The system provides several approaches for recording sales, depending on a company’s business practices. Businesses can:
§ Record cash receipts for over the counter businesses
§ Track invoices and payments as a complete Accounts Receivable system
§ Enter or import sales and cash receipts transactions as double-sided entries
A number of methods are provided for review and reporting.
Cash Receipts (Cash Deposits Option)
The Cash Receipts method is the simplest way of recording sales, and bypasses the Sales module to best suit over-the-counter businesses. You can easily record sales and cash deposits without requiring customer names. You can record deposit slip numbers, and if the same deposit slip number is used multiple times, it is combined as a single entry for use in the bank reconciliation.
For review or audit, you can attach or save a scanned image of your deposit slip with each cash receipts entry.
Customer Invoicing
This method uses the Sales Module to track invoices, receivables, credits, and payments.
Set up invoices using the Preferences and Customize Invoices features available from the Sales menu. These screens allow you to fully customize the format of your invoices and the information on them.
From the Preferences screen, identify:
§ Default accounts for sales activity, each of which has been defined with the appropriate category when you set up the accounts,
§ Fields to include on invoices (such as PO number, shipping method, freight, and several user-defined fields),
§ Whether the company collects sales tax and the default sales tax location
§ An annual rate for finance charges.
On the Customize Invoices screen, you can customize the appearance of your invoices, including the columns to display and whether to print your company’s logo on invoices and customer statements.
Once you have set up invoices, define customers and products.
Use the Customers tab of the Customer Center screen to define customers for easy selection on invoices. If the customer is taxable, you can enter their sales tax information if it differs from the company default. You can either enter customer information on screen or import it from QuickBooks, Peachtree, or an Excel spreadsheet.
Use the Products/Services screen to describe products or services, enter unit prices for each product or service, indicate whether the product or service is taxable, and enter a revenue account to be credited when the product or service is sold. In addition, if you use inventory features to track products, you enter inventory information for the product. Like customers, products and services can also be entered on screen or imported.
Properly setting up your invoices, customers, and products or services, makes invoice creation a simple matter of selecting a customer and the products or services to invoice.
Fields on your invoices allow you to specify additional information such as discounts to apply, departments or jobs to which to apply the invoice, if applicable, sales representatives, and freight or finance charges. If necessary, you can adjust sales tax information on any invoice or for any customer, and you can make any invoice a recurring invoice.
In addition, you can create an estimate for any customer, and then easily convert the estimate to an invoice. If you need to recover expenses from a customer, you can generate a customer invoice from the Expenses module as you enter the vendor’s bill.
To help you track sales tax liabilities, you can identify any vendor as a Sales Tax Agent. Invoices taxed to that state are then recorded on the Sales Tax Report for tracking purposes.
Payments and Credits: You can record payments either through the Cash Receipts or Payments screens:
§ Cash Receipts (Customer Invoices option): Lets you enter invoice payments and record deposit slip numbers. You can optionally record undeposited customer payments, and then record the deposit later that period.
§ Customer Invoice Payments: Enter customer payments, which are applied by default to the oldest invoice first. You can write off the invoice in whole or part, or enter a discount at the time you record the payment. If the customer has no open invoices, the payment is treated as an advance deposit to be applied to any invoice you later generate. For review or audit, you can attach, or save, a scanned image of your customer’s check with each cash receipts entry.
§ Credit Memos: You can enter credit memos either to adjust an invoice in whole or in part, or as open credit.
Transaction Entry and Import
To record double-entry transactions, you can record activity to the Sales or Cash Receipts Journals. You can either select customers from a saved list or enter payor names on the fly, and you can designate departments or job costing information for each transaction.
As an alternative to recurring invoices, you can set up Transaction Templates for journals you enter repeatedly.
If you maintain sales transactions using another software product but use the system for analysis and financials, you can import transactions from QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, or a properly formatted Excel file.
On-Screen Review
On-screen lists are provided in a number of modules to allow you to review and edit individual items such as invoices, payments and receipts, bills, estimates, customers and vendors, products or services, and inventory items and adjustments.
The Find Transactions screen lets you search for any transaction using a variety of filter criteria.
From the Journals screen, an on-screen version of the Transaction Journals Report, you can drill down from any line to the originating transaction. The Sales Transactions Summary lets you review invoices, credit memos, and payments for any selected customer, and drill down to the underlying transaction.
Reporting
The Reports module provides a variety of reports to track sales and customer activity:
§ General Ledger: Displays all activity for a single account or multiple accounts.
§ Transaction Journals: Lists all activity for a selected journal, for all offset accounts, or for a single account.
§ Departmental Transactions: Tracks all activity for a single department or all departments.
§ Cash Register: Lists all cash transactions, such as deposits.
§ Customer List: Displays customer names, phone numbers, and addresses.
§ Customer Statement: Prints a statement for a selected customer.
§ Finance Charges: Displays overdue amounts and finance charges billed to customers.
§ Sales Tax Liability: Displays sales tax liability for any states for which sales tax has been collected.
§ Accounts Receivable Aging: Tracks receivables to show which invoices are overdue.
§ Invoice Register: Displays all customer invoices, credit memos, and payments.
§ Sales Report: Displays all sales and credit memos. Activity can be grouped by customer, product/service, or sales rep, and the report can provide a quick overview of your best performers in each category.
§ Customer Balances: Compares invoiced amounts and balances due for each customer.
§ Products and Services: Lists information for all products and services.