Archive for ◊ 2009 ◊

Fixing Sales Tax paid
Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | Author:

So you paid Sales Tax, but you didn’t use the Pay Sales Tax icon and now there is a problem?

As you just found out, Sales tax is an add on program to QB, bundled with it so to speak, and you have to use the pay sales tax icon to get anything done.

Hopefully there are not too many checks that have been written that you have to correct.  The only way I know to do it is:

  • 1. Go back through the check register and find the checks, then write down the check date, the check amount and the check number.  Then delete the check from the register.
  • 2. Bring up Pay Sales Tax, click on the make a payment and enter a partial payment.  Be sure to use the same information from the check you just deleted; same check number, same date, same amount.
  • 3. Go back and do another, until you have done them all.

This will mess up any reconciliation you have recorded since you had to delete the check, you may have to go back and redo them all.

If, like most of us, you get a discount for timely payment, you can take care of that when you pay sales tax the next time it is due.

Before paying the sales tax click adjust and lower the amount due by the amount of the discount, select an income account for the adjustment.

Category: Sales & Use Tax  | Tags:  | Leave a Comment
Hotel Tax
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 | Author:

Sales tax is enough of a headache in QB. Add in the fact that it still does NOT have a way to track use tax, which is needed, and things get harder.

But if you have to add a separate tax rate, to the mix, that is even harder.

Hotel Tax:

Typically all cities require a tax on the room rate separate from the state sales tax, sometimes there is more than one hotel tax or lodging tax that has to be collected.

I am not a hotelier, so if I make some assumptions that are wrong and you know it, please let me know.

So what has to be done is to itemize the days room rate, itemize the hotel tax for that day, and add in state sales tax.

What I suggest is:

1. Create an Other Liability Account called hotel tax due.
2. Create an other charge item, select the hotel tax due account on the item screen and set the rate to a percentage.
3. Create if you don’t have one a service item for the daily room rent, income account should be sales.
4. Create a group, and in that group list the service item for the room rate, followed by the hotel tax due item.  Mark the group to print all items in the group.

When you create the sales document, use the group.  Use the group for each day of room rent.

You can click in the description block of the group and enter the date and if necessary click in the rate column to change the room rate for that day.

You could also set up groups for your most common discount programs so that you don’t have to do all that clicking.

When you need to pay the hotel tax, look at the chart of account to find the amount due in the hotel tax due account, write a check in the check register and in the account box, select the hotel tax due account.

Category: Sales & Customers  | Tags:  | Leave a Comment
Bar Codes and QB
Friday, December 25th, 2009 | Author:

Every one seems to want to bar code things and is curious about bar codes an QB.

First let’s understand that a bar code scanner is nothing more than a substitute for a keyboard.  The scanner reads the code, translates it into characters, and sends those characters to the computer.  It is up to the software that the characters are sent to, to do something with the characters received.  And since QB is not designed to handle bar codes, that puts limitations on how you can implement bar codes and QB.

QB does not have a separate field for a bar code.   QB picks your items by the item name, so if you want to use a bar code scanner the code has to be the same as the item name.

That gives you a choice, you can use the bar code provided by the manufacturer on the package and use that information as the item name,  or create your own using item names that mean something to you.

Typically manufacturer bar codes are not real useful in this situation.  I find it easier to use one of the free programs on the net that generate bar codes that correspond to the item name I type in. Then I print a sheet and stick the labels on the items.

In QB, when you put the cursor in an item name field, then scan the bar code, if the code and the QB item name are the same, QB will pull up the item.

As well as using the bar code for item names, you can also create a sheet of control codes as bar codes, that allows you to scan commands like: TAB, Enter, ESC, etc etc.

The more complicated bar codes that include the item name and price are useless in QB since it is not really designed to use bar codes at all.  You could have the item name include the price, but QB will not pull that price out of the item name and use it as a price on a sales document.

Category: Inventory  | Tags:  | One Comment
Factoring Invoices
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 | Author:

Factoring is when a company sells some or all of its’ accounts receivable to another company at a discount.  That discount is usually a percent of the total amount.

