Customize QuickBooks® Forms for a More Professional Image

Want an easy, free way to make your business look more professional and polished? Customize your forms. QuickBooks® has the tools.

You probably don’t get as many paper forms in the U.S. Mail as you used to. But when you do, do you draw conclusions about the business that sent them based on what their forms look like?
Whether or not you think you do, most people make judgements on businesses based on collateral materials. You might notice that there’s no company logo, or that there are unnecessary blank fields. Maybe the print is very light or blurry, and there’s no message at the bottom thanking you for your business and your payment.
How you present yourself on paper does matter. There’s a lot of competition out there, and you need to use all of the tools available to you to stand out. QuickBooks provides one way to do so with its simple forms customization features.

Getting Started
To see what forms are available for customization, open the Lists menu and select Templates to open this window:

QuickBooks’ Templates

Figure 1: QuickBooks’ Templates window shows you what forms can be customized and provides tools for working with them.

Before you try your hand at customizing a form, make a copy to work with first. Highlight Intuit Product Invoice. Click the down arrow next to Templates in the lower left, and select Duplicate. A small window will open, displaying your options. Select Invoice and click OK.

QuickBooks will then take you back to the Templates window, and you’ll see a new entry labeled Copy of: Intuit Product Invoice. Right-click on it and select Edit Template from the menu that opens. This will open the Basic Customization window.

There are two parts to this screen. The editing options for the template you selected will appear on the left, and a preview of your invoice will display on the right. As you make modifications to the template, the preview will change to reflect them.

​The best, most noticeable thing you can do to customize your invoice is to add a logo. Click the box in front of Use logo, and locate the file in the computer directory that opens. Double-click it. You logo will appear to the left of your company name and address in the upper left corner of the preview.

Basic Customization

Figure 2: The Basic Customization window displays options for modifying your copy of the Intuit Product Invoice template.

You can make numerous changes to your template in this window, like:
•        Selecting a new color scheme,
•        Changing fonts,
•        Deciding how much of your contact information should appear, and
•        Indicating whether the Print Status Stamp (PAID, PENDING, etc.) should appear where appropriate on your invoices.

Note: You can choose to use the same modified design on multiple types of forms. This is a little complicated; let us help you.

More Customizing Options
The changes you just made were fairly superficial. However, QuickBooks offers tools that let you go much further, modifying the actual content of the invoice itself, its columns, and its fields. To get started on this, click the Additional Customization button at the bottom of the screen. The window that opens displays a preview of your invoice on the right side, just like in the previous window.

Your customization options appear on the left side, divided into five different sections. You’ll work primarily with three of them for your invoice:

Header. This includes all of the information that appears on about the top third of the form, like Bill To, Terms, Due Date, and Project/Job.

Columns. What are you billing the customer for? Item, Description, Quantity, Rate, etc.

​Footer. What information will you want to enter after you’ve completed the invoice’s product or service content? You’ll likely want fields like Total, Balance Due, and Payments/Credits, perhaps a Message.

Figure 3: QuickBooks gives you tremendous control over the content in your forms.

Figure 3: QuickBooks gives you tremendous control over the content in your forms.

As you can see in the above image, QuickBooks lets you choose whether specific fields and columns will appear on your invoices onscreen and/or in print. You can also change field labels if you’d like. And if you have overlapping fields or want to further modify the appearance of the invoice, you can use the Layout Designer. It’s a simple tool, but it requires some design skills.

Of course, you may not be printing many invoices at all if you’re set up to email them and accept payments online. But your customers, of course, will still see how carefully you’ve crafted your forms, which will feed into their overall perception of you. Let this impression be a good one.

Receiving Payments in QuickBooks®

It’s probably one of your favorite QuickBooks activities. Be sure you understand the mechanics of recording payments. There are numerous ways to prioritize your workday. Do the most difficult things first. Get important phone calls out of the way. Respond to customer emails.

But it’s likely that one activity takes precedence when you see that it needs to be done: recording payments. While you’re probably very careful with this process, it’s critical that your actions here are accurate. If they’re not, you could either lose money that you’ve earned or anger customers by requesting payments they’ve already made.

QuickBooks comes with some helpful pre-defined payment types; however, you also have the flexibility to edit that list and add new types. To see your list, open the Lists menu and select Customer & Vendor Profile Lists, then Payment Method List. This window opens:

accept payments from customers

Figure 1: QuickBooks lets you accept payments from customers in a variety of ways.

