Is Quickbooks for me?

Because our bills are FOB the factory. So if we have 10 day terms, it's not out of the question that we need to pay the bill before the goods show up.

Also, it frequently happens that we have one invoice with goods that get shipped in multiple boxes. The boxes don't always show up together. Sometimes one box gets lost, etc.......

The way that we get around this is to enter all bills immediately. We then keep the paper bills in a file and check off the items as they are received. When all the items are received the bill gets filed.

It would be MUCH better if this was handled properly within Quickbooks.

Mike Schumann

Do you have any idea how complex this would be for the volume of transactions that we do????

Mike Schumann

What version are you using? The US versions have functions for receive item, receive bill, and receive items with bill.

For an accounting program to handle the above situation correctly it would need to be able to receive the goods but each item would have to be flagged as in transit. When the goods are physically received the flag whould have to be removed.

In my opinion you are being unrealistic expecting this type of functionality from an entry level program like QB. I am placing bets right now that we will not see this feature in QB 2007. Any takers?

Personally I would simply issue a check to the vendor and record it as a prepayment. When the goods are physically received the invoice would be entered and I would apply the prepayment..

Your method does not take advantage of the functionality in QB. You end up checking off items on paper rather than receiving against a PO in the software.

If I needed to issue GAAP financials then a journal entry would be made to account for any goods whose title passed at the vendor(s) shipping dock that have not be recorded as received.

If the title was changed to "Inventory in Transit" rather than prepaid inventory Karl's method would account for your situation correctly. However I do agree the mechanics are awarkward and difficult to track.

This might not too hard

On first Bill (to Inv in transit), enter the PO number in the Memo field in the top part of the Bill

On second bill (with items received , credit to Inv in transit) enter the same PO number in the Memo field in the top part of the Bill

Run a Customer Transaction Detail Report, sort by "Memo". (unfortunately can't total by Memo but could do that in Excel)

Also Filter this report by Cleared status. Mark both Bills as cleared whend goods received and then the report will show only Inv in transit.

I would simply issue a check to the vendor and code the check to Accounts Payable. At a later date after goods are received enter the invoice and apply the prepayment.

I never said that I expected QBooks to solve this problem. I'm just reporting a limitation that is there, which higher end packages probably solve. I have also given up on getting this fixed, after years of trying to get Intuit's attention.

Our work around has proved to be the simplest solution for our business. Others may come up with better ideas given their own situations.

Mike Schumann

All of these ideas work fine if you have bills with one or two items. I have shipments that have 20-50 items on a bill, where one or two items might be shorted or lost. Our approach has proven to be reliable and the most efficient in terms of time and keystrokes.

Mike Schumann

I have never encountered any program that does this. Perhaps another poster can let us know which one does.

Sorry Mike but to me your solution just sounds like a bad habit that your company has gotten used to. Other than needing to record the inventory in stock for GAAP purposes I can't understand why a simple prepayment check can not be issued. I am assuming that you understand how prepayments are used.

I won't even get started on how confusing it must be for your people taking orders and seeing items in stock which are really in transit from the vendor.

We don't use Quickbooks to keep track of our actual physical inventory. It works fine to approximate the value of inventory from a financial perspective, but because of the problems I have outlined, and other issues perculiar to our industry, it doesn't have the functionality that is needed to provide on-line inventory information.

For us, it's a choice of a decent, inexpensive accounting system coupled with some manual proceedures, vs. investing $20-30K plus $10K / year for support in an industry specific application. We just couldn't identify enough potential cost savings to justify this expenditure, disruption & retraining.

Mike Schumann

Up until now you excluded the information below because?

If you are interested in something with built-in reporting capability, I would suggest a program written in MSAccess. It is a relational database so it gives you all the flexibility in the world to slice and dice your data any way you want it. Also, the built-in Access report writer gives you everything you need as far as reporting power.

We've worked with a lot of QB clients in the past and getting the data out of QB into an actual databasse like Access or SQL in a comprehendable format is a challenge, so I would proceed cautiously if you think you might want a relational database in the future.

Hope this helps, Rebecca