Author: Ida_Bencomo

Refunds!! You probably wince at the word. Some – like customer refunds for returns – are fairly uncomplicated, thanks to QuickBooks’ tools. Others, not so much. You may find yourself unable to balance your accounts receivable. There are numerous scenarios that necessitate the use of credit memos, including overpayment, order cancellations and bad debt write-off. It’s critical that these are entered correctly. If they aren’t, you may lose a lot of the time that QuickBooks helped you save as you try to chase down a few dollars.

Figure 1: QuickBooks helps you identify refunds quickly. 
Sending money back 
Let’s say a customer pays for an order but cancels before it ships. You could: 

• Apply the balance to an existing invoice
• Keep it as an available credit
• Issue a refund 

 Click Customers | Create Credit Memos/Refunds. Select the correct customer and job (and A/R account, if you have more than one). Enter the items just as they appear on the invoice.
When you’re finished, click Save & New.  The Available Credit window opens, displaying your options:

Figure 2: The Available Credit window displays your credit balance options.
You would select Give a refund and click OK. The Issue a Refund window opens and should already be filled in. If everything is correct, click OK. The refund check has now been entered in the checking register, ready to be processed. If the order involved inventory items, the creation of the credit memo has returned the items into inventory.

WARNING: If the invoice was paid with a credit card, it gets complicated. Your instructions will depend on whether you are using Intuit Merchant Service for QuickBooks or another merchant account service. You’ll also have to deal with transaction fees. We can help you deal with this. Other refund options
If the customer has open invoices, you may want to choose Apply to an invoice in the Available Credit window. A list opens;  just select the correct invoice. Or if you want to have those extra funds available for other invoices but don’t want to apply them immediately, click Retain as an available credit.  When you want to use them, click the Apply Credits button in the lower right corner of the invoice.

Figure 3: When issuing a refund, QuickBooks can hold those funds to be applied to invoices later.
Sometimes, customers overpay an invoice or statement charge, or make a down payment for which there is no invoice. This is easy to fix. Open the Customer Payment screen (Customer Center | Transactions | Received Payments) and double-click the related payment. In the screen’s lower left corner, you’ll see this:

Figure 4: Click the correct option here.
Click the correct button, then Save & Close. The Issue a Refund window opens; you’d treat it the same way you did when you dispatched a return refund.

Another use
You can also use credit memos to write off bad debt if you are using the accrual method of accounting.

If you don’t already have a Bad Debt item in your item list, set up a new item as an Other Charge. Name it “Bad Debt” and match it to the correct account. Usually this account is an expense account called BAD DEBT EXPENSE.

Open the Credit Memo window and select the customer, then select Bad Debt as the item. You’ll get a message saying that the item is associated with an expense account; click OK. Enter the write-off amount minus sales tax if taxable (be sure the Tax column is correct) and click Save & Close.

The Available Credit window opens. Select Apply to an invoice. Put a check mark next to the correct one and click Done.

Make refunds make sense
It seemed easier in the days when you just wrote a check for a refund or made an entry in a paper ledger, didn’t it? Using QuickBooks credit memos, though, helps you maintain records that follow standard accounting procedures and simplifies our understanding of your files. We’ll be glad to help you make sure that this sometimes-complex task is done right from the start.

E-Pay and E-File with QuickBooks are two great benefits of QuickBooks Payroll.

Are you using these features or are you still logging into EFTPS and doing your payments there, and filing paper forms for 941, State Taxes and 940. We can even do your W-2s electronically.

It’s so easy and makes it possible for you to be totally in control and up do date with all your payroll tax info.

​Give us a call and we can guide you througjh the set up and make your life easier. It’s worth it.

Never leave QuickBooks and yet make  your tax payments and file your tax forms – ELECTRONICALLY. QuickBooks even gives you a confirmation number and tracks the info all the way to IRS or your state agencies with an audit trail.
Make sure you are getting the most out of your QuickBooks payroll subscription.

No matter which level of QuickBooks® payroll you choose, you’ll have to do some groundwork before you start dispatching paychecks. Intuit can manage everything up to and including, well, everything – payroll runs, filings, taxes and reports – but you’ll have to provide myriad details before you begin and during each payroll run.
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QuickBooks’ tools must be followed to the letter to avoid penalties from federal and local agencies. But before you even fire up QuickBooks, you’ll save a lot of scrambling later if you pull together the information you’ll need first.

Details, details, details

​Yes, this part will be tiresome, but you’ll have to do it eventually, anyway. You may have all of this information in a neat file or an Excel spreadsheet, but it may also be scattered. Wherever it exists, pull together:

• All employee W-4s
• All possible compensation levels (salary, hourly, bonuses, commissions and tips)
• Employee benefit information. Do you offer 401Ks, health or dental insurance? Can employees set up Flexible Spending Accounts?  How much PTO, vacation and sick time, etc.,  is offered?
• Additional withholding and payment options, like travel reimbursements and cash advances, wage garnishments and union dues
• Hire and termination dates
• A voided check, if you offer direct deposit

Figure 1: Before you start entering payroll information, QuickBooks will want all of the details.
Tax data, too

You know from getting paychecks in the past that your total earnings are reduced by deductions like FICA, Medicare and state income tax. As an employer, you’re now responsible for calculating those withholdings and remitting them to the appropriate government entities.

Payroll taxes will be the bane of your existence unless you pick a payroll option that manages them (or let us help you with this arduous task). You’ll need to know exactly what your liability is to both federal and local authorities. If you don’t already, you can find contact information for state and local agencies here.

So another pre-payroll information-gathering task will involve learning what you’ll owe to whom, and when. Fortunately, QuickBooks will do all of the calculating for you, and it provides a thorough setup wizard.

Figure 2: QuickBooks helps you set up your tax liabilities.
Paying employees is a challenging element of your role as an employer, and it must be done right. We can help you build an accurate framework and keep up with your government payroll tax obligations.

​No matter which version of QuickBooks you’re using, there are always ways to make your workday easier. As with any software, we tend to learn the features we need and not much more. But small changes in the way you operate can add up to significant time savings and more accurate files. If you jumped into QuickBooks without a thorough introduction, consider these tips.

Use the Open Window list
Spend some time in Preferences, and you’ll be surprised to learn that you have more flexibility than you knew. QuickBooks is designed to work for a tremendously wide variety of businesses, so it comes with some features activated but many dormant.
The Open Window list is a good example. Do you tire of closing windows to find a screen that you used several tasks ago? Make sure that you’re in one-window view (View | One Window), and then click View | Open Window List. Click on any entry to move to that page.

Figure 1: The Open Windows list lets you easily move among active screens.

Make account assignment mandatory 
QuickBooks lets you enter transactions without assigning them to accounts. So your Chart of Accounts has two accounts labeled Uncategorized Income and Uncategorized Expenses that serve as repositories for these transactions. This means that when you run reports or prepare for taxes, you may have a hard time remembering the circumstances of those transactions and will find it difficult to assign them to accounts.

Do yourself a favor. Set up QuickBooks so that you must assign an account to every transaction. This will take extra time upfront, but not as much as if you try to recall the transaction three months from now. Go to Edit | Preferences | Accounting | Company Preferences and make sure that Require Accounts is checked. If you have questions on this, please call or email us.

Use the Account Prefill fields 
Speaking of accounts, here’s a little time-saving tip. If you have vendors that are always assigned to the same account(s), you can establish this constant in the vendor record. Simply open the Edit Vendor window for a client and click the Account Prefill tab. Select the appropriate selection(s) from the drop-down lists. If a payment is sometimes split between multiple accounts, you’ll handle this division when you add transactions.

Figure 2: Designate vendor accounts to save time when creating transactions.

Use “Pending Sales”
Invoices, sales receipts and credit memos can be earmarked as “pending.” These sales do not show up in registers or reports (except for the Pending Sales report) and can’t be used for transactions where payment has already been applied. Create the transaction and click  Edit | Mark [form name] As Pending. To finalize it, open the form and click Edit | Mark [form name] As Final.
This action can be useful in multiple situations, including:

• Backordered items
• Draft approvals
• Estimates
• Time-tracking for jobs
• Profit and loss reports that show the impact of pending sales (choose Either as the posting status [Non-posting or Posting] under Filters)

Figure 3: You can mark a payment as “pending” in several situations.

Be kind to your accountant: Set a closing date 
Once we’ve worked with your QuickBooks file up to a certain date, entering, editing or deleting transactions prior to that date wreaks havoc with the balance of your books. To be safe, your administrator should password-protect the ability to do this, so that no one does this intentionally or unintentionally. Go to Edit | Preferences | Accounting | Company Preferences and enter a closing date and password. We will change the date each time we complete our work.

