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.

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.

QB only allows you to use markup. Markup is where you tell QB to increase the cost of an item by x-percent to determine the selling price.

Margin is just adding x-amount of dollars to the cost to determine the selling price.

Bounced Checks happen, when they do there are several things that must be done. The original deposit has to backed out of the checking account, the fee the bank charges has to be entered as a withdrawal (credit) to the bank account, you have to re-invoice the person who bounced the check, and you should add to that invoice the bank fee and any other handling fee you impose.

Set up an income account called “Bad Check Charges”, if your business does not charge more than the bank charged you for the bad check you do not need this item

Several items need to be set up.

An “Other Charge” item called “Bad Check”, make the item non-taxable, leave the amount blank, and select your bank account in the account field, in the description block enter “Check returned NSF”.

An “Other Charge” item called “Bad Check Fee”, make the item non-taxable, leave the amount blank, and select your bank account in the account field, in the description block enter “Bank Service Charge”.

An “Other Charge” item called “Bad Check Charge”, leave the amount blank, set it to non-taxable, and select your new income account (Bad Check Charges) in the account field, in the description block enter “Bad Check Handling Charge”. If your business does not charge more than the bank charged you for the bad check you do not need this item or the income account set up in the beginning - decision point as to whether the added work is worth charging for.

When you get a bad check returned from the bank, it also tells you the amount of the bad check charge your bank charged you.

Create an invoice, select the customer:

Line 1: enter the Other Charge item “Bad Check” and the amount of the check that bounced.

Line 2: enter the Other Charge item “Bad Check Fee” and the amount the bank charged you

Line 3: enter the Other Charge item “Bad Check Charge” and the amount your company charges for handling bad checks (note that if you do not charge more than the bank does this line and the associated item does not need to be used)

Send the invoice.

What happens:
The Other Charge item “Bad Check” credits your bank account for the amount of the check, basically reversing the original deposit.

The Other Charge item “Bad Check Fee” credit your bank account for the amount of the service fee charged by the bank, and it will show up as a seperate item in the reconciliation as it will on the bank statement, and your bank balance will be correct.

The Other Charge item “Bad Check Charge” will account for the income from the charge when the total amount is received and the total amount received will go to undeposited funds as with any other receipt. This assumes you charge an additional charge for having to deal with a bounced check.

Recurring invoices are a problem in QB. You can memorize an invoice so it makes it easy to pull up, but you have to remember to do it each month.

If you have Premier or higher there is another way. Use a sales order.

The reminders window, which you can set to open all the time will show all future sales orders in date sequence (see the entry “Custom Desktop View” in the Misc category).

Create a sales order, for each recurring invoice you need, and date it for the next date you will need to use it (mark it as needing to be printed so it shows up on the reminders window list). That puts it in on the reminders list, when you need to invoice, double click on the sales order, click the create invoice button, print, mail and save the invoice created.

Then go back to the reminders window and double click on the sales order you just used, change the date to the next month and save it. That puts the sales order in a new position in the list.

When you issue a refund, if you got the item back then use the item on the refund form and QB will return the item to stock.  If for some reason the item cannot be returned to stock you need to set up an other charge and use that item for the refund.

Suppose you sell and your terms are 2/10/ net 30, that means 2% off if you pay within 10 days otherwise the full amount is due in 30 days.

When you make the sale you have no way of knowing if you will receive the full amount, or the discounted amount, so you make the sale and the sales account reflects the full price.  Let’s say you sold something for $100, if they pay within 10 days you will only receive $98, then what?

Set up an income account called Sales Discounts, and in the memo block make note that this is a “contra account” and the balance will normally be  a credit (a minus).

Set up an other charge item called Sales Discounts, set the rate to -2%, and point it to the Sales Discount account.

When you receive the discounted amount, Use receive payments, in the receive payments screen double click on the invoice to bring it up, and on the next line on the invoice enter the Sales Discount item. QB will calculate the discount, then click save, answer yes to your changing the invoice and do you want to save it.  That puts you back in the receive payments window and the invoice has the new balance, put a check mark by it and receive the money.