That discount is an expense.

So what you need is an expense account called Factoring Expense.

In QB this can become a hassle to accomplish.  The amount written off (the discount amount) has to be applied to each invoice sold to the factoring company.

  • 1. Bring up receive payments, select the customer and check mark the invoice.
  • 2. At the top left, second block from the top enter the amount of money received, less that the amount due.  I would enter in the memo field that the invoice was factored.
  • 3. When you do that a screen pops up asking what you want to do with the unpaid portion of the invoice – select “Write off extra amount” then click save.
  • 4. A pop up window will appear asking you to select the account, select the Factoring Expense account you created.
  • 5. Select a class if you are tracking by class, and hit OK/Save.
Category: Sales & Customers  | Tags:  | One Comment
Use Tax
Friday, December 18th, 2009 | Author:

QB does not handle “Use Tax” at all. (there are two ways to do it in this entry)

Use Tax being the sales tax the company owes on items bought across state lines where no sales tax is paid on the purchase but there is still a requirement to pay that sales tax to the state comptroller, or the sales tax on items withdrawn from inventory and used as demos, samples, and for personal use.

The only way I have found to handle it (relatively easy), is to set up a class “sales tax due” and **remember** to identify transactions with that class. Then just before my quarterly tax payment date I run a class report on that class to get the total of the purchases, demos, samples, and personal use for the period of the sales tax payable requirement .

Outside of QB I use a calculator to determine the sale tax liability on that total, That total is also reported on the sales tax reporting form to the state.

I have an expense account set up titled “sales tax paid”

When I bring up the pay sales tax window I use the adjust sales tax button to enter the new amount of sales tax due, and assign it to the ’sales tax paid’ expense account. Then pay the tax bill.

In the QB forum, DawnSBAServices in Oregon showed us a way to track use tax for items purchased. Purchased is the key word here. Create, if you do not have them, a liability account called something like “Use Tax Due” and an expense account called something like “Use Tax Paid.”When you enter the bill, calculate the amount of tax you should pay on a calculator, then select the “Expenses” tab. On the first line select the “Use Tax Paid” account and enter the amount you calculated. On the second line select the “Use Tax Due” account and enter the same amount as a negative. In the memo block enter the amount of the bill.

When sales tax time rolls around, do a quick report on the account “Use Tax Due”, that will total the amount of use tax you owe, the memo block will list the total of the invoices that the use tax is due for, use a calculator and add them up, this is the amount you report for the value of use tax due.

Bring up pay sales tax, click the adjust button, mark it as an increase, select the tax vendor, and select the “Use Tax Due” account as the adjusting account. Enter the amount of Use tax due, click ok.

Update:

Carrying Dawn’s solution one step further and accounting for inventory items that are withdrawn from inventory and used in the business, I found this way to do it.

Create an expense item called “Use Tax Paid” and point it to the expense account with the same name.

Create an other charge item called “Use Tax Due” and point it the liability account with the same name.

Open the item list and right click on the item, look at the very bottom and write down the avereage cost of the item, you should NOT use the cost in the cost block just below the description block, most times this will be the same but not always, and QB uses the value at the bottom called average cost.

Bring up a sales receipt, select the item and then click in the rate column and enter the average cost figure you wrote down.  Mark the item as non-taxable. Then do the calculation and enter the item Use Tax Paid and the amount, then on the next line enter the item Use Tax Due and in the quantity column a negative one and the same amount, and enter the amount of the sale in the memo block. (Invoices and sales receipts will not allow you enter a negative price.)

You could just sell the item at cost to the company and let the sales tax be calculated automatically as sales tax due, but for some reason states want the use tax number seperate.  When I talked to the Texas comptroller for sales tax audit department they said they wanted it called out separately and if it wasn’t then during an audit they would have to do the calculations all over even though the result (tax due)  is the same and the audit file would show that you were not reporting correctly.  I got the impression that having that notation in my file would not be a good thing since it would tend to make them more willing to look at me again in the future.  Your choice.

