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Update
Neat Promotion Features of QuickBooks POS Pro v10
Feb 19th
Do you use QuickBooks POS Pro version 10? There may be some advertising features that would be useful to implement to help you increase sales.
Printing Coupons on Receipts – with this feature you can print a coupon on receipts you print. For example, on the receipt it could say 10% off your next purchase of $25 or more on non-sale items. You can even dictate when a coupon prints on a receipt: always, randomly (such as every 10th receipt printed), or if the sale is greater than a certain amount (such as $45). If you already have a customer set-up to receive customer rewards, you can exclude coupons for that customer.
Email Marketing – with this feature you can automatically add customers to Constant Contact. Maybe you have a new sale this weekend and want to alert your customers. Send an email to your customer base through Constant Contact!
Email Documents – you can email receipts to your customers in several formats: .PDF, Text, HTML, & Excel.
Reward Manager – if you turn on this preference, you can give rewards to loyal customers. For example, you can say that if a customer spends $100 in merchandise, the customer can receive $10 or 10% off a future purchase. You can set rewards to occur during specific time frames. For example, if you want to set-up rewards only for purchases made for a specific weekend, you can do that. In addition, you can make rewards expire, which may entice the customer to come in sooner versus later to use the rewards and purchase more items from your store. In addition, you can exclude some items from earning rewards. For example, if you have a rare expensive item that you do not want a customer to earn rewards on, you can exclude that item.
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Remote Access Options for QuickBooks
Feb 19th
Let us say that you do not use QuickBooks Online but you want to be able to access your QuickBooks program remotely. Below are a couple of options you can use.
Intuit QuickBooks Remote Access – there are two levels of service provided by this company. For $3.95 per month you get access only to your QuickBooks program and transferring files. For $7.95 per month you get access to your entire computer. If you are a QuickBooks ProAdvisor you get this service for free for QuickBooks only access for up to two computers.
I tried this service on my father’s companies as a test. At first I got a green screen and nothing happened, but I was able to use the transfer file feature so I knew there was definitely a connection. I had to wait until the next day to access online chat support to find out how to resolve the issue. The steps did not work. Later, when someone was in the office, I was able to see the QuickBooks program. I think the computer went to sleep and that is why I could not access QuickBooks. When I could use the QuickBooks, I made a bunch of memorized reports for the companies for his employee to send to his tax accountant. I talked the employee through exporting the memorized reports to Excel, password protecting them, and emailing them to the tax accountant.
The service states that it is possible to print locally, but with my ProAdvisor access I could not figure out how to print locally. Perhaps it is only possible with the full access subscription.
For more information on this service, visit http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/add_ons/remote_access.jsp.
LogMeIn – this is a service that was highly recommended on the Intuit Community website to access QuickBooks files remotely. I tried this program and like it a lot. The best part is that it is free!
With this program, you can access your computer wherever you are. The program allows access to the entire computer and prints locally. In fact, as soon as you log in, the program finds the local printer and shows a message that it can print there. The interface is easy to use and it worked the first time!
Another neat feature of LogMeIn, for iPhone/iPad users, is a free app that allows you to access your computer. I have used that and it works!
For more information on this service, visit https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/#RemoteControl.
Comparison – for both programs, it seems that if the computer is set to fall asleep after x amount of time the programs do not work. LogMeIn has the ability to wake up a sleeping computer, but only if Wake on LAN is enabled from the BIOS. You can change the settings on your computer to never fall asleep if the computer is plugged in.
LogMeIn worked right away and I did not need to contact customer support, but with QuickBooks remote access I had to wait until the next day to contact support and the steps that were recommended did not work.
LogMeIn allowed me to print locally from my printer and the program found the printer when I logged in, but with QuickBooks remote access I could not figure out how to print locally. It did not appear that I could, so maybe I would need the full access to do this.
I liked the security features of LogMeIn. First, you have to log into the program online with a username and password. Second, you have to log into your computer with a username and password. You could set-up users on your computer to only have access to certain programs and not allow someone to transfer files. Third, someone most likely would have to log into QuickBooks with a username and password. However, with QuickBooks remote access you just have to log into the website once and cannot have multiple users. Although QuickBooks might have multiple users, the person with remote access can transfer files from your computer.
If you need to use remote access, I recommend using LogMeIn over QuickBooks remote access.
If you are a QuickBooks ProAdvisor that needs to walk a client through an issue, I recommend using QuickBooks remote access.
