Rustler’s Quickbooks Tips

Occasionally I need to write myself a note concerning an order, something I need to do in addition to what ever the order is about.  But I don’t want the note to be printed on the invoice. This only works if you use a sales order before creating an invoice.

Create an item called instructions, makes no difference what kind of item but I use an inventory item since it is up at the top of the list and easy to find. Set the sales price to zero. DO NOT enter a qty on hand.

Go to the menu Edit>Preferences select Sales and Customers. On the company tab, there is a section for sales orders, check mark the box that says do not print items with zero amounts.

Put this item on the sales order and type in your reminder in the description block.

Create the invoice from the sales order. The instructions will be on the screen, but when you print or print preview the instructions disappear.

Occasionally you pay for an order of inventory items ahead of time and when the shipment arrives there are missing items that will not be shipped at all. When you paid for the purchase a couple of things happened. You told QB to increase the inventory asset account by the amount of the purchase, and you increased the quantity on hand for everything you thought you were getting. Since you will not be getting some of the items, there is a credit with the vendor.

But there is more than a credit memo to deal with, when you paid for the items you told QB you receivied them so they were put in inventory. Quantity on hand increased as did the inventory asset account.

Since you didn’t get them, they need to be backed out of inventory asset and the quantity on hand needs to be backed out too.

Use the icon receive inventory with bill, select the vendor, mark it as a credit, enter the item(s) not received, the quantity and the cost, click save.

This takes the items out of inventory, and creates a credit to the vendor. The next time you buy from the vendor when you go to pay bills there will be a credit sitting there waiting to be applied if you want to.

Create a PO for the individual or company that places items on consignment with you. List the items, the price you will pay for them, and the quantity.

These should be items in your non-inventory item list.  Set the COGS account to COGS or maybe better would be a sub account called “COGS-consignment”, and set sales to either a sales income account or a “sales-consignment” income account.

When you sell an item that was on consignment, put it on the sales receipt/invoice and sell it just as you would any item you stock.

Bring up the purchase order, set the quantity column to the number of the items sold, all other items in the list should be set to a quantity of zero. So the purchase order will have an amount equal to what the items sold cost. Click save and close.

Bring up pay bills. Put a check mark by the bill that corresponds to the items you just sold, the ones you marked on the Purchase order.  Then pay the bill.

If you accumulate the costs of the items sold on consignment for  a month or quarter or …, create a Credit Card account with the person/company name who places items on consignment with you.  When you pay the bill, use the “credit card” account to pay it.  The balance owed will accumulate in the credit card account - when you pay the bill to the person/company pay it just as you would a real credit card.  Write a check.

What happens is the sales receipt/invoice records the sale.  When you pay the bill for the items sold, that cost is sent to COGS.  The difference between the COGS and the sales amount is your commission.

The purchase order was marked as a partial receipt and if you bring it up again it shows that of the original quantity ordered, you received some.

That doesn’t track the amount on hand very easily, and for some reason adding the column “Quantity on Purchase Orders” to the item list does not work for non-inventory items either (2006).

You can add things to the original purchase order, even though you have sold some of the items and paid for them. Just click through the warning about payments being made and this may effect them when you click save.  But do not delete any lines that have a payment for, that will really screw the pooch.

Sometimes the cost basis of inventory needs to be increased.  The most common reasons are for businesses who hold what is considered an asset for resale, autos, houses, etc.

Let’s use a house as an example.  The cost to buy the house is its cost basis. But then you need to do some repairs and pay taxes, those are also costs that need to be tracked and added to the base cost of the house being held for sale.

Set up a clearing expense account and pay the bills using that expense account.  Then write down the total in the account and bring up inventory adjust.

Set the adjustment account to the  clearing account you used to pay the bills, mark the adjustment as a value adjustment.  Scroll down and find the house.  Leave the quantity the same and change the total.  Add the amount you wrote down to the total value that QB shows and enter that new total in the new total column.

QB will take the amount out of the clearing expense account  and add it to the cost basis of the house. When you are done the clearing expense account should have a zero balance, check it.