It always makes me sad to see QuickBooks users slowly entering data using the little calendar. Here are the keyboard shortcuts for entering dates -
The easy trick to memorizing the shortcuts is that each shortcut corresponds to the word – W is the first letter in the word week, K is the last letter in the word week and so on.
When you take your car to the repair shop, do the guys show you how to do your own repairs? When the plumber comes to your house to unclog your drain, does he train you how to handle your own small plumbing problems? No, he doesn’t and the reason is it would be bad for his business.
It would not be good business for your CPA to give you the tools you need to be an excellent do-it-yourself bookkeeper because he would lose the money he makes every year from cleaning up your QuickBooks before he does your taxes. I have seen business owners spend up to $1000 on clean up before the taxes were even started!
I offer several QuickBooks training packages for the do-it-yourself bookkeepers, and I offer QuickBooks support by phone, email and remote access. If you would like to learn more, visit my website at http://www.bookkeepingguru.com/.
Modifying QuickBooks Reports Gives You Better Insight Into Past, Future: Part 1
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. I 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. I 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.
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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 me. I’m your partner and I’m here to make your business better.
Do you know that QuickBooks has a Year-End Guide? You access it from the Help menu.
A nice young woman come by my Auburn QuickBooks Meetup. She had a new Mac laptop and she had QuickBooks for Mac installed on her new laptop. Her CPA sent her a portable company file, which she couldn’t open.
I copied it and opened it up on my laptop, and saved it into a QuickBooks for Mac backup. I put it on her laptop and she couldn’t open it, it said she needed an older version of QuickBooks for Mac.
So I have older versions of QuickBooks on my laptop, and I tried to open the portable company file with the older version, but it wouldn’t open.
I think what I need is a Mac user with an older version to open this file and create a regular backup for her that she could open in her newer version. Or, someone really smart with a work around.
This is the file information -
Follow these instructions to have QuickBooks automatically back up your company file when you close the file.
If you prefer, you can schedule backups daily or on specific days and times.
To do this task
1.If not already displayed, open the automatic and scheduled backup window in the backup wizard.
a. From the File menu, click Create Backup to open the backup wizard.
b. Click Backup Copy, then click Next, then click Local Backup.
c. If you haven’t already done so, click Options to set your backup defaults (such as where you want to save your local backup) then click Next.
d.Click Only schedule future backups (to create a schedule without running a backup) and click Next.
2.Select the first checkbox and enter 1 in the field provided.
The backup is stored in the location you specified in the Backup Options window. To view or change this location, click the Options button.
To cancel automatic backups, clear the checkbox.
3. Click Finish to close the wizard.
I can’t believe we are in the 4th quarter, much less at year-end. This always a busy time for me as my current and potential clients realize that they want to make changes before 2012.
I will be upgrading a company to QuickBooks 2012, and I will be doing a year’s worth of bank reconciliations for a small business who neglects the bookkeeping.
I will be creating a new company file for a local dentist who wants to start the year with a smaller data file. I am setting up a small publishing company with a QuickBooks Payroll solution, so that they can save time, money and avoid the headache dealing with their big payroll service.
Do you have a QuickBooks project that you would like done before January 1st? Give me a call or email me and we will make your New Year’s resolutions happen.
QuickBooks Tips And Tricks: Make it Yours
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 me.
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 I’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. I will change the date each time I complete my 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. I 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 me. I am your partner and I am here to make your business better.
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.
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.
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.
WARNING: Enter two lines on the credit memo if it combines both taxable and non-taxable items (both charged to the Bad Debt account), one for each type. Be sure that the Tax Columns are correct.
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. I’ll be glad to help you make sure that this sometimes-complex task is done right from the start.
I’ve been using QuickBooks ever since it came out. Before that I used Quicken for all my home recordkeeping. As professional bookkeeper, I like keeping track of things.
When QuickBooks first came out I didn’t use it at work. We had a big enterprise system that we used where I was working. But I had a lot of girlfriends that were in business, and I installed QuickBooks on their computers and I’d slide in there on Saturday morning and do their bookkeeping for them. You know how it is – you love your girlfriends and you want them to do well and you want them to feel like everything is under control.
So in 2003 there were signs and indications that my job was going to be gone. The company that I was working for wasn’t doing well. They lost a big client, and it just didn’t look good for me. I knew these things of course because I was doing the bookkeeping. So that is when I bought my first laptop, and I got my first QuickBooksProAdvisor certification , and when I was laid off from my job I went right down to my smart girlfriend, a graphic designer, and she designed my business cards for me and I was in business.
I always feel like if you think there’s a possibility that you are going to get get laid off from your job you should start figuring out your plan B. Don’t wait until the big day, and then go home and say, “Gee what am I going to do ?”
I got my first two clients from her husband, who is a CPA and knew a bookkeeper that was going into a completely different line of work and not going to be doing bookkeeping anymore. So I was off and running. From the very beginning I’ve been doing things differently, I offer QuickBooks training and professional bookkeeping.
The Bookkeeping Guru