Keeping Up With Receivables: Know Who Owes You

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

QuickBooks Online provides numerous ways for you to know which customers owe you money – and who is late.

There are so many financial details to keep track of when you’re running a small business. You have to make sure your products and services are in good shape and ready to sell. You have to stay current with your bills. Orders need to be processed as quickly as possible, as do estimates and invoices. And you may have numerous questions from customers and vendors that must be addressed.

Your number one priority, however, is ensuring that your customers are paying you. Whether you accept credit cards or bank transfers or issue sales receipts for cash and checks, you need to always know where you stand with incoming payments. “Are my receivables current?” should be a question you’re asking yourself or your staff frequently.

QuickBooks Online offers numerous ways to know whether you’re being paid for your products and/or services and who might be falling behind. That information is critical to your understanding of how your receivables are stacking up against your payables. You should be able to gauge whether you’re making a profit, staying even, or losing money. Here’s a look at the tools you can use.

Learning When You Launch

QuickBooks Online provides a good overview of your current cash flow as soon as you log into the site and see your two-pronged Dashboard. The first thing you see when you click the Business overview tab is a cash flow forecast that goes up to 24 months. Other content includes a profit and loss graph and charts showing expenses, income (including open and overdue invoice totals), and sales. Your account balances are there, too.

This is helpful data, but it’s broad. To get far more detailed information, hover your mouse over Sales in the toolbar and select All Sales. The horizontal bar across the top displays dollar and transaction totals for estimates, unbilled activity, overdue (invoices), open invoices, and (invoices) paid last 30 days. When you click one of the bars, the list changes to show only that particular set of transactions.

Graphical user interface Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Partial view of the toolbar at the top of the Sales Transactions page

The table of transactions is interactive. That is, there’s an Action column at the end of each row. Click the down arrow next to any of the activity listed there, and you’ll see a menu of options. Depending on the status of each, these options include commands like Receive payment, Send reminder, Print packing slip, Send, and Void. 

Running Reports

The Sales Transactions page provides more of your receivables nuts and bolts than the Business overview screen does. But to get the most in-depth, customizable, comprehensive view of who owes you, you’ll need to run reports. Click Reports in the toolbar and scroll down to Who owes you. 

There are three columns here. You’ll land on Standard, which is a complete list of all of the pre-formatted reports that QuickBooks Online offers. Click Custom reports to see the reports you’ve customized and saved. Management reports opens a list of three reports that can be viewed by a variety of date ranges: Company Overview, Sales Performance, and Expenses Performance. You can view, edit, and send these, as well as export them as PDF and Microsoft Word files.

There are five reports listed under Who owes you that you should be creating on a regular basis. How regularly? That depends on the size of your business. The greater your sales volume, the more frequently you should run them.

When you select A/R Aging Summary, you’ll see at a glance which customers have current balances and those that are 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, and 91+ days past due. A few customization options appear at the top, like Report period, Aging method, and Days per aging period. To really zero in on the precise data set you want, click Customize. The panel that slides out from the right contains option in several areas: General, Rows/Columns, Aging, Filter (by customer), and Header/Footer.

Graphical user interface Description automatically generated

QuickBooks Online helps you target the data set that you want.

There are four other reports that can help you track your receivables:

  • Open Invoices displays a list of invoices that still contain a balance.
  • Unbilled Time tells you about any billable time that hasn’t been invoiced.
  • Unbilled Charges lists billable charges that haven’t been invoice.
  • Customer Balance Summary simply provides all open balances for you customers.

These are all very simple reports that you shouldn’t have any trouble customizing and running. They can give you a complete picture of where your receivables stand. But there are other reports that will require our help. These are standard financial reports that should be created monthly or quarterly, including Statement of Cash Flows, Profit and Loss, and Balance Sheet. You’ll need these critical financial statements if, for example, you’re applying for a loan or trying to attract investors. Please let us know if you want us to run and analyze these so you can get a detailed, comprehensive view of your financial health.

How QuickBooks© Online Helps You Track Mileage

Ida_BencomoLeave a comment

With gas prices so high, you need to track your travel costs as closely as possible. Consider getting a tax deduction for your business mileage.

If you drive even a little for business, it’s easy to let mileage costs slide. After all, it’s a pain to keep track of your tax-deductible mileage in a little notebook and do all the calculations required. If you do rack up a lot of business miles, you probably forget to track some trips and end up losing money.

QuickBooks Online offers a much better way. Its Mileage tools include simple fill-in-the-blank records that allow you to document individual trips. You can either enter the starting point and destination and let the site calculate your mileage and deduction or enter the number of miles yourself.

