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 preferences 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 a range you’d like to see. Want the data displayed by different time increments – like week or quarter – instead of just the 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 addition, you can switch between Accrual and Cash 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’re very specific to that group of data.

Clicking on Revert takes you back to the default format, and Advanced opens additional options specific to the current report.

More customization = more insightful results = more informed financial choices

Transaction reports have many similarities and two major differences: You can change the column order by hovering your cursor over the column label until a hand appears. Click, hold and drag the column to the desired spot and let go. You can also add or delete columns by clicking Customize Report and checking or unchecking labels.

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.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

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.

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. Please don’t hesitate to call us at 801-288-1222.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

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.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

Intuit Payment Solutions provides tools – websites and hardware and software – that let you establish merchant relationships with banks so you can accept check and credit card payments and authorize them. The money moves into your account, usually within 2-3 business days, and your QuickBooks® files are always updated. The result: faster customer payments.

In Your Office

Intuit Merchant Services for QuickBooks® has helped businesses accept credit card payments for years. You simply enter the number in QuickBooks® (or swipe the card).

Figure 1: You can process credit cards in QuickBooks® like you would a check.

The Intuit® PaymentNetwork offers another alternative: electronic invoicing. You include a link in outgoing invoices. Your customer clicks on it and enters bank account information, and the funds are transferred to your account.

Intuit Check Solution for QuickBooks® is a good option for businesspeople who process a lot of paper checks. You can either scan checks directly into QuickBooks® or enter the routing and account numbers.

No QuickBooks®? No Problem

If you’re often on the road without QuickBooks® access, your PC can be an Intuit Online Terminal. The service’s secure website is available from any computer with an internet connection. The information from your customer’s paper check is converted into an electronic payment when you enter the numbers or swipe the card.

Intuit Check Solution for Terminals requires a special check reader. Once your customer’s check is approved, you’ll get a paper receipt that he or she will sign. You void the check and return it.

Retail and Mobile Payment Processing

Intuit Merchant Service for Web Stores is your solution for online sales. You get a merchant account, set up your store through an approved company, and connect it to QuickBooks® for integrated bookkeeping.

If you have a physical retail location, you should consider QuickBooks® Point of Sale. This is sophisticated software that helps you manage actual sales and track customers and inventory.

Finally, mobile businesses can now process transactions on their smartphones. Intuit GoPayment Mobile Credit Card Processing provides a special website where you log in, enter credit card information (or swipe the card using the free reader), and email or text a receipt.

For more information on these and other services call us at 801-288-122. We can help you find the best solution for your business and get you set up. You’ll soon be on the road to better cash flow and happier customers.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

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 businesses that 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. If we can be of assistance, please call us at 801-288-1222.

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

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

You might have routines and systems to help a new employee settle in, such as payroll forms and training manuals. You might also have some procedures set up for when you start doing business with new vendors, such as asking them for their tax ID paperwork and having them submit invoices to your standards. But what about onboarding new clients? Most entrepreneurs don’t think about systematizing that process.

You will save a ton of time if you stop and put some systems in place to help you and your new client get off to an efficient start. The payoff can be extremely high. If you save a half hour per client and you have 100 new clients a year, then you just saved 50 hours a year, or an hour a week.

Here are a few tips to get you thinking about where you might be able to streamline your new “New Client Acquisition Process.”

First the Paperwork

What forms do you need from every client? These might include:

• An engagement letter or contract that describes the scope of the work to be done.

• Billing information, which might include a credit card on file and the process they want used to submit and approve invoices.

• How the client found out about you for marketing tracking purposes.

You can further systematize this by having a standard engagement letter, a form each client fills out, and/or a standard pre-written email (forever saved in your drafts folder of your email program for easy access).

The Good Old Days

Way before computers and the internet, all types of businesses used to run credit checks on new customers before opening their accounts. That might not be a bad idea to bring back! If so, you’ll need a form for that so that your clients can provide you with the information you need to run a credit check. Either that or provide them the ability to prepay their account.