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Using Estimates in QuickBooks for a Commission-Based Business
Feb 5th
Does your business sell products on behalf of several companies and receives a commission for the sales? Then using estimates in QuickBooks could be useful to you.
Tracking Commissions Owed – Let’s say you sell products from Unique Clothes Company to your customers. In return for the sales, your company receives a 10% commission. Instead of relying on Unique Clothes Company to pay you the correct commission earned, you can track the commissions earned yourself. Then, when the commission check is received, you can compare it against what you expected to verify that you are receiving the correct amount.
In QuickBooks you would create an estimate for the sales. Then you would create an invoice for the percentage that your company is paid. In this example it would be an invoice for 10% of the estimate. After invoicing off the estimate, you would mark the estimate closed.
Negotiate With Provider Customer – At the end of the year, you can generate reports to see how much you sold on behalf of Unique Clothes Company. Using this information, you could show trends and possibly negotiate a higher commission rate from the company.
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Estimates vs. Sales Orders in QuickBooks
Feb 4th
Some business owners may need to use estimates in QuickBooks but some may need to use sales orders to accomplish sales. The estimate feature is in QuickBooks Pro, but you have to use Premier or Enterprise if you want to use the sales order feature.
Estimates – Estimates are good to use if you have to provide a quote to a customer which the customer can accept or reject. Once accepted, you can invoice a customer using the estimate. If you have progress invoicing turned on, you can even invoice for a certain percent of the estimate or for specific items. If you create a subsequent invoice based on the original estimate, the progress invoice will show the original estimated amount, the previous amount invoiced, and the current amount due.This is a handy feature for construction or consulting firms.
Sales Orders – Sales orders are good to use if you sell inventoried products, such as books or clothes. You can also use sales orders to track services. When you are ready to invoice a customer, you can choose one or more sales invoices to include on one invoice. The invoice will show the sales order numbers, the original amount ordered, amounts previously invoiced, items backordered, and items currently invoiced.
Differences – An estimate is used when the customer has not yet accepted your product or service, whereas the sales order is used when the customer has definitely accepted your product or service. You can create a progress invoice with the estimate, but only for one estimate. With sales orders you can choose which items to invoice, like the estimate, but you can include multiple sales orders. Sales orders pull the item from inventory to give you an accurate idea of the amount available to sell, but estimates do not. You can generate estimate vs. actual reports for estimates. You can generate open sales order reports for sales orders.
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Consignment Sales in QuickBooks
Jan 14th
Some businesses sell items on consignment. Consignment goods are not part of your business’ inventory, so there should never be a value of the consignment products on your Balance Sheet. However, you may want to track how many items you have in stock to sell and how many items you did sell so that you know when you have to order more product from your vendor or pay your vendor for the product. There is more than one way to track consignment sales. The following is one way you can do it:
Create Inventory Items on Consignment – for each item that you sell on consignment, create a new inventory item. You could even create a main inventory item called “Consignment” and create sub-items under that for each item you sell. For the COGS account, use an account called Cost of Goods Sold – Consignment. For the income account, use Consignment Sales.
Receive Items – you want to be able to see how many consignment items you have in your store, but you do not want the items to have any value because they have not sold yet. You can receive the items in using the Inventory Adjustment screen. Create an adjustment to show you received the items. This will increase the number of units on hand but will not increase the asset value on your Balance Sheet.
Invoicing – invoicing is the exact same process as with regular inventory items. Choose the item that you sold and invoice your customer. Because the consignment item was received in at $0.00, after recording the transaction $0.00 will post to your Cost of Goods Sold – Consignment account.
Paying for the Consignment Items – typically you do not have to pay for consignment products until they are sold. You can generate a sales by item summary report to see how many consignment items were sold. Using this report you can determine how much money you have to pay your vendor. When you pay your vendor, instead of using the item tab like you do when you purchase inventory, use the expenses tab and choose the account called Cost of Goods Sold – Consignment.
Reports – if you only want to see the profit made on consignment sales, you can generate a Profit & Loss statement and filter the report to show Consignment Sales and Cost of Goods Sold – Consignment. If you want to see how many consignment items you have available to sell, you can generate an Inventory Stock Status by Item report.
In addition to using the above steps, you could use class tracking to keep a handle on your consignment activity.
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Best Month Ever!
Jan 9th
We’re only 9 days into the New Year, and EverChange, LLC has had the best month ever! All January slots have been filled and half of February has been booked. Some March appointments have been made.