Undeposited funds reflects what you actually received, sales indicates the full amount of the sale, and the contra account Sales Discounts shows the amount that you discounted the sale as a negative.  When it is all added up to get total sales it balances out.

So you sell something you don’t have- what happens?

Inventory for the item goes negative.

COGS is correct, QB takes the average cost of the item and multiplies it to determine total cost for the sale and posts it to COGS.

Inventory asset is correct, the total cost of the sale is deducted from inventory asset.

Sales income goes up by the amount of the sale.

So what is the problem, everything is right. Well not exactly, there is a cost being booked that you have not paid for, that is one problem. And another is that the cost being booked is the old cost, you may buy stock at the same old cost then again you may not, and of course you have a negative quantity for the item in stock. And Inventory Asset went down by an amount that was not there.

And then you buy some, buy some at a higher cost.

QB makes some correcting entries for you.

Inventory is updated to reflect the purchase quantity less what was sold that you didn’t have.

Inventory Asset is increased by the amount of the purchase.

The difference between the cost that was booked when you sold stuff you didn’t have and the new cost is posted to:

COGS as a bill, yes a bill, so if you are seeing bills show up in COGS that is most likely the reason. The problem is figuring out why the bill is there. The bill is posted as of the date of the bill, and the original cost is posted as of the date of the sale, There is no way to correlate the two in QB.

And Inventory asset shows a bill for the difference in cost amount as a negative, just like it did when the cost of the sale was deducted at the time of sale. Same date problems exist and the same lack of correlation as with the posting in COGS.

Purchase orders, sales orders, and pending invoices are non-posting records. They do nothing to the “books” in other words. You will not see them in any financial statements.

In preferences you can have Sales Orders reduce inventory levels if you wish, there is a toggle there to do it, but that is the only exception. All that does is reserve the inventory on the sales order, makes it appear, key word is “appear” as though the inventory is not there. Though it appears as though it is sold it is not, not until the sales order is turned into an invoice.

The problem with doing it that way is that if you do a physical inventory and compare what is on hand to what the item list says, there will be a difference because the sales orders have reduced inventory, well reduced what appears to be on hand.

A client retainer is when you take a deposit against work you will perform.  Typical used when you sell a service by the hours worked, web design, legal, etc.  You accept money in advance of work, so that value is a debt you owe, but it is also money you need to deposit.

On a sales receipt, I would use an “Other Charge” item (lets call it ‘retainer’) and point it to a current liability account for client retainers.  You can set the other charge item for the hourly rate you charge (lets say $250/hr). That gets the pre-paid deposit on the books as  a liability and the money will show up in undeposited funds.

Then you should have a service item for hours worked at the rate of $250/hr (sales price = $250).

When you invoice for hours worked, enter the service item an the number of hours worked (lets say 2 at $250/hr).

That gets the charge on the invoice for a total of $500.  Then  enter the other charge item retainer and enter a negative and the number of hours worked (-2 for 2 hours worked in other words at $250/hr), that gets a negative $500 and the invoice total is zero. And if you worked more hours than the retainer then the invoice will show an amount due.

QB will take the $500 out of the retainer liability account and send it to the sales income account. No money will show up in undeposited funds since you already have the money and all this does is reduce the liability and increase sales.

There may be a better way, and if there is I hope someone chimes in with it, but since QB lumps all retainers in one account there is no way to tell when a particular client has used up their retainer. What I do is create a sub account under the retainer account for each client and put their deposits in their account. It means I have to check the balance in their account before billing - major pain - but I haven’t found a way around it.

QB doesn’t seem to have any way to indicate that an invoice was mailed or e-mailed (and of course that includes the product shipment too).  What I do is enter the date I mailed it or e-mailed it in the memo block.  Then if you click on the column headers in the customer center you can customize the column headers and add the memo block so you can easily see the memo comment.  If you use delivery confirmation as I sometimes do, this is also a good place to make that note.

