Sales Receipts are used to handle cash sales, transactions whereby you deliver the services/products and receive payments from your customers at the same time.
The wording “cash” in cash sales in QuickBooks is somehow misleading because your customers can pay with other form of payments, such as checks or credit cards, but the transactions are still considered cash sales. The criterion for cash sale is actually the simultaneous exchange of service/product with the payments instead of the form of payment itself.
What is the difference between an Invoice and a Sales Receipt, then?
Both record sales transactions of your services/products, but when you create an invoice you add balance to your account receivable, since you do not receive any payment yet; when you create a sales receipt, you do not add any balance to your account receivable, since you receive a payment at the same time.
There are 2 ways of handling cash sales:
When you work on jobs, such as in renovations or building constructions, you probably have estimates as a prerequisite before your contract. Depending on your contract, you should be able to progress invoicing based on estimates, once portions of the job is finished. These are common for constructions works whereby you do not have to wait until the whole job is done before invoicing your customers.
Progress Invoices are basically invoices linked to estimates you have for specific customers or jobs. Here is how to create one:
1. Ensure that “Do you Create Estimates” and “Do you Progress Invoicing” boxes are activated in the “Jobs & Estimates” company preferences.
We discussed how to record vendor refunds in the previous blog by depositing it using Make Deposits window. If you receive a credit from your vendor instead of a refund, here is how to record it in QuickBooks:
1. On the Home page, select Enter Bills, or select Vendors > Enter Bills from the Main menu.
Enter Bills window will appear (as if you are entering bills) with the Bill button automatically selected as default as shown below:
First and foremost, a purchase order is a non-posting transaction, meaning it has no effect whatsoever on your financial records. Most businesses using purchase orders to keep track orders against received goods or as vendors’ requirements.
If you have created invoices in QuickBooks, then you will be very familiar with the Create Purchase Orders window, as they are similar except in the Customer & Ship to fields, and Add Time/Cost button.
Let’s go into how to create a purchase order:
1. Ensure you activate “Inventory and purchase orders are active” checkbox in the “Items & Inventory” company preferences. Once this is done, QuickBooks will create a Purchase Order account as a non-posting item in your charts of account.
2. Go to Home page and click Purchase Orders icon, or Vendors > Create Purchase Orders:
When you are doing a lot of transactions with your vendors, sometimes orders are incorrect, stock not available after your payment, or you don’t like the purchased item, and your vendor refunds your payment or issue a credit. Either way, you have to record it in QuickBooks.
We are going to discuss how to record vendor credits in the next blog, while the following is how to deposit refunds from your vendor:
1. First of all, you can either click Record Deposit from the Home page or Banking > Make Deposits from the main menu. The following “Payment to Deposit” window will appear if you have existing deposit: