, make many refunds, etc. Quickbooks gives you a formal process for doing so, easy ability to generate documents, etc.
Automating transaction mechanics can certainly facilitate doing accounting later, but it doesn't seem like what I expected from "accounting" as in the stuff you would normally have an "accountant" do. Rather it seemed that you had to set up most of your own accounting (eg defining the data model of all the accounts), and Quickbooks would help you by entering in data for the transactions types it knows about (and you use it for).
>it would be valuable if you need to send lots of invoices, pay lots of bills
That is actually a very valuable function that QB provides, because it enables the ability to view financial reports on either an accrual or cash basis. For tax purposes, your business is required to choose one method of accounting or the other at the start and then generally stick with it forever. For management purposes, you can in QB view your reports at any time using either method, because it's all based on the same underlying transaction data.
