QuickBooks Training Materials – Part 10

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We should be wrapping up our look at QuickBooks related 'Money-In' training by the time we are done with this article. Next, we can move on to another major section of QuickBooks training for your clients. 

Remember this content is designed to provide you with training materials you can use in working with your own QuickBooks Desktop clients. (Note: The representations made in this article are based upon QuickBooks Enterprise, not all features, functions or capabilities outlined herein maybe available to QuickBooks Pro or Premier users.)

Reviewing your Money-In

In this section of our training, we'll see how QuickBooks can help you get a clear picture of your sales and receivables.

Income Tracker

The Income Tracker is available by selecting Customers > Income Tracker. You can also access it from the Customer Center.

The Income Tracker makes it easy to find and work with your un-billed sales like Estimates and Sales Orders, unpaid sales, including open and overdue invoices, and your paid sales, which include payments and sales receipts. The paid items only include those paid within the last 30 days.

Each of the colored blocks of the Income Tracker is a filter. If you click one, it filters the list of transactions based upon the selection you make. For example, you can filter the list to see any active estimates by clicking on the Estimates section.

You can easily take action from this list. In the case of this example, just select an estimate and click the Action button to convert it to an Invoice, You can also mark any item as Inactive, Print or Email.

Income Tracker makes it easy to work on collecting past due invoices by simply clicking the overdue filter. You overdue invoices will appear along with the customer phone numbers, so you can give them a call or send them an email reminder. You can even customize your Email templates in the Preferences window.

Collections Center

The Collections Center can be accessed in the Customer Center. This feature allows you to work with your overdue invoices from the Income Tracker, so most of the Collection Center’s functionality has been replaced by the Income Tracker. Some users still prefer the Collection Center. 

If you don’t find the Collections Center in the Customer Center, you'll need to turn it on from the Company Preferences tab of the Sales & Customers section under your QuickBooks Preferences.

One of the additional functionalities of the Collections Center is the identification of invoices that are almost due, so you can send customers emails regarding those invoices before they are past due.

Income vs. Sales Reports

While Income Report are driven from data captured within the various "income accounts" set-up in your QuickBooks file, Sales reports are based upon the "sale of items." In other words, Income is account-driven reporting, while Sales is item-driven reporting. To get the most out of QuickBooks, all sales should be recorded using sales-type transaction forms that make use of items.

Item-based Reports

Sales do not appear on reports unless they're entered using Items. That means the sale must be entered via an Invoice, Sales Receipt or Statement Charge (or a Credit Memo if the item is being returned). If you enter sales directly into the Make Deposits window, Check Register or with Journal Entries, QuickBooks Sales Reports will not be accurate.

All the reports found under Reports > Sales are Item-based reports.

The Sales by Customer Detail report (shown at the top of the next page) gives you the details about what each customer bought. This report shows every line of every income transaction attributed to each Customer:Job.

QuickBooks offers custom fields for items and QuickBooks has the ability to run item-based reports filtered on the custom fields you set-up for your items.

The Filter below set in your Sales by Customer Detail report results in a much smaller portion of the original report before it was filtered. Here we're looking for specific text in one custom field. Note that we have also modified the header to display what's included in the report.

When the filter for the custom field Material is applied, after being set to Wood, the Sales by Customer Detail report becomes much more specific to our needs.

In the above case, after applying our filters, we're looking only at those Sales Details related to transactions involving Wood.

Sometimes we don't need or want all the details, we just want a summary of our Sales by Customer. In this case, the Sales by Customer Summary report is just what we're looking for.

Additional Sales Reports that you may find useful are the Sales by Ship To Address and Pending Sales reports.  Both of these are shown below.

Other Reports

There are numerous reports to provide insight into sales and receivables, but there are simply too many to review them all in this article. You will find them if you go to Reports > Company & Financial or Reports > Customers & Receivables.

Under Company & Financial reports you will find the Income by Customer Summary report. This report tells you how much is being earned from each customer. It shows the NET Income for each customer — sales less any expenses attributed to that customer.

There is also a detailed version of the same report showing all the various transaction details making up the customer's total.

If you wanted to see only the income, without related expenses on the Income by Customer Summary (or Detail) report, you can customize the report by selecting Accounts, and then selecting Income and Other Income Accounts. 

When this filter is applied to the report(s), the Customer's information displays the gross income in the amount column.

Under Customers & Receivables you will find all of your Accounts Receivable related reports including:

Open Invoices report - this report shows all unpaid invoices and un-applied payments or credits. The information is grouped by customer and job.

Customer Balance Detail report - this report helps you keep track of each customer’s account balance and to quickly find out how much any particular customers owes you.

Accounts Receivable Aging Summary report - this report tracks the past due amounts for each customer, showing the amount owed in the current billing period and any unpaid balances from previous billing periods.

Accounts Receivable Aging Detail reports – if we are going to have an A/R Aging Summary report then we are going to have an A/R Aging Detail report that shows you all of the details of the invoices making up your accounts receivable on an aging basis. You define the billing periods you want included in the displayed aging.

Customer Balance Summary report – provides you with another way of looking at how much each of your customers owe you at present.

Memorizing any Report

Whenever you change the settings for a report (modify it), you can memorize the report with the new settings and save it in the Memorized Report List. When you want to create a similar report, you can click the Memorized Report List to find it.

Note: QuickBooks Desktop memorizes the report settings, not the data in the report.

When you display a memorized report, QuickBooks applies the settings you memorized, but displays the most current data. For example, if the report date is set for the period Last Month and you memorize the report in September but

run the report again in December, the recalled report will have data for November, not August.

To memorize a report:

1) Open the Report Center from the QuickBooks Desktop Navigation Bar.

2) Open the report you want to modify and memorize.

3) After you have customized the report, click Memorize at the top of the report.

4) If you have changed an existing memorized report, indicate whether you want to replace the earlier report (under the same name) or create a new memorized report (under a new name).

5) In the Memorize Report window, enter a title for the report.

6) If you want to assign the report to a memorized report group, choose Save in Memorized Report Group and choose the group from the drop-down list. (You must already have the group set up on your Memorized Report List. You cannot create a new group here.)

7) Click OK.

Next time we will begin our exploration of 'Money-Out' and the training materials I use for that critical QuickBooks functionality.