If you use QuickBooks Online’s mobile app, it can track your miles automatically as you drive (as long as you have the correct settings turned on). Here’s a look at how all of this works.

Setting Up 

To get started, click the Mileage link in QuickBooks Online’s toolbar. The screen that opens will eventually display a table that contains information about your trips, but you need to do a little setup first. Click the down arrow next to Add Trip in the upper right corner and select Manage vehicles. A panel will slide out from the right. Click Add vehicle.

A picture containing text Description automatically generated

You’ll need to supply information about your vehicles before you can start entering trips.

You’ll need to supply the vehicle’s year, make, and model. Do you own or lease it, and on what date was the vehicle purchased or leased and put into service? Do you want to have your annual mileage calculated by entering odometer readings or have QuickBooks Online track your business miles driven automatically? When you’re done making your selections and entering data, click Save.

Entering Trip Data

You can download trips as CSV files or import them from Mile IQ, but you’re probably more likely to enter them manually. Click Add Trip in the upper right corner. In the pane that opens, you’ll enter the date of the trip and either the total miles or start and end point. You’ll select the business purpose and vehicle and indicate whether it was a round trip. When you’re done, click Save. The trip will appear in the table on the opening screen, and your current possible total deduction will be in the upper left corner, along with your total business miles and total miles.

If you want to designate a trip as personal, click the box in front of the trip in that table. In the black horizontal box that appears, click the icon that looks like a little person, then click Apply. Now, the trip will appear in the Personal column and will not count toward your business tax-deductible mileage. 

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated

When you select a trip in the Mileage table, you can mark it as personal so it’s not included in your business tax-deductible miles.

Personal Trips Can Count, Too

If you use your vehicle(s) for personal as well as business purposes, tracking some of those miles can also mean a tax deduction. For tax year 2022, you can deduct 18 cents per mile for your travel to and from medical appointments. Note: Medical mileage is only deductible if medical exceeds a certain percent of AGI. Be sure to check with the IRS yearly tax code, as they update the mileage amounts annually.

And if you do volunteer work for a qualified charitable organization, the miles you drive in service of it can be deducted at the rate of 14 cents per mile. You can also claim the cost of parking and tolls, as long as you weren’t reimbursed for any of these expenses. Obviously, the IRS wants you to keep careful records of your charitable mileage, and QuickBooks Online can provide them.

QuickBooks Online doesn’t track these deductions, but you’ll at least have a record of the miles driven.

Auto-Track Your Miles

The easiest way to track your mileage in QuickBooks Online is by using its mobile app. You can launch this and have it record your mileage automatically as you’re driving. Versions are available for both Android and iOS, and they’re different from each other. They also have more features than the browser-based version of QuickBooks Online, like maps, rules, and easier designation of trips as business or personal.

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated

The iOS version of Mileage in the QuickBooks Online app

In both versions, you’ll need to click the menu in the lower right corner after you’ve opened the QuickBooks Online app and select Mileage. Make sure Auto-Tracking is turned on. Your phone’s location services tool must be turned on, too. There are other settings that vary between the two operating systems. You can search the help system of either app to make sure you get your settings correct if the onscreen instructions aren’t clear enough.

Of course, you won’t see the fruits of your mileage deductions until you file your 2022 taxes. But you can factor these savings in as you’re doing your tax planning during the year. Please let us help if you’re having any trouble with QuickBooks Online’s Mileage tools, or if you have questions with other elements of the site.

With gas prices so high, you need to track your travel costs as closely as possible. Consider getting a tax deduction for your business mileage.

Some Small Businesses Are Recovering. Is Yours?

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, but many small businesses are on the upswing. How QuickBooks Online can help if yours isn’t.

Intuit recently did a survey documenting the financial losses that many small businesses had experienced since March 2020. Not surprisingly, the report, Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Recovery, found that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the financial health of U.S. small businesses.

But many of the companies surveyed have proved to be resilient. As of March 31, 2021, 61 percent of them saw an annual revenue increase compared to pre-COVID days.

How would you have answered the survey? If indeed you did suffer financial and personnel losses because of the pandemic, has your business started to rebound yet? If not, there are actions you can take in QuickBooks Online to help in your recovery. Here are some of them.

Transactions: Watch your income and expenses like a hawk.

QuickBooks Online provides excellent transaction-tracking tools that help you document income and expenses.

How much time do you spend working with your downloaded transactions? If you take advantage of the excellent tools QuickBooks Online provides, you may notice patterns that you’ll want to explore and modify. For example, are you spending too much in one or more particular areas? When and where is your income dipping?

It’s critical that you connect to as many online financial institutions as possible, so you get a complete picture of your income and expenses. Once you have, click on Transactions in the toolbar, which should open to the Banking page. If you’re only going there to make sure there are no unrecognized entries, you’re missing out on some of QuickBooks Online’s transaction-tracking tools. In the image above, we’ve specified a vendor and chosen a Category and Tags. This will make your reports more meaningful and actionable.

If you don’t know what it means to Find Match, we can show you how that works. It’s a real time saver. 

Sales: Make it easier for customers to pay you.

We’ve written about accepting online payments in this column before. It’s especially important if you’re struggling. You may actually be losing sales if you don’t let potential customers pay online through a credit card or bank account transfer. And existing customers may pay faster if they can do business with you in that way.

QuickBooks Payments makes this possible. There are some nominal fees involved, but the potential increase in your income should more than cover them. Let us know if you want us to help you set up a merchant account.

When you set up a merchant account through QuickBooks Payments, you may find that your customer base will grow, and existing customers will pay faster.

Expenses: Categorize expenses with tax time in mind.

You’ve probably already filed your 2020 income taxes, but we’re well into 2021, and it’s not too early to start thinking about your current tax situation. QuickBooks Online helps you track your income carefully, but it’s equally important to make sure you know what your tax-related expenses are. You want to get every deduction and credit you can. So when you’re looking at transactions, like we described above, make very certain that you’re assigning the correct categories to each of them. 

We can help you run reports on a quarterly basis that should be of help when you make estimated tax payments. That way, you may be able to reduce your quarterly obligation during the 2021 tax year and won’t have to wait until you file in 2022 to see savings.

Time: Make sure your billable hours are billed.

Unless you have an organized, easy-to-use method for tracking billable time, some hours are likely to fall between the cracks. QuickBooks Online provides effective tools in this area. As you go through your downloaded transactions, you may see expenses that can be billed to a customer. Select the Customer/project and check the Billable box so you’ll be able to include it on their next invoice.

You can mark expenses as billable to customers in your Transactions register.

As you create time entries for you and/or your employees, you can also mark those hours as billable.

Reports: Run basic, critical reports regularly.

You can’t know how your business is doing financially unless you create reports. Besides the quarterly and standard financial reports we can run and analyze for you, you can—and should—be generating reports yourself through QuickBooks Online. Here are some of the ones we suggest:

  • Budget vs. Actuals. If you’ve put the time and effort into creating a budget, it’s critical that you gauge your progress regularly and make adjustments as needed.
  • Open Invoices. Who have you billed that hasn’t paid?
  • Accounts Receivable Aging Detail. Who owes you, and how far behind are they?
  • Sales by Product/Service Detail. What is selling well and what isn’t? You can make decisions about your product and service lines by viewing this report. This is especially important when your sales are sluggish.
  • Business Snapshot. This is a series of charts and lists that provides a quick visual overview of key data.

QuickBooks Online can’t, of course, revive your business if the pandemic has created conditions that are out of your control. But that shouldn’t stop you from controlling what you can, no matter what your situation is. It was designed not only to automate and streamline your daily accounting work, but also to provide the information you need as you evaluate your present situation and plan for the future. Please call on us if you need help making optimal use of QuickBooks Online.

Should You Charge Late Fees? QuickBooks Can Help

Ida_BencomoLeave a comment

Do you have a lot of aging receivables? Assessing finance charges can speed up customer payments.

Have your customers been submitting payments later than usual these last several months? It wouldn’t be surprising. Many businesses are struggling to pay bills these days. Still, you need to get paid – and on time. Tardy receivables have a negative impact on your own cash flow.

We’ve discussed ways to encourage prompt payment in past columns. For example, you can start accepting credit/debit cards and direct bank transfers, make sure invoices go out immediately after a sale, or offer a premium like a small one-time discount for paying on time 12 months in a row to name a few.

You can also assess finance charges on remittances that come in after the due date. QuickBooks provides the tools to allow this.

Setting It Up

Before you start charging extra for late payments, you’ll need to do some setup work in QuickBooks. Open the Edit menu and select Preferences, then Finance Charge. Click the Company Preferences tab. You’ll see a window like this:

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated

You can set your own preferences for assessing finance charges in QuickBooks.

You’ll have to answer these questions and enter your responses in the window:

What will your Annual Interest Rate (%) be?

What will you set as a Minimum Finance Charge?

Will you allow a Grace Period? This is the number of days given to your customers to make their payments after the due date before finance charges kick in. This is typically from 15-21 days.

Where should captured finance charges go? In this example, the Finance Charge Account has been assigned to Other Income. 

Do you want to Assess finance charges on overdue finance charges? Some jurisdictions don’t allow you to charge interest on overdue interest charges. If you want to do this, check on your local lending laws – specifically state usury laws which may limit the amounts that can be charged.

When will you start to Calculate charges? In this example, the due date is selected. So, QuickBooks will start to add finance charges 21 days after the stated due date. If you choose invoice/billed date, you’ll want to make your grace period longer. This can be rather a confusing concept. Contact us if you want a deeper explanation.

Assessing Finance Charges

There’s one more issue on the Preferences screen that you’ll need to resolve. QuickBooks offers two ways to notify customers about finance charges. You can’t include them on invoices, like you may be used to seeing on credit card bills. Rather, you have to print separate invoices that only contain the finance charges. 

If you put a check in the box in front of Mark finance charge invoices “To be printed,” you can print them out separately. If you leave the box blank, the finance charges will appear on the customer’s next statement. Click OK when you’re done with this window.

Graphical user interface, table Description automatically generated

QuickBooks can find the overdue invoices that need to have finance charges applied and display them in a window like this one.

Open the Customers menu and select Assess Finance Charges. A window like the one in the image above will open. Make sure that the Assessment Date is the actual date you want to assess charges, which may not be the current date. Click in the Assess column to create a checkmark for every customer you want to charge. When you’re done, click Assess Charges.

When you’re ready to print finance charge invoices, open the File menu and select Print Forms | Invoices to open a window like this:

Graphical user interface, table Description automatically generated

Invoices with an FC preceding the number are finance charge invoices ready for printing.

Lots to Learn

Besides knowing whether you can charge finance charges on existing finance charges, there are other considerations. For example, do your state’s lending laws allow you to use the phrase “finance charge” or must you use something like “late fee?” When should you assess finance charges? Have you notified your customers of your intent to begin assessing finance charges? This is definitely something they should know in advance. You might need to add this to your customer message on invoices.

We can’t tell you whether finances charges are the path you should take to improve your cash flow as there are many issues to consider. But we can help you with the mechanics of doing so and are here to answer any questions. Let us know if you want to get started using this tool, we can help.

New to QuickBooks® ? Try These 5 Activities

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

QuickBooks can be overwhelming when you first start using it. Here are five ways to familiarize yourself with some of its features to get you up and running in no time.

Tackling any new piece of software can be daunting. Add a complex process like accounting to the mix, like QuickBooks does, and you may feel apprehensive about your ability to learn how to use it. 

But QuickBooks was designed for small businesspeople, not for accountants nor technical wizards. It uses familiar language and forms, and it works like other Windows programs. That doesn’t mean, though, that you’ll be able to just jump in and start completing your accounting tasks. 

Here are five steps you can take to start familiarizing yourself with QuickBooks that will get you up and running in no time. We’ll assume that you’ve already created your company file. If you need help with this critical first step, let us know.

Open a sample file.

While you’re exploring QuickBooks, it’s a good idea to work with a sample file. That way, you can look around and practice without risking compromising your company file. You’ll be able to see how completed records and transactions should look and try your hand at entering sample data of your own.

QuickBooks comes with sample files that allow you to practice entering data without harming your own company file.

Before you open a sample file, you’ll need to close your current company. Click on File in the upper left to open that menu, then select Close Company. A window will open that should have your company file in its list. Below that, you’ll see three boxes containing different options. Click on the down arrow next to Open a sample file, as pictured above (this may look slightly different in your version). Choose the one you want to open and click on it. QuickBooks will load again with that file open. When you’re done looking at the sample file, go to File | Close Company again. The No Company Open window should appear again. Click on your company file name and then on Open to return to your own file.

Learn where your lists are.

You’ll be storing a great deal of information in lists. QuickBooks maintains these automatically sometimes when you enter information in a record or transaction. For example, when you create a record for a product or service you sell, it goes into a master list that you can access by opening the Lists menu at the top of the screen and clicking on Item List. You’ll also open the Lists menu when you want to add options to an existing type of list, like Class List (QuickBooks allows you to assign Classes to transactions so you can group related information, like New Construction or Remodel if you’re a contractor).

You’ll sometimes select from lists of commands in QuickBooks. This is the menu for the Item List.

Try a Transaction.

There are two transactions you’ll probably be using the most: invoices and sales receipts. QuickBooks comes with templates that resemble these sales forms’ paper counterparts. You simply fill in the blanks by entering data and selecting options from drop-down lists. Open the Customers menu and select Create Invoices. Click the back arrow above Find in the upper left corner to see sample invoices. Then click the right arrow to get back to a blank form and create an invoice by clicking the down arrows in blank fields to see your sample lists.

Explore Snapshots.

Once you start entering records and transactions, you’ll want to be able to access that information in ways that provide insight on how your company is doing. You’ll eventually start running reports in QuickBooks, but the software also accomplishes this through its Snapshots. There are three of them, and they all provide these overviews by using data tables and charts. Open the Company menu and click on Company Snapshot, then click the tabs to move between Company, Payments, and Customer. You’ll learn how QuickBooks provides real-time information about your finances.

Look at the Income Tracker.

It’s easy to see the status of your invoices (and estimates) in QuickBooks. Open the Customers menu and select Income Tracker. Colored bars at the top of the screen show you what’s outstanding and what’s been paid. A list of the related transactions appears below these bars.

This partial view of the Income Tracker tells you how much money is tied up in unbilled Time & Expenses and unpaid Invoices.

As we said earlier, QuickBooks can be overwhelming when you first start to use it. We can ease that transition by providing training and helping you move your existing accounting information over to the software. If you’ve started using QuickBooks on your own and you have questions, we can always step in to offer answers.

Stay healthy, and best wishes for a more prosperous 2021.

How Do You Create Price Levels in QuickBooks?

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

QuickBooks allows you to create Price Levels that you can assign to customers and jobs and to individual items.

You already know that when you create a product or service record in QuickBooks, you must assign a sale price to it. But did you know that QuickBooks gives you a great deal of flexibility when to comes to pricing items you sell? The software allows you to create one or more additional Price Levels that you can access in invoices, estimates, sales receipts, credit memos, and sales orders.

There are three ways you can use these. Once you’ve created them, they’ll be available in a drop-down list in the Rate field. This means you can assign them manually to individual transactions. The second option is to assign them globally to specific customers or jobs. Once you’ve done so, that price will apply every time you create a transaction for one of them. Finally, you can create price levels for selected items.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you want to be able to create a price level that’s 15 percent below the actual price that you can use in individual transactions. You open the Lists menu and select Price Level List. Click the arrow in the lower left corner next to Price Level and select New. A window like this will open:

You can create price levels in QuickBooks and assign them to individual sales transactions.

Fill in the field next to Price Level Name, and then click the arrow next to Price Level Type. Select Fixed %. Select decrease from the drop-down list on the next line and enter your percentage number. Round up to the nearest is an optional field, Click OK when you’re done. The next time you create a sales transaction, your new price level will be available as an option when you open the drop-down list in the Rate column.

When you need to edit or delete a price level, go to Lists | Price Level List again and click the arrow next to Price Level in the lower left corner. You have several options here. You can, for example, make a price level inactive so it doesn’t appear on the list. The field next to Price Level is labeled Reports. Click on the arrow to see what’s available there.

Customers and Jobs

You can also apply a price level you’ve created to a specific customer or job, perhaps to reward a customer for frequent purchases. When you do so, that rate will appear every time you enter a sales transaction for the customer or job you selected.

Open the Customers menu and select Customer Center. Double click on a customer or job’s name to open the record. Click on the Payment Settings tab. Click the arrow in the field next to Price Level and select the right one, then click OK.

You can assign a Price Level to specific customers or jobs.

Per Item Price Levels

QuickBooks also allows you to set custom prices for specific items that are associated with preferred customers or jobs (this option is only available if you’re using QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise). Let’s say you want to give a 10 percent discount to specific customers who purchase your website development services. Go to Lists | Price Level List and click the arrow next to Price Level in the lower left corner again, then select New (you can also get to the New command by right-clicking anywhere in the window). 

Give your price level a name (like Web Development 10 Off), then select Per Item from the Price Level Type drop-down list. Click in front of the Item you want to include. The fields in the next line should read as pictured in the image below: 10% | lower | standard price. Click Adjust. You’ll see your reduced prices in the Custom Price column in the table above.

You can establish a Price Level for specific items in QuickBooks.

Again, the rounding field is optional. When you’re finished here, click OK. The next time you create a sales transaction for a customer who is eligible for the lower price, you’ll select Web Development 10 Off from the drop-down list in the Rate column.

Feel like you’re outgrowing your current version of QuickBooks, or is it several years old? Talk to us about upgrading. We’re here to support you and to help you more effectively use the software as your business changes and grows.

How to Create Product Records in QuickBooks® Online

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

Whether your company sells product or services, QuickBooks Online can help you track them.

If you sell one-of-a-kind products and can see all of them at a glance, tracking your inventory isn’t such a big issue. But not many people run businesses like that. Even if you do, you’d want to keep track of what you have and what you’ve sold for accounting purposes.