In addition to regular clients, EverChange, LLC has earned the business of 4 new clients this month, 3 training and 1 bookkeeping; has been referred to 3 businesses this month from a CPA to meet with for potential new business, 2 training and 1 bookkeeping; and has been asked by a second CPA this month if he could pass my business name along to 2 non-profits for potential training and bookkeeping. One potential client referral has been made by EverChange, LLC to a colleague firm due to overflow. I’m all smiles!
Business Personal Property Tax Listing Due Jan. 31st!!
Jan 4th
Happy New Year!!
Do you have assets on your balance sheet? Computer equipment, equipment, furniture, automobiles, leasehold improvements etc.? If yes, you probably have to file this tax form.
Talk to your CPA about preparing the return…..or for you do-it-yourselfers get the information you need from your county’s website. Here are some useful URLs:
Durham County – http://www.co.durham.nc.us/departments/txad/Business_Personal_Property_Taxation.html
Wake County – http://www.wakegov.com/tax/businessproperty/default.htm
Orange County – http://www.co.orange.nc.us/revenue/business_tax_requirements.asp
If I missed your county, simply do an Internet search for Business Personal Property Taxes and _______ (insert your county).
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Job Costing Using WIP in QuickBooks
Dec 25th
Some small business owners, such as construction firms, want to utilize job costing reports in QuickBooks. There is more than one method for recording job costing information in QuickBooks. The following summarizes a method recording the information using Work in Process (WIP) by keeping all revenue and costs on the Balance Sheet until the job is completed. This method assumes you are an accrual basis taxpayer.
Create a Job – the first step in job costing in QuickBooks is to add a main customer and add a job to that customer. For example, customer Juliet Hurley might have a job called Kitchen Project.
Create Items – you need to create service items which will be the services you invoice to the customer:job. For example, Plumbing, Cabinets, Windows, and Electrical. In the item set-up put a check box under the item name to indicate that the service is provided by a subcontractor. The expense account would be Work in Process (an Other Current Asset Account) and the income account would be Construction Income.
Create an Estimate – create an estimate for the project detailing out each invoice line item.
Invoice the Customer – typically you can use “progress invoicing” for an estimate, but for this example you should invoice your customer using an item called Security Deposit. Create a sub-item for each deposit you collect. For example, you would create a sub-item called Down Payment #1 for the first down payment you invoice the customer for, Down Payment #2 for the second down payment you invoice the customer for, and so on. The service item and sub-items would point to the Account called Customer Deposits (an Other Current Liability Account) for both the expense and income account.
Enter Vendor Bills – enter the bills that you receive from vendors for services rendered. Instead of using the “Expenses” tab, use the “Items” tab and choose the type of service performed. For example, Plumbing. Enter the job that the expense was for.
Close the Job – when the job is completed, you need to close it out so you can see if you made or lost money on the project. Create two “Other Charges” items called Reverse WIP (pointed to the Work in Process account) and Cost of Goods Sold at Closing (pointed to the Cost of Goods Sold account). Also create a new bank account called Adj Register.
Create an invoice for the total amount of the estimate. Under the last item add in new lines to subtract the amounts already paid as down payments that were previously invoiced. For example, if you originally invoiced $10,000 as Down Payment #1, type in the item Down Payment #1 and in the amount column enter -$10,000.
Enter in a zero dollar check using the bank account called Adj Register. Using the Items tab, choose Reverse WIP. Enter in a negative amount for the balance in the Work in Process account for that job and enter the job name on the same line. In the next line choose Cost of Goods Sold at Closing. The amount will be the exact same amount for the line above but entered in as a positive amount instead of a negative amount so that the net check amount is $0.00. Enter the job name on the same line.
Generate Reports – if you want to see a summary of profit (loss), you can run the Profit & Loss by Job report. If you want to see actual revenue and actual costs of the job, you can run the Job Profitability Detail report. To see revenue and costs by individual line items of the estimate, modify the report and remove the account filter. If you want to see if you were over or under your cost estimate, you can run the Job Estimates vs. Actuals Details report.
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Job Costing & Payroll in QuickBooks
Dec 18th
Some small business owners like to use the job costing feature in QuickBooks. QuickBooks Desktop Pro & Premier, MAC, and Online Plus and above have the ability to perform job costing. Job costing is where you can tag both income and expenses to a specific job and then view a profitability report by job to see if that specific project made money or lost money. Typically construction firms and real estate management firms use job costing. For example, if you have a subdivision where you are building multiple homes, you may want to see which homes that sold made a profit. The main customer could be the subdivision name (ABC Subdivision) and the jobs could be the addresses (124 Turtle Ave., 456 Stark Road, etc.). Job costing can work with a variety of industries. It just depends on how much time you are willing to put into your accounting to achieve the results.
Job costing also allows you to tag expenses to be invoiced back to the customer at cost or at a % markup. For example, if you purchased some bricks for job 124 Turtle Ave. and had the “billable” box checked, you could invoice job 124 Turtle Ave. for the bricks (note: in the MAC version, to be able to invoice costs back to jobs, the chart of account type had to be “expense” and cannot be type “cost of goods sold”. In the desktop versions the chart of account type can be “cost of goods sold”).
Assuming you use Intuit’s payroll (a QuickBooks subscription service for the desktop and MAC versions or QuickBooks Online Plus w/ Payroll) you will have to use a journal entry to assign the payroll costs to specific jobs. The following briefly describes ways to perform job costing for payroll.
Online Plus w/ Payroll – Although there is the option to enter in time by employee and job using the timecard feature, the job information does not import into the payroll module. Instead, only the hours import for the employee. The sole purpose of the timecard in this online product is to be able to invoice time back to a job. So if you want to assign payroll and payroll taxes to specific jobs, you have to create a journal entry. QuickBooks Online does not allow the import of Excel .iif files, so you would not be able to create an import template. This method would be very tedious and time consuming if you had several employees and several jobs to assign costs to.
Desktop and MAC Versions – In these programs, you can use the timecard feature by employee and job and the information will be able to break out payroll costs by job. However, the payroll taxes will not be assigned to a job so you would need to enter a journal entry to allocate payroll taxes to specific jobs. The good news is that you could create an import file from Excel to help make the process easier, especially if you have several employees and several jobs that you want to assign payroll taxes to.
With both methods, unfortunately you cannot avoid having to enter in a journal entry. However, if you have multiple employees and jobs, the desktop or MAC version would save you more time than the Online version.
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Tips For Saving Time and Money on Tax Preparation
Dec 10th
It is almost the end of the year, so it is time to start thinking about … taxes! Here are some tips to help you save money during tax season:
Do Hire a CPA to Prepare Your Business Tax Return at Least One Time
This will give you a template to prepare subsequent tax returns and give you a chance to pick the brain of your CPA to fully understand why certain expenses were put on specific forms and why some expenses were not deductible.
Do Not Hire a Secretary at $8/hr. to Keep Your Books
A secretary with no accounting knowledge may make a bigger mess with your accounting that will have to be cleaned up by a bookkeeper or year-end tax preparer and it costs more to clean up the books than to have them right from the beginning.
Hire a bookkeeper or get trained on how to keep your books on a software program such as QuickBooks®. At the end of the year you print off a Profit & Loss statement and a Balance Sheet and hand it to the tax preparer. The person can then just plunk the numbers into the tax software without having to perform bookkeeping services at a price higher than a bookkeeper or yourself.
If you do not use a computerized accounting program, at minimum make a spreadsheet in Excel. The more information you have in an accounting software program or spreadsheet, the less bookkeeping work the tax preparer has to do.
Bank Statements
Some tax preparers will recreate your financial information on their end using your bank statements. If so, make sure you have all of your bank statements from January through December in a folder for your tax preparer. If one month is missing reprint an online statement or obtain a reprinted statement from the bank now so your tax preparer does not have to ask for it. Make a list of any unusual transactions to minimize the amount of questions the tax preparer may ask. For example, if some deposits are personal money (not taxable income), put it on the list.
New Purchases to Capitalize
Sometimes when you spend money it is not considered an “expense” on your Profit & Loss statement but instead is considered an “Asset” on your Balance Sheet and has to be recorded and depreciated over time (or section 179). Instead of making your tax preparer play detective and try to figure out what should and should not be capitalized (especially if you are making several payments for a purchase over time), make a list.
Some examples of new purchases include vehicles, computer equipment, furniture, tools, etc. If you are not sure it belongs on the list, put it on the list – let your tax preparer decide if it should be expensed or remain a capital asset. On your list, write down the date of purchase, the amount you paid for it, the vendor that you purchased the product from, and a brief description of the item.
Receipts
Receipts for debit card purchases (credit card purchases) are useful for tax preparation to help properly code the expense without guessing using the vendor name. Find all of your receipts and give them to your tax preparer. But do not just put them in a shoebox and hand them to your tax preparer, unless you want higher tax preparation fees. Instead, make twelve envelopes and label them January debits (credit cards), February debits (credit cards), March, etc. and put the receipts in the appropriate envelope. This will reduce the amount of time it takes for your tax preparer to find a receipt.
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