QuickBooks Tips & Tricks

How to Track Designated Donations in QuickBooks

News Flash – QuickBooks Payroll Scheduled Maintenance Alert

How to Add Non-Numeric Values to UPC Fields in QuickBooks Point of Sale

News Flash – Issues with QuickBooks 2012 R8

How to Track Unfilled Orders After Payment Has Been Processed in QuickBoos

How to Send Inventory Items from HQ Store to Remote Stores in QuickBooks Point of Sale

News Flash – 30% Discount on The Sleeter Group’s QuickBooks Consultant’s Reference Guide

How to Track Expenses Paid With Personal Funds in QuickBooks

How to Add Additional Costs to Inventory Items in QuickBooks Point of Sale

How to Select Married but Withhold at Higher Single Rate in QuickBooks Payroll

Ruth Perryman — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:33:10 +0000

Q: Hi Ruth:

I volunteer at a small nonprofit. We raised $10,000 at a fundraiser, and we want distribute a portion of it according to our mission, and hold a portion as seed money for the next fundraiser as well as operating expenses (a few hundred dollars per year). I am thinking we should have a general operating account and another Temporarily Restricted account, and move mission-related distributions through that account with careful documentation of conditions and restrictions, and with every distribution from that account supported by a vote. Or am I over-complicating it? We won’t have more than 5 or 6 distributions per year.

Thanks much for your help.

A: You’ve got to be careful about how you do the fundraising if you want to be able to use any of the funds raised for fundraising or operating expenses.

If the donations are for a specific purpose, you can’t use them for any other purpose (including fundraising or operating expenses) and you must place them in the temporarily restricted fund until they’re spent for the purpose they were donated for.

If the donations aren’t for a specific purpose, they should be placed in the unrestricted fund. If you like, you can create a sub-class called something like “designated funds” but they are still unrestricted and can be spent on anything unless they were donated for a specific purpose. In other words, only the donor can place the restrictions. Boards can designate funds but future boards can change their mind about the designation.

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Written by +Ruth Perryman, CMA, CFE, CFM, MBA

Ruth has provided QuickBooks help to thousands of businesses around the world since 1996. She is an Intuit Solutions Provider, an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and a member of the Intuit Trainer/Writer Network. She is also certified in QuickBooks Point of Sale and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.

QuickBooks price list | Buy QuickBookse | Free trial of QuickBooks POS | Free trial of QuickBooks Enterprise

Ruth Perryman — Sun, 13 May 2012 13:32:07 +0000

Intuit QuickBooks Payroll

Important System Maintenance Announcement

The Intuit Small Business Division, including QuickBooks and QuickBooks Payroll product lines, will be performing a system-wide upgrade starting on Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 6pm PT and ending on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 at 5am PT. Our goal with this upgrade is to provide you and your clients with a complete view into all of the Intuit products and services you use and improve your overall support experience by getting you to the right team Customer Care team member quickly.

As a result of this upgrade, some of the services you receive today on the Intuit.com websites, as well as within your QuickBooks and/or QuickBooks Payroll products will be temporarily unavailable at various times throughout the weekend.

Description	Unavailable from May 25 8pm - May 26 2am	Unavailable from May 24 6pm - May 29 5am	Unavailable from May 25 6pm - May 29 6am	Available all weekend
Creating direct deposit paychecks
Processing payrolls that do NOT include direct deposit checks
Electronic filing and electronic payments (efile and epay)
Activation of products already purchased, Upgrade to different service level
Access to account information from within your QuickBooks product
Online purchases at Intuit.com, QuickBooks.com, Payroll.com
Self help support at Payroll.com
Payroll phone support*

*Payroll phone support is available during normal operating hours: 6am-6pm PT, Monday through Friday. Payroll phone support is not available on weekends or bank holidays, including Memorial Day.

What does this mean to me?

If you or your clients need to create direct deposit paychecks: QuickBooks Payroll will not process direct deposit checks dated for Monday, May 28, 2012 due to the Memorial Day holiday. In order for your employees to receive their paychecks before Monday, May 28, you should change your paycheck date to Friday, May 25 and send your payroll by 5pm PT on Wednesday, May 23. For more options and a detailed direct deposit schedule, click here.
If you need to access your account information from within QuickBooks, we encourage you to do so prior to May 24 or after May 29. You can access account information in QuickBooks by selecting Employees, then selecting My Payroll Service, then Account/Billing Information.

Things to do before May 24th:

Download the latest tax table: version 21210. Go to Employees and then select Get Payroll Updates. If you are not using tax table version 21210, click on the Update button and follow the download instructions.
Print and share this email. Please share this information with anyone else who has access to your QuickBooks or QuickBooks Payroll products. You can also visit our maintenance website here for more information.

We appreciate your patience as we upgrade and improve our systems. If you have any questions about this upgrade or would like to contact our Customer Care team, please visit our website for the latest information.

Regards,

Ginny Lee

General Manager, Intuit Payroll

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This notification is being sent to inform you of a critical matter concerning your current service, software or billing. Please note that if you previously opted out of receiving marketing materials from Intuit, you may continue to receive notifications similar to this communication. If you have any questions or comments about this email, please DO NOT REPLY to this email. Payroll customers can use the support feature located at payroll.com/support.

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Intuit, Inc., Customer Communications 2800 E. Commerce Center Place, Tucson, AZ 85706.

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Ruth Perryman — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:42:45 +0000

Q: How do we add Non- numeric values to generate UPC in QuickBooks Point of Sale???? ( e.g. ABC 12345)

A: The UPC field should only be used for true 13-17 digit UPC codes. If they aren’t use the Alternate Lookup field instead. For more info, go to Help > Help Contents and search for UPC.