To make changes to this list, click the down arrow to the right of Payment Method. By selecting items from this menu, you can add, edit, and delete payment methods. You can also make one temporarily inactive if for some reason you’re not going to support that option right now but don’t want to delete it, either. Click in the box next to Include Inactive if you want it to remain on the list (an X will appear next to it). When you want to reinstate it, open the Payment Method menu again and select Make Payment Method Active.

To search for every transaction that used a specific payment method, highlight it in the list and select Find in Transactions. QuickBooks will open the Find window with that filter already applied.
When you’re done working with that window, click the x in the upper right to close it.

Applying the Funds
Ideally, you or someone on your staff will be working frequently with the Receive Payments screen frequently. To get there, open the Customers menu and select Receive Payments, or click Receive Payments on the home page. This is the screen you will work with if you’re recording a payment that is to be applied to an invoice that you sent.

The Receive Payments

Figure 2: The Receive Payments screen in QuickBooks

First, select a customer by clicking on the down arrow in the field to the right of RECEIVED FROM. If there are outstanding invoices, they will appear in the table below. Enter the PAYMENT AMOUNT in the field below, and change the date if necessary. Click on the icon representing the payment method. If you don’t see it there, click the down arrow below MORE and add it or select it. Your chosen icon will turn green. Then:

  • For cash or e-checks: Just enter any REFERENCE #
  • For checks: Enter the CHECK #.
  • For credit/debit cards: If you’ve saved the customer’s preferred payment method in his or her record, the number will fill in automatically. If not, or you need to change it, enter it manually. As you know, you need a merchant account in order to accept credit/debit cards and e-checks. If you haven’t set one up and want to, let us help.

If the payment amount equals the total of all outstanding invoices, there will be a check mark in the first column of every line in the table. If the payment is for any less than the CUSTOMER BALANCE in the upper right, QuickBooks automatically pays the oldest invoice(s) first. You’ll also see an UNDERPAYMENT box in the lower left corner. Click the button in front of your preference here (leave as underpayment or write off the extra). When you’re done, click one of the Save buttons.

Other Types of Payments
You’ll also use the Receive Payments window to record down payments and overpayments. And there are situations where you’ll have to complete other forms to document the incoming money. For example, if a customer makes a partial payment for products or services that haven’t yet been invoiced, you’d use a Payment Item. A customer who pays for a product at the time it is received would get a Sales Receipt.

Picture

Figure 3: Sales receipts go to customers who pay for products or services at the time they are received.

This may all sound a little confusing. But it won’t be if you gain a thorough understanding of the right way to record different types of payments. We can go over all of this with you to ensure that your incoming money is documented correctly, which will take less time than trying to retrace your steps when a mistake has occurred.

Why You Should Be Using Mobile Apps with QuickBooks®

Intuit discontinued its own QuickBooks mobile app a while back, but there’s still plenty of processing power available for your smartphone or tablet. In days gone by, running a company was a 40 hour per week proposition. You might have taken work home some evenings or gone into the office on weekends.

Those days are over, thanks to the internet and mobile technology. This fundamental change in the way we do business means that it’s now hard to get away from work.  Your smartphone and tablet are usually within easy reach, and they’re always tempting you to check in.
On the flip side, that kind of 24/7/365 accessibility has numerous benefits. There are, for example, apps that can be integrated with your desktop QuickBooks company file, which enable you to:

  • Make sales wherever you are,
  • Document expenses as they’re incurred, and
  • Monitor employee time for payroll purposes.

Let’s take a look at these in more detail.

Mobile Sales

QuickBooks is GoPayment.

Figure 1: One of the oldest apps that integrates with QuickBooks is GoPayment. You can process transactions on your smartphone or tablet from anywhere. ​

Payment-processing on smartphones has become commonplace these days. You’ve probably seen merchants accepting credit cards on mobile phones in one of two ways: by swiping the card on a small card reader that attach to their device or by entering bank cards numbers directly.

