Quicken 2005 - Invoice reports

Tell me about it. :) No, Quicken does not help much.

I am in a DFW area subject to DART MTA tax, so I also have to track city, regarding the 1% DART tzx. My sales tax is only a couple hundred dollars annually, so I only report the tax to the state once at year end.

Most of my online sales are not in Texas, Quicken reports can count the total overall sales number. My Texas sales tax entry (from a Texas invoice) goes to the *Sales Tax* account. Which never seems to appear in any Quicken report (cannot find a Category to include for it), but from within that account, it can total it in the Register Report menu (for the year).

But cities are a problem for me. The way I read the rules, because my city is DART MTA, I collect the MTA 1% from all DART MTA cities, but not from other cities. So what I do is for sales in Texas, I edit each one of those sales tax records as they occur, to add city to the Memo field in the *Sales Tax* account. This city then shows in the register report too, but you have to figure out what is what for subtotals. However this much alone should have a big impact, but is still tedious work.

What I actually do is at year end, I export that *Sales Tax* account (for the year) to a qif file. Then I wrote a smell program to read it sort it and count it by city. That little program knows which cities are 8.25% with DART MTA, and the others are 7.25%.

Hawk and Wayne,

I too use Quicken H&B to generate invoices, and I need to collect sales tax (in CA) on some transactions. In addition to sales subject to sales tax, I have out of state sales (no sales tax) and sales for resale (no sales tax).

Here's what I do:

When I create a new customer record, I add a code after the customer name that will distinguish that customer from others. For example, let's say I have three customers:

1) Smith Company -- in my local tax area, so I charge them tax. 2) Jones Company -- in another state, so I don't charge them tax. 3) Miller Company -- either in my state or out of state, but the sale is for resale, so I don't charge them tax

In Quicken, I will name these customers as follows:

1) Smith TXCA 2) Jones TXOUT 3) Miller TXRE

When I go to prepare an invoice, those names are what will appear in the little dropdown at the top of the invoice form labeled Customer. The Bill To field on the invoice form will have the company name/address without my code.

When running reports, I filter on TXCA, TXOUT and TXRE. The reports give me the numbers I need to complete my sales tax return.... almost! For the transactions that are subject to sales tax, I have to use a small Excel spreadsheet to compute the amount on which the tax is applied and the amount of the tax. My Quicken report on TXCA will show the total amount -- invoice subtotal plus sales tax. My CA sales tax report needs two separate numbers -- the subtotal and the tax. My Excel spreadsheet takes the total and gives me the two separate numbers.

I think my system can be modified to work with different sales tax percentages. For example, you could have TX75 and TX85 to represent you two tax zones.

I have used H&B since day-one, and this has always been a nuisance and shortcoming to me. Having worked out my system, however, it's now very easy to prepare my quarterly sales tax reports.

John

Thanks Wayne & John,

Both your posts give some hope... But alas - I think it's quicker in the long-run to just wait til the end of each quarter, and add up the sales... We generally have about 200-250 invoices per quarter... and about 90% are non-taxable (resale, church, and out-of-state sales... so picking out the taxable ones, though, is a PITA.

For a while we ran a separate spreadsheet. Whenever we created a quicken invoice, we'd enter the data including onlt the following info: Invoice number, Invoice Date, Invoice subtotal, and tax collected.

Then I'd sort based on tax collected, and give a total sum of the subtotal column, and then a sum of the invoices that had a "tax collected" in excess of 1 cent.

I may go back to this method... We gave it up when I realized 2 years ago that quicken would do invoices.. however, I think it's lacking in some of the "basic" reports that a small business needs... Maybe in a future version....

(Yep - we're in Dallas county as well - but even the Texas long form for sales tax submissions is pretty easy.. then we file & pay via their web-file.

Rex S.

Wayne wrote:

It seems easier Rex, at least almost. I use Q2005 too, and the sales tax on the invoice goes to your sales tax account (defined at Q2005 menu Options - Invoice Defaults in your invoice account). I use one invoice for Texas, and another for non-Texas or non-taxable, so there is only a tax field on taxable Texas sales. That sales tax account shows only the tax amount, customer name and date (for each Texas invoice that had the tax field on it), but its register report will add it up for a date range, like for the quarter or year.

Then if local sales, where your tax rate is 8.25% and total amount of tax collected has added to $X by the register report, then $X is obviously what you report, and your taxable sales was X / 0.0825 dollars. This is quite automatic, plus a minute to do the register report and reach for the calculator to divide.

But my problem with mail order delivery is that some of mine are 8.25%, but others in Texas but outside of DART MTA area are 7.25%, which is two totals because of the different divisors. The tax form wants an overall total for the state (6.25%), same overall total for your city of Dallas (1%), and a smaller total (just from the DART cities) to credit to DART MTA (1%). So I identify these by manually putting the city name in the Memo comments area of that tax account record (as entered, to ID them). Technically, you only need cites on the DART city invoices, but I add it to all to flag when I forget to add it.

I dont see a way for Quicken to sort those cities, but if you print it and mark DART cites with a highlighter pen, it is easy to add them. You do have to learn the DART cites, and keep it straight, which is pretty simple. And you do have the overall total. But I instead actually export this tax account to QIF file, and wrote a small program to sort it by city and add up totals, and the DART cities.

Hi again guys...

I just checked the Intuit Support site and searched under Quicken 2008 for "sales tax." There are several articles which address the exact questions Rex is asking about.

quicken.custhelp.com

John B.

Thanks John. It seems to say that 2008 will allow multiple sales tax accounts, which we can select at the invoice, so that should total them up any way we want. That is not in Q2005. :) But I think Q2005 cutoff date is approaching anyway, so this should be a help then. Thanks.

You are welcome. I think you will do fine with '08 and multiple sales tax accounts.

John B.