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Part of running a small business is making, sending, and receiving invoices. It’s like a paper trail of exchanged goods and/or services during a set period of time, almost like a receipt. The invoice lists the services completed or goods sold (or in the works), and how much is owed by the person who purchased from you, a.k.a. the buyer.

Your invoice should contain some basic components like the word INVOICE at the top; personal information,including your name/company name, address, email address, and phone number so the buyer can reach you; an invoice number to keep accurate records of invoices and when goods or services were exchanged; the date of the sold good or service; a description of the good(s) or service(s); andother helpful informationlike quantity ordered and the grand total of their order (including any taxes or discounts specified). 

If you do your own bookkeeping with QuickBooks, you may have noticed the pesky little Undeposited Funds account along the way. This account confuses people, but we promise it’s for a good purpose! If you’ve just happened to ignore this feature of QB, you’re doing yourself a disservice. 

Your Undeposited Funds account will act as a middleman between your invoices and your bank deposits. When you receive payments from invoices, they’ll be held in this temporary Undeposited Funds account until they’re deposited into your bank account. When you receive a payment, you’ll simply choose Undeposited Funds from the “Deposit to” dropdown menu, this way you know which payments need to be deposited (it should already be the default option). 

When using the Undeposited Funds account, you can enter single or group payments. However, it’s vital to remember that your QuickBooks account should match what’s happening in real life in your bank account. If your bank recorded group payments as one single deposit, then your books should match this. For single invoice payments, the Undeposited Funds account may not be necessary and you can easily skip this step without causing issues in your books. But, to ensure everything is right, it’s never a bad idea, even if it is a couple extra steps. Come time to reconcile your accounts, you’ll be thankful when everything matches up. 

The Undeposited Funds folder isn’t as mysterious as it seems. It’s purpose is to streamline and make for a more efficient invoicing process. It keeps track of all

In a perfect world, all of your clients would pay you on time, which, in result, would help you manage your cash flow more effectively. That’s not always the case, though. Not every client will pay you on time - that’s the harsh truth of it. What steps should you take when an invoice remains late and unpaid?

We always say you should be paying constant attention to your books, so we decided to break it down based on what you should be doing daily, weekly, and monthly. What you do in these short periods of time can impact the overall state of your books and your knowledge of your company’s financial standing. The more often you work in your books, the less time you’ll have to spend on them come the year’s end. You’ll thank yourself come December! If not, we’re here to help.

Money that goes in and out of a business is referred to as cash flow. That’

Need to write off an uncollectible invoice but don’t know how? It’s sad but sometimes people don’t pay you what is owed.  You need to get these numbers out of your books, but you also want to track this correctly, so what do you do? Here are step-by-step directions to do this in QuickBooks:  

Step 1.  In your Chart of Accounts create an Income Account called “Bad Debt.”

Step 2.  In your Items create an item called “Bad Debt-Uncollectible” and link it to “Bad Debt” (the account you created in Step 1).

Step 3.  Create a Credit Memo in your QuickBooks and use the Item “Bad Debt-Uncollectible” (that you created in Step 2) with the amount that you need to write off.

Step 4.  Apply this Credit Memo to the invoice(s) that are uncollectible.

Now when you look at your P & L report, you’ll see a negative number in the Income Area, labeled as “Bad Debt.” Although it seems unusual to have a negative number for Income, this is correct.

Here is an example of what is happening in the background:

Consulting Services Income            $500.00

Bad Debt                                              -$500.00

                    Total:                                      $0.00

Step 5.  Make a note to never do business with this individual/company ever again!

Intuit has released information about the new features coming with QuickBooks 2018. The scheduled release date is September 26. Although we’re excited for all updates coming in the latest version, here are the top five we are most anxious for:

1. Multi-Monitor Capability

The 2018 version now offers support for up to three monitors. This will allow you to move a task/report/register from your one monitor to another monitor. For example, you can have two reports open at once - one on each monitor. Or you might have an invoice on one monitor while you have a bill open on another monitor. This will be a definite enhancement to your productivity.