QuickBooks

There are many ways to encourage delinquent customers to pay. QuickBooks Online’s statements may be effective for you.

After the year-plus you’ve just experienced, the last thing your small business needs is customers who are behind on their payments to you. You may have been giving them a break because you know that they’re struggling, too, but things have been looking up for many companies in the past few months. It’s time for you to be more proactive about calling in your debts.

There are numerous ways you can accomplish this. One of the best is to send statements in QuickBooks Online, which are detailed reminder forms that contain multiple transactions. These can be especially helpful if you’ve sent multiple invoices with no response. There are three different types you can send, depending on your needs. Here’s how you create them.

Before You Start

QuickBooks Online offers a couple of options for formatting your statements. To see these, click the gear icon in the upper right corner and select Your Company | Account and Settings. Click the Sales tab and scroll down to the Statements section. Click the pencil icon over to the far right to make any changes needed. You can:

• List each transaction as a single line or include all of the detail lines.
• Display an aging table at the bottom of each statement.

Click the buttons to specify your preference and then click Save and Done.

Three Statement Types

You can choose from among three different types of statements in QuickBooks Online: Balance Forward includes invoices with outstanding balances for a specified range of dates. Open Item statements contain information about all unpaid (open) invoices from the last 365 days. And Transaction Statements show every transaction in a date range that you specify. We’ll describe how to create them so you can decide which makes the most sense for a particular situation.

One Way to Create Statements

Like it does for many other actions, QuickBooks Online offers two ways to create statements. The first is easier. Click the New button in the upper left and select Statement (under Other). Click the down arrow in the field under Statement Type to see the three options there.

If you select Balance Forward, you’ll need to define three criteria (there will be similar options for the other two types):<.p>

• Statement Date
• Customer Balance Status (Open, Overdue, or All)
• Start Date and End Date

When you’re satisfied with your statement parameters, click Apply. QuickBooks Online will display a list of the transactions that meet your criteria, along with the number of them that will be generated. Each row in the list will display the recipient’s name, email address, and balance. In the upper right corner, you’ll see the number of statements again and the total balance these customers represent.

If you want to exclude any of these customers, click in the box in front of each to unselect them and delete the checkmark. When you’re satisfied with your list, click Save, Save and send, or Save and close. If you click Save and send, a window will open containing a preview of your statements. Thumbnails of each will appear in the left pane. Click on any to see their previews. When you’re ready, you can download, print, or send them.

If you click Save or Save and close, you’ll still be able to see the statements you’ve just generated. Click the Sales tab in the toolbar, then All Sales. Click the down arrow next to Filter and open the drop-down list under Type. Select Statements, and your list will appear. You can print or send one by selecting the correct option in the Action column. If you want to dispatch multiple statements, click in the box in front of each, and then click the down arrow next to Batch actions.

Another Method

There’s an alternate way to create statements. Click the Sales tab in the toolbar, then Customers. Select any or all of the customers in the list, then click the down arrow next to Batch actions and select Create statements. QuickBooks Online will open the Create Statements window again so you can select the type and process your statements like you did using the previous method.

We don’t expect that you’ll have much trouble working with statements, though you may want to consult with us on when they’re appropriate. We can also suggest other ways to bring your accounts receivable up to date. As always, we’re available to help you maximize and streamline your use of QuickBooks Online. Keeping your financial books current and organized is one way to ensure that you don’t fall too far behind with customer payments.

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Are too many of your customers behind in their payments to you? Consider sending statements in QBO. We can show you how.

QuickBooks Online supports statements, reminder forms you can send to customers whose payments are past due.

Don’t know how many customers are past due on their payments to you? Run QuickBooks Online’s A/R Aging reports.

There are two ways to create three different types of statements in QuickBooks Online. We can help you sort it out.

If you have one or more people besides yourself using QuickBooks Online, you’ll need to know how to set up their accounts.

Your QuickBooks Online file contains a great deal of very sensitive information, like customers’ credit card numbers and employees’ Social Security numbers – data you don’t want to have fall into the wrong hands. You obviously trust your employees or you wouldn’t have hired them, but when it comes to security, you should implement all the safeguards you can.

QuickBooks Online can help you stay safe by limiting the access that other users have to your company file. Here’s how it works.

To get started, click the gear icon in the upper right and select Manage users. You should be listed there, of course, as the Master Administrator. Click Add user. The screen that opens will ask you what type of user you’re adding. There are four of them:

• Standard user. You can assign full or limited access to standard users, but they won’t have administrator privileges.
• Company admin. At this level, the user can see and do everything.
• Reports only. These individuals have access to all reports except those that contain payroll or contact information.
• Time tracking only. You’d assign this type to employees who only need to enter their own timesheets.

The first two count toward your user limit, but the second two do not. Make your selection and click Next. We’ll select standard user for this example.

On the screen that opens, you’ll be assigning actual access rights, telling QuickBooks Online what the user’s restrictions are. You can choose All (with or without payroll access), None (allows some activities), or Limited. Select Limited, then click in the box in front of Customer to create a check mark. You’ll see the list of specific actions that that individual can take (like creating invoices, sales receipts, and statements) and the screens that they can see (customer registers and reports, tax rates and agency settings, etc.).

There’s also a list of what they can’t do, including printing checks, viewing bank registers, and preparing a sales tax return.

Click in the box in front of Customer again to uncheck it and select Vendor. You’ll see a similar list here of what your new user can and can’t do, only its activities relate to your accounts payable.

Click Next If the user will be entering his own her own timesheets in QuickBooks Online, click the button in front of Yes, then select the correct name from the drop-down list. Click Next. Answer the user settings questions on the next screen and click Next. Enter the user’s name and email address (user ID), then click Save. QuickBooks Online will return you to the Manage Users screen, where you’ll see that your new user has been added to the list. The individual you just invited will receive an email invitation to set up an account, with instructions on how to do so.

Other Security Tips

There are other ways you can keep all of your company’s data safe. Here are some suggestions to consider if your business has returned to its offices.

• Always update your operating system and applications when prompted. These often contain security patches in addition to bug fixes and new features.
• Keep backups out of reach of others. Cloud backups are best, but if you use a local device, don’t leave it out in the open.
• Log out of QuickBooks Online when you’re not at your desk.
• Shred anything you print from QuickBooks Online or store it in a locked drawer.
• Protect your networks. Discourage excessive web browsing by employees. Don’t allow extraneous app downloading on company equipment and ask employees not to use company mobile devices on public networks. Consider network monitoring software if you can’t afford managed IT.

We follow security best practices in our own offices, and we hope you’ll do the same. Applying safeguards proactively will help prevent data theft that can be nearly impossible to recover from.

Intuit employs industry-standard security practices to keep your data safe, too, and it handles all backup and upgrades. Often, those updates include new features, like the recent addition of transaction “tags.” Let us know if you need our help with these or with any other element of QuickBooks Online.

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Are you taking on a new employee who will use QuickBooks Online? The site has a specialized setup process for this.

Did you know that you can create and use tags now in QuickBooks Online? We can show you how it’s done.

Are you concerned about the security of your QuickBooks data? Ask us how you can best protect it.

Are you considering using QuickBooks Online in 2021? We’d be happy to help you set it up for your business and learn to use it.

Ready to get started with a Certified QuickBooks accountant? Call us at 912-634-7722 to schedule your free initial consultation.

Not finding quite everything you need in QuickBooks Online? Here are some handy add-on apps available.

QuickBooks Online may work for you just fine as is. After all, it was designed to meet the needs of the millions of small businesses that want to manage and track their income and expenses, create records and transactions, and run reports to gauge their financial health. QuickBooks Online was also designed to grow along with your business. But there’s no need for Intuit to add internal features to do so. In fact, that would make it too expensive and unwieldy for many companies.

Instead, Intuit has partnered with other small business websites to provides add-ons–applications that extend the usefulness of QuickBooks Online in one or more areas, like accounts receivable and payable, inventory, and expense-tracking. They integrate easily to share data and do the extra work you need. Here are some of them to consider.

You can certainly enter and pay bills using QuickBooks Online. And you can send invoices to customers and receive payments. But adding a connection to Bill.com gives you more advanced options for accounts receivable and payable. Simply send your bills to Bill.com by scanning, emailing, faxing, or taking a picture with your smartphone. The site’s automation tools turn them into digital records and route them through your specified approvers. Once approved, they’re paid electronically or by paper check. Invoices are just as easy to process; customers can pay by using PayPal, credit card, or ACH. Bill.com’s mobile app makes it possible to keep up with invoices and bills while you’re out of the office.