Figure 4: Password-protect closed periods to preserve the accuracy of your books.
These are just a few examples of ways you can customize QuickBooks to make your workdays more productive and your record-keeping safer and more reflective of your business. We can help you further tailor the software to make it a better fit.
If you have questions on this or any other QuickBooks feature, call or email us. We’re your partner and we’re here to make your business better

As it usually does this time of year, Intuit has introduced new versions of its Pro and Premier products. QuickBooks 2012 promises to help you get better organized, save steps, and acquire more in-depth financial insights.

The new Express Start is designed for newcomers to QuickBooks who want to blast through setup and start entering customers and invoices. You have two other options, though: Advanced Setup is the old EasyStep interview that solicits more details. You can also open an existing file or convert data from Quicken or other accounting software.

Express Start requires minimal input: company name, industry, company type, tax ID, and contact information. After you save your company file, it lets you start adding or importing customers/vendors/employees, products/services, and bank.accounts. Of course, depending on your needs as a business, there are many features not covered here that a qualified Pro Advisor could set up and explain to you, but this gets you started.

Figure 1: Express Start simplifies company setup

An Activity-Driven Calendar
QuickBooks’ Reminders keep you apprised of each day’s tasks, but they don’t provide any information about the past or future. QuickBooks 2012 solves this problem with its new Calendar. When you enter an appointment, to-do, or key business task (invoices, bills, purchase orders, etc.), it appears in the calendar. You can display a graphical view of the month that tallies activities for each day and lists them below. Daily and weekly views are in list form. And links open the original documents. For those of you acquainted with the Find function in QuickBooks, this Calendar feature may make it easier and faster to find documents you are looking for if they are in the near recent past.

Figure 2: The new Calendar displays daily, weekly, and monthly views of your financial transactions.

Save Excel Formatting
Once you’ve formatted a QuickBooks report in Excel, it’s frustrating to have to reformat it each time you run it for different time periods and/or with your ever-changing content.  Excel Integration Refresh simplifies this process. You can now export a report to Excel, make formatting changes and save them, and then reapply them later to the same type of report using different date ranges and your updated QuickBooks data. Acceptable alterations include:

• Row and column header font formatting
• New formulas
• Renamed column and row headers, and report titles
• Resized columns
• Inserted columns and rows
• Inserted formula text

You can do this by opening your report in QuickBooks and clicking Update an existing worksheet, or by launching your report in Excel and clicking the QuickBooks tab on the toolbar, then the Update Report button.

Figure 3: This window opens when you click Update Report in Excel.

A New Report Community
There’s always room for more report formats. QuickBooks 2012 offers a library of Contributed Reports, variations created either by Intuit or your fellow users. You can select one of these, like Customer Sales By Quantity By Item Detail and instantly populate it with your own data. This list is starting out with hundreds of reports created by Intuit, but as users add to them who knows how large the list will be.

You can sort these templates by industry and rating, and view them as a list, in a grid, or in the
Report Center’s Carousel view.

Centralized Operations
QuickBooks 2012 also saves you time with its new Centers. The Inventory Center works similarly to those available for customers, vendors, and employees. It’s a clearinghouse of item records and transactions that can be viewed and sorted. You can also do inventory housekeeping tasks here, like adding items and launching transactions. You can now post an image of your inventory product and you also have a field to make internal notes on this product. This is quite a revolution in the inventory list.

The Lead Center helps you carefully track new leads that you either paste in from Excel or enter manually. You can add to-dos and notes to contact records, and convert them into customers. Wow. To me this is a big one. Keeping all your leads in the same software as your accounting. I look forward to using this feature myself.

Upgrading Can Be Tricky
Intuit has included other, smaller time-saving organizational and reporting tools in QuickBooks 2012, like One-Click Transactions, which lets you create related transactions from existing ones (i.e., invoice to credit memo) with one click.

There’s nothing especially difficult about using most of QuickBooks 2012’s new features. But upgrading and setup are sometimes quirky, and the Excel Integration Refresh tool has a learning curve. We’re happy to help you start your company file on the right foot or get acclimated to this latest version.