Intuit’s GoPayment lets you do either. You can download the free app and process a customer’s payment on your smartphone. However, you still have to download it into QuickBooks and either create a sales receipt or match it to an open invoice. This isn’t a difficult process once you understand it, but you must be sure to do it correctly from the start. We can do some practice runs with you. Benefit: Improved sales that aren’t dependent on location

Travel Expenses On the Go

One of the smartest, most useful apps that has ever been created is the expense reporter – particularly when used by your road warriors for on-the-go expenses. There are a handful of these. Travelers can record expenses in two ways: they can either enter the information directly or snap a picture of a receipt with a smartphone. When your employees get back to the office, they’re able to prepare complete expense reports, whose approved data can be transferred into QuickBooks.

Concur is one of these apps. When you set it up, it imports Account Codes, Customers, Jobs and Classes, and Vendor and Employee Records from QuickBooks so that these can be assigned for each expense entry. Credit card transactions can be imported directly. When an expense report is completed, it can be sent to a manager for approval, and reimbursement is then deposited in the employee’s bank account.

 Intuit’s App Center

Figure 2: Intuit’s App Center is home to hundreds of add-on applications for QuickBooks.

Tallie works similarly. It can automatically categorize expenses and alert approvers to expense policy violations. Used in conjunction with Bill.com and SmartVault, it can accommodate a sophisticated, seamless accounting workflow. We’ll see more multi-app integration as cloud-based financial solutions mature, but if you’re going to attempt such a setup, let us help you with the initial mechanics.

Benefit: More accurate, policy-compliant expense reports

Time-Tracking and Timesheets
If all of your employees walk through the office door every morning and stay there, you don’t need a mobile app for time-tracking. But for businesses whose cash flow depends on recovering and recording every minute of billable time, a smartphone time-tracker is ideal.
TSheets Time Tracker can help improve your bottom line in numerous ways. This particular app:

  • Accommodates real-time mobile data entry,
  • Tracks employee locations using GPS, and
  • Creates timesheets that can be synchronized with QuickBooks, tracking billable time by customer, job, employee, etc.

Benefits: Employee accountability; recovery and correct classification of all billable hours; and less time required to create timesheets.

Moving Toward Integration
Given the size limitations of smartphones, some mobile apps contain only a subset of the features found in their desktop counterparts. But that subset is chosen based on the needs of mobile users.

Fewer features mean that your learning time for the mobile apps that integrate with QuickBooks will be minimal. But the steps to sync with QuickBooks must be followed to the letter, and you may not be familiar with such a process. We want you to experience the benefits that these smartphone solutions can offer without compromising the integrity of your QuickBooks company file. Let us introduce you to these forward-looking, beneficial tools.

Customizing Quickbooks Reports

QuickBooks provides lots of customizable report templates, but which are musts?

Let’s go over this…You send invoices because you sold products and/or services. Purchase orders go out when you’re running low on inventory, and it seems there are always bills to pay. All of this activity is important in itself, but what’s probably the most critical element of QuickBooks… is “reports”.

Reports can tell you how many forest green sweatshirts you sold in April, what you paid for health insurance premiums in the first quarter of this year, and how much you bought from your favorite vendor last month. They’re very good at drilling down to get the precise set of numbers you need.

But reports – carefully customized and properly analyzed – can do more than tell you how many items you have/sold, and if you are starting to pay too much for your phone bill. They can help you make the business decisions that will help you take your company to the next level. There are several that you should be looking at regularly, and we can help you with the interpretation of the more complex financial reports.

So… The below listed reports, are the ones you’ll want to run often:

Who Owes Money? This is a big one!
That’s probably a question you ask yourself every day. You don’t have to run the A/R Aging Detail report every day, but you will want to run it frequently. It tells you who owes you money and whether they’ve passed the due date (and by how many days). See the example picture below:

As with any report, you can modify it to include the columns, data set and date range

Figure 1: By running the A/R Aging Detail report, you can see whether you need to follow up with customers who have past due invoices.
As with any report, you can modify it to include the columns, data set and date range you want by clicking the Customize button. When you create a report in a format that you think you might want to run again, click the Memorize button. Enter a name that you’ll remember, and assign it to a Memorized Report Group.

Getting There… Help:
There are two ways to find the reports you want to see. You can open the Reports menu and move your cursor down to the category you want, like Customers & Receivables, which will open a slide-out menu of options there.

