How to Track Donated Products Using Quickbooks
Does your business regularly donate its products? Product donations are a common practice among businesses. If you have leftover inventory that you can’t sell — or inventory that will take an excessively long time to sell — you may want to donate it. Aside from helping others in need, donating the products will grant your business a tax deduction. You can typically write off the donations to lower your business’s tax liability. To do so, however, you’ll need to track the donated products.
Steps to Tracking Donated Products in Quickbooks
If you use Quickbooks Online, you can track donated products in just a few easy steps. Start by logging in to your Quickbooks account online and clicking the “+ New” button at the top of the homepage. Next, select the “Sales Receipt” option under the “Customers” menu.
You should see a drop-down menu for “Deposit to.” Clicking this menu will reveal a list of all of your business’s connected bank accounts. When tracking donated products, you’ll need to choose one of your business’s bank accounts from this list.
For the field labeled “Product/Service,” select the type of product that you donated. Like with bank accounts, Quickbooks will reveal a list of all of your business’s products. You can scroll through this list to choose the type of donated product. For the “Rate” option, change the value to zero. You can then click “Save” to complete the process.
Don’t Forget to Create a Journal Entry
You’ll need to create a journal entry when tracking donated products in Quickbooks. A journal entry will provide a record of the donation or donations. You can create a new journal entry by clicking the “+ New” button on the homepage, followed by “Journal Entry.” For the “Account” section, select the bank account that you used to track the donation. You’ll have to enter a few more pieces of information, including the cost of the donated products. You should also choose “Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) as the account for the donated product. When finished, click “Save and close.”
In Conclusion
Donations aren’t performed exclusively by consumers. Many businesses perform donations as well. If your business regularly donated its products, you’ll need to track them. Tracking donations will create cleaner records while allowing you take advantage of their tax deductions. Just follow the steps outlined above to track donated products in Quickbooks.
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The Beginner’s Guide to Using Tags in Quickbooks
Have you come across the tag feature when using Quickbooks? Quickbooks supports tags. You can create tags to categorize and track your business’s transactions. Because it’s an optional feature, though, many business owners overlook tags. Creating tags, however, can streamline many accounting processes while promoting cleaner records in the process.
What Are Tags?
In Quickbooks, tags are labels that you can attach to relevant transactions. You can attach them to your business’s invoices, expenses, bills and other transactions. They won’t affect the values of the transactions. Rather, tags are used for reference purposes. With tags, you’ll have an easier time finding and tracking specific types of transactions. You can create tags for different types of transactions, after which you can attach them to the appropriate transactions. Rather than going through all of your business’s transactions, you can then search for a specific tag.
How to Create Tags
To get started, you should create tag groups. Tag groups, as the name suggests, are groups of tags. You can create them by going to the “Settings” menu and choosing “Tags.” On this page, click the “New” drop-down menu and select “Tag group.” Quickbooks will then ask you to enter a name for the tag group. You can also choose a color for the tag group. When finished, select “Save” to finish the process. You should now have a new tag group to which you can add tags.
Creating new tags is a breeze. While editing any transaction form, including invoices, you should notice a field labeled “Tags.” Just enter a unique name in this field and click the “Add+” button. You will then have the option of placing the newly created tag in one of your tag groups. Tag groups will nearly organize your tags while also allowing you to track the transactions with which they are used more easily.
View Tag Insights
You can view insights involving your tags as well. This is done to reveal how all transactions featuring a particular tag are performing. To view tag insights, click the “Banking” menu, followed by “Tags.” Once you’ve located the tag group, click the “Run report” link under the “Action” menu. Viewing tag insights can prove useful in determining which tags are outperforming the other tags.
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Help! Quickbooks Won’t Let Me Send More Than 100 Emails
Quickbooks doesn’t just allow you to generate reports regarding your business’s finances. In addition to generating invoices, receipts, estimates and other financial reports, it allows you to email them to yourself or your accountant. With that said, Quickbooks may return a message indicating that you’ve hit your limit. After sending 100 emails, you may receive this message. Why does Quickbooks limit the number of emails you can send, and how do you overcome this limit?
The 100 Email Limit
There’s a 100 email limit in place for all Quickbooks Online trial accounts. Quickbooks Online is the cloud-based version of Intuit’s popular accounting software. It’s available as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). You can sign up for a Quickbooks Online account, after which you can manage your business’s finances from a secure web portal.
You can take a metaphorical test drive of Quickbooks Online, however, by signing up for a trial account. The trial account comes with limitations, one of which involves emails. You’ll be limited to sending no more than 100 emails. Upon reaching this limit, you won’t be able to send any more emails from Quickbooks until you have a paid account.
How to Upgrade to a Paid Account
To overcome the 100 email limit, you’ll need to upgrade your Quickbooks Online account from a trial account to a paid account. You should notice a link in the notification indicating that you’ve reached the 100 email limit. There’s a green-colored “Subscribe” link. Clicking this link will take you to the Quickbooks subscriptions page where you can choose a paid account.
