Mahoney Ulbrich Christiansen & Russ P.A. • 30 East Plato Boulevard, St. Paul, MN

Phone (651) 227-6695  •  Email  JaymeQuickbooks@mucr.com

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QuickBooks®e-Newsletter               Summer 2011: Issue #3

Sales Orders in QuickBooks: Why? When? How?

There aren’t that many different types of forms to keep straight in QuickBooks, but you likely don’t use all of them. You probably use invoices and purchase orders frequently, and may fill out the occasional sales receipt or credit memo or estimate.

But what about sales orders? You may find that they could make your bookkeeping more accurate and easier. There are only a few situations where they’re needed, but they’re the appropriate form to use at those times.

A happy problem

If you’re lucky (or a good businessperson), you have customers who place orders frequently. It’s not practical to invoice them every time they order, but you want to make sure everything is recorded. A sales order (which you’ll eventually turn into an invoice) is the correct choice for these customers.

Warning: You must use a sales order from the beginning of the selling process; you can’t switch gears part-way through.

To get started, click Customers | Create Sales Orders. A blank form like this one will open.

Figure 1: To create a sales order, you simply fill in the blanks and select from drop-down lists, just as you would with an invoice.

Would you send a sales order out to a customer in a multi-order situation, or wait until you have enough sales to dispatch an invoice? That’s up to you. It’s a good idea if you want them to be aware of the costs that are piling up.

Looking good

Before you begin entering data on the sales order form, check the fields to make sure they’re all needed, or if you’re missing any. The Template field in the upper right corner should display Custom Sales Order; change it if not. Should you want to add or delete fields, click the arrow next to Customize, then Customize Design and Layout.

If you’ve just been sending out the default forms that QuickBooks offers, you should consider adding some personalization. Click Create new design if you want to upload a logo and select fonts, colors, etc. Once you’ve decided on a theme, QuickBooks can apply it to all of your forms.

To add or delete fields, click Customize data layout. By checking and unchecking boxes, you can alter the content of your sales orders.

Figure 2: It’s easy. Just check or uncheck boxes to have field labels appear (or not) onscreen and in print. You can also change the label text, reorder columns, and designate text for a footer.

Halfway there

Another situation where you might want to send a sales order is when you’re doing partial invoicing; that is, when you don’t have enough items to fulfill the order as it came in.

In a case like this, go ahead and complete a sales order as if you had everything in stock. When you’re done, save the sales order, then find it and open it again. Click the arrow next to Create Invoice, then click Invoice. You’ll see this dialog box.

Figure 3: This dialog box lets you create an invoice for all items on a sales order or just a subset.

Click Create invoice for selected items, then OK. The Specify Invoice Quantities for Items on Sales Order(s) window opens. Items on the sales order you created are listed here, with additional columns for number available and number you ordered, number previously invoiced, and the unit of measured used (if applicable). 

There’s a check box next to Show quantity available instead of quantity on hand. Here, you can opt to display the number of each item that’s truly available; that is, the number actually in inventory minus those reserved, either on other sales orders or for building inventory assembly items. Or you can request the number that’s physically in inventory.

Using this information about availability, you’ll enter the number of items you want to invoice from this sales order in the To Invoice column.  It would look something like this:

Figure 4: When you convert a sales order into an invoice, you can select which items should be included.

Click OK, and your invoice appears. Do any editing necessary, and dispatch the invoice.

Tip: You can choose whether to have the items with a quantity of zero display on your invoice by going to Edit | Preferences and clicking on the Sales & Customers tab. 

Tracking it all

There are several places in QuickBooks where you can view your sales orders. The best way to keep track of those partially filled is through two reports, Open Sales Orders by Customer and Open Sales Orders by Item. You can also see them, of course, in the Customer Center, and in the balance and transaction history found next to transaction forms.

Sales orders can help you better track sales, speed up receivables with partial invoices, and maintain communications with frequent buyers. But partial invoices require extra attention to inventory. Before working with them, it’d be best to schedule a session with us; we can help you keep things straight.

If you have any questions about memorized transactions, call any of our team members.

Sincerely,

The MUCR QuickBooks® Team

Mahoney Ulbrich Christiansen & Russ P.A. • 30 East Plato Boulevard, St. Paul, MN

Phone (651) 227-6695  •  Email  JaymeQuickbooks@mucr.com

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QuickBooks® e-Newsletter                 Spring 2011: Issue #2 

Repetitive Transactions? Memorize ‘em.

