Bugs & Quirks
Bugs and Quirks
Cost block
The cost block on the inventory and inventory assembly screens does not do what the QB help says it does. QB help says you can increase the cost of the item there to reflect the added overhead.
Well let me re-phrase that a little, you can change the number, that changed number will show up in all your reports, BUT QB does not use that number when it does the cost calculations. So it is really useless.
Quantity needed in an assembly
Logically you would think that since there is a quantity block for each item used in building an assembly that if you put zero in there for one of the items, QB will ignore it when building the assembly. NOPE. QB defaults to a quantity of one.
Purchase Date
Interestingly enough if you accidentally receive an inventory item with a future date, QB will stock the item. Well it shows the item as being on hand in the item list. But you can not sell it or use it in an assembly until the date arrives. So if you get a “not enough of that item to sell” warning, and the item list shows enough on hand, go back through your receipts and check the dates received.
Inventory cost
QB calculates average inventory cost and it uses the life of the item to do that average, not the current fiscal year as it should. BUT, sometimes if you sell the item down to zero on hand and then buy more QB will start the calculation all over again with the present cost, keyword here is sometimes. In playing with it I cannot find a reason why sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. If you sell the item to a negative quantity on hand it never does it.
Sales Tax Groups
When QB does a sales tax group it calculates the sales tax for each item in the group, rounding that number to two decimal places, then it adds up all the sales tax items in the group for the total tax the group charges. Quite often that results in a penny or two more calculated by QB than if you calculate the tax as a whole due to the rounding of individual items. There is no fix for this problem, as near as I can tell it has existed for more than a few years.
Inventory Assemblies
Do not leave a blank line in between items in the build list, QB acts funny when it finds them.
Copy Item
The Menu item that says Copy Item is there just to drive you nuts - it does not work.
Auto Build Assemblies
QB does not do this at all. A lot of us want that feature, but a lot of the experts are against it. They seem to be against it cause they start in with the what if this and that when looking at the process from a very complicated standpoint of manufacturing. That is all well and good and the reasons are valid. But in my opinion if you have a very complicated manufacturing business you are probably using a dedicated accounting/work-flow software solution rather than QB. And even if those limitations were there, QB has so many other quirks and limitations that have existed for so long, what is one more? If you really need that function some of QB’s competitors have it.
QB Won’t Print
If QB stops being able to print to your printer, rather than re-installing the whole shootin’ match, deal with the printer configuration file itself.
With QB closed …
The file is called “QBPrint.qbp” (without the quotes), where it is, well that is another problem. You’ll have to search for it. In Windows, press and hold the windows key (down there between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the left) and hit the F key (the letter F not the function key). That brings up the Windows find function, select Find files and Folders and then enter the name of the file to be found.
When windows finds it right click on it and change the name to something like QBPrint-old-qbp.
Start QB and then select the menu File>Printer Setup, that will create a new printer file with the original name and things should, repeat, should work.
Sales Tax is dumb!
QB will not let you set a flat rate for sales tax, nor will it let you create an other charge item and point it to sales tax payable - dumb!
Non-inventory Items
QB restricts items from pointing to this or that kind of account a lot (like the above entry). For some reason QB does not restrict you from selecting an income account when setting up a non-inventory item. Non-inventory items are supposed to be for expenses, why QB would not restrict the selection is a mystery. Use service items for income, that is what you do, you perform a service.
Non-inventory items and assemblies
Do not use a non-inventory item in an assembly build, it does not work the way QB help says it will. What will happen is that the cost you enter in the cost block on the non-inventory item will go to COGS immediately when the build is created. That is wrong the cost should be held in the cost of the build and not sent to COGS until the build is sold.
QB does not hold the value of a non-inventory item marked for resale as it should, so when you use it in a build there is no value to add to the cost of the build. So what QB does is take the amount you entered in the cost block of the non-inventory item and send it to COGS immediately.
Since you had an expense when you bought the non-inventory item, using the non-inventory item in a build, adds that expense again in COGS. Not only is doubling expenses, but COGS should not have an entry until the assembly is sold.
Invoice Numbering
QB is interesting, the invoice numbers increment automatically, but did you know that if you add a letter to the invoice number, the next invoice will keep the letter and increment the number before the letter? I add a “-H” to the number to show we are invoicing for a seminar held at a hotel rather than our usual location. You do have to delete the letter on the next invoice or it will show up on all subsequent invoices.
Tracking back-orders
Sorry unless you ponied up the money for Accountant, Manufacturing and Wholesale, Retail, and Enterprise editions, you are just out of luck. Evidently the designers of QB think no one else has back orders.
Now someone explain to me why an accountant edition would need to be able to track back orders? What they run out of pencils?
Ok Ok I am being facetious, they need it cause in theory they audit the other high dollar versions.
In my view this is a major problem with QB, and it causes major problems by not having that ability in the versions used by most of us. Not having a way to track back-orders means you can sell something you do not have - that is a problem! And to me that makes it a bug!
Hiding the bank balance in Enterprise
Julie W let me in on a little trick to get around a quirk, sounds more like a bug to me, in 2006 Enterprise Solutions.
It seems that when you set preferences so that users can not see the bank balances, QB dropped the ball when dealing with refunds. Even though the user is restricted from viewing bank balances, when the user brought up the credit memo, QB popped up the bank balance for all to see.
As a work around Julie created a bank account called “Barter” and set it to a zero balance. Then in preferences she set the default account to the “Barter” account for her users. Now when a user creates a credit memo that is the account that pops up, with a zero balance of course.
The window does have the drop down arrow for other accounts, but when another account is selected, QB does what it is supposed to do and hides the balance.
Price List and Change Prices
QB help lets you think that if you set the price list or use the menu item Customers>Change Prices to set a markup of x% over cost that you will get that result when you sell something.
Yes and no.
When you first set the markup it works fine. But when you buy more of the item and the average cost changes the Price Lists or Change Prices does not update!
The programmers dropped the ball once again by not making the lists dynamic and self updating, guess they thought costs would never change huh?
Another problem with the price list, is that it does not use the actual average cost that QB calculates, it uses the cost that is entered in the block called “cost” located just below the description block on the item edit screen. A block that may or may not be correct.