Figure 4; Track your leads and convert them into customers in the new Lead Center

If you are anything like me, being able to do things on the keyboard sure speeds up entry rather than having to reach for that mouse all the time….and there are so many things you can do in QuickBooks ON THE KEYBOARD. It all started in DOS (yes, I remember DOS…am I telling my age LOL) and now those “quickie” keystrokes are still there. You might want to try them and see how they speed up your entry.

Shortcut 1: Keyboard Tips Working with Dates
When in a date field there are many ways to change the date. Of course you can type the date or you can pull up the calendar and “mouse it”, but there may be faster ways to get to a specific date.

Changing by a Few Days:
If you only want to change a few days try using the Plus (+) or Minus (-) key to move forward or backwards. You can hold the key down and change dates quite quickly but I usually recommend this for a change of a few days.

Changing by Weeks:
You can go back to the first day of the week by using the letter W and forward to the last day of the week by using the letter K.

Note: Recognizing that these are the first and last letters of the word WeeK gives you a clue as to how you can move forward or back within the week.

Changing by Months:
You can go back to the first day of the month by using the letter M and forward to the last day of the month by using the letter H.

Note: Recognizing that these are the first and last letters of the word MontH gives you a clue as to how you can move forward or back within the month.

Changing by Year:
You can go back to the first day of the year by using the letter Y and forward to the end of the year at a time by using the letter R.

Note: Recognizing that these are the first and last letters of the word YeaR gives you a clue as to how you can move forward or back within the year.

Today: By now you will probably not be surprised to learn that you can return to today’s date at any time by pressing the letter T.

Shortcut 2: Saving Transactions from Keyboard
When working in a transaction and tabbing from field to field, you eventually get to the point where you want to save the transaction.

If you do not wish to take your hands off the keyboard to move the mouse to the Save & New Button, try holding down the CTRL key while pressing the Enter key.

This combination will execute whatever is highlighted, almost always the Save & New Button.
Shortcut 3: Calculations on the Fly

How often have you worked in QuickBooks and needed to do add up numbers?
Windows and QuickBooks both have calculators that you can pull up, but you really don’t need them.

If you are in an amount field anywhere in QuickBooks, like on a check or other transaction, just pressing the number keys followed by a mathematical symbol (+, -, /, *) you will pull up the calculator. You can continue to enter numbers and math functions until you are done.

When I show clients this shortcut they are amazed, as they had been reaching for a calculator when they had one right in front of them without even leaving the field they were in.

Note: Just remember to press the Enter key to enter the amount into the number field. If you press the tab key you will lose the amount.

Shortcut 4: Working with Check Numbers
Many people don’t realize you can enter something other than a check number in the check number field.

I like to use the word “Online” for all transactions that I do online. You can enter whatever description  pleases you to categorize your transactions. I use “DD” for the direct deposit checks.
The main thing is to know that once the check is entered you can put anything in the number field and it does not have to be a number.

QuickBooks actually enters “e-pay” when you use the e-pay in Payroll to pay your payroll taxes.
This makes it easy to track the transactions and they show up grouped together on the bank statement reconciliation screen.

Note: Just be sure to be consistent with the word and the spelling, including capitalization or they won’t be grouped together.

Shortcut 5: Making the Icon Bar Work for You
Every menu item that you use often should be ON YOUR ICON BAR.
This makes entry so easy and fast, I would be lost without it.

If you go to VIEW on the top menu, you will see “Customize Icon Bar”. Click on it and you will see how you can add and delete icons from the bar.

You can also open up a window or a report and click on View and just click “add to icon bar”. Then you will have the exact window or report at your fingertips. No more searching thru menus for frequently used items.

Of course the Home Page is always there for you, but this saves a click because the icon bar is always on the screen.
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I hope these tips make using QuickBooks a little easier as you go through the day.

Which is right for your application?

​QuickBooks’ standard reports are critical to understanding your company’s past, present, and future. But the program also offers innovative tools that can make them significantly more insightful and comprehensive.

QuickBooks offers two simple conventions that let you identify related data: classes and types. Classes are used in transactions. Types are assigned to individual customers, vendors, and jobs.

You might use classes to, for example, separate transactions that relate to different departments or locations or types of business. A construction company might want to track classes using New Construction, Remodel, and Overhead. Your customer types might help you isolate groups by characteristics like Industry or Geographical Location. A common use of classes is to separate two or more company “locations” or “divisions”. allowing an income statement by profit center.