Getting Started

Make a list of items you need from your clients to get started. This will vary depending on what industry you serve. Here are some common items to get you started:

• Contact information include staff names, titles, phone numbers, and email addresses

• Account names, user IDs and passwords

• Description of their problem if it’s repair-related

• Hardware and software information if it’s a computer-related service

• Any documents you need to complete your project

• Insurance information

• Licenses

Once you have your list, you can create a form asking for all of the information you need from every client. This will save you tons of time if you are asking for these things piecemeal now.

Instructions

Do you find yourself repeating the same instructions over and over again to each new client? Write your spiel down or better yet, make a recording so your client can listen in at their convenience and play it over and over again if they need to.

Here are some common implementations of this one:

• Photography studio owners can write down how clients can prepare for their portrait and what to wear.

• Grocery stores can provide recipes for items in their deli.

• Plant nurseries can have instructions on how to re-pot plants.

• Plumbers can provide instructions for how to turn off the water.

• Restaurants can offer menus that disclose ingredients and calories for those who are sensitive or on diets.

• Office supply stores can make a chart of how different products compare.

• Web hosting companies can have screen-capture videos made on how to set up email accounts.

You’ll save tons of time with this one. What can you think of to save yourself time onboarding clients?

Systems

There’s no doubt you’ll need to enter some information into your sales, order, accounting, or project system in order to set up your new client. If there’s any way your client can do this directly, then you will have saved yourself a step. Take a look at where you have duplicate data entry and explore ways to automate it or have the client enter the information directly. We can help you with some ideas if you need help in this area.

Welcome Packet

Is your business the type that could send your client a welcome packet of goodies? If so, shower your new client with bonuses and goodies so they’ll have a positive first impression that will last a long time. These items will include anything that saves your client time and money, and will NOT be a bunch of promotional items with your logo on it. (If it has your logo on it, it’s not a gift; it’s an ad.)

These items might be checklists, reports, tips, cheat sheets, candy, flowers, liquor (if your license allows it), a thank you note, a stuffed animal, and/or anything else that is a traditional gift.

Take a look at all the steps you go through to onboard your client, and see where you can streamline your systems so that both you and the client will save time. You’ll also look amazingly organized to the client, which is a good thing! And please, call us, at 801-288-1222, if you have any questions on how to best help.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

Is finding enough time to do everything you need to do one of your top five small business challenges? If so, you’re not alone; just about every entrepreneur lists “time” as a challenge they face today in running their businesses. It’s not uncommon to feel stressed and overwhelmed at everything you need to do.

Plenty of time management books will help you use your time more productively, but who has time to read a whole book these days? Instead, here are some quick tips to help you work smarter, ease any stress, and tame the time monster.

The 4 “D”s

You might have seen a strategy that allows you to evaluate how to handle each task or e-mail as it comes across your desk. Here’s mine: 1. Do, 2. Delegate, 3. Delete, and 4. Delay.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. For each task you have, you choose one of the four. Do means drop everything and do it now. Delegate means give it to another person to do. Delete means you didn’t really need to do that task in the first place and you can cross it off the list. And delay means you’re going to do the task later and not now.

Every single thing that comes into your life can be handled using this 4D filter: do, delegate, delete, and delay. It’s a great tool, and I’d definitely recommend trying it if you don’t have a system for yourself. But there’s an even better idea.

The Secret Sauce

Once you’ve applied your formula and you’ve decided on the tasks you’re going to “do” today (the first of the “D”s), there’s another step we can add that will actually start freeing up some time. With tasks you’re going to “do,” you have two more filters to try:

1. Can I automate this task?
2. Can I systematize this task?

Go ahead and “do” the task the way you’ve always done it. Then add another step that essentially asks: “Is there a better way?”

Take Your Biz Off Automatic Pilot

It’s funny how we keep doing the same things over and over again the same way, even though our business has long outgrown the way we’re doing it! Sometimes we don’t think to question whether there are new ways of doing things faster. We might not want to tackle the learning curve, even though we could save a lot of time in the long run.

A client showed me her invoices recently, and I asked her how long she had been doing invoicing that way. “About 15 years,” she said. The second she said it, it dawned on her to change. It hadn’t occurred to her to even consider changing before! Once she got the bug to change, you couldn’t stop her. She was able to both systematize and automate her invoicing, saving several hours each week. Once her mind was turned on to asking “Is there a better way?”, she found dozens of tiny procedures she could change, freeing up even more time in her daily routine.