You can also add the memo field to most all reports, so reporting on aging as an example will show the memo entry. Handy if you sent a late notice, when that happens to me I enter LTE and the date the late letter was sent.

Drop shipping is when you do not stock the item being sold, someone else does and you tell them to ship it using your return address so it looks like it comes from your business. So basically what you order is your cost of goods sold, and I see no reason to keep an inventory list. Drop shipping can have two conditions:

Condition 1. You get the order and the full payment, you order the item and pay your cost.

I would create a service income item for sales, and use that on the sales receipt to record the income from the sale. In the description block you could put what was sold.

Then order the items from the supplier using a generic non-inventory item that has COGS as the expense account. That will give you a payable that is your cost.

Condition 2. The order goes to the shipper and the shipper gets paid, you get a check for your share of the purchase.

Create an Other Charge item and call it something like sale-cost, and select the COGS account as the expense account.

I would create a service income item for sales, and use that on the sales receipt to record the income from the sale. In the description block you could put what was sold.

Then put the Other Charge item on the next line, enter a -1 (negative one, or higher of course if you had more than one ordered) and enter the cost.

That sends the cost to COGS, and the sale to sales income, the amount on the sales receipt will reflect the check you received and that amount will go to undeposited funds.

——

The drawback to doing it this way is a lack of detail on what is selling and what is not, but I would expect (I don’t use drop shippers so I am guessing here) that periodically the drop shipper will send you a recap of your activity showing what was sold.

This is one way to do the core thing, there are probably other ways to do it. I’ve assumed only one item that has a core charge, obviously if you have more than one item, the core charge and core item will have to be specific, you will have more than one of each in other words.
(i.e. core-alternator, core-starter, core-injector)

A core charge is when you are required to get the used item back so it can be rebuilt. Like a starter motor for a car, you buy a new one, but it is actually a rebuilt core you are buying, so the shop charges you a core charge, if you bring back the core, you get that charge refunded.

So you need to charge for the core at the time of sale, and the customer will do one of three things:

Condition 1. Pay the core charge at the time of purchase

Condition 2. Have the core to turn in at the time of purchase

Condition 3. Bring in the core some time after the purchase.

Obviously we need a charge item, an income item, an inventory item, and an account to track core charges and refunds.

Set up an income account called core.

Set up an other charge item called core-charge and select the income account core, enter the amount of the core charge.

Set up an inventory item called core-item select the income account core and set the price as the same as the core charge.

Condition 1. Create the invoice, enter the part being purchased and then the core charge - receive payment.

Condition 2. Create the invoice, enter the part being purchased, and then the core charge, then enter the core-item and a quantity of -1 (negative one), the core-item should have the same price as the core charge. (if you get a warning about not having enough to sell, ignore it)

Condition 3. Condition one has already happened (the core charge was paid in advance). Bring up Create Credit Memo/Refunds, select the customer, then enter the item core-item, a quantity of one (positive one for this action), and the amount, click save and close. QB asks if you want to refund or carry a credit. If you refund, the screen comes up, Select the account and type of refund, click close.

Behind the scenes:
When you charge for a core, the amount goes to the income account for cores. When the core is returned, the inventory item “core-item” increases the amount on hand, the negative amount is sent to the core income account and zeros out the core charge that was posted there. If a refund is issued, the refund is credited to the core income account, again zeroing out the amount received. Since the inventory item “core-item” has no cost, there is a zero entry in COGS.

Inventory increases the number of cores on hand even though you entered a negative one on the invoice (I have no idea don’t ask), so you can see how many cores you have and send them off to be rebuilt when you have enough.

In the invoice layout designer there is a ruler down the left side, I put the tear off line at the 3.5 inch mark (which is the first fold for a tri-fold letter). What I did was add a text box, extend it all the way across the invoice, and entered the words “Please separate at the dotted line and return the top part with your payment. Thank You.”

