Quickbooks

Make QuickBooks Yours in 2014: Customize

While many of the things you purchase and use in your daily work and professional lives don’t come with options, many do. Think about the last time you bought a car, for example. Did you request additional features for safety or convenience or aesthetic value?

You can’t buy “extras” with your copy of QuickBooks. You can select from the different versions (Pro, Premier, etc.) and extend the software’s functionality by installing integrated add-ons from the Intuit App Center. But if you install QuickBooks on two machines from the same DVD or download, they’ll look and work the same.

Figure 1: Need more functionality in areas like CRM or receivables? Talk to us about adding an integrated app.

That is, until you start customizing the product, which you should do. The customization options in QuickBooks let you:

Change the appearance of your desktop
Modify forms to include only needed content and to make them look professional and uniform, and
Drill down deeply on your company data to isolate only the information that you want.

The benefits of customization are obvious. You’ll accelerate your workflow, polish your image and get insight that helps you make critical business decisions.

Your Desktop View

QuickBooks has always made your most commonly-used tools available on the home page. Intuit revamped this screen very skillfully starting with the 2013 versions, so it is much cleaner and less cramped. But if you do not use all of the functions represented by icons, you do not have to even see them.

Figure 2: You can remove icons from the home page, but not if related features are enabled.

You can remove icons like Estimates and Time Tracking if you are not planning to use those functions, but some icons must remain if specific features are active. For example, if sales orders and estimates are enabled, invoices are automatically turned on. Likewise, if enabled, then Inventory, Enter Bills and Pay Bills are locked in, too.

There is an option to either limit the QuickBooks display to one window or let multiple windows open simultaneously. When you open QuickBooks, you can choose to have a specific set of windows open, the window or windows that were open when you shut down, or no windows.

Your Forms

QuickBooks comes with pre-defined forms for transactions such as purchase orders, invoices and sales receipts. If you don’t like the look of one of these default templates, you can download one from the dozens of alternatives that QuickBooks supplies. You can alter these to better meet your needs–even creating multiple versions of the same type of form to use in different situations.

Columns and fields can be added, deleted, renamed and repositioned so that your forms contain only the information that your business requires. You can add your logo and change fonts and colors. Once you’ve settled on a design, you can apply it to multiple forms to present a unified image to your customers and vendors.

Figure 3: You can specify which fields will appear–both onscreen and in print–in your templates’ headers, footers and columns.

QuickBooks provides the tools to do all of this, but let us help you if you plan to do much modification. It can be challenging, especially if you have to use the Layout Designer.

Your Reports

You already know that you can do simple modification of your reports, like changing the date range. You may even have clicked on Customize Report and altered the column structure of a report and its sort order.

But do you regularly click on the Filters tab in the Modify Report dialog box? If you’re often frustrated because your reports cover too much ground or an inadequate, unfocused level of detail, you should be exploring the options offered here regularly. Filters restrict the data in a given report to a smaller, more targeted group of records or transactions, based on your needs.

For example, you might want to find out which customers in your New Construction class have outstanding balances (based on invoices) of more than $500 that are more than 60 days old. You would set up Filters to create this screen:

Figure 4: You’ll learn far more about your company’s financial status if you use Filters in reports. We can help you set up the most effective ones for your business.

Why not resolve to make your copy of QuickBooks your copy of QuickBooks in 2014? Some customization processes will require some upfront time, but once you get going, you’ll wish you had done this sooner.

Receiving Payment from Customers in QuickBooks

Undoubtedly, there are some QuickBooks tasks that are more enjoyable than others. It’s no fun paying bills, for example, and making collection calls on unpaid invoices can be downright unpleasant.

But you probably don’t mind recording payments after all of your hard work creating products or providing services, sending invoices or statements, and generating reports to make sure you’re on top of it all.

QuickBooks offers more than one way to document customer remittances, and it’s important that you use the right one for the right situation.

Defining the destination

Figure 1: Uncheck the box on the farthest right if you think you may want to direct payments to other accounts sometimes.

Before you begin receiving payments, you need to make sure they will end up in the correct account. The default is an account called Undeposited Funds. To make sure that this setting is correct, open the Edit menu and select Preferences, and click the Company Preferences tab. Use Undeposited Funds as a default deposit to account should have a check mark in the box next to it.

If you think you’ll sometimes want to deposit to a different account, leave the box unchecked. Then every time you record a payment, there will be a Deposit to field on the form. Talk to us if you’re planning to use any account other than Undeposited Funds, as you can run into serious problems down the road if payments are earmarked for the wrong account.

The right tool for the job

Probably the most common type of payment that you’ll process will come in to pay all or part of an invoice or statement that you sent previously.

Figure 2: You’ll record payments on invoices you’ve sent in this window.