Alternatively, you can upgrade to a paid account by clicking the “Gear” icon on the homepage of Quickbooks Online and choosing “Account and Settings.” For the “Billing & Subscriptions” section, choose the type of paid account that you’d like to upgrade to. You should now be able to send additional emails. More importantly, you’ll have full access to all of the features in Quickbooks Online.
In Conclusion
Quickbooks Online has a 100 email limit for trial accounts. If you’re still using a trial account, you won’t be able to send more than 100 emails from it — at least not until you upgrade to a paid account. Upgrading to a paid account will remove this limit while allowing you to take advantage of all features in Quickbooks Online.
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An Introduction to Opening Balances in Quickbooks
Creating opening balances is important when using Quickbooks. For each credit card and bank account, you’ll need to enter an opening balance. Opening balances act as starting points for your accounts. Failure to create them, or entering the wrong amount for them, could result in your business’s financial information being incorrect. By understanding how opening balances work in Quickbooks, though, you can maintain clean and accurate financial records for your business.
The Basics of Opening Balances
The opening balance is the amount of a financial account — a credit card or bank account — at the time when you add it to Quickbooks. When you add a financial account to Quickbooks, you’ll have to enter a date and amount for the opening balance. Quickbooks will the opening balance as a starting point for the account. If you choose $100,000 as the amount, for instance, Quickbooks will treat the respective account as if it already has $100,000 in it. Therefore, any credits will be added to the $100,000, whereas any debits will be taken from the $100,000.
How to Enter an Opening Balance
You can enter an opening balance in just a few easy steps. Assuming you use Quickbooks’ online banking feature, it will automatically create opening balances for all of your accounts automatically. You won’t need to manually enter the opening balances. Rather, Quickbooks will download the transactions from your accounts, after which it will calculate their respective opening balance. There’s no easier way to ensure that your accounts have accurate and up-to-date opening balances than by using Quickbooks’ online banking feature.
If you don’t use Quickbooks’ online banking feature, you can still enter opening balances; it just requires a little more work. For Quickbooks Online, you can enter opening balances by navigating to the “Settings” menu, followed by “Chart of Accounts.” On the “Chart of Accounts” page, select “New.” You can then enter some basic information about your new financial account. For the “Balance” field, enter the opening balance of the account. There’s also an “As of” date field. In this field, enter the date of the opening balance. You can enter the current day’s date, for instance, if you want Quickbooks to begin tracking the account from today. When finished, click “Save and close” to complete the process. Your account should now be added to Quickbooks, complete with an opening balance and date.
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How to Add Employees to Your Payroll in Quickbooks
Have you recently hired one or more new employees? If so, you’ll need to add them to your payroll. Assuming you use Quickbooks as your business’s primary accounting software, you can update your payroll with new employees. Quickbooks has a built-in payroll feature. With this feature, you can add new employees to your payroll or remove existing employees from it. How do you add new employees to your payroll in Quickbooks exactly?
Steps to Adding Employees in Quickbooks Online
If you use the payroll feature of Quickbooks Online, you can add new employees to your payroll by logging in to Quickbooks and selecting “Payroll,” followed by “Employees” and then “Add an employee.”
You will then see a screen with optional fields about the new employee. In these fields, you can enter the new employee’s name, date of hire and email address. After completing these fields, select “Done” to complete the process. The new employee should now be added to your payroll.
Steps to Adding New Employees in Quickbooks Desktop
If you use the payroll feature of Quickbooks Desktop, on the other hand, you’ll need to make sure that you are logged in as the admin. This is done by selecting “Edit,” followed by “Preferences.” For the “Payroll and Employees” menu, choose “Company Preferences.” You can then select “Employee Defaults.”
While logged in as the admin, go to the “Employees” section and choose “Employee Center.” On the next screen, choose the option for “New Employee.” Quickbooks will then ask for some basic information about the new employee. You can enter the new employee’s name, Social Security number, address and phone number. When finished, click “OK” to complete the process.
Quickbooks Online isn’t the same as Quickbooks Desktop. While they both have a payroll feature, the former is cloud-based, whereas the latter is locally installed. You can still access Quickbooks Desktop from the internet. There are authorized third-party hosting providers, such as My Vao, that offer Quickbooks hosting services. When adding new employees to your payroll, you’ll need to consider which version of Quickbooks you use to track your business’s finances.
Keep in mind that Quickbooks will automatically add the new employees to your list of “Active employees” after following the aforementioned steps. It will show the new employees, however, as “incomplete” until you enter their tax information about other required information.
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An Introduction to Net Profit in Accounting
Net profit is an important financial metric for all businesses. Regardless of what type of goods or services your business sells, you’ll need to track its net profit. Net profit, however, isn’t the same as gross profit. It’s a unique financial metric that offers an accurate look at your business’s overall profitability. For a better understanding of net profit, including how to calculate it, keep reading.
What Is Net Profit?
Net profit refers to how much money your business generates during a given period after paying for all its expenses and other costs. It’s also known as “bottom line.” With net profit, you can see how much money your business profited. It takes into account your business’s revenue as well as your business’s expenses and other costs.
