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.

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.

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.

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.

So I check and Intuit wants a pretty penny, and I think “Google is your best friend” and sure enough I find the same thing for almost half what Intuit wants.

But wait a minute, how in the hell does the program know that I have inserted a QB formatted deposit slip? Well obviously it doesn’t. So for giggles I print one anyway. Hmmmmm.

Back to the site I go and I find out that you have to give them your company name, bank name, routing number and account number which they pre-print on the forms. That hmmmm awhile ago was me wondering where the bank and account information was.

Now color me paranoid, but having hacked and phreked some back when I was less of a citizen than I am now, I have this phobia about giving that kind of information out. And if you don’t understand the words then you are more of a citizen than I will ever be - ROFL.

So off to QB I go. Long and short of it I have designed a deposit slip that works without having to buy any.

Well there is an extra step or two. I haven’t figured out how to automatically transfer the deposit list and data to the form (yet), so what I have done is make the template. You print the blank template, put it back in your printer, and print the deposit. Sounds complicated but it isn’t, and I avoid buying deposit slips that sit around as just one more file to keep. You do have to cut it since plain paper is not perforated, but hey no big deal.

If you want the deposit slip … it is free for all, but please also get the instructions that are a seperate file. The instructions tell you how to get the template into QB, how to put your business information in it, put your bank information in it, and how to use it.

Click the links below, click each one of them please! When you get asked if you want to open or save, save it to your hard drive (remember where you saved it, you will need that information to get it into QB). If the Adobe PDF document just opens, select the menu File>Save As and save it.

deposit template
template instructions

For 2008 Premier or higher, same process should work for previous years

First you have to have QB installed on both machines, BUT and here is the key, on the portable machine that you will take on the road, when you install QB select “Accountants” version.

Just before you leave on your road trip, using the file on the office computer bring up QB, select the menu File>Accountant’s Copy>Save File. Go through the wizard and select the date. I would use the current day or the most recent of the canned choices in the drop down list. Select the location to save the file, a USB drive is handy since you can then move it to the laptop.

When you create the accountants copy, QB locks your books (at the office) so you cannot make changes to the past, but you can work on current and future transactions. This is done so that the base of information is the same between the accountants copy and the copy the office works on. With the base of information the same it is easy to see what changes are made in each copy and merge them when the time comes.

There are somethings you cannot do when using the accountants copy on the road so it they are critical then this may not work for you. You CANNOT:

- make estimates or sales orders (but before leaving you could print blank ones and enter the info when you return)
- mark invoices as pending
- use the vehicle mileage applet (would be really nice if you could)
- pay Sales Tax
- do payroll

For most all other activities you can add, but not edit or delete. But to me it seems as though what you would be doing is creating invoices or sales receipts most of the time anyway.

Plug the USB drive in the laptop, open QB, and select the menu File>Accountants Copy>Open & Convert. That opens the company file you created as an accountants copy. Accept the default file name and proceed.

Now when you are on the road, process your transactions.

When you get back to the office. On your laptop, assuming you have finished entering everything, use the Menu File>Accountants Copy>view/export changes. That will bring up a report of the changes (think transactions) that you made while on the road. There is a button at the bottom that says “Create Change File for Client” - click that and accept the file name QB picks, save the file to your USB drive.

On the office computer, bring up QB, put your USB drive in the slot for it, use the menu File>Accountants Copy>Import Accountants Changes. Click yes if QB wants to close all windows. Select the file on the USB drive in the open dialog box, QB will open a report of the changes. I suggest at this point you print it out as a safe guard. Click the import button at the bottom and QB will first back up your company file, and then merge the changes. When the window says the changes were made click close.

QB will open the company file, with the changes (the transactions you made while on the road) as well as the transactions that were made in the office while you were away.

Charlie in his comment make a good point, so good I thought I would copy it here rather than you having to click to find it, but to read the full comment just click on the comments link.

—–snip from Charlie ——

Prior to creating the accountant’s copy I would recommend that you check the starting file for any errors, and perhaps do a rebuild. Clean up any errors that show in the error log (which can be a bit cryptic, unfortunately). Some of us believe that these kinds of errors are what might be causing the merge problem later on.

And don’t let the office staff delete records or rename things while you are on the road, because if they delete something that you make a reference to in your “road” copy, this could possibly be a source of the error.

Personally, when I’m on the road, I usually have an Internet connection available, so I use a product like LogMeIn to access my office computer to do the updates there. Which isn’t as convenient, but works.

——end snip—-

Enter all your items that are being sold, then enter a subtotal item. Then on the next line enter your discount item. Insure that all items are marked as taxable. QB will calculate the new total (subtracting the discount amount) and calculate the sales tax based upon the new total.

The discount item is interesting (other charge item), when you set it up it asks for an amount or a percentage and that is what shows on the invoice when you use it. but you can click in the rate column on the invoice and change it to a dollar amount or any other percentage, just make sure you use the negative sign. When you set up the discount item make sure you use the negative sign in the rate column or QB will think it is a charge, since the item being used is an “Other Charge” item.

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

If you need or want the invoice to show the non-taxable status there is two ways to go about it.

When you bring up the invoice, click the button customize, then click the tab “Footer” there is a sales tax entry there that you can check mark to show on the footer when the invoice is printed. For non-taxable sales it will show zero percent.

If that isn’t good enough, create a customized invoice, call it non-tax, and insert a text field that says Non-Taxable, make it as large as you want and in the color you want. Then use that invoice when creating a non-taxable sale.