Or you can open the Report Center, which lets you explore reports in more depth. Each is represented by a small graphic with four icons under it. There, you can:

  • Run the report with your own data in it
  • Open a small informational window
  • Designate it as a Favorite, and
  • View QuickBooks help.

Figure 2: If you access QuickBooks reports through the Report Center, you’ll have several related options.

Other accounts receivable reports that you should consult periodically include Open Invoices and Average Days to Pay.

** Sound like too much to remember or go through? Relax… we are here to help you with these or any related tasks with QuickBooks! We can either handle it ALL for you, OR we can teach you how to become proficient and effective while doing your own bookkeeping: 972-495-8877

Tracking What You Owe
Reports can also keep you up-to-date on money that you owe to other people and companies. An important one is Unpaid Bills Detail, accessible through the Vendors & Payables menu item. Though you can modify its columns, this report basically tells you who is expecting money from you, the date the bill was issued,  its due date, any number assigned to it, the balance due, and relevant aging information.

Vendor Balance Detail is critical, as well. This report displays every transaction (invoices, payments, etc.) that contributes to the balance you have with each vendor.

Figure 3: We hope you’ll let us help you by running and interpreting these standard financial reports for you!

QuickBooks report categories include one labeled Company & Financial. These are reports that you can run yourself, but they’re critical for understanding your company’s financial status. We can customize and analyze these for you on a regular basis so you’ll know where you stand, to make it easier for you. They include:

  • Balance Sheet. What is the value of your company? The balance sheet breaks out this information by account (under the umbrella of assets, liabilities and equity).
  • Income Statement. Often referred to as Profit & Loss, this shows you how much money your business made or lost over a specific time period.
  • Statement of Cash Flows. How much money came in and went out during a specified time range?

Reports can only generate information about what you’ve entered in QuickBooks and exactly where it’s been entered. So it’s crucial that you follow standard accounting practices as you proceed through your daily workflow. We’re always available to answer questions you have about QuickBooks’ structure and your activity there. Your reports – and your critical business decisions – depend on it… So we can teach you how to operate these effectively, OR we can simply take care of it all for you!

The TOP QuickBooks® Reports That You Should Be Running Regularly

QuickBooks provides lots of customizable report templates, but which are musts?

Let’s go over this…You send invoices because you sold products and/or services. Purchase orders go out when you’re running low on inventory, and it seems there are always bills to pay. All of this activity is important in itself, but what’s probably the most critical element of QuickBooks… is “reports”.

Reports can tell you how many forest green sweatshirts you sold in April, what you paid for health insurance premiums in the first quarter of this year, and how much you bought from your favorite vendor last month. They’re very good at drilling down to get the precise set of numbers you need.
But reports – carefully customized and properly analyzed – can do more than tell you how many items you have/sold, and if you are starting to pay too much for your phone bill. They can help you make the business decisions that will help you take your company to the next level. There are several that you should be looking at regularly, and we can help you with the interpretation of the more complex financial reports.
So… The below listed reports, are the ones you’ll want to run often:

Who Owes Money? This is a big one!

That’s probably a question you ask yourself every day. You don’t have to run the A/R Aging Detail report every day, but you will want to run it frequently. It tells you who owes you money and whether they’ve passed the due date (and by how many days). See the example picture below:
As with any report, you can modify it to include the columns, data set and date range

Figure 1: By running the A/R Aging Detail report, you can see whether you need to follow up with customers who have past due invoices.
As with any report, you can modify it to include the columns, data set and date range you want by clicking the Customize button. When you create a report in a format that you think you might want to run again, click the Memorize button. Enter a name that you’ll remember, and assign it to a Memorized Report Group.
Getting There… Help:
There are two ways to find the reports you want to see. You can open the Reports menu and move your cursor down to the category you want, like Customers & Receivables, which will open a slide-out menu of options there.
Or you can open the Report Center, which lets you explore reports in more depth. Each is represented by a small graphic with four icons under it. There, you can:
Run the report with your own data in it
Open a small informational window
Designate it as a Favorite, and View QuickBooks help.

Report Center

Figure 2: If you access QuickBooks reports through the Report Center, you’ll have several related options.

Other accounts receivable reports that you should consult periodically include Open Invoices and Average Days to Pay.