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Ruth Perryman — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:48:32 +0000

Well it’s starting to look like the R8 update for QuickBooks 2012 is a bit problematic. Many users are starting to report errors – Out of Memory, Unrecoverable Error, Action Cannot be Completed, etc.

Worse, for me anyway, downloading Microsoft’s critical updates yesterday not only broke my QuickBooks but also caused my computer to become excruciatingly slow. I’ve never been so frustrated in my life. Poor Randy!

Why do I think my Windows problems were related to R8? First, one of the computers that got updated was still on R5 and didn’t have any problems until tech support convinced me to update to R8 – kicking and screaming I might add. Again, poor Randy. That man’s a saint!

You can imagine my frustration when immediately following the update, that computer started having the same problems. So I rolled my QuickBooks back to R5 and the problem’s solved (knock on wood!)

If you are also experiencing any problems, I recommend uninstalling R8 and reinstalling R5. The links are below.

QuickBooks Pro R5 download
QuickBooks Premier R5 download
QuickBooks Enterprise R5 download

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Ruth Perryman — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:05:15 +0000

Q: Hi Ruth. Customer orders are imported from my web site shopping cart as invoices.

I rely on an “Order Aging” report to show me my order backlog, which is adjusted every time I receive payment.

I use QuickBooks Pro 2011 with Intuit Merchant Services and enter credit card data manually (just before I ship the order) via the receive payments window. I also record PayPal payments at this time. But I would now like to process the credit cards when I receive the orders, rather than when I complete them. How can I do this and still have an order aging report to keep track of my unfilled orders?

Thank you!

A: You can add most of the invoice header fields as a column on most reports. So try renaming one that you aren’t using to something like “Shipped”. You can then enter the date you shipped it or something like Yes or No. The actual Ship Date field won’t work because if you leave it blank it’ll default to the date the invoice was created.

Then, you can create a custom transaction detail report, add the new field to the columns (select the original field name not what you renamed it), and filter the report for transaction type = invoices.

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Ruth Perryman — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:46:10 +0000

Q: How do we send inventory items from HQ Store to remote Store???

A: Visit the Store Exchange Center to send and receive files. For more info, go to Help > Help Contents and search for store exchange.

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Ruth Perryman — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:37:23 +0000

I am thrilled to announce that Doug & Sherrill Sleeter have offered our readers a special discount code to get 30% off their fantastic QuickBooks Consultant’s Reference Guide!

The 2012 QuickBooks Consultant’s Reference Guideis packed with techniques to diagnose and fix your clients’ QuickBooks files. Its in-depth material helps you through some of the most difficult issues you will confront as a consultant. It includes easy-to-understand steps and screenshots to guide you through the trickiest problems.This edition includes an extensive new chapter on Inventory written by Charlie Russell, editor of the QuickBooks and Beyond Blog. This chapter offers a thorough understanding of inventory, including in manufacturing environments. Also included with this edition are all the new features of QuickBooks 2012 and Enterprise 12, such as Batch Timesheets, the Inventory Center, the new Inventory features, Period Copy and more.

Whether you are a new QuickBooks consultant or a seasoned expert, you will learn new procedures and best practice recommendations.

The ProAdvisor Discount Code is RP12CRG (case sensitive – use upper case) to receive 30% off the listed price. The Consultant’s Reference Guide is available as a printed book, CD-ROM, or downloadable PDF. The ProAdvisor discount may be applied to any of these formats. Order online and use the code upon checkout, or call 888-484-5484 or +1-925-416-6300 and mention the code.

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Ruth Perryman — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:11:16 +0000

Q: Hi Ruth. My client spent his own money to buy materials for a job and I want to not only keep track of what he has put into the business but book the materials to the job. What is the best way to do that?

Thanks!

A: The easiest way to handle this is to enter the expenses on a journal entry – debit a materials cost of goods sold account and credit an owner’s contributions equity account (if he’s a sole proprietor).

If he wants to keep track of vendor information, he can create a credit card account called something like “owners contributions” and enter credit card charges. At the year-end, you’d create a journal entry transferring the balance in the credit card account to the correct equity account. This is also useful if he’s doing full job costing because there isn’t an Items tab on journal entries.

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Ruth Perryman — Sun, 06 May 2012 14:58:37 +0000

Q: Ruth. I’m sorry to be bothering you with questions, and if I need to stop let me know, but I have a question to which I can not find the answer.

We are using the QuickBooks POS program for our garden center. We have purchased plants in one size container, and they are in our inventory, but as they grow we are re-planting them into bigger containers. This changes the size of the container and the sale price. How can we make those changes in the POS?

A: I’m always happy to answer quick questions.

I recommend using assembly items for this. That way you can create a new inventory item that includes the cost of the original plant plus the new container. For more info, go to Help > Help Contents and search on assembly.

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Download Excerpts:

Sample Topics Include:

Table of Contents

Zero Dollar Checks

Receiving Two-Party Checks

Floating Host

Understanding the Intuit Partner Platform

NEW! Features in QuickBooks 2012, including Enterprise 12

NEW! Extensive Inventory Chapter

Troubleshooting QuickBooks Data Files

Tricky Transactions

Data File Management

Networking QuickBooks

Ruth Perryman — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:37:08 +0000

Q: Hi Ruth
hope that you are well. I have a new employee that on the w4 and the state has married but withhold at higher single rate but I can’t find that entry in the QuickBooks payroll setup. Thank you.

A: There isn’t a special rate for married but withhold at higher single rate. Just choose the Single rate.

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