Most businesses sell multiple types of products and stock numerous units of them. These companies need to be able to easily add them to invoices and sales receipts. They need to know what’s selling and what’s not, and they need to know when it’s time to reorder.

QuickBooks Online’s recording and tracking tools meet all of these requirements by allowing you to create records for services. Here’s how it works.

Getting Ready

Before you can start working with QuickBooks Online’s product records, you should make sure that the site is set up for this purpose. Click the gear icon in the upper right, then Your Company | Account and settings. Click the Sales tab to get to the Products and services section, as pictured below.

QuickBooks Online’s Account and Settings has a section devoted to Products and services.

Click on Products and services to open your options here. To turn any entry from On to Off, or vice versa, click in the box at the beginning of the line to check or uncheck it. To see an explanation of each, click on the small circled question mark. When you’re done here, click Save. Then click the X in the upper right to close this window.

Creating Records

To start entering product and service data in records, click the gear icon in the upper right, then select Products and services. Since you haven’t entered anything yet, the table will be blank. Eventually, it will contain data for each record you’ve created. You’ll also notice two colored circles at the top of the screen, one marked Low Stock and the other, Out of Stock. When there is a number next to either of them, you’ll be able to click on either circle to see a list of what’s low or what’s out.

Click New in the upper right. A vertical panel will slide out asking what kind of record you want to create. You can choose from:

  • Inventory – Physical items you sell whose quantity you want to track
  • Non-inventory – Products you buy or sell but whose quantities you don’t need to track
  • Service – Services you sell, like legal representation or landscaping
  • Bundle – A group of products and/or services that are sold together, like computer training and accompanying software

We’re going to create an inventory item, so click on Inventory. Type its Name in that field and add a photo if you’d like. If the product has been assigned a SKU, enter that in its field. You may want to divide your products into primary categories and sub-products or services (like Writing Instruments and Pens, Pencils, Markers, etc.). You can skip this option if you don’t.

QuickBooks Online helps prevent product shortages.

In the next section, you’ll enter the Initial quantity on hand. How many do you have as of (current) date? And where do you want to set your Reorder point? What number of items remaining should trigger the Low Stock alert so you can replenish your supply?

Inventory asset account should already be set at Inventory Asset. Enter a brief Description and then the product’s Sales price/rate (the price you’ll charge customers) and leave Income account set at Sales of Product Income. Then select a Sales tax category. If you haven’t set up sales taxes in QuickBooks Online and believe you’re required to pay them on at least some sales, please let us help. 

In the Purchasing information field, enter the description that should appear on purchase forms, then Cost (the price you paid to buy the product, if any). The Expense account should be Cost of Goods Sold. Select a Preferred Vendor if you’d like and Save the record.

Not all fields are required in your product and service records, but we strongly recommend you complete each record as thoroughly as is possible.

Next month, we’ll look at how product and service records are used in QuickBooks Online. In the meantime, please let us know if there’s any way we can help with your accounting or your use of QuickBooks Online. We know these are challenging times for you, and we hope you’ll use us as one of your resources.

Make QuickBooks® Yours: Customize the Desktop

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

Make QuickBooks work faster for you by changing a few settings.

Whether your business has been locked down because of the pandemic, or you’re scrambling to hold things together with fewer employees or diminishing sales, you’re probably leaning on QuickBooks more than ever. You may be watching dwindling inventory items closely or monitoring your daily cash flow or trying to collect on invoices that aren’t being paid because your customers are short on money.

QuickBooks can help with all these accounting tasks. But you certainly don’t want to waste time now just dealing with the software’s mechanics.

As always, we’re available to help as you deal with the toll that COVID-19 is taking on your company. We’d also like to suggest that you spend a little time customizing QuickBooks. Streamlining its operations will take some of the unnecessary frustration out of your work life.

Getting Around Quickly

QuickBooks tries to accommodate different work styles and preferences by providing multiple navigation methods. These are:
• The old, standard Windows menus.
• The home page’s icons.
• The Icon Bar that appears in the left vertical pane by default (you change its position by opening the View menu).

If you’re going to use the Icon Bar, we recommend that you set it up to make your most often-used tools prominent. Right-click in the toolbar and click on Customize Shortcuts to open the Customize Icon Bar window. In the upper left corner, you’ll see a list of your icons as they’re currently arranged. You can rearrange them by grabbing the small diamonds to their left with your mouse and dragging them to their new positions. You can change their labels by clicking Edit, or Delete them.

You can add almost any window in QuickBooks to your fast-access Icon Bar.