Then right click on the box and select properties. Click the tab titled “Border”, insure there is a check mark on for the bottom border, select dashed in the pattern area, and I used a “3pt” line, with black color. When you click OK move the text box with the dotted line so the line is at the 3.5 inch mark.

As you can see the fancy stuff is on the tear off portion, but on the lower portion which my customer will keep, the business information and my copyright notice is there in case after they have paid it they need that information.

You can add a labor charge to an invoice or add one to an assembly build.

Set up an other charge item, mark it as being used in an assembly, select the COGS account for labor and the sales account, give it a cost and sales price (usually the same), save it and then add it to the build list or just use it on an invoice.

When you go to print an invoice or sales receipt, some things print, some don’t. You control what does or does not print.

Click customize when an invoice is open, then edit, the window that pops up gives you control over what prints and what is seen on the screen.

Inevitably, this not being a perfect world, you will come across a dead beat who does not pay his debts. The IRS and what accounting standards I can find all say that you should not make the determination that a debt is a bad debt until you have exhausted all the ways of collecting it - judgment decision. But when that happens you will need to create an expense account called something like “Bad debt expense” and set up an “Other Charge” item called Bad-debt which points to the bad debt expense account. If you normally sell and collect sales tax make the Other Charge item taxable.

Bring up the customer center and use the drop down arrow by the button that says New Transactions and select Create Credit memos/refunds, that opens a window. Fill in all the fields, under item use the Bad-debt item. Remember that if the customer pays sales tax, you need to enter the amount less sales tax, then QB will calculate the sales tax on the amount.

Then save and close the credit memo, when you do that QB will ask you what you want to do - select apply to an invoice, then select the invoice it applies to. When you do the invoice will be marked closed, the amount will be removed from accounts receivable, the sales tax amount will be removed from the sales tax payable account, and the bad-debt expense account will show an increase.

Since you did not get whatever you sold back, there is no entry made to inventory or cost of goods sold.

You cannot customize and save a default invoice, but you can use one as the template. Just above the drop down box for what kind of template you have displayed (when an invoice is open on the screen) is a button titled “Customize”, click it and the template list comes up, select the default template and then click New, that uses the template but allows you to save it under a new name.

Since QB sorts all lists alphabetically, I preface all my invoices with the business initials, that keeps them together in the list. Explore the tabs that are provided, one nice function is the ability to have information on the screen that is not printed, so make sure when all is said and done that you bring up an invoice and use print preview to insure that what you designed is what you are going to print. You cannot do this from the designer, you must exit the designer and bring up an invoice normally.

I’m kind of a control freak so I don’t add fields from this screen, I would rather add what I can see and put it where I think it belongs - your choice.

Click “Layout Designer” and the invoice comes up with a drag and drop screen. You can add and delete what ever you want. If you are going to put a logo on the invoice you should make sure it is at least 300 dpi or better.

When you click in a field, it gets a funny border and that is when you can drag and drop, resize, etc. If you right click you can select properties. Some fields on my invoice I do not want borders, if you click the tab “Border” you can select which border you want, or none. Selecting the bottom border only allows you to put what looks like a fill-in the blank line, I use this for a field where I want the customer to enter the amount paid.

Since I print on plain paper, I don’t use a lot of borders, wastes ink and it takes longer to print. And for the most part the borders I do use are the thinest possible.

If you click the button “Font” then you change the size, color, bold, italic, etc etc. Interestingly enough if you select bold for a calculated field (like amount due) when QB automatically fills in that field with the total billed, the result will be bold.

The default green areas are for windowed envelopes, put your return and send to address fields in them and you can use windowed envelopes. I use normal printing for the return, and bold printing for the send to fields.

On the screen that has the button “Layout Designer” there are several tabs. Those tabs control what you see on the screen and what you see when you print it. Go through each one and set it to what you want. As an example, there is no reason to print sales tax or totals on the packing slip, so in the tab that says “Footer” make sure those items have no check marks under the print column at least.