To do this, open the Customers menu and select Receive Payments. In the window that opens, click on the arrow in the field next to RECEIVED FROM to display the drop-down list, and choose the correct customer. You’ll see the outstanding balance. Enter the amount of the payment you received in the AMOUNT field and change the date if necessary. Click the arrow in the field next to PMT. METHOD, and then select the type of payment.

If you established a credit card as the default payment method in the customer record, the card number and expiration date will be filled in. If not, or if a check was submitted, enter the information requested.

Any outstanding invoices will appear in a table. Make sure that there’s a check mark in front of the correct one(s). If the customer only made a partial payment, you’ll have to indicate how you want to handle the underpayment. Here are your options:

Figure 3: You can select how to handle partially-paid invoices here.

When you’re done, save the payment.

Instant income

There may be times when you receive payment immediately, at the time your products or services change hands. In these cases, you’ll want to use a sales receipt. Open theCustomers menu again and click Enter Sales Receipts.

Select a customer from the drop-down list or add a new one, then fill out the rest of the form like you would an invoice, selecting the items and quantities sold, and indicating the type of payment made (cash, check, credit).

Figure 4: Fill out a sales receipt when payment is received simultaneously with the sale.

Other scenarios

These are the most common methods of receiving payments from customers, and you may never have to do anything other than simple payment-recording and sales receipts.

But occasionally, unusual situations arise that may leave you stumped. For example, a customer may want to make a partial, advance payment before you’ve created an invoice or at the same time you’re entering it. In a case like this, you’ll have to create a payment item so that the money you’ve just received is reflected on the invoice. Or you may get a down payment on a product or service, or even an overpayment.

Let us help you when such situations occur. It’s much easier–and more economical for you–to spend some time with us before you record a puzzling payment than to have us track it down later on. We’ll help ensure that your money makes it to the right destination.

QuickBooks’ Custom Fields: An Overview

The beauty of QuickBooks is that it can be used for so many different kinds of businesses. Its smart design lets realtors and retail shops, plumbers and plastic surgeons use it to track income and expenses, pay bills and invoice customers, and to run those all-important reports.

But Intuit knows that QuickBooks can’t–and shouldn’t–tailor itself to individual business types (except in the industry-specific versions). So its structure and tools are somewhat generic and as universal as possible.

That’s where custom fields come in. You can simply use them for your own informational purposes, but QuickBooks also lets you create and add fields to your existing customer, vendor, employee and item records and forms, and use them as filters in reports.

A Common Application

Let’s say you want to search for your best customers to create a targeted marketing mailing.

Start by opening the Customer Center and opening any customer’s record there. Click on the Additional Info tab. In the lower right corner of this dialog box, click on Define Fields. This box (with some fields already defined in this example) opens:

Figure 1: You can create custom fields for your lists of names in this dialog box.

You want to send mailings to customers who order frequently, or who regularly purchase big-ticket items. You can call them your “High-Value Customers.” Click in the first field that’s available in the Label column and type that phrase, then tab over to the Custcolumn and click in it to enter a checkmark. Click OK. The Edit Customer dialog box opens with the new custom field included.

This field will now appear in all of your existing customer records as well as any new ones you create. You’ll need to open the record for each High-Value Customer, click on theAdditional Info tab and enter “Yes” on the corresponding line.

Figure 2: Custom fields appear in this box in your customer records.

Using Custom Fields in Items

If you sell physical inventory, custom fields will probably be needed in your item records. You might want to use them for t-shirt colors or sizes, for example, or to store serial or model numbers. They can be employed for all items types except subtotals, sales tax items and sales tax group items.

The process is similar to the one you used to define custom fields in your contact records. Open the Lists menu and select Item List (or Fixed Asset Item List where appropriate). Click Custom Fields in the dialog box that opens.

Tip: The Custom Fields tool is also available in the New Item dialog box. So you can move directly to that step as you create an item record if you’d like.

Click Define Fields and add your field(s). Be sure to put a checkmark in the Use column, and click OK.

Figure 3: QuickBooks also lets you define and use custom fields in your item records.

Reports and Forms

Custom fields can be invaluable when it comes to using them in forms and reports. Your fields will automatically appear at the bottom of the Filter list within your reports’ customization tools, but you’ll have to add them manually to any forms where they should appear.

Warning: You should probably enlist our help before you customize forms. QuickBooks provides tools to help you through this process, but you will encounter some potentially confusing messages as you add fields to forms, and you may have to use the Layout Designer, which can present quite a challenge.

Let’s say you wanted to find out how many blue coffee mugs Suzanne Jenkins sold in November. You’d proceed like you normally do when you’re customizing a report, but you’d have to scroll down to the end of the Filter list to find the Color custom field that you created. You’d enter the word “Blue” in the field supplied. Your Sales by Item Summaryreport setup would look something like this:

Figure 4: Filtering a report using a custom field.

This report will only run properly if you’ve added your Color field to your sales forms. Again, we’d be happy to help you with this, and to explore other uses for QuickBooks custom fields.