You’re not limited to the items in the list. Click Add, and the Add Icon Bar Item opens, as pictured above. Click on any of the ones you want to include in the Icon Bar, then click OK. QuickBooks allows you to add almost any screen to your Icon Bar. Navigate to the window you want to add, then open the View menu and select Add…to Icon Bar. If you never use the Icon Bar, you can collapse it by clicking the small arrow to the right of the Search box at the top of the pane. You can also close the home page by clicking the lower of the two small X’s in the upper right.

Tile Your Windows
If you regularly work with the same handful of screens, there’s a faster way to access them. Open them all, then open the Window menu and select Tile Vertically. All the windows will be displayed on the same screen, arranged vertically. If there are enough of them, they will overlap. To activate one, just click on it. You can open it to full screen by clicking the small rectangle in the upper right and return to your vertical arrangement by clicking the double rectangle in the upper right.

If you’d prefer, you can Tile Horizontally. Or, you can click Cascade to display them stacked on top of each other with only each window’s title label showing, as shown below. If you want to go back to a blank screen and start over, click Window | Close All. The Window menu also displays a list of open windows that can be used for navigation.

If you click Window | Cascade with multiple windows open, QuickBooks will stack them, with only the bottom screen showing. Click on a title label to open a different window.

The Desktop View

There are other ways you can make QuickBooks work the way you want it to. Open the Edit menu and select Preferences, then Desktop View. Click on the My Preferences tab if it’s not already highlighted. There are several preferences here. Look under the Desktop heading. You can have QuickBooks open to the configuration of windows you want. Your options are:

• Save [the windows that are already open] when closing company.
• Save current desktop (a specific set of windows).
• Don’t save the desktop (always open to just the home page).

Click the Company Preferences tab to add or remove icons from the home page. This is also where you turn features on and off.

We’re Still Here

All these suggestions may seem minor to you. But they will save time. More important, they will give you a better sense of control over the hours you spend on accounting tasks. And with so many things out of our control right now, creating a software environment that is tailored to your workflow can benefit you.

We know that you may be struggling right now to maintain your financial health, as well as your physical health. More than ever, we hope you’ll contact us if you have a QuickBooks or general accounting problem that we could solve. We’ll be happy to do what we can to help you through during this very challenging period.

Start 2020 Right: Get into the Report Habit

Digital TouchstoneLeave a comment

It’s a good time to start new habits – or refresh old ones. Running reports regularly will help you make better business decisions.

Whether or not you made New Year’s resolutions, you probably look at January as a fresh start in personal and professional matters. Unfortunately, we can’t help you join a gym or organize your closets or meet your monthly sales goals.

What we can do, though, is encourage you to start a new habit that may actually leave you more time for those activities and even improve your company’s financial bottom line. We’re talking about committing to using the reporting tools QuickBooks offers.

You can’t possibly know how your business is doing unless you take advantage of this critical feature. It’s the payoff for all the hard work you do keeping up with your daily accounting workflow. Here are five things you should try.

Visit QuickBooks’ Report Center: 

As you know. QuickBooks devotes an entire menu to reports, dividing them into types (Sales, Purchases, Inventory, etc.). When you hover your mouse over one of these categories after opening the Reports menu, you’ll see a list of all related reports. 

Click on Report Center, though, and you’ll see a kind of home page for reports. They’re categorized by type, just like in the main Reports menu, but there’s much more you can do here.

A screenshot of a cell phone Description automatically generated

Click on a report name in the Report Center and you’ll have numerous options.

When you click on the graphic representing a report, you’ll first be able to change the date range by clicking on the down arrow. Then you can Run the report, see a brief explanation by clicking Info, click on Fave to add it to your list of Favorites, or open Help. The tabs at the top of the screen allow you to toggle between these Standard views, reports you’ve Memorized, Favorites, Recent, and Contributed (report templates created by individuals outside of Intuit). 

If you know exactly what reports you want to run it’s probably easier to just use the Reports menu, but the Report Center is a great place to learn about and organize your content.

Customize Your Reports:

You’re probably used to changing the date range on your reports, but have you ever explored any of QuickBooks’ other customization tools? You can use them on any report. Click the Customize Report button in the upper left. Click on the Display tab, and you can change the report’s columns by checking or unchecking entries in the list. Filters are more complex, and you may need our help setting up very specific, multi-filter reports. They offer a way to pare down your report to contain just the data you want. You could, for example, prepare a report that only includes one or more Transaction Types or customers who live in a specified state.

