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D-1. I do sub-contract work and
need to bill one customer for many different (3rd party) jobs and work sites. Do
I setup each job site as a customer?
No, you should only setup one customer number for the company you do
sub-contract work for. This is who will pay you and who you should send the
invoices and statements to. The rule to follow here is, if the person/company
will not be paying you directly, do not set them up as a customer. They don't
owe you the money and you will never be billing them.
What you want to do is setup the company who will be paying you as a customer.
Then, for each job you do for them, prepare an invoice and enter the job
location, persons name, work order number or brief description of the work done
in the statement comment field on the invoice. The statement comment field is
very important here as it only appears on the customer's statement. When you run
the statement for your customer, you will see the date of each job, the work
location, the amount you charged, what the customer has paid you and what their
current account balance is. You can attach the copy of each invoice to the
statement if your customer wants backup detail. If you do not want to use the
statements, you can send your customer the invoices instead. Use the
Notes/Comments/Reference field on the invoice to enter the work location and/or
job description. This field prints on the invoice.
If you use parts or other supplies, you can set them up as products and bill
your customer using the Product Invoice. If you would rather type a long
description of what type of work you did, you can use the memo invoice. It's
easy to bill third-party charges with our billing system!
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D-2. I charge all my work to one
product code when billing my customers, but later, I want to move the charges
from that product code and split the charges against different product codes.
Can I do this with your system?
Yes, Accountants call this a journal entry. Journal entries allow you to
transfer charges from one product (project) code to another, or split the
charges over several codes. An example would be if you did consulting and used a
"consulting" product code when you bill your clients. But for your own
bookkeeping purposes, you would like to allocate the charges for the consulting
product code to what type of work you actually did, like computer consulting,
business consulting, tax consulting, labor, parts, etc. You could use these
product codes when you bill your client, but if you don't want your client to
see these individual charges, you will need to do a journal entry.
Simply create a Product Invoice for a ZERO amount. You should also setup a
special customer number called "Journal Entry", so you don't enter these
invoices on your customer accounts. Then enter a negative amount for the product
code you want to take the money away from and then add a line item for each code
you want to split the money over. For example, if you charged a client $50.00
using the "consulting product code" and want to split the money evenly over a
"labor" code and a "parts" code, you would enter an invoice for zero amount and
add three line items to that invoice. The first line would be for -50.00 to the
"consulting" code, the second for 25.00 to the "labor" code and the last for
25.00 to the "parts" code. The total of these lines equal zero and will not
affect your accounts receivable balance. When you run the Sales Report, sorted
by product code, you will see the journal entries moving the money from one code
to the others. Another example would be if you book sales commissions. You would
not want your customers to see the commission entries on their invoices, you
would want to use journal entries to reclassify the charges.
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D-3. How do I write-off a bad (unpaid) debt?
An unpaid (bad) debt becomes a business
write-off. You can generate the supporting documentation while using our
software for such a transaction. To write-off a bad debt, simply post the
payment to that invoice to mark it paid in full. Then run your Payment Register
and circle that payment amount as a write-off and put that report in your tax
folder for documentation purposes. It's easy to make adjustments using our
software! In any accounting system, a write-off for bad debts effects the bottom
line of the profits. In our program, the adjustment amount appears as a payment
on your payment register, recorded as a payment write-off adjustment on your
taxes, providing an audit trail and documentation for tax purposes.
As an alternative, you could simply delete the invoice and be done with it,
however, that would leave no audit trail. It's up to you how you want to process
these transactions. We have some tools to help you. We have an Audit trail
feature (General Settings in Company Manager) which does not allow
deleting/editing invoices, but requires an adjustment entry (the audit trail) to
be created. You can also password-protect your company settings so that they
cannot be changed without the password. Audit trails and tax documentation are
easy to create using our software!
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D-4. Unit price for same
product/different sales price...how?
Suppose you sell perfume by the ounce. If
they buy more than 10 ounces, you give them a different sales price. How do you
setup the product code unit price? That depends on what information you
want the system to give you back. Yes, you could setup product codes with
different prices, but that would also give you different stock balances. If it
is the same product, sold at different prices, you really only need one product
code. Then you would simply change the sales price on the invoice. With
Inventory Pro, you can also change the cost price on the invoice and your Profit
Report will pick up all the pricing variances. In this example, your unit of
measure is ounces, and you can change your sales price depending on the number
of ounces sold. Your stock report will always show the number of ounces you
currently have in stock. You can also set target product stock levels, and the
re-order report will use these values to tell you when it is time to order more
product. If you purchase the product by the gallon, you would add 128 ounces to
your stock level, for each gallon purchased. Your cost price would be your
purchase price divided by 128 ounces. The key here is to setup your product unit
price and stock level to what you want to see on your inventory report (i.e.,
gallons, ounces, feet, yards, units, etc.), and to use when setting up your
re-order and target stock level watches. Since you can over-ride the cost and
sales price at the invoice level, you have complete control over your inventory
pricing options.
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D-5. How do I handle down-payment to apply to an
invoice?