Filling out invoices the first time can be a pain, especially if they’re lengthy. But doing the same thing repeatedly if the identical invoice recurs regularly? No need.

QuickBooks can memorize a variety of transaction types, including invoices, purchase orders, and bills. After you’ve memorized them, you can edit, reschedule, and delete them, as well as group them if more than one will be dispatched on the same day. Here’s how.

A familiar start

Let’s say you’re starting a new job providing regular training for a client; it’s always four hours, every Monday, for 12 weeks. First, find or create the invoice.

After you’ve found (or created) the invoice, then click Edit | Memorize Invoice. This window opens:

Figure 1: You’ll define the terms of your memorized transaction in this window.

The client’s name will already be filled in. You’ll first have to decide whether you want to just be reminded every week (the tickler will appear in your Reminders list) or whether you want QuickBooks to automatically enter the transaction. Click the appropriate button, or Don’t Remind Me if you have another way to remember.

Drop down the list next to How often, and select Weekly. Enter the first date of training. Put 11 in the box next to Number Remaining to represent the balance of the 12 weeks, and 0 next to Days In Advance To Enter. Click OK.

Retrieving your work

It’s easy to find your memorized transactions when you need to alter or delete them. Click Lists | Memorized Transaction List (or Ctrl+T). Highlight the entry you want to change in the list that appears. At the bottom of the window, click Memorized Transaction. This window will pop up:

Figure 2: This window displays your options for managing Memorized Transactions.

Click Edit Memorized Transaction. The window you used to specify the original options (as displayed above, in the very first figure) will open. Make the desired changes and click OK.

Tip: To save time, when the list of memorized transactions first appears, put your cursor on the targeted entry and right-click. The Memorized Transaction menu will appear.

Of course, if you want to remove an ongoing transaction, just highlight it, right-click, and select Delete Memorized Transaction.

Customizing your view

You can change the way your list displays by right-clicking on an empty space in the Memorized Transaction List and clicking Customize Columns. A window like this will appear:

Figure 3: It’s easy to customize the screen that displays your list of memorized transactions.

To add a column to the Memorized Transaction list, highlight it in the box of available columns on the left and click Add. It will move over into the box on the right and be inserted into your table. Similarly, to get rid of a column, highlight it in the box on the right and click Remove.

You can also change the order in which columns appear by highlighting one and clicking Move Up or Move Down.

More tools

If you’ve gotten a reminder that it’s time to pay a bill, you can go straight to the Memorized Transaction screen by right-clicking the item in the Reminders screen and selecting Recall Transaction. The correct transaction should be highlighted. At the bottom of the screen, click Enter Transaction (or right-click it) to display, edit and/or save it.

Sometimes your memorized transactions will occur on the same day. To save time, you can group them. Open the Memorized Transaction list and right-click in an empty part of the screen. Select New Group. Enter a name for it in the Name box, and set your reminder and frequency options like you did with the transactions themselves (you’ll be seeing the same dialog box as you did then). Click OK.

Right-click on the first entry that you want to add to the group, then select Edit Memorized Transaction. Click next to With Transactions in Group, then drop down the list next to Group Name and grab the correct one. Click OK. Now you can use your group just as you’d use an individual memorized transaction.

Figure 4: Once you’ve named and defined a group, you can add individual memorized transactions to it.

Memorizing transactions in QuickBooks isn’t exactly rocket science, but you can find yourself with late bill payments, items not invoiced, and/or inventory not ordered if you don’t do it exactly right. Triple-check your work and consult with us until you’re confident. Once you are, you may find your financial ship sailing more smoothly than ever.

If you have any questions about memorized transactions, call any of our team members.

Sincerely,

The MUCR QuickBooks® Team

Mahoney Ulbrich Christiansen & Russ P.A. • 30 East Plato Boulevard, St. Paul, MN

Phone (651) 227-6695  •  Email  JaymeQuickbooks@mucr.com

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QuickBooks® e-Newsletter                 Winter 2011: Issue #1 

Turn over a new leaf.  Make a New Year’s Resolution.  Make a fresh start. Get your ducks in a row.  All familiar clichés, but their message is valid: At this time of year, you probably feel like renewing your commitment to running a more successful, productive business.  It might be a good time to grade yourself, to get a close look at how your business is doing. And there's no better way to do that in QuickBooks than to run reports. You probably do that a lot already, but are you really making full use of the program's reporting tools?