Expensify

Are your employees still paper-clipping receipts to handwritten expense reports? This method is unnecessarily time-consuming – and often inaccurate. Expensify solves both problems. Your staff can take photos of receipts with their smartphones. Expensify then converts the expense information into coded digital records and submits them for approval based on your company’s policies. Credit card purchases can be automatically imported, too. All data is synchronized with QuickBooks Online in real-time and coded to reflect your preference of QBO’s expense accounts, customers/jobs, etc. Once you’ve approved a report, you can have the money deposited in the employee’s bank account the next day.

TSheets Time Tracking

TSheets employee scheduling software automates tasks that QuickBooks Online doesn’t do: scheduling and remote time-tracking for your hourly employees. Your staff no longer has to fill in paper timesheets. Instead, they can use their smartphones to track their hours and GPS location points. And while Excel is certainly better for creating schedules than paper, TSheets takes over that task, too. After you’ve approved timesheets, that information is sent over to QuickBooks, ready for use in your payroll processing.

Your employees can easily “punch” in and out using their smartphones. TSheets also uses GPS technology so that your staff members’ locations are always known to you.

SOS Inventory

QuickBooks Online performs some basic inventory management tasks. You can create records for items and use them in transactions, and keep track of the number of items in stock so you know when to reorder (or have a sale). SOS Inventory goes well beyond those capabilities. You can create sales orders, track cost history and serial numbers, and document work-in-progress (WIP). SOS Inventory supports multiple locations and the entire pick/pack/ship process.

Insightly CRM

You can create thorough customer records in QuickBooks Online and document some of your interaction. But it doesn’t facilitate true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) nor project management. Insightly CRM does both. It lets you build exceptionally thorough customer profiles so that you can view social streams, email history, and any events, opportunities, or events related to them. Its project management features include the ability to track by pipelines or milestones, define contact roles and custom fields, and generate advanced project reporting.

QuickBooks Online Integration Key

All of these apps can work in standalone settings, but their integration with QuickBooks Online and their mobile capabilities create powerful partnerships that help you serve both your customers and your employees in ways that QuickBooks Online alone can’t.

We’re not trying to sell you applications here. Our concern is that you’re getting as much out of QuickBooks itself as you can. We can steer you toward add-on solutions if that seems necessary, but we’re always happy to work with you on getting to know QuickBooks Online better and matching its capabilities to your company’s needs.

…and how QuickBooks Online can help you with the mechanics.

If you already have a budget, it’s probably been difficult for you to stick with it for the last several months. Unless you provide products and/or services that have been in great demand since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, you’ve had to adjust your budget significantly.

Better days are ahead, though, and now is a good time to start doing some planning for 2021. While there are still likely to be uncertainties next year, creating a budget will give you a starting point. A budget increases your awareness of all of your projected income and expenses, which may make it less likely that you’ll find yourself constantly running short on funds.

Here are some ways you can make your budgeting process more effective and realistic.

Use what you already know. Unless you’re starting a brand-new business, you already have the best resource possible: a record of your past income and expenses. Use this as the basis for your projections.

Be aware of your sales cycle. Even if you’re not a seasonal business, you’ve probably learned that some months or quarters are better than others. Budget conservatively for the slower months.

Distinguish between essential and non-essential expenses. Enter your budget items for the bills and other expenses that must be covered before you add optional categories.

You can use data from a previous year to create a new budget in QuickBooks Online.

Keep it simple. Don’t budget down to the last paper clip. You risk budget burnout, and your reports will be unwieldy.

Build in some backup funding. Just as you’re supposed to have an emergency fund in your personal life, try to create one for your business.

Make your employees part of the process. You shouldn’t be secretive about the expense element of your budget. Try to get input from staff in areas where they have knowledge.

Overestimate your expenses, a little. This can help prevent “borrowing” from one budget category to make up for a shortfall in another.

Consider using excess funds to pay down debt. Debt costs you money. The sooner you pay it off, the sooner you can use those payments for some non-essential items.

Look for areas where you can change vendors. As you’re creating your budget think carefully about each supplier of products and services. Can you find less costly alternatives?

Revisit your budget frequently. You should evaluate your progress at least once a month. In fact, you could even start by budgeting for only a couple of months at a time. You’ll learn a lot about your spending and sales patterns that you can use for future periods.