In my business I need the following templates, you might need more or less, but what I did was get the first one right, then use it as the selected template to use when I clicked on “New” and rename it. My invoice names are”

EEC-invoice
EEC-invoice-overdue
EEC-invoice-revised
EEC-invoice-payments

I also have an EEC-packing slip which was created from the default packing slip.

The two invoices called revised and overdue have those words in large red capital letters right between the Amount due and the Amount paid fields on the top tear off portion of my invoice. Sometimes our contracts for service are revised and that is the reason I need that kind of invoice, changing the template allows me to make the changes in the detail part of the invoice without changing the invoice number or voiding and creating a new invoice.

The payments invoice I only use for those times that I have received a partial payment and need to rebill. My thinking is that human nature being what it is, if the customer sees a field that says “payments/credits” they will think to themselves that I accept (as a normal course of business) payments on invoices - without prior approval. I would rather they see the amount due and think the whole thing has to be paid and pay it, than take it upon themselves to only pay a portion of the amount due.

Since I am really lazy, I found an easy way to fold an invoice the right way every time. Bank of America, and I would imagine others, have fliers in the bank lobby. I found one that was a tri-fold and made out of heavy card stock. Slip the invoice into the flier face down and close the flier over it, then use the edge of the flier to create the first crease. Fold the rest of the invoice inside the folded part and crease again. Perfect fold each and every time.

If you need to put disclaimers or copyright notices on your invoice do that with a text box, I have found that Times New Roman and a font size of 9 is about the smallest most legible printing you can get.

Sometimes you want to provide a discount for the number of items ordered. Kind of like order more than 10 and the price is lowered by x-percent, more than 20 and a different discount is applies. All of QB’s competitors do this but, as usual, QB does not.

The work around is to use price levels, and remember to select the price level list on the invoice when you need to.

Create a price level list called “>10″ (to use the above example of a discount applying to a quantity of 10 or more).

Price level lists are funny, all the ways to manipulate them are not in the help file.

Click the “Mark all” to select all the items in the list - that is pretty obvious.

Click on one or more of the items (you have to click in the check mark column to select an item) and you can do interesting things to only the items clicked:

Click in the custom price column and enter the price you want to put there for each and every item selected.

Use the adjust up/down by a percentage to change all selected items by that percent

Tell QB how to round the result. Click adjust and it does just that.

But then you can go back and set a check mark by other items (clear the check mark from items that you do not want to adjust) and do it all again using different percentages or just entering a price. In other words you are not confined to one adjustment on the screen, just one at a time.

When you are done entering the price changes for this list click OK and it will be saved. To use it, just select it on the invoice or sales receipt and the price from the price list will replace the normal retail price you have on the item screen.

You can also use the price list to give special prices to a specific customer(s) - in the customer screen, on the “Additional Info” tab is a drop down box where you can select the price level to always use for this customer.

This problem has been rattling around the forums awhile, QB does not show payments on the invoice. I finally figured out how to do it. The problem is the fields that QB selects and how it handles them on the default invoice. You and I think total means what is due to the business, but QB thinks total means what was billed and does NOT include payments.

Bring up your invoice in designer, delete the “Total” block at the bottom (click in it and hit the delete key).

Click the button “Add” and select “Data Field” use the scroll bar to select “Balance Due”.

Do it again and select “Payments/Checks”.

Move those fields to where you want them, I put them toward the bottom, with balance due last. (if you have a tear off portion on the invoice the total block must be replaced by Balance Due too)

Do a print preview to make sure things line up. The invoice will show the total of all payments in the Payments block and it will show the balance due in the balance due block.

If you want to pay your sales reps on gross profit (the difference between the sales price and the cost of the item(s)) then you need to be able to bring up a report by sales rep that shows that calculation.

You have to have your sales reps listed in the sales rep list, and you have to have added a sales rep data box to your invoices and sales receipts, and of course when the rep makes a sale he has to select his name in that box. Assuming the all that is being done.