Let's take a look. Reporting changed a lot between QuickBooks 2009 and 2010 in terms of interface, navigation, and access to reports. We'll look at version 2010 since the core reporting mechanisms are similar, and wrap up with a brief summary of the new features in 2010.

Extensive customization

Open the Reports menu. You can go directly to the Report Center, but since the interfaces are different (and very self-explanatory), we'll work from the menu.

Drop down to Sales, and in the pop-out menu, click Sales by Customer Detail. You'll see a window similar to Figure 1.

Figure 1: You may just be changing the date range when you run reports in QuickBooks. If so, you're missing out on a lot of customization and other features.

Don't like displaying the date/time/basis for each report? Click Hide Header and then Show Header if you want to bring it back.

Are some of your columns--usually Name, Item, and Memo --being truncated (such as Gutter clean… in the example above)? Grab the diamond to the right of the column name and drag it to the right with your mouse. It may take some adjusting to make every column header display properly.

Are you exporting a lot of reports to Excel workbooks but never clicking on the Advanced tab in the dialog box? If your reports always look different in Excel and you don't like them, it may be because you're skipping this step. Click the Advanced tab to see this view.

Fiqure 2: Before you export a report to an Excel worksheet, click the Advanced tab in the Export Report dialog box. You'll be able to select options that will preserve or ignore the original QuickBooks formatting.

Sophisticated modifications

To get to the real meat of your modifications, click the Modify Report button. You'll be able to tinker with a number of report elements here, including (and shown in Fiqure 3):

• Display. What dates should the report cover? Which columns should display (you'll have plenty to choose from)? Cash or accrual? How do you want to total and sort data? Click Advanced to show all accounts or those in use during the report period, and to display a customer's current balance or the balance as of the report's ending date.
• Filters. QuickBooks builds in powerful filtering capabilities, allowing you to corral a subset of data that contains exactly what you want, down to the words included in the Memo field. Take some time here and read the accompanying help files. A box on the right displays the current filters; you can easily remove any of them or revert to the original configuaration.
• Header/footer. Easy here, too. You can make choices about the fonts and colors you want your report to contain, and how you want numbers to be displayed.
• Fonts & Numbers. Easy here, too. You can make choices about the fonts and colors you want your report to contain, and how you want numbers to be displayed.

Figure 3: QuickBooks gives you an enormous amount of control over the format and content of your reports.

Memorization and more

Once you've gone through all the trouble of formatting a report, you'll probably want to save it so you can use it again (the settings are memorized, not the data). QuickBooks makes this easy. With the report open, click Memorize. In the window that opens, type a name for your report (if you want to specify a new one), and check the box next to Save in Memorized Report Group if you want it categorized. To access a memorized report, open the Reports menu and put your mouse on Memorized Reports. From the pop-out menu, select the report you want. You'll be able to modify it.

The new Report Center in QuickBooks 2011, shown in Figure 4, makes it easier to locate the desired reports quickly. It features a scrolling 3-D representation of sample reports in each financial category (list and grid views are also available); you can click on icons in a toolbar to see your own version of the report, change the dates, learn more about it, and tag it as a favorite. Other links let you toggle the view among standard, memorized, favorite, and recently accessed reports.

Figure 4: This "carousel" view of sample reports in QuickBooks 2011 especially helps beginners find the correct report.  Grid and list views are also available, as are other tools for locating the right screen.

When you're just running reports for your own edification, you may not do more than select a report and change the date range. But there will likely be many occasions when you're presenting report tools can help you slice and dice your data in myriad ways and make your financials look polished and professional. The ability to export to Excel opens up even more possibilities.

Please feel free to contact any of our team members with questions. 

Sincerely,

The MUCR QuickBooks® Team

Mahoney Ulbrich Christiansen & Russ P.A. • 30 East Plato Boulevard, St. Paul, MN

Phone (651) 227-6695  •  Email  JaymeQuickbooks@mucr.com

 Winter 2011: Issue #1 

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