I thought that my original question was rather simple and had hoped for a simple answer, so I did not go into the detail that follows.
My problem is I have a subsidiary ledger for sales that does not tie back to my QuickBooks (Pro) sales report for the month. The reason is that the automated system that records sales deals only with the material being shipped. A freight charge added onto the invoice is recorded in QuickBooks as a sale, so my QuickBooks sales exceed my subsidiary ledge's sales by the amount of the freight charge added on to one invoice.
As I said, I inherited this chart of accounts and way of doing business. For now, there is no freight-income account. Maybe there should be; that's a question I'll address after I get this month's financials closed. There is, however, a freight-expense account. If I had a freight-income account, on the financial reports that I prepare for management, the amount therein would be combined with the amount in the freight-expense account to show a net freight expense. So I think that, for now, the best place to out that invoiced freight amount is in the freight expense account.
So, to go back to my original post, all I want to do is debit sales by $554.08 and credit freight expense for the same amount. And, yes, I'm sure that that's what I want to do.
I really don't care how it's accomplished so long as my QuickBooks sales and my production system sales tie out.
There are no sales-tax issues involved.
I need to chase someone out so I can go into single-user mode to check out the item-list suggestion.
If anyone has any further advice, I'd be happy to hear it. Thanks for what you have provided so far.