Sound like too much to remember or go through? Relax… we are here to help you with these or any related tasks with QuickBooks! We can either handle it ALL for you, OR we can teach you how to become proficient and effective while doing your own bookkeeping: 972-495-8877

Tracking What You Owe

Reports can also keep you up-to-date on money that you owe to other people and companies. An important one is Unpaid Bills Detail, accessible through the Vendors & Payables menu item.

Though you can modify its columns, this report basically tells you who is expecting money from you, the date the bill was issued,  its due date, any number assigned to it, the balance due, and relevant aging information.

​Vendor Balance Detail is critical, as well. This report displays every transaction (invoices, payments, etc.) that contributes to the balance you have with each vendor.

Figure 3: We hope you’ll let us help you by running and interpreting these standard financial reports for you!

Figure 3: We hope you’ll let us help you by running and interpreting these standard financial reports for you!


​QuickBooks report categories include one labeled Company & Financial.

These are reports that you can run yourself, but they’re critical for understanding your company’s financial status. We can customize and analyze these for you on a regular basis so you’ll know where you stand, to make it easier for you. They include:

  • Balance Sheet. What is the value of your company? The balance sheet breaks out this information by account (under the umbrella of assets, liabilities and equity).
  • Income Statement. Often referred to as Profit & Loss, this shows you how much money your business made or lost over a specific time period.
  • Statement of Cash Flows. How much money came in and went out during a specified time range?

Reports can only generate information about what you’ve entered in QuickBooks and exactly where it’s been entered. So it’s crucial that you follow standard accounting practices as you proceed through your daily workflow. We’re always available to answer questions you have about QuickBooks’ structure and your activity there. Your reports – and your critical business decisions – depend on it… So we can teach you how to operate these effectively, OR we can simply take care of it all for you!

QuickBooks ®Simplifies, Maybe Accelerates Common Tasks

New version of desktop QuickBooks®​ can accomplish a goal of speeding up, refining your workflow.

Rather than pile on tons of new features in its upgrades, Intuit – for many years – has seemed to concentrate on making it easier for you to access the tools and data that are already there.
QuickBooks 2014 can make it easier to get in and do what needs to be done quickly, and then move on to other activities that will help build your business.

A Better View
If you do upgrade to QuickBooks 2014, check out the new Income Tracker (Customers | Income Tracker). QuickBooks new feature provides possibly the best “view” we’ve seen in the software.

Figure 1: QuickBooks 2014’s new Income Tracker gives you real-time access to the status of your receivables.

This screen gives you a birds-eye view of your receivables that isn’t available anywhere else in the program. You can click on any of the four colored bars that run across the top of the screen – Estimates, Open Invoices, Overdue and Paid Last 30 Days — to change the data that appears below. Within each bar is the number of related transactions and their total dollar amount.
More Descriptive/Detailed Email
If you regularly send invoices through email, you may have wondered how many of them actually get opened by your customers in a decent, timely fashion. QuickBooks 2014 has a new tool that makes the details of an invoice available in the body of the email itself.

Figure 2: You can modify this template or leave it as is: QuickBooks 2014 will fill in the relevant details for each customer.
To access this template, open the Edit menu and select Preferences. Click on the Send Forms tab, then Company Preferences.
Some Other Smaller Changes
Intuit has made many small-but-productive features to QuickBooks 2014, all designed to help you work faster and smarter, and simply to support simpler operations. For example, the Ribbon toolbars on transactions now include a tab or menu that lets you open related reports.

Figure 3: You can now access reports directly from the Ribbon toolbar on transaction screens.
In addition:

  • The program seems to run faster.
  • We can communicate with you (and vice versa) through an email window that’s been embedded into the software.
  • There’s been some re-doing of online banking (now called “Bank Feeds”), making it more accessible and hopefully understandable to you and other users.

Upgrading to a new version of QuickBooks can sometimes be challenging, so we encourage you to let us know if you’d like to explore the process. New functionality and usability that improves your workflow and your understanding of your finances can be worth the time and trouble.

Modifying QuickBooks® Reports Gives You Better Insight Into Past and Future

If you make one resolution about improving your accounting procedures in 2012, it should be this: Make extensive use of the tools that QuickBooks offers for report modification.

Comprehensive, meticulously-shaped reports that flow out of your carefully-constructed records and transactions are your reward for pounding on the keys every day, conscientiously recording income and expenses. 

