If your business collects and remits sales tax, you have to set your Sales Tax preferences in the Edit > Preferences. Or if you answer ‘Yes’ to question ‘Do you charge Sales Tax?’ when you created your company file, Yes button is already selected when you open your Sales Tax preferences.
When you create a company file using either Express Start or Advanced Setup, QuickBooks asks what type of industry your business is. By answering this, QuickBooks set up your charts of accounts according to your business type.
Sooner of later, as your business grows, you may need new accounts such as new income or more detail expenses. Creating new accounts is an easy and simple task in QuickBooks.
Before creating a new account, you have to open your Chart of Accounts window using one of the following:
• From Home page, select Chart of Accounts in the Company panel,
• From the Main menu, select List > Chart of Accounts,
• Ctrl + A.
You sometimes make a mistake in creating an invoice – you have to eliminate it from your books. There are 2 (two) ways to do this:
1. Deleting, or
2. Voiding it.
When you delete an invoice, QuickBooks really deletes all related transactions and reports, removing it from your books without traces. This will muddy your books even deeper when you don’t know exactly what you are deleting.
When you void an invoice, QuickBooks resets the transaction value to 0 (zero) dollar – making it nonexistent to your account and customer balance. It does not erase the invoice number, so you can account for it.
You can find your deleted/voided transactions from Reports > Accountant & Taxes > Voided/Deleted Transactions Summary as shown below:
Reimbursable expenses are cost you incur from your vendors on behalf of your customers – costs that you will pass on to your customers. For example:
• General expenses such as telephone, travel, or parking expenses;
• Products that you buy for your customers;
• Services that you subcontract for your customers job.
There are 2 (two) ways to track reimbursable expenses in QuickBooks:
1. Track it as Income – this way QB posts the expenses to the specified expense account when you pay your Bill, and posts the reimbursement (when you invoice your customer) as specified income account you created. This means that both your income and expenses will be higher than by not tracking it.
2. Track it as Expenses – this way QB posts the expenses to the specified account when you pay your Bill, but posts the reimbursement (when you invoice your customer) to the same expense account. This means, your specific expense account ending balance will be nil.
Sometimes you need to pay your vendor’s bills right away or you may decide not to use the Enter Bills functionality to simplify and speed up your payment process. You can skip the Enter Bills and use write checks functionality through:
1. Write Checks window, or
2. Bank register.
1. Using Write Checks window.
Go to banking from the Main menu and choose Write Cheques, or Ctrl + W for shortcut. You can also click Write Cheques icon from the Home page to open Write Cheques window: