Hello people I have installed quickbooks and helped setting up online banking for a friends business.
The only thing she apparently intended to use quickbooks for, was getting details about the checks she has been writing from her checking account. With these details about payees, she says quickbooks should be able to catagorize her expenses for her(if we catagorize the payee names first).
I have been trying to find information about this. Seems to me this is not at all the point of quickbooks. But i might be wrong, so can anyone steer me in the right direction here please?
If this feature exist, whats the name of it in quickbooks Pro 2006?
Ive been messing around with this a bit.. My problem is now that alot of the payee's information is simple ''CHECK", which i cant catagorize upon.. So now it seems my friend has to use the "write checks" function everytime she writes a check, to catagorize effectively. Which means i should also have the opening balance set up and then she should also type in deposits everytime she makes one..
Am i right in this conclusion? Or is there another way to identify the payee so that i can catagorize the expenses for her?
How are you entering the information? Are you downloading from the bank? Or does your friend simply enter the word 'check' in her register and expect you to sort it out?
Again, categorize is not the word you want to use here. QB is a double entry accounting program, where every transaction has two entries.. a debit to one account and a credit to another. When you use the write checks window, for examply, you subtract from the amount in your bank account, and add to the amount of the expense.
Your friend picked the wrong software... not that I am sure there is a correct software.
From your posts it seems your friend wants to download her checks from her bank, and have the software 'categorize' it for her.
Ummm, no.
Software is not prescient... you need to enter the data. Now, some things can be 'remembered' by QuickBooks. If you enter a check to a specific vendor and have turned on the option to "recall the last transaction for this payee" then the next time you enter a payment for a specific payee, QB will recall what expense account (or item) was associated with that payee, and will pre-fill the information on the check.
Post back with exactly what your friend (or you) mean by 'categorize the expenses' using 'details about payees'.
Ideally, your friend should have some idea of exactly what she wants to do. If she is looking to keep track of income and expenses associated with her business, she has tons of software options.
My local community college offered low to no cost classes on basic business recordkeeping and accounting. It sounds as though it might be just what you need.
As she enters checks, she can code them all to an expense account which you will create called "Suspense". Later, you can open that account and code the checks to the appropriate expense accounts. (Entries to QuickBooks can be changed after they are made.)
The next time she writes a check to a vendor which you have changed (example: client enters check to ABC Office Supply Company and codes it to "Suspense". You change the entry from "Suspense" to "Office Supplies Expense"), her next check to ABC Office Supply Company will pop up as an "Office Supplies Expense" code, and "Suspense" will not be needed for that vendor again.
Well i think my question before was a bit unclear im sorry, ill try again and hope you have more patience left.. But thanks for answering. I do understand the thing with accounts instead of catagories in QB, it works fine..
Well she prefers writing real checks for her vendors and give them to them when they arive with the goods. Right now she does not keep track of these checks with quickbooks at all.
We do download the transactions from her checking account in her bank. What she wants now is to use this transaction information to "catagorize" the checks she wrote in hand into different expense catagories(expense accounts in QB).
Problem is that when she writes these checks in hand, the payee name will just be "CHECK". Therefore it seems QB will not be able to decide the right expense account(or what i would call catagory) for the transaction.
So to decide the right expense account for checks in the future, it seems everytime she issues a check, she needs to write in the information in the "write checks" function in QB. So that QB can compare the check no. and the payment amount to the transactions. Isnt this correct?
Yeah i told her i suspect this too..
Yes exactly..
I think this is what i got working when i found out the payee names mostly were "CHECK" :(
Hope i explained it good enough before.
Yeah this is what she wants in the end to be able to.. Those handwritten checks just seems to create alot of trouble with it..
Thanks but im just helping her while i live at her place for a little while. Im studying software engineering, so i suppose in her mind that means i know all software in the world... i dunno.. But i do what i can, but man its incredible boring. Almost tempted to just make my own version of the software to get into my field of expertise.. But that would probably take alot longer... Anyways...
Yes. If she won't be using "items" then she can enter checks from the check register screen and bypass the Write Checks feature. Its faster.
What you're seeing isn't a shortcoming of Quickbooks but of online banking. Banks don't record payee, memo or original date details so they can't download them to software.