How QuickBooks Online Can Help

QuickBooks Online offers built-in tools to help you create a budget. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner and select Budgeting under Tools. Click Add budget. At the top of the screen, give your budget a Name and select the Fiscal Year it should cover from the drop-down list by that field. Choose an Interval (monthly, quarterly, or yearly) and indicate whether you want to Pre-fill data from an existing year.

QuickBooks Online supplies a budget template that already contains commonly used small business items.

The final field is labeled Subdivide by, which is optional. You can set up budgets that only include selected Customers or Classes, for example. Select the desired divider in that field, then choose who or what you want included in the next. Click Next or Create Budget in the lower right corner (depending on whether you used pre-filled data) to open your budget template. If you subdivided the budget, you’ll see a field marked View budget for. Click the down arrow and select from the options listed there.

To create your budget, you simply enter numbers in the small boxes supplied. Columns are divided by months or quarters, depending on what you specified, and rows are labeled with budget items (Advertising, Gross Receipts, Legal & Professional Fees, etc.). You simply enter numbers in the boxes that apply. When you click in a box, a small arrow appears pointing right. Click on this, and your number will automatically appear in the rest of that row’s boxes. When you’re done, click Save in the lower right. You can edit your budget at any time.

QuickBooks Online provides two related reports. Budget Overview displays all of the data in your budget(s). Budget vs. Actuals shows you how you’re adhering to your budget.

We know creating a budget can be challenging, but it’s so important – especially right now. We’d be happy to look at your company’s financial situation and see how QuickBooks’ budgeting tools—and its other accounting features—can help you get a better understanding of your finances.

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Don’t have a budget set for your business? QuickBooks Online has tools that can simplify the process of creating one.

When you’re creating a budget, it’s helpful to distinguish between essential and non-essential expenses. QuickBooks Online has tools that can help you, including budgeting for necessities first.

When was the last time you shopped for new suppliers? Now is a good time to see if you could save some money and help with your budget. QuickBooks Online has many tools that can help both you and your business budget.

Did you know QuickBooks Online allows you to use existing income and expense data to create a budget? Here is how this is done.

The most important thing you need to know about sales tax is that administering it correctly can be challenging.

If you sold only one type of product to customers in one city, collecting and paying sales tax would be easy. But most businesses have a wider reach than that.

QuickBooks Online offers tools that allow you to set up sales tax rates and include sales tax on sales forms. Further, it calculates how much you must pay to state and local taxing agencies.

This is one of the most complicated areas in QuickBooks Online because you may have to deal with numerous taxing agencies. If you’re not already working with sales taxes, we strongly recommend you let us help you get everything set up correctly from the start. Taxing agencies can audit your recordkeeping and you want to make sure it is set up correctly.

That said, here are five things we think you should know.

QuickBooks Online calculates sales tax rates based on:

• Where you sell. Every state is different. If your business is located in Florida and you sell to a customer in Minnesota, you’ll be charging any sales tax levied by the state of Minnesota and possibly the city and county and other taxing authorities – if you have a connection, a “nexus” in that state (a physical location, active salesperson, etc.).
• What you sell.
• To whom you sell. Some customers (like nonprofit organizations) do not have to pay sales tax. You’ll need to edit their customer records to reflect this in QBO. Open a customer record and click the Edit link in the upper right. Click the Tax info tab and make sure there’s no checkmark in the box that says This customer is taxable. The Default tax code will be grayed out, and you can enter Exemption details in that field.

Customer records for exempt organizations should contain details for that exemption. You’ll need to see their exemption certificate or at least know its official number.

Intuit now offers a revamped version of QuickBooks Online’s sales tax features.

At some point, you’ll be asked if you want to switch to the new, more automated system. The actual mechanics of the process are simple, but you’ll be moving historical and in-process data to a new structure. If you have sales tax set up right now and your situation is at all complicated, you’re going to want our help with the transition.

This enhanced feature only supports accrual accounting.

You can combine individual tax rates.

If you are required to pay city, county, and state sales tax rates for a particular customer, for example, you can create a Combined tax rate that contains all of the individual components. The customer will only see the total on an invoice or sales receipt, but QuickBooks Online will track each one accordingly for payment and reporting purposes.

You can combine sales tax rates in QuickBooks Online (image above from current Sales Tax Center in QuickBooks Online, not the enhanced one).

Product and service records should contain sales tax information.

This is another area that will require some research. Just as some services are subject to tax, some products are not (like groceries in Arizona). So, you’ll need to find out what the rules are for what you sell. You can find this information on the website of the state’s Department of Revenue (sometimes called the Department of Taxation).

Once you know, you can record that status in QuickBooks Online. Open a product record by going to Sales | Products and Services and clicking Edit in the Action column or create a new one by clicking New in the upper right. Scroll down to Sales tax category in the record. You can choose between Taxable – standard rate and Nontaxable.

There’s a third option here: special category. This gets complicated. We can help you determine whether it applies to you.

QuickBooks Online tracks the sales tax you owe.

You can see what you owe to each agency by running the Sales Tax Liability Report, and record payments when you’ve made them. Summary and detail versions of the Taxable Sales report are also available.

Once you get sales taxes set up in QuickBooks Online, it’s easy to add them to the relevant sales forms. Getting to that point, though, takes time, study, and careful attention to detail. If you’re getting ready to sell, or you’re already selling and struggling with sales taxes, let us know. We can schedule an initial consultation to see how we can be of assistance.

Make income tax preparation easier by tracking all the deductions you can take.

You’ve heard it said before: Tax planning should be a year-round process. It’s so true. Your life will be a lot easier early next year when all your tax forms start rolling in.

Forms like 1099s and W-2s do a lot of the tracking for you. You only need to transfer data over to your IRS tax forms and schedules. But what about the daily stuff, the expenses you incur as a part of your workday that no one else is documenting? There are a lot of tax-deductible costs that can really add up when it’s time to file.

The IRS has two criteria for evaluating the validity of business expenses. First, is it ordinary? Is it something that other companies in your trade or profession would commonly buy? Second, is it necessary? Is it “…helpful and appropriate?”

Warning: Some expenses that you think might be deductible are not. Obviously, you can’t claim the costs of personal items. The IRS specifies two other types of expenses that can’t be deducted: Capital Expenses and those used the calculate the Cost of Goods Sold. Questions? Ask us.

Pulling together all that numbers required for the IRS Schedule C can be challenging. Let us know if you have questions.

Here are some examples of expenses that you might not consider, but which should be recorded as they occur so you don’t forget about them come tax time.

Advertising and promotion

Some of these expenses are obvious. For example, you might report printing costs for brochures, ad space bought, and postage for mailers and other business correspondence. But there’s much more that fits into this category. Think about everything you do that helps promote your business, like expenses related to:

• Business cards
• Team sponsorships
• Your website (including startup and maintenance fees)
• Graphic design
• Workshops/webinars

Insurance

Do you have any kind of business insurance, like liability or malpractice? Your premiums are deductible.

Car and truck expenses

Understandably, you can only deduct expenses for miles driven for business purposes. If you have a vehicle—either owned or leased—that you also use for personal driving part of the time, you’ll need to track those two separately.

There are two options for calculating business mileage: Actual Expenses and Standard Mileage. To calculate the latter, you’d multiple the number of business miles driven by 53.5 cents for tax year, then add tolls and parking fees. The Actual Expense method is more complicated; it involves many costs, and recognizes depreciation of the vehicle. Check with us if you’re planning to claim expenses for a car or truck, as there are additional rules governing this deduction.

Postage and office supplies

Yes, they’re deductible if you need them for your business.

Meals and entertainment

Familiarize yourself with the rules for this one. They’re complicated, and the IRS looks closely at such deductions.

Business use of your home

Ditto. There are all kinds of regulations, restrictions, and exceptions here, even if you use the simplified method that the IRS introduced a few years ago. Further, the home office deduction can be an audit red flag.

The rules are very specific and very rigid. For example, even if you use your home’s land line for business, you can’t deduct it. Add another line for business, and you can.

Professional and legal fees

If you pay an individual or firm for services provided to help you operate your business, those fees are often deductible. This includes lawyers, accountants, and tax preparers, of course, but as always, there are exceptions. You can’t usually, for example, deduct attorneys’ fees if you were getting legal help to buy business assets.

Dealing with Details

As you can see, there are many allowable business expenses that require meticulous recordkeeping. You can, of course, do this on paper or in a spreadsheet. There are cloud-based applications specifically designed for this purpose. If you’re interested in checking these out, let us know. We’re always available to help you plan for future tax filings.