QuickBooks has many neat features to help make a business owner be more efficient with his/her accounting. Below I discuss one way to be helpful, but is it really?

Duplicating Invoices – there is a feature inside QuickBooks that allows a user to duplicate an invoice. It is easy to use. Simply find the invoice that you want repeated, click edit from the main menu bar, and click on duplicate invoice. Enter any new information that you want and click save and close. Wa lah! Fast and convenient, right?

Well, not really. I had a client that was using this feature for invoicing but there was one small flaw. The computer program saved the “due date” of the duplicated invoice as the original invoice no matter what the terms of the new invoice was or what the date of the new invoice was. For example, if the original invoice was dated 7/1/2011 and had terms due upon receipt, the due date was 7/1/2011. The due date does not necessarily show up on the invoice unless you have customized the invoice to show it. Otherwise, just the terms shows up and the due date is in the computer system behind the scenes.

What the computer program did was to keep the original due date of 7/1/2011, even though the subsequent invoice was dated 8/1/2011 and was due 8/1/2011. This made the Accounts Receivable Aging report look all out of whack. The duplication made it appear as if the invoices were all at least one month past due when they were current.

Because of this problem, each month I had to go in and edit each invoice one by one, changing the terms to something else, saving the invoice, going back to the invoice and changing the terms back to how it should have been and saving the invoice again. So using the duplicating invoice technique was not cost effective for my client. There are two other ways to get to the same efficient goal with invoicing without having to change the terms and save the invoices again like I had to do.

Memorizing as Automatic Transaction – you can save an invoice as a template that automatically enters itself and you tell it the frequency, such as weekly, monthly or annually. This technique is great when the dollar amount of the invoice does not change each month. For example, if you invoice $1,500 for rental income each month, you can use the memorized transaction and have it automatically enter the invoice each month.

Memorizing as a Template – you can save an invoice as a template that does not automatically enter itself. Instead, you click on it to use it when you need to enter in the invoice and then change the information on the invoice such as the dollar amount owed. For my client that duplicated invoices, I used this technique because a lot of the verbiage was the same but the dollar amount changed.

By using the memorized transaction option, you will not have strange due dates on your invoices and your Accounts Receivable Aging report will be accurate.

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