Using the Payroll Summary In QuickBooks

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

Welcome to another QuickBooks Gal Minute. I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal

It's time to start thinking about end of year procedures. One of those for me is verifying payroll to assure that there won't be any problems when it comes time to prepare W-2 forms.

There is a great tool in QuickBooks called the Payroll Summary Report.

You can find that in the Report drop down menu at the top of the main window in QuickBooks. From there, select Employees & Payroll and then select the Payroll summary.

You can use this report to review totals by employee and for your company. Additionally, you can review payroll-related liabilities & expenses by employee and grand totals for the company by date range or for the year to date.

I generally print this report every time I create a payroll and keep that report in my Payroll Book and I always keep a final year-end copy with my payroll records and employer copies of quarterly reports & W-2's.

I hope this tip is useful. Please tune in again for another QuickBooks Gal Minute.

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal. Thanks for your continued interest. If you have questions or suggestions for future topics, please drop me a line at jayne@qbgal.com.

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What Is An Accountant's Copy?

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

Welcome to another QuickBooks Gal Minute. I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal

Does you Accountant need to work in your file offsite and you need to maintain day-to-day operations that will not allow you to stay out of the file while he or she has it?

The answer is The Accountant's Copy.

If your accounting professional wants you to review your QuickBooks file and make adjustments to your books, but you don't want to lose access to their books while they work in the file, you can give them an Accountant's Copy of your data.

That way you can continue your day-to-day operations with QuickBooks while the Accountant enters adjustments into the Accountant's Copy you gave them . The Accountant can even work transactions from previous fiscal periods while you continue to work in "real time".

When your Accountant has finished, they import their changes into your company file. At no point during the process do you lose the ability to work with your QuickBooks data.

Here's how you create an Accountant's Copy in QuickBooks:

1. Go to the File menu, click Accountant's Copy, click Client Activities, and then click Save File.

2. Confirm you want to create an Accountant's Copy and click Next.

3. Choose a dividing date.

4. Click Next.

5. (Optional) Change the suggested location for the file and the filename that QuickBooks suggests for the accountant's copy. The file must have a .qbx extension.

6. Click Save.

7. Give the Accountant's Copy transfer file (.qbx) to your accountant and continue work.

After saving the Accountant's copy, QuickBooks displays "Accountant's Changes Pending" in the title bar.

I hope this tip is useful. Please tune in again for another QuickBooks Gal Minute.

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

I'm Jayne Miller. Thanks for Listening.

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Call us for all Your Point of Sale Needs!
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Accountant's Copy & Upgrading QuickBooks

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

Welcome to the QuickBooks Minute. I’m Jayne Miller, the QuickBooks Gal

If you are upgrading from an older version of QuickBooks - QB 2004, for example - and an Accountant's Copy exists, be advised that you will lose the Accountant's Copy in the process.

When you upgrade, the Accountant's Copy is "broken", If your accountant is working in your file with an Accountant's Copy, he will not be able to return it to you in the older version expecting that your newly upgraded file will accept it.

Be sure that you check with your Accountant before you upgrade to assure that you both have the same version and to coordinate your upgrade process in order to either obtain and install the Accountant's Copy before you upgrade or to ask that your financial professional wait until after you have both upgraded the file.

I hope this is a useful tip. Be sure to come back again for another QuickBooks Gal Minute.

If You've Got a QuickBooks Mess, Call The QuickBooks Gal!

I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal. Thanks for listening.

Certified Point of Sale Pros!
Sales, Support & Service
Call us for all Your Point of Sale Needs!
775-348-9200

Customize General Ledger & Other Reports

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

Welcome to the QuickBooks Minute. I’m Jayne Miller, the QuickBooks Gal

Today I want to remind you that it's easy to Customize Reports in QuickBooks.

A client called the other day to ask a question about customizing a report for her boss. She works for an accountant who wants to produce a customized General Ledger report that doesn't show two or the four accounts that are automatically created in QuickBooks: Retained Earnings & Payroll Liabilities.

She wanted to know how to get rid of those accounts...when she tried deleting them, they always came back the next time she opened the QuickBooks company file. She tried making those accounts inactive, but when she printed the General Ledger, there they were again...even if there was no activity recorded to them!

The solution is simple: Modify the report to exclude those accounts and then memorize this report for future use so it won't have to be modified every time it is used.

To do this, simply open the report and select Modify in the report tool bar. Once there, select the Filters tab and select Multiple accounts making sure to exclude the accounts you do not wish to be shown in the report.

Then once you return to the onscreen view and confirm that you have accomplished the desired results, memorize the report and give it a unique name, such as Custom G/L.

Now all you have to do is open the Memorized Report and select the date range you wish to view.

I hope this is a useful tip. Be sure to tune in again for another QuickBooks Gal Minute.

If You've Got a QuickBooks Mess, Call The QuickBooks Gal!

I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal. Thanks for listening.

Certified Point of Sale Pros!
Sales, Support & Service Call us for all Your Point of Sale Needs! 775-348-9200

Item Profitablilty By Invoice Sales Report

“Quicklet” - A Podcast for QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise Solutions, Point of Sale and Peachtree users featuring helpful information, tips, tricks and suggestions for bookkeepers, business owners, and consultants.

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

Hi, I'm Jayne Miller, The QuickBooks Gal. Welcome to another in my series of “Quicklets” – informational podcasts about QuickBooks, Peachtree and related bookkeeping topics.

Item Profitability By Invoice

We recently had a request from a client to produce a report from his QuickBooks file that would show him the profitability of a particular item over the course of time on a per invoice basis.
Since his cost and his sales price have varied over time this would be a very useful report : What margin were we making in the first quarter vs. the second? Do we need to raise our price to maintain our margin?

The problem, as he quickly discovered is that QuickBooks has no such report - nor way to modify a report to get invoice level detail. The "Item Profitability Report" is a great tool to see the big picture, but not detail.

Unless, you double click on the "Actual cost" to bring up a bill-level detail of costs, export that report to Excel and then go back to your "Item Profitability" and double click the actual revenue figure to bring up an invoice level report of revenue and export that to Excel.

Now, with a little bit of copying and pasting from each report, you can easily create a new spreadsheet that contains both bill and invoice detail (be sure to line up the correct bill with the correct invoice).

And finally create two new columns: one for the dollar profit (subtract the actual cost from the actual revenue) and a second column for the percentage of profit (divide your dollar profit by actual cost).

This produces a nice, concise report that lets a business owner, purchasing manager, or sales manager see at a glance item profitability on a per invoice basis.

Well, that’s it for now. Please tune in again for another in our Quicklet© series.
If there are topics you would like me to cover send me an email at jayne@quickbooksgal.com.

Got a QuickBooks Mess? Call The QuickBooks Gal!

Certified
Point of Sale Pros!

Sales, Support & Service

Call us for all Your Point of Sale Needs!
775-348-9200