Creating Classes
First, make sure that QuickBooks is set up to use classes. Go to Edit | Preferences | Accounting | Company Preferences. Make sure that Use class tracking is checked. If you want to be prompted for a class designation in transactions, check that box, too. This could be very important if you want to make sure that every transaction is coded to a class. QuickBooks already contains a Type field in customer, vendor, and job records. Therefore, Type is set up in the profile and will pertain to every transaction that is created in that customer, job or vendor name.

It’s easy to build lists of options for both. To define classes, go to Lists | Class List. In the bottom left corner of the screen, click on Class, then select New from the menu. You’ll see this:

Figure 1: To create a class, just give it a name and click OK.

Let’s say that you’re a contractor and you want to separate remodeling jobs into room types, like Bathroom or Kitchen. Go through the above steps again. Enter “Bathroom” in the Class Name field and click the box next to Subclass of. Open the list and choose “Remodel.” Click OK. 

Tip: If your class list grows lengthy and you want to tidy it up, you can make classes that you’re not currently using inactive by checking the box in this window. It will remain in your QuickBooks records and can be reactivated again. 

Putting Classes to Work
Now you can use classes in transactions. Open a blank invoice and select a customer. The Class field will be next to the customer name. If the entire invoice will be assigned to the same class, click the drop-down list and select it. You can also assign separate classes to individual line items:

Figure 2: You can assign different classes to individual line items in transactions.
Not all invoice templates include a column for classes. You can add this by selecting the invoice form you want to modify and clicking Customize in the toolbar. You need to make sure that class is on the template that you are using, although most of the time, it is only on the screen and you would not choose to print it. You may also note that when you are customizing a template in most cases, QuickBooks requires that  you may a copy of their default template so that the default stays in tact, and that you are customizing a duplicate of the model template. A good control.

QuickBooks comes with two reports specially designed for tracking class-based transactions: Profit & Loss by Class and Balance Sheet by Class (both can be found in the Reports menu, under Company & Financial). Of course, you can filter other reports to include a class column. You can also create a QuickReport for individual classes. Go to Lists | Class List and select a report or graph.

Figure 3: You can filter by class in QuickBooks reports.

Warning! The Balance Sheet by Class report is complicated and may produce unexpected results. Let your ProAdvisor help you work with this one. They can also help you set up a solid class structure.

A Simpler Assignment
Customer, vendor, and job types are a bit less complicated. Job types are especially useful; you can track, for example, profitability and time spent on individual projects. Customer and vendor types can produce output for things like targeted mailings and reports.

Creating types is very similar to creating classes. Go to Lists | Customer & Vendor Profile Lists, and select the type you want to work with. You’ll follow the same instructions here as you did for classes. Types do not appear on transactions; they’re designed for your own internal use, and they’re stored in records.

Figure 4: Customer, vendor, and job types are specified in their records.
Classes and types can be used very effectively in your bookkeeping, but they require a good deal of thought and planning upfront to get accurate, meaningful reports. Let us know if we can assist as you attempt to use these powerful forms of classification.

Hi All,
Just returned from Las Vegas and the 3rd annual QB conference of Scaling New Heights. Training for QuickBooks Consultants. New technologies and new tricks on using QuickBooks. If you are not using Online Banking Download or using e-pay and e-file with you Enhanced Payroll Subscription, you are wasting precious time. These are two great functionalities of QB 2010 and 2011.
Go Payment is new. If you are a service company, and have techs in the field with Intuit Merchant Services, you can add the Go Payment feature where your techs can process payment at the time of service with their Smart Phone, swiping the customer’s card. Incredible. And the payment goes right into your QuickBooks. If you want to use QuickBooks Connect, you can even have the invoice upload to QuickBooks. I know this is all probably confusing but we saw it work at the conference. The main thing is for you to know that it is possible and you can do it with your company. What a time saver and a push to cash flow.
And REMOTE….REMOTE is the new technology. We can service you remotely in so many ways with the connection technology and also the bank and credit card downloads. We train and troubleshoot and even do the bookkeeping remotely. GOTOMEETING, GOTOASSIT, LOGMEIN…ALL technologies for us to help you remotely no matter where you are. So exciting to think how small the world is becoming with all these possibilities. We hope you are as excited as we are.