You can calculate your business’s net profit for a given period by adding up all of its revenue and substrating it by all of its expenses and other costs for that period. If your business generated $100,000 last month and its expenses were $30,000, its net profit for that month would be $70,000.
Why Net Profit Is Important
Net profit is important because it provides insight into profitability. There are other financial metrics available. Many of them, however, only look at revenue and not expenses.
Generating revenue is undoubtedly important. You can’t run a successful business without generating revenue. With that said, high expenses and related costs can counter the otherwise positive benefits of high revenue. If your business’s expenses surpass its revenue, it won’t generate profits. Your business will essentially burn money until its revenue increases and/or its expenses decrease. With new profit, you can gauge your business’s profitability. Net profit will reveal whether your business is truly making a profit. It will also reveal how much profit your business is making.
What About Gross Profit?
Contrary to common belief, net profit isn’t the same as gross profit. Gross profit is a different financial metric. While gross profit still takes into account your business’s revenue, it doesn’t include all of your business’s revenue.
Gross profit reflects your business’s revenue for a given period minus its cost of goods sold. Cost of goods sold is just one type of expense. There are many other expenses that your business will likely incur. For a complete view of your business’s financial health, you should calculate its net profit.
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Understanding the Different Quickbooks File Extensions
Using Quickbooks to track your business’s finances requires an understanding of the software’s file extensions. Quickbooks will automatically create various files, each of which contains certain forms of data that are specific to your business. There are several different extensions, however, in which these files are saved. By understanding Quickbooks’s file extensions, you can take full advantage of this popular accounting software.
QBW
The QBW file extension is designed for company files. You should have a company file that contains all of your business’s financial information. Quickbooks supports the use of multiple company files. With that said, each business should have its own, unique company file. Accountants may create multiple companies — one for each business in their account. If you use Quickbooks strictly for your own business, though, you will only need a single company file. Regardless, company files created in Quickbooks use the QBW extension.
QBM
The QBM file extension is designed for portable files. A portable file is essentially a condensed version of your company file. It allows you to quickly transfer data between two or more places. Portable files contain logos, templates or similar types of unnecessary data. Rather, they only contain essential financial information. You can identify your portable file by looking for the QBM extension.
QBB
Another common file extension in Quickbooks is QBB. The QBB file extension is designed for backup files. More specifically, if you create a backup copy of your company file, Quickbooks will use this file extension for it. Quickbooks supports both manual and automatic backups. Manual and automatic backups are created by choosing “Back Up Company” under the “File” menu. You can then select the option to create backups manually or automatically. Regardless of which method you choose, Quickbooks will use the QBB for the file extension.
QBO
There’s also the QBO file extension. The QBO file extension is designed for bank statement files. Bank statement files are generated by Quickbooks using your bank account information. You can download transactions from your bank account, for example, which Quickbooks will automatically place inside of a QBO file. You can then import this file into your register. The QBO file extension is simply used for bank account statements such as this. Along with QBW, QBM and QBB, QBO is a common file extension used by Quickbooks.
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How to Use Advanced Reporting in Quickbooks
Advanced Reporting is a native feature in Quickbooks Enterprise. If you use this premium version of Intuit’s popular accounting software, you can take advantage of Advanced Reporting. It’s included as a native feature in Quickbooks Enterprise. Before using Advanced Reporting, though, there are a few things you should know.
What Is Advanced Reporting?
In case this is your first time hearing about it, you might be wondering what Advanced Reporting is exactly. Basically, it’s an optional feature that allows you to customize your reports. With Advanced Reporting, you can create custom reports that specifically include — or exclude — data. You will still be able to run traditional reports that follow Quickbooks’s predefined format. Advanced Reporting is simply an optional feature that gives you the freedom to run and create custom reports as well.
Steps to Using Advanced Reporting
Assuming you have an active subscription to Quickbooks Enterprise, you can use Advanced Reporting. First, however, you’ll need to enable this feature. Advanced Reporting is disabled by default. To enable it, you’ll have to contact the Quickbooks Desktop support center. When requested, they will enable Advanced Reporting in your account.
Once enabled, Advanced Reporting will allow you to customize the data in your reports. You can still run reports. Rather than using the standard formats, though, you can customize the data of these reports. The Quickbooks Library offers a plethora of customization tools, some of which include tables, charts, text and utilities. To customize a report, go to the Quickbooks Library and choose one of these tools.
Right-clicking on any data section of a report will allow you to customize it. Simply right-click the area that you want to customize and choose “Properties.” Quickbooks will then reveal information about how to customize it. You can choose the “Dimensions” tab to add groups or totals to the report. Alternatively, you can select “Expressions” to add a column to the report. When adding a column to the report, Quickbooks will reveal options for customizing tables and fields.
Quickbooks Enterprise offers more features than some of the lower-tiered versions of Intuit’s popular accounting system. Advanced Reporting is one such feature that’s included in Quickbooks Enterprise. It’s designed to help you create advanced reports. With Advanced Reporting, you can customize the data of your reports.
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