Don’t rush out to upgrade from QB Enterprise 2014 to QB Enterprise 2015

Posted on October 28, 2014 by David

You must understand that if you upgrade to QB Enterprise 2015 you agree to Intuit’s new yearly subscription pricing model.  You are obligated to pay the yearly renewal fee.  If you don’t and your subscription expires the software will “conk”.

If you are on QB Enterprise 2014 or earlier versions you can continue to use that version of the software without upgrading and the software won’t “conk”.

However if you use payroll and QB Enterprise periodically, about every year or two, Intuit will discontinue support for payroll in order versions.  So sometime in 2015 or 2016 Intuit will most likely discontinue support for the 2014 version.

I tell you all this in the interest of full disclosure.

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QB Enterprise more on backorders.

Posted on April 21, 2012 by David

There are several fields in customize layout you can choose for the sales order and invoice.  Here is a sales order and then the result of transferring the partially filled sales order to an invoice.  After creating the sales order, to invoice the customer for the amount shipped, click Create at the top of the screen and then Invoice.

 

 

Click on Customize, the Customize Design and Layout.  You will want to modify both your sales order and invoice.  Here is an example for the sale order.  If you have Progress Invoicing enabled in Company Preferences you will see a Progress Column tab after the standard Column tab.

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Quick Books Enterprise – whats slicker than greased eels?

Posted on April 14, 2012 by David

Several things in QB Enterprise are slicker than greased eels.  I’ll just touch briefly on a couple of things here and expand more on them in future blog posts.

Assisted Payroll is one.  Compared to just buying Payroll and Direct Deposit in other ERP systems costing many thousands of dollars, Assisted Payroll in QB is an extreme value for the dollar.  I don’t want to use the word cheap.  But that’s what I’m thinking.  Assisted Payroll works so well and is so inexpensive it’s just a fantastic buy.  Assisted Payroll will do everything from payroll checks to direct deposit to filng all your reports with the government and deducting and submitting all the taxes.

Using Merchant Services inside QB is also slick.  Attach a credit card USB magnetic stripe reader and your ready to go.  Scan the credit card in Create Sales Receipts or Receive Payments.  Making credit card deposits and accounting for the fees is a click of a button.

 

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Quickbooks Enterprise and the confusion Advanced Inventory creates with accounting.

Posted on April 14, 2012 by David

Well, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.  QB has grown up and is growing up.  It treats certain accounting methods now like a more grown up and sophisticated ERP accounting system.

Let’s take Advanced Inventory for example.  Now, with Advanced Inventory added to QB Enterprise we can separate the functions of receiving the inventory on a PO and the actual receiving of the bill for the inventory from the vendor.

How often do you get the inventory receipt and the bill from the vendor at the same time?  Hardly ever, unless your paying by credit card.

Now you produce your purchase order to the vendor.  Then inventory is delivered and you do the receipt in QB.  Later when the bill arrives you process the bill in QB.  This process sets up the accrual to a GL account typically called accrued purchases.

When the purchase order receipt is done in QB Enterprise with Advanced Inventory, the Inventory GL Account is debited, and the Accrued Purchases account is credited.  Later when the bill from the vendor is process the Accrued Purchases account is debited and the Accounts Payable account is credited.

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How to use Quick Books Pro, Premier, Enterprise for over the counter sales.

Posted on March 7, 2012 by David

You can use Estimates, Order, and Invoices for various combinations of order and invoice workflow.  If your not quite ready for full blown Intuit Point of Sale but want to have a counter sales operation here is what you can do.

Click Create Sales Receipts, which is just above Receive Payments on your Home Page workflow diagram.

Use Create Sales Receipts to quickly enter counter sales for check, cash, and credit card payment. If you have Merchant Services you can swipe the credit card and enter the cvv code.

Click Print to print a receipt for the customer. Once you click Save, you can then make your deposit in Banking as normal.

Quickbooks sales receipts

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QB Enterprise and Intuit Payroll single user mode.

Posted on February 24, 2012 by David

Most companies want to control access to payroll.  Intuit has designed payroll to work in single user mode.

If you have QB Enterprise, you must log in as Admin, and switch to single user mode to setup, manage, and process payroll.

For smaller companies this may not be an issue.  For larger companies with multiple payroll clerks it could become an issue.

One way around this is to setup a separate company file to handle payroll.

Intuit assisted/full service payroll will work with handle 150 employees.  If you have more employees you may need more than one company file.

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How to do the first reconcile after startup in Quickbooks.

Posted on February 22, 2012 by David

Previous posts talked about loading data in QB and making net change entries to create previous years of GL history.

For example you start a company file 1/1/2012.  However you want a year of GL history. Enter a beginning balance j/e for the balance sheet accounts for 12/31/2010. For each month after enter a net change j/e for the entire chart from a general ledger or trial balance report from the other system.  Remember that net change entries are the net debit/credit difference for each account for the period.  Not the ending balance for the period.  If you pick up the ending balance for each account your books will be totally out for each period and at 12/31/2011.

So at the 12/31/2011 you’ve entered all the net changes and the trial balance looks good.  But you go to reconile the bank statement at 12/31/2011 and you realize you have un-cleared checks and what’s more all the j/e’s appear on the reconcile screen.

