QuickBooks Tips – Four (4) Ways to Add Long Disclaimers on Forms

As a business owner  there can be several different situations that you encounter where you might need to include a long legal disclaimer or explanation when you sell a specific item, offer special discounts, provide warranty disclaimers and  information or explain your payment requirements when bidding on a job or even invoicing a customer.

There are four different methods for addressing this issue; the one that you choose will depend on what makes the most sense for your business:

1. Items
2. Template
3. Letters Function
4. Outside of QuickBooks

1. Using Items to add long disclaimers – If the additional information needs to be included when a specific product is sold, that information can be included in the description OR you can create a new item with a zero sales cost for the purpose of adding the information to a Purchase Order, an Estimate, or an Invoice.  The advantage of creating a separate item is that you can place the disclaimer item where you would like it on the form; right after the item it relates to, or at the bottom of an Estimate form.  Later, you can delete it for billing purposes – as long as both you and your customer have a copy of the Estimate that contains the detailed information.
2. Modifying the Form Template to include long disclaimers – If the disclaimer is long and you have the same disclaimer for every Estimate you create, for example your billing terms, and would like to make it a standard part of your form, using the Long Text Disclaimer section on the template itself may be the best solution.  Choose Lists -> Templates -> select form -> Edit.  The text can be entered and then the font size and placement can be adjusted using the Layout Designer.
3. Using the QuickBooks Letters function – If the disclaimer is exceedingly long, after you create the form create an accompanying Letter in QuickBooks.  Access the Letters function from the Customer Center by clicking on the Word option.  Use this method with option with option 1 or 2 above to indicate that additional information is included on a separate page.
4. Outside of QuickBooks – Depending on what needs to be included, it might make more sense to print the disclaimer on the back of the form.  It would also be possible to use this method in conjunction with option 1 or 2 to state something along the lines of “see additional disclaimer information on the back of this form” to include a reference to the information without having to actually include it on the form.