It can happen when you add or replace an employee, too. You’ll see what systems need tightening up, and you can create procedures and implement new software and tools with the new employee to make the job even more effective. This happened recently to an associate when he hired a personal assistant.

Workflow Improvements

Frank is a do-it-now sort of guy. When he needed something, he needed it now. He was making multiple personal errand trips several times a week to purchase groceries, make dry cleaning runs, do banking business, and mail packages. His new assistant, Beth, took over all of those tasks and she also systematized everything. She created inventories and re-order points on all his supplies and even his groceries. She set up procedures for all her new tasks. What took Frank 10 hours a week now takes Beth 3 hours a week because she eliminated the redundancy and streamlined the job. Now that’s a time management tip worth implementing.

More Important Things

The 4Ds, Do, Delegate, Delete, and Delay, are a great way to organize your time. To save even more time, take a look at automating or systematizing everything you can, and let us know how we can support you.

Won’t it be nice to have time for more important things? And please, call us, at 801-288-1222, if you have any questions on how to best help.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

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.

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. QuickBooks already contains a Type field in customer, vendor, and job records.

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.

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 your ProAdvisor know if he/she can assist as you attempt to use these powerful forms of classification. And please, call us, at 801-288-1222, if you have any questions on how to best help.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

Next to payroll, paying bills is probably your least favorite task in QuickBooks. You don’t have to use this feature – you can keep stacking bills on your desk, scrawling the due dates on a paper calendar, and writing checks.

If you’re still operating this way, though, you’re missing out on the numerous tools that QuickBooks offers to track your accounts payable, including the ability to:

• Enter bills as they come in

• Set reminders for bills due

• Pay bills easily

• Locate a bill or payment quickly

• Enter bills as (or after) you receive items

• Link bills to purchase orders

• Have instant access to a bill’s status

Receiving the goods

When an expense bill comes in (from a utility company, for example), click the Enter Bills icon on the home page, or Vendors | Enter Bills. A window like the one displayed above opens. Select the vendor and fill in the blanks. Make sure that the Expenses tab below is selected and the appropriate account number and amount fields are completed. If it’s a bill for an item that already has a related Item Receipt (the shipment preceded the bill), QuickBooks instructs you to use Vendor | Enter Bill for Received Items. Follow the prompts.

Note: Dealing with incoming inventory is complex. Consult with us if you plan to use this feature.

If the bill came simultaneously with items, click Vendors | Receive Items and Enter Bill. When you select the vendor from the list, this box opens (if you have sent a purchase order):

Figure 2: QuickBooks is telling you that you have open orders with this vendor.

Click Yes. The Open Purchase Orders box opens, containing a list of open POs. Select the one(s) you want and click OK. The bill form opens, containing the details of that purchase order. Change quantities if they don’t match the shipment, and edit other fields as necessary. Save the bill.

Settling your debts

It’s good to set reminders for bills. Go to Edit | Preferences and click Reminders. Make sure that that Show Reminders List… box is checked, then click Company Preferences. Find the Bills to Pay row and enter the advance notice you’d like. Indicate whether you want to see a list or a summary, then click OK.

When bills are due, click the Pay Bills icon or select Vendors | Pay Bills. A window opens displaying all outstanding bills. You can pare this down by selecting a date in the Due on or before field and filtering by vendors. The screen will look something like this:

Figure 3: You can easily select the bills you want to pay.

Enter a check mark next to the bills you’re paying, and change the amount in the Amt. To Pay field at the end of the row if necessary. At the bottom of the screen, you can set the payment date and type, use any discounts or credits, and make sure the correct payment account is selected. When you’re done, click Pay Selected Bills.

Tip: You can have credits and discounts automatically applied by going to Edit | Preferences | Bills.

After You’ve Paid Up

There are a number of places where your bills appear in QuickBooks, including:

• The Unpaid Bills Detail report

• The A/P Aging Detail report

• The Vendor Center

• QuickReports

• In the Recent Transactions pane of some forms

• On the bills themselves

Figure 4: QuickBooks displays the Paid status of bills.