Clear all the j/e’s.  The beginning balance plus all the net changes will equal the ending balance in the checkbook, and supposedly what the bank has.  But how do balance to the bank when you have un-cleared checks or deposits.  You can’t.  We have to make a couple of entries to handle this.  I suppose you could just enter the book balance and not the balance from the bank.  Buy here’s another way.

Create a new gl account called Un-cleared Checks.  You can make it an Other asset account.

Make a j/e on 12/31/2011 to credit Un-cleared Checks and Debit the checkbook for the total amount of the un-cleared checks.  Or you can enter each check individually.  Put the check number in the memo field.

Click Reverse on the j/e to record a reversal of this on 1/1/2012. Both j/e will be recorded at this point.

Reconcile the checkbook to the bank statement at 12/31/2011.  You will clear all the appropriate entries on the right side of the reconcile screen including the debits entered above.

Do not clear the entires on the left side

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Using the check register in Quick Books to void or delete a check.

Posted on January 19, 2012 by David

Go to the check register by clicking on Banking – Use Register or by clicking your work flow icon.

Right click on the line to work with.  Select either Delete or Void.  In QB Enterprise deleted and voided transactions are tracked.  Under Reports – Accountant & Taxes there are the Summary and Detailed Voided/Deleted Transaction reports.

There is no und0 for this operation.

Deleting removes the transaction from the register list.

If you want to leave the transaction in the register list with a zero amount use Void.

 

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Using the check register in Quick Books to record manual checks.

Posted on January 19, 2012 by David

There are several situations in which you will use the check register.  One is to enter checks manually after the fact or loading checks starting up a system.

Click on Banking – Use Register on the top navigation bar.  Select a check book.  You can also click Check Register on your home page; it’s one of the work flow icons near the bottom left of the page.

In the date column enter the check date, in the number column enter the check number, in payee click the drop down and select a vendor or select add at the top of the look up box.  You can also just start typing, auto-complete will suggest a vendor and you can select it, or if it is an unknown vendor when you click enter or tab on the field a pop up box will allow you to do a Quick Add or Setup for the vendor.  Quick Add is very fast.  For a new vendor just click OK on the next box that comes up and your done.  You can complete the vendor setup details at a later time.  In the payment column enter the payment amount.  In the account field click down and select an account of start typing and let auto-complete suggest an account. If it’s a new account you can click add at the top of the account lookup or when you enter or tab you will be prompted to setup the account.  Enter a memo if desired in the memo field.

If multiple distribution accouts are needed click Splits.  At the bottom of the page then you have several more lines to enter accounts and the amounts.  Notice the original account line now says “split”.  Enter each account and split amount on the lines in the box.  When finished click Record.

If you anticipate using splits a lot click the check box at the bottom left by 1-line.  The top display will change to a

 

 

 

 

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Review of Chax software for printing MICR checks.

Posted on November 2, 2011 by David

Chax software offers MICR printing of checks on blank check stock in Peachtree, Quickbooks, and other programs. http://www.chax.com/check-printing-software.htm

For this particular application I needed software to work with both Quickbooks and Peachtree, and that supported more than ten checkbook accounts so I choose the Ultimate version for $299.

Also for the printer I choose an HP P2035 and I ordered a MICR (magnetic ink) toner cartridge.  A regular toner cartridge is not recommended.

I setup six checkbook accounts for Accounts Payable checks, and six checkbooks accounts for Payroll.  So right away I had 12 checkbooks. You will setup a Control for each type of check you want to print. So I had a Peachtree control for payables checks and a Peachtree – Payroll control for payroll checks.  Each control will hold the bank accounts, and I setup six in each with a starting control number of 001 through 006.

The Control setup is easy.  First print the grid for your particular check.  Then setup the input control. From the grid you will enter the starting row and position where the payee name and address, amount, amount in words, etc occur in the print stream of the check.  The output control is used to adjust the horizontal and vertical positioning which in most cases may not be necessary.  I ran the system in Manual mode since I wanted to be prompted to select the bank name when printing.  The security feature is good and I had a userid for Payables checks, and a userid for Payroll checks.

Next you will add bank accounts for each control. Key in your Bank Name and information for the top of the check.  Key in your Company Name and information. Entering the MICR routing number and bank account number is very easy.  Use the shift & and shift / key for the delimiters.  Enter a quick print bank name to easily recognize the bank account when printing.

When printing you will select your check form in the software and the Multichax Virtual Printer.  I did modify the AP check and removed several fields I did not want. Other than that no modifications to the check in Peachtree or QB should be necessary. Once the output to the Multichax Virtual Printer is detected you will be prompted by Chax to select the Control and checkbook account. In my case I would enter the userid and password for either the AP or Payroll control.  Then I double click on the checkbook to use for the check run.

The support from Chax was outstanding and I probably recieved the best service I have received in months from a software vendor.

If you have more than one or two checkbooks and multiple company files the cost savings could be extreme.  In some cases pre-printed continuous forms cost $250/box.  There are also the time savings and the security issues with pre-printed checks.

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