I am using Quickbooks for a small business (learning center). For some of my students part of the tuition payment is done by parents and part by a government agency. I was wondering how can I apply payment from multiple sources to one job. My first thought was to creat one customer called "Government Agency" and list all students (each registered in different subjects) as jobs of the big customer, but this seems to be a very rudimentary way.
I was wondering what is a better way to handle this case?
If you don't have to bill the separate paying entities individually then you create one invoice for tuition per student (customer) and receive many payments against it.
How you set things up depends on whether or not you are billing the government agency for multiple students. If you are then make them a customer with the students as jobs under that customer. You would only include the government agency's portion of the tuition under this customer. The rest of the liability goes to the parent.
If the student is responsible for getting their own funding (parent or government) then just use customer:job for the student. When the money is received, just apply it to the appropriate student's invoice.
scfundogs wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:
Thanks for the prompt response. I am still not quite clear though. After creating one invoice per student (job), I can apply the the part of the payment receieved from parent (customer) to him. But how can I apply the payment received from the agency? Should I enter the agency as a customer? As far as I uderstand I can receive a payment only from a customer and apply that payment for a job that corresponds to that customer.
In my case each parent is customer and each learning subject for each child is a job for that customer. It seems that the government agency that pays a sum check for many students each month falls outside this "cutomer/job" tree.
I used to work at a school where some of our tuition was paid by the state unemployment agencies. We made the county the customer. I was using a different software that did not have jobs but you would then add each student as a job under this customer. When the check from the government comes in just apply it to the appropriate student's job.
"Laura" wrote in news:CrJDh.7267$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:
Thanks Laura,
I am pretty new to quickbooks. I understand that a job (student and subject of study) can be under one customer (parent or gov. agency); it cannot be under two customers. When invoice the job, the invoice appears only under the customer to whom the job belongs.
I have two customers, one the parent that pays a posrtion of tuition for his kids and one the gov. agency that pays part of the tuition of many kids (belonging to many parents, i.e., customers). How can I apply the money received from the gove. agency to a job that is not listed under it?
Maybe I am missing something here. My understanding is that 1-I can only receive a payment from a custome, 2-I can only apply the payment that I have received from a custome to a job under that customer, and 3-A job can be listed only under one customer.
"Laura" wrote in news:3TJDh.49740$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:
Thanks Laura,
HOw then did you apply the parents's part of the tuition? It looks that the student (job) was listed as a job under the county (customer). In my case part of the tuition comes from the parent, so I need to apply that part to the invoise. But if the student(job) is listed under county it seems that there is no easy way to apply parent's portion to it.
If the answer is "the student", you have one customer called "the student."
If the answer is "the student" for a portion and "the government" for a portion, you have two customers and two invoices.
If the latter applies and you have more than one student for whom you are billing "the government", you will have "the government" as your customer and sub-accounts (known as jobs) for each student under the customer called "the government."
When payment is received:
from "the student" or anyone else paying "the student" invoice such as the parents, that payment is applied to the invoice created for the customer called "the student."
from "the government", select "Receive Payments" and choose "the government." All of the invoices you have created for all of the student sub-accounts (jobs) under "the government" will appear in the "Receive Payments" window for "the government." If you have a check from "the government" for various students for all or part of the invoice you created for the customer "the government" you will apply the appropriate amounts as defined on the payment you received.
Set your "Preferences" to have payments go to the account called "Undeposited Funds". After you have done the "Receive Payments" process, choose "Make a Deposit".
Sometimes, when setting up QuickBooks is too confusing, it is best to have an expert help you. When QB is set up correctly, it is much easier to work in than creating a monster from the start.
How would you handle a check received from a government agency for multiple students? Are you entering parts of the check received when it is spread over multiple students and repeating the check number for each piece of the payment?
That's what I'm suggesting but only if there's no official reporting requirement. What I'm describing is a scenario whereby a government check comes in for a handful of students at a time. Receiving payment for 3 students, individually, and dumping it all into undeposited funds works well as a simplistic approach and keeps quickreports accurate.
If there are official/legal reporting requirements attached to receiving government tuition checks and/or these checks are coming in with payment for 50 different students on them then a much more detailed approach would be needed.
That's my experience too. With how slow government agencies are with paying tracking their obligation by student is important. I often had 50-100 active county funded students at a time in various stages of payment. I had to track these students using excel spreadsheets and only had customer accounts for the self-pay students. I was lucky that it was rare that a county funded student also had part of their tuition paid by their parents or themselves.
"Joanne" wrote in news:rHKDh.5760$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net:
Thanks Joanne, but I still do not know how to apply the check received from two customers to a single job!
My answer to the question you asked it ""the student" for a portion and "the government" for a portion" hence I need to have a customer as the government and for each student a "job" under the government. Paying government's portion in this way is easy since when I use "Make a payment" to the customer "government" I ac apply the payment to the jobs under it.
The problem arises when I receive a check from a parent (which is a customer separate from the government) and I want to apply the payment to the student. I cannot do this since the "job" (student) is under the "customer" (government) not under the "customer" (parent).
The only solution that I can think of (which is not a good solution) is to bread up the parent and governments portion of tuition into two jobs and list them under two customers, parent and government. This makes my list of jobs much longer. I hope this is not the only solution.
The 'Receive Payments' window needs only the name of the account/job the payment is for. Theoretically, you don't even need the invoice to be created yet - a payment can be left on a customer:job as a credit.
If you consider your students as the customers, simply create accounts for each student.
When a student pays you, enter the method, amount, and all information. If you receive a payment from anyone else to be applied to the student account, enter the payment as above - you might want to use the memo to note that payment was via government/parent/agency check.
The only wrinkle would be if a government agency drafted a single check to cover multiple students.
If you foresee that as an issue, you may have to use another method to credit the students accounts.
No. Not true. The recieve payment window requires you enter a customer:job for which the payment is to be applied. There is no requirement that the payment (which you deposit) has the same name attached as the customer.
Yes... sort of. Using the Recieve payments window, you may enter ONE customer:job name to apply a payment too. There is nothing, however, that prevents you from 'splitting' a check over multiple customer:jobs. It is done all the time in situations where a single customer has multiple jobs, and you want the reporting nice and tidy. QB is even smart enough to know, provided the parent customer name and the check number are the same, that the split payment should be totaled in the deposit slip.
The only issue is if your single payment covers multiple customers (one government check covering multiple students). While you can use the memo field and check number to cross-reference, there will be no way for QB to know that the payments came from a single government agency check.
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