Category: Sales & Use Tax  | Tags:  | 3 Comments
Print Check bug 2010 Premier
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Author:

Today, 12/16/09, I found that when you double click on a check in the check register to bring it up in its’ own screen, and then click print – the check number in the print screen is NOT the currently displayed check, it is the last printed check number.

Think that through, pretty dumb!  Why would I be viewing a check and clicking print if I wanted to print some other check?

Update -> well it started working as it should, I have no idea why!

Category: Bugs and Quirks  | Tags:  | Leave a Comment
QB Automatic Back up 2010
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | Author:

QB lets you set the number of backups to be maintained.

There is a bug in 2010 premier. It does not work. Seems that once you do a manual backup (tell QB to back up rather than accepting QB’s recommendation) the software stops counting how many backups exist and just adds another. That means your back up folder starts filling up quick, and your hard drive.

A manual back up is something you need to do occasionally. There is a TLG file that holds a transaction list of recent transactions and it grows with each one. The only time it gets zeroed out is when you do a manual back up.

So once in awhile you need to bring up your back up folder and delete the old backups. Be careful, windows file manager lists things by file name alphabetically, that means that Nov comes after Dec, not before it as the calendar shows. And if it has been awhile since you last did it, it is very possible to have the most current back ups in the middle of the file list.

Category: Misc  | Tags:  | 3 Comments
Cash Refund from a Vendor
Sunday, December 06th, 2009 | Author:

So what do you do if the vendor sends you a cash refund, QB just does not seem to be able to handle this at all.

1. Use Enter Bills
2. Set it to a credit
3. Select the vendor
4. On the item tab – select the item, the qty and the amount received
5. Save and close

Then
6. Bring up the register for Accounts Payable
7. Select the vendor
8. Enter the amount received in the Billed column
9. Select the bank account for deposit in the account field
10. Click Record

The reason you have to do it this way is because of the way QB treats things. When the credit was recorded for the vendor, QB logged that in Account Payable. Actually a sub account of Accounts Payable – the sub account for that vendor.

To get it out of the accounts payable sub-account you have to tell QB where to put it – that is the deposit entry using the accounts payable register. That entry moves the credit to the bank as cash.

Category: Misc  | Tags:  | 2 Comments
Work in Progress
Saturday, December 05th, 2009 | Author:

There are a lot of variations for dealing with work in progress and there is no way cover all kinds. One common scenarios is that you order raw material of some kind and you send it to someone else to make what you sell. So the cost of what you sell is the combination of the cost of the raw material and the bill from the other company who turned your raw material into a product.

I buy the raw material as an inventory item. Then when I have to ship it out to a business to be turned into something salable, I use inventory adjust to move the raw material I am sending out to an other current asset account I set up called WIP. That adjustment takes the raw material out of inventory and holds that value in the WIP account.

When I get the bill for making something from my raw material, I receive the inventory just as you would normally. That gives the item a cost.

Then look at the WIP account and write down the balance.

Then use inventory adjust, set the adjusting account to the WIP account, and mark the adjustment as a value adjustment. Find the item in the list, and add the amount from the WIP account to the total value of the item. DO NOT change the number of items on hand.

When you click save the value of the raw material that was in the WIP account will be added to the value of the items that were made and a new cost per item will be calculated. The WIP account will have a zero balance.

You can use variations of this process to cover just about any process where more than one transaction is involved in determining cost.

Answering a question on the QB forum led me to another way to accomplish the same thing.Create an other asset account called something like WIP, and then create a non-inventory item called something like “WIP-purchases” and point it to the WIP asset account. When you buy things use this item, and in the description block enter what it is you bought. As soon as the transaction is saved the cost of the “WIP-purchases” item is sent to the WIP asset account since the cost of all non-inventory items (even if they are marked for resale) are posted to the account they point to.

Category: Misc  | Tags:  | Leave a Comment
How to use Excel for Importing Data
Saturday, December 05th, 2009 | Author:

I am not in any way familiar with this process, but Charlie is the resident expert. He has a how to, nice write up Charlie – well done, in his blog. Click the link (opens a new window)
How to use excel

Category: Misc  | Tags:  | One Comment
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