Memorize Your Reports:

Once you’ve changed columns and filters in a report you’ll run frequently, you can save those settings so you don’t have to go through all of that again. Open any report and click the Memorize button in the upper toolbar. The window that opens will ask if you want to save that customized report to a Memorized Report Group, which you can do by clicking the box and opening the list of groups. Either way, you can find your report by opening the Reports menu and selecting Memorized Reports.

A screenshot of a cell phone Description automatically generated

If you want to create a new Memorized Report Group, open the Reports menu and click Memorized Reports | Memorized Report List. Open the Memorized Report drop-down menu and select New Group.

Schedule Your Reports:

The best way to get your report habit started is by creating a schedule of reports you need to see regularly. You can do this by setting up Reminders (Company | Reminders). Click the gear icon in the upper right corner to specify your Preferences and the + (plus) sign to add a reminder. QuickBooks 2017 and later versions offer a scheduling tool that allows you to share reports with others, but please don’t try this on your own. It’s a complicated procedure with many rules.

You’ve probably noticed that there is a report category called Accountant & Taxes. Some of these should be created monthly or quarterly, but you’ll need our help analyzing them as well. 

In the coming year, we strongly encourage you to expand your skills at generating reports. You can’t make realistic, effective plans for the future of your company without knowing its current financial state and its history. So start the year off right in 2020, and let us know how we can help.

Still Dealing with 2019 in QBO? Clearing the Way for 2020

Ida_BencomoLeave a comment

If you have a nagging feeling this month that you’re not caught up with your accounting tasks, it’s time to clean up your unfinished 2019 work.

It would be great if you could have closed out 2019 knowing that you were all caught up with your accounting work. You sent all your invoices, paid all your bills, and wrapped everything up with a series of reports and a proverbial bow.

Unfortunately, December rarely goes that way. You’re making last-minute adjustments for your taxes. Dealing with the holiday rush if you’re a retailer. Handling end-of-year employee issues, trying to make your monthly sales quotas, and doing something special to make your customers feel appreciated at this time of year.

On top of your daily accounting work, you’re feeling pressure in December to get a clear picture of your finances for the entire year. Then the holidays hit, and suddenly you’re ringing in the New Year without having had time for that.

Here are five things you can do clean up 2019 and make way for 2020.

1. Create two critical A/R reports: Accounts Receivable Aging Summary and Open Invoices.

This may make you feel both better and worse. On the bright side, you’ll know where you stand in terms of who owes you what and how big the problem is. On the other hand, you may find it disheartening to see how many payments are past due. These reports are easy to find. Click Reports in the left vertical pane and scroll down to Who owes you.

A screenshot of a cell phone Description automatically generated

The Open Invoices report can show you quickly who’s past due.

Now would be an excellent time, too, to develop some strategies to be proactive and keep your accounts receivable more up to date in 2020. We’d be happy to sit down with you and help you with this difficult task.

2. Create two critical A/P reports: Accounts Payable Aging Summary and Unpaid Bills.

Add “Stay Current with Bills” to your list of 2020 goals. But first, you have to see where you stand right now. Click Reports again and scroll down to What you owe.

Who is responsible for paying bills? If it’s you, maybe it’s time to hand over that task to someone without your managerial responsibilities who can make it a priority.

3. Create statements for all customers who are past due.

Things slip for your customers toward the end of the year, too. Give them a chance to catch up. Their invoices might have gotten lost in the year-end confusion, but you need to get current with your accounts receivable. So, send statements to those in arrears.

Click +New at the top of the left vertical pane, then go to Other | Statement. 

4. Clean up your customer and vendor lists.

Customers and vendors come and go, but their QuickBooks records are forever unless you do something about them. You can easily make them inactive – after confirming they have no open activity. Click Sales | Customers in the left vertical pane. Click the box in front of customers you want to make inactive and then click Batch actions | Make inactive.

A screenshot of a cell phone Description automatically generated

Cleaning up your customer and vendor lists will save you time in the future.

5. Always look carefully at your dashboard when you log in.

The block in the upper left corner is the most important here. You can see at a glance how much money you have tied up in unpaid invoices and how much money needs to be deposited. This will help you keep QuickBooks Online cleaned up.

More to Do

There are certainly other things you can do to clean up QuickBooks. For example, if you carry inventory, January is a good time to run the Physical Inventory Worksheet report and make some decisions about where your purchasing emphasis should be in 2020. Need help interpreting your product movement and sales priorities? We can help with that.

Finally, sometime this month—certainly in the first quarter of 2020—let us create the critical standard financial reports (under For my accountant in Reports) that you could actually generate in QuickBooks Online, but which would be difficult for you to analyze. These are the reports you would need if you were going to apply for a loan, for example, or request a business valuation. But the insight they provide can give you a sophisticated overview of your finances.