Vendor

QuickBooks Tip – Accounts Payable – Vendor Bill Approvals

Published June 28, 2010 | By Nancy Smyth

A reader asked the following question:

Do you know of a good method for indicating or tracking that a vendor bill is approved for payment?

Answer:

Technically, the bill should be approved before it is input into QuickBooks; and generally indicating on the front or face of the document/purchase order/voucher/vendor invoice or whatever you happen to call it, is usually the relied upon method.
1. Purchasing inexpensive “custom printed stamps” is probably one of the easiest ways in which to start the process.
When ordering custom made stamps you can include lines with places for accounting to approve the document signifying that the invoice had all pertinent documentation attached, that the dollar amounts matched, and the date that the invoice was received. Be sure that there is another line or place for the owner to sign off.
2. Another valuable stamp is one that is made for costs that are to be passed along to the customer.
If a vendor invoice has costs that have to be passed along to the customer, purchase a stamp that says “Invoiced Customer ____________”, you can then stamp the vendor bill and insert the customer name on the actual invoice and mark the Invoice as “To Be Billed” in QuickBooks.
3. If all of the above sounds like too much work and “paper shuffling” and you fear that some vendor invoices will become lost in the process, then try this simple method.
As vendor invoices are received, enter them into QuickBooks using the Enter Bill function. Use the memo field to indicated Purchase Order Numbers, discrepancies, and other important information; such as if it is billable to the customer. Use the “To Be Billed” function as necessary.
Generate an “Unpaid Bills Detail Report” (QuickBooks Reports Menu -> Vendors & Payables -> Unpaid Bills Detail) that has been modified to include the “memo” field. Provide this report, along with the current bank balance, and give it to the business owner. He/she will then circle bills that they wish to have paid and return the report to you. You generate the checks; give them the checks to be signed along with the report; now indicating the bank balance after you have generated the checks.

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QuickBooks 2010 – Rapid List Entry (Add/Edit Multiple List Entries)

Published October 5, 2009 | By Nancy Smyth

The Add/Edit Multiple List Entries is another new feature in QuickBooks 2010; where you can work with Customers, Jobs, Vendors, Service Items, Inventory Parts or Non-Inventory Parts. I can see this as being a very useful feature, and so far my favorite new feature in 2010.

New QuickBooks users will be able to quickly add these list entries (speeding up setup time) and existing users can also benefit when they need to update say their item list with new pricing, change preferred vendors, change Expense or Income Accounts.

Access this feature from the Lists menu -> Add/Edit Multiple List Entries to display the following window. Using the List drop down menu, you can select to work with the following Lists – Customers (and Jobs), Vendors, Service Items, Inventory Parts, and Non-Inventory Parts.

Let’s say for instance, that I wanted to work with my Service Item (Cost Code) List, I would select that list from the drop down menu (1), and then I would want to click the Customize Columns button (2) to be able to work with all the specific elements within the item (3). Once the Customize Columns window (3) is open I can see a list of available columns that I can work with as well as the chosen (default) columns.

I would probably want to select or choose to work with all of the columns that are available – and I would do this by clicking on each item in the Available Column (1) and then click the Add button (2) – this action moves the item element from the Available Column to the Chosen Column window.

Once I had moved all of the Available elements to the Chosen Columns, I would click OK

I would also want to move things around so that the columns more accurately matched the layout of the actual Item Record

Once I had arranged the order of my Chosen Columns, I would then click the OK button so that the flow of data entry would be more consistent with how data would be entered if you set up the items individually.

Once you have the Item List entries displayed, it’s very easy to update costs, change expense accounts, preferred Vendors, etc. and save all the changes with a click of the button.

For example, let’s say that you wanted to change the Expense Account associated with ALL of your items, you would first click into the first cell that contains the Expense Account and using the drop down menu that appears – change the account.

Next, right click the newly selected account and choose the Copy Down feature. This will replace ALL of the existing entries with the new account.

And ALL of your Expense accounts have been changed to reflect the new one that you just selected. Very cool!

As with all good things – there are also bad; and by that I mean that we start running into problems with Customer & Vendor record elements that aren’t accessed through this process. Now this doesn’t mean that the feature is worthless, it just means that you can enter most of the basic information but will still need to edit Customer, Job, and Vendor Records individually to complete the rest.