What she needs to do it to take the cancelled checks each month or the check book register that lists the payee name and use that to enter the info in QB. Some banks have a way of viewing the check image online. This would be another way to get the info but it is time consuming.
I see, i think i get this part now yes. Yeah viewing the check images online would be a bit overkill, but otherwize i think this is what im going to have her do. I think what we will do is to :) thx for the help guys.. ehh girls.
So now im in doubt about another thing though. The transactions from the checking account has alot of deposits from the creditcard company which ofcourse is from people paying with creditcard. I would like to register these deposits automatically. Can you guide me through this please?
I tried "add to register", and "add to deposits" and the last one i forgot what is called, with the transactions. Seems to me add to register might be the right one for doing it automatically. But maybe im wrong, so once again i need your help and hope you have more patience?
Yes, it would be overkill. She needs to either give you the check book register or make sure that the bank statement contains either the actual cancelled checks or check images. This varies from bank to bank.
She needs to be recording her daily sales. One simple way is to use the Sales Receipt screen or a memorized journal entry. Separately record the cc deposits to line up with how your bank will show the deposits on the statement. Usually this is Visa/MC/Debit, AMEX, Discover. Her manual deposits of hard cash each day need to be posted to. Most post the CC to undeposited funds and then manually transfer them over to the bank account using Make Deposits but I found it more work than it was worth. I just post them directly to the bank account and leave them uncleared at the end of the month.
Your journal entry would look similar to this:
Debit Cash Debit VISA/MC/Debit Debit AMEX Debit Discover Credit sales Debit/Credit Cash Over/short (to make the entry balance)
Also included would be the appropriate Debits to Expenses accounts if she pays any vendor out of the register. But in the end all cash & expenses will total the sales for that day (or week).
By recording her daily sales, you mean everytimes she sells anything she needs to type it into QB? Sales reciept screen or memorized journal i cant seem to find these in my options. I have invoices and recieve payments?
Im pretty sure she will drop using QB all together if she also has to write all the deposits in manually.. Isnt it possible to do it automatically? Im not sure if that was what you in fact was describing, but i wasnt really sure what you meant and it seemed to me you were describing how to put deposits in manually? Sorry for the inconvenience. :/
Now im just in doubt when to start tracking it all. I could start tracking 3 months ago, which is how old the oldest bank transactions i recieved are. This is what ive done so far and then i just placed all the checks under 'other expenses'(crazy amount of checks i would have to type in details about otherwize). And now my intention was that i could start catagorizing checks from now on. For instance if she writes a check for a coca cola delivery today, ill write it in QB and place it under 'cost of sold goods'. So that from this date on the expenses will be sorted in the right QB accounts. But before this date the expenses are all messy and all in 'other expenses'..
Is this a good way to start? Otherwize please describe the right way of doing it?
You should be at least separating the expenses into major categories. Anything that she is selling put into Cost of Goods sold. She can adjust the inventory at year end. Put rent into its proper category, ditto with insurance and utilities. Put the small one-time stuff into "Other expense" but at least put the monthly, regular bills into their rightful accounts. This way she can track her regular expenses from the very beginning.
Is she a cash or accrual based company? Are you recording everything after the fact or will you be doing the transactions in real time once you put in the old stuff? The reason that I ask is that she should be entering the invoices for items purchased using the date received. Most large scale vendors allow for discounts to be taken if paid within 10 days. If she is not tracking the date of the bill then she is missing out on major discounts.
If her sales volume is large then daily is the only way of keeping on top of it. If she only has a handful of sales each week then weekly is okay. It all depends on the volume of sales. I support a liquor store and the daily sales journal entry takes about 30 per day to tally and enter. But this is a busy liquor store. What is her business?
Under Customers you will see Enter Sales receipt. Once you create one select Edit>>Memorize sales receipt. To access the SR each time it is needed go to Lists>>Memorized transaction list. Edit the memorized transaction settings and specify "don't remind me". This allows you to manually update and save the transaction as needed.
To use a journal entry to enter this go to Company>>Make General Journal Entry. This is what we used for the liquor store I support. Again, set it up once and then memorize it.
Everything needs to be entered into QB. What kind of automatic system are you looking for?
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