Bring up a profit and loss statement, click Modify Report, then click the tab titled Filters. In the list box titled Filters scroll down and find Rep, when you do the drop down box to the right of that list will change to Rep, use the drop down arrow and select the sales rep name. Then click OK.

Refresh the report. It should show the total sales for the rep and the cost of the sales.

Memorize the report (I would use the sales reps name, especially if you have more than one sales rep). Memorizing the report makes it easier to bring it up next time.

When you select the filter for sales reps in the P&L report, keep in mind that if you select all sales reps, nothing will happen to the P&L - after all - all sales reps means all sales. But there is a bug, well I consider it a bug, if you select multiple sales reps and click on their names, what QB does is add up the sales for all the identified sales reps rather than reporting each one individually as I would think it would. That could be handy if you want to see what one group of sales reps are doing compared to another.

Create an other current liability account called something like Customer-deposits.

Create a service item in your items list called something like Deposits and in the account point it to the Customer-deposits account you just created.

When you accept the deposit, use the deposit item on an invoice. What happens is that the money received (the deposit) is sent to the other current liability account. It is a liability because you owe the customer something, either a refund or a product.

When the product or job is done, invoice the customer for the full amount, then as the last entry on the invoice enter the deposit item and enter the amount of the deposit as a negative number.

This records the sale, takes the deposit out of the liability account and applies it to the amount owed, and the invoice will show the amount still due to you.

OR

If all that sounds like too much trouble …

Another way to do it is to create the invoice, then use receive payments against that invoice with the deposit amount being received. Then after that use the statement function to bill rather than a new invoice, the statement will show the deposit and subsequent payments made and the balance due. Receive payments against the original invoice.

And as an example of another way - easier in my opinion 

To handle customer retainers (deposits) you need an “Other Current Liability” account, lets call it cust-deposit. Then an “Other Charge” item, which points to the cust-deposit account, lets call it use-cust-deposit.

To record the deposit:

Open the bank register, enter the customers name, enter the amount in the deposit column, and select the “cust-deposit” account.  That puts the money in the bank, and creates a current liability in that amount.

To bill and use the deposit:

Create your sales receipt or invoice billing for what ever.  Last item, enter the other charge item use-cust-deposit, enter a negative 1 (-1) in the quantity, and the amount in the rate.

The invoice will reflect the lower amount due, or zero. The amount of the retainer used will come out of the current liability account cust-deposit.

I pay an 8% commission on a specific service I offer, the commission is paid semi-annually so I wanted to accumulate a payable automatically. This works for me, You would have to change the amounts and names of items of course to suit your situation.

I have set up:
1. a “service item” TAKS at $850.00
2. an “other charge” as ‘pearson’ at 8%
3. a “COGS account” called COGS-pearson
4. a “service item” ‘pearson-fee’ and pointed to COGS-pearson at -8% with a sales price of zero

Then I created a group, and
1. First line I put the service TAKS
2. Second line the other charge (pearson)
3. Third line the service item (pearson-fee)
4. Type the description in the group description line.

Set the group to NOT print all lines so the customer does not see the commission.

When you sell the service use the group item. On screen you will see the fee computed, but when you print or print preview the fees will not be shown.

I have a situation where a school orders from me and the district is billed and pays. Multiple schools in one district.

When I set up the customer, I name it with the district-name-school-name. In the bill to address is the district billing address. In the ship to address is the school address (this is on a sales order). From the sales order I use a dymo label maker to print the shipping label, then convert the sales order to an invoice.

On the invoice screen I select packing slip and print it, then select invoice and print it and then save it as a pdf (paper less records) as well as saving it in QB. Both the packing slip and the invoice have the purchase order numbers on them.

Pack and ship the items, send the invoice in the mail. At the district end they see the district name and the school name so they know where the item was shipped to.

Often when I get a check it is for several invoices for several schools. Since the check stub they send itemizes the invoice numbers, I receive payments against each school invoice and put the check number in the block for it. The total of the invoices received against equals the total of the check.

Works in my situation, might work in yours.