QuickBooks also lets you void and delete bills, and copy and memorize them. Check with us before voiding and deleting, as this can make some complicated changes in your accounts.

You can just pay bills by using Banking | Write Checks or Enter Credit Card Charges. But the payoff for tracking bills is instant access to your accounts payable status, better relations with vendors, and a more insightful accounting of your company’s cash flow.

Don’t be afraid to let us help you navigate your way through whatever QuickBooks questions you have. Please don’t hesitate to call us at 801-288-1222.

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com

How do you let customers know they owe you money? Probably by sending invoices. And how’s that working for you? If your customers are all conscientious and pay on time, maybe that’s all you need to do.

But perhaps you need to consider doing at least part of your billing by dispatching statements. These forms have their drawbacks. For example, you can’t include sales tax or discounts on them. You can’t group related charges and subtotal them. And your customization options are weaker than in invoices.

Still, you may want to send statements when you’re billing on a regular basis for services, or when a client has built up numerous charges, some of which are past due. Statements lay out the customer’s current financial obligation to you, including finance charges, should you choose to impose them.

Outlining the charges

To get started, click on the Statement Charges icon on the desktop. (If there’s no icon and you want one, click Edit | Preferences, then Desktop View | Company Preferences, then click in the box next to Statements and Statement Charges.) Or you can just click Customers | Enter Statement Charges.

QuickBooks Helps you Make a Statement - Figure 1

Figure 1: Click on Edit | Preferences to add Statement Charges and Statements icons to your desktop.

The customer register opens. Select the customer you want to create a charge for by clicking the down arrow next to Customer:Job. If you are in the middle of more than one job for the customer, make sure you make the correct one active.

Go down to the first blank line and change the date if necessary. Tab to the Item field, and drop the list to select the relevant product or service. Tab and enter the Quantity. The Rate and Amt Chrg should be filled in (if not, go back to Lists | Item List and edit the record). QuickBooks will have entered STMTCHG in the Type field. Tab to the Description field and complete it if it’s blank, and select a Class if you’d like. Your window will look something like this:

QBs Helps You Make a Statement - Figure 2

Figure 2: It’s very easy to enter statement charges in QuickBooks.

If you have another charge for that job, go ahead and enter it. When you’re done with charges for that job, click Record.

Build a statement

When you’ve entered all of the charges, you can easily convert them to statements. From the Home page, click on the Statements icon. This window opens:

QBs Helps You Make a Statement - Figure 3

Figure 3: You’ll select options from this window when you’re building a statement run.

If the window contains an A/R field, that means that you have more than one receivables account. Be sure to select the appropriate one. Verify, too, that the date is correct. This will appear in the customer’s register as the Billed Date.3

Here, too, you can choose a range of transaction dates for your statement(s), or simply opt to create forms for all customers with open transactions (in the latter case, you can limit it to transactions that are more than 30 days past due). You must also indicate whether you want statements sent to all customers or a subset. You can manually choose one or many customers, or select by Type (commercial, residential) or Preferred Send Method (E-mail or Mail).

QuickBooks gives you some control over your statements’ layout; click Customize if you want to explore this. Next, you can indicate whether you want to create one statement per customer or per job. The other options here are self-explanatory, but be sure to go through them every time you create statements.

Another decision

Will you be wanting to assess finance charges on the past due charges? This is a decision you may want to talk over with us. It’s a complex issue. Should you want to do so, though, clicking on Assess Finance Charges will open the Assess Finance Charges window.

When you’re satisfied with your choices, you can Preview your statements. Here’s an example:

QuickBooks Helps You Make a Statement - Figure 4

Figure 4: Statements lay out all transaction activity within a given period.

Statements don’t take over the role of invoices, but they can be an effective way to let your customers—and you—get a comprehensive view of their financial interaction with you. If you’re still unclear on how these forms can fit into your accounting workflow, we can help. Please call our office at 801-288-1222 so we can help

Hal Rosen, CPA, 5911 S. Fashion Blvd., Ste. 200, Salt Lake City , UT 84107, 801-288-1222, hrosen@halrosencpa.com