​QuickBooks supplies you with a wide variety of pre-formatted reports whose modification options
can help you do focused, critical analysis of your financial data. The right set of numbers will help you understand your history and plan for the future more effectively.

Note: The reports discussed and pictured here shows only one possible set of customization options. There are many variations. We can answer your questions.

CHECK YOUR PREFERENCES

When you created your company file in QuickBooks, you chose between reporting on a cash (income and expenses are recorded when money changes hands) or accrual (recorded when you invoice or receive a bill) basis. This affects summary reports, but not those that break out individual transactions or are simply lists.
If you want to change this, click Edit | Preferences | Reports & Graphs | Company Preferences and click the desired button:

Figure 1: You can establish a preference for your summary reports’ basis here.
You can set other preference in this window that will affect your report output here, too, as you can see.

ALTERING THE DISPLAY
Open the INCOME BY CUSTOMER SUMMARY report (Reports | Company & Financial). Change the dates to reflect the range you’d like to see. Also QuickBooks has a feature called “fuzzy dates”. When you choose a “fuzzy date” range for your report, like “last month” or “last quarter” and you memorize this report, it will always come up with the dates changed to reflect your “fuzzy date” no matter when you pull it up – a month later or a quarter later. Note that Figure 2 is using a “fuzzy date” – “This fiscal year-to-date”.

Want the data displayed by different time increments – like week or quarter – instead of just total?
Click the arrow next to COLUMNS and select FOUR WEEK.

Figure 2: You can do some report display alterations from this toolbar; the options it offers vary by report.
By default, your report rows display alphabetically. If you want to view a column by total in ascending or descending order, select the column by hovering over the top number until the magnifying glass appears, and click on it. Click the arrow next to Sort by and choose Total, then click the AZ [down arrow] icon (in some reports, there will be other options here).

Additional options in this toolbar let you:

  • Memorize the report
  • Print, email or export it to Excel
  • Hide or Show the Header
  • Collapse or Expand the columns
  • Refresh the report if you’ve made changes that will alter data

MORE DISPLAY OPTIONS 

Click CUSTOMIZE REPORT to open this window:

Figure 3: This window outlines your report’s content options.
Some of the options here duplicate what you saw in the toolbar. In additon you can switch between CASH and ACCRUAL for just this report, and add subcolumns in some. The latter is a complicated operation, one that you must understand well in order to glean any insight from it. We can help you with this.

Sometimes the subcolumns are generic, as shown in the screen above. In other reports, they are very specific to that group of data. An example of that might be theAR AGING REPORT. Some of QuickBooks’ reports are specifically designed to do a certain type of report and they therefore refer to that specific outcome.

Clicking on REVERT takes you back to the default format, and ADVANCED OPTIONSopens addtional options specific to the current report.

Figure 4: In transaction – or detail – reports, you can alter the column structure.  
Learn the mechanics of report display modification well, and your company’s finances will come into much sharper focus, improving the wisdom of future choices. Up next month: filtering your reports for additional clarity.

​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!

Intuit Merchant Service for QuickBooks® Improves Cash Flow and Streamlines Accounts Receivable

Keeping your accounts receivable current in this economy is a challenge. Checks can be slow to arrive and cumbersome to process. And if you’re using a non-QuickBooks merchant account for credit card transactions, you may be paying more than necessary, using a clunky terminal, and/or doing unnecessary data entry.
There’s a better solution. Intuit Merchant Service for QuickBooks lets you accept credit and debit card transactions. You’ll be able to:

  • Authorize the transactions in QuickBooks
  • Get paid faster
  • Reduce data entry errors
  • Process payments on any PC

Recording Cards
After a quick application and setup process, you can begin. If you’re applying payments to invoices, just click Receive Payments like you normally do (you can also apply card payments to sales receipts and credit memos).

In the Customer Payment window, choose a customer, enter the amount, and select the payment method. Enter the number and expiration date (if this is already in the customer record, it will appear), check the Process xxxx payment when savingbox, and save. Upon authorization, the money will go into Undeposited Funds unless you’ve specified otherwise in Preferences.

​Let us know if you have any questions – we’ll be happy to help you get started on the right foot.

Customer Refunds in QuickBooks®

Customer Refunds: Are You Doing Them Right?

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.

Paying your PR Taxes and Filing Forms Electronically With QuickBooks®

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.