This would be a deposit on account, using the Payment Wizard. Deposits don't do
anything except reduce the customers account balance. When you do the final
invoice and the customer sends you the final payment (less the deposit), post
the final payment, offsetting the invoice and the deposit to equal the final
amount owed. For example, the customer gives you $50 and you enter it as a
deposit on account. When you finish the work, you invoice them for $75 and they
send you a check for $25, the balance due. Post the check of $25 and offset the
$75 invoice and the $50 deposit. Together they equal $25 and then click the post
button to mark both paid. Then you can run the Customer Statement to see the
transactions and how they are offset by the program. See the online help for the
Payment Wizard for deposits on account.
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D-6. How to track inventory used by a Job or Project?
You would need to do an invoice to remove all materials used from stock. You can
use a dummy customer number for this, which could be the truck or project
number. You can do as many invoices as you need to move all the items. When the
job is done, run the statement of account for that customer number to see the
total material charges, invoice numbers and dates. You can also run the Sales
Report sorted by customer number to see all the individual items.
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D-7. Can I do Quotes?
Sure. Currently our customers setup separate
companies to do their quotes in, so they can change the form headings to say
"QUOTE" instead of "INVOICE" and so their quotes don't get mixed up with their
invoices. You can also run the reports on your quotes this way.
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D-8. Do I ever need to rebuild my data files?
The only time you really need to rebuild data files is if you have a power
outage or Windows locks up on you and your program does not work properly. It is
also necessary to rebuild your data files after you restore from a backup disk.
Also, we have built-in error checking and our program will prompt you if the
files need to be rebuilt. We have customers who never have to use this option,
and we have some that must do it often. When you rebuild the data files, the
index files are rebuilt. We use the index files to find information quickly and
they are vital to the operation of our program. As a general rule of thumb, you
should not need to rebuild the data files unless our program complains with some
sort of error message, then rebuilding the files is the first thing to try.
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D-9. Why does the Repeat Billing Wizard still
generate an invoice for an inactive account?
Marking a customer inactive will not stop a
repeat billing that you have setup. It is only meant to alert you that this
customer has special handling or items that need to be taken care of. You need
to delete the type "R" Master Repeat Billing invoice to stop a repeat billing
from generating future invoices. To delete a repeat billing master (type R ),
simply click on the invoice in Invoice Manager so it is highlighted and then
click the trash can button.
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D-10. I have a customer name longer than 35
characters. What do I do?
35 characters is the limit for the name and address fields. Split the company
name into two lines, like:
Big Long Company Name Incorporated
of North America
Also note that the above example could have been
placed on 1 line if you had entered like this:
Big Long Company Name Inc. of NA
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D-11. Can I fax my invoices/statements through
my computer to my clients?
Yes, but you will need to have the fax software installed on your computer. When
you have fax software properly setup, you will see another printer in your
Windows Print Setup, usually called "fax" or something similar. With the "fax"
printer set as your default Windows printer, all printed output is sent to the
fax instead of the printer.
All you need to do is use the printer setup option on Billing Manager's File
Menu, to set your default printer as your fax program and then print an invoice
as you normally would. Windows will then re-route the invoice to your fax
software instead of the printer. The fax printer will remain the default Windows
printer until you either exit the billing program or use the Printer Setup
option to change default printers.
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D-12. Can I charge multiple taxes
on my invoices?
Yes, we have many customers who must charge
multiple taxes. Setup as many additional taxes as you need by creating product
codes for each additional tax type. When you need to add an additional tax type
to the invoice, simply add that product code as a new line item on your invoice
and enter the tax amount in the unit price field. When you run your Sales Report
sorted by product code, the taxes will be sorted together and sub-totaled for
you for tax reporting purposes. Also note that there is a calculator picture
button on the invoice so you can easily calculate the additional tax amount.
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D-13. How do I handle GST?
Our program can support the GST and any other
tax you may need to calculate. Here are your options:
1. GST INCLUSIVE: Setup your product codes at the GST INCLUSIVE price and add a
sales message at the bottom of your PO’s/invoices which includes a notation of
how the GST is calculated. Using the Sales Message tab option in your company
setup, you can create your own message to appear at the bottom of your
PO’s/invoices. You can indicate how the GST was calculated here.
2. GST EXCLUSIVE: You have two options:
A. Setup your product codes at the GST EXCLUSIVE price and mark each item as
taxable or non-taxable and then set your system tax rate to the GST rate. The
tax is automatically calculated for each item marked taxable and added to the
“tax” field on the invoice. Using this method, you do not
have to manually calculate the GST and the tax amounts that Billing Manager
includes on it’s reports, will reflect the GST. If you need to add an additional
tax for something else, you can add it as an additional line item on the
invoice. Also, since you mark the items taxable/non-taxable, you control which
items are used (included) when the program automatically calculates the GST.
This method also eliminates calculation errors as it is calculated by Billing
Manager and not done “manually”. You can also change the tax caption to read
“GST” by editing the company setup and selecting the Company Address/Tax tab
option. The tax caption is located under the tax rate setting.
B. Setup your product codes at the GST EXCLUSIVE price and then add PST as a
product code (set it up for a zero amount) then add it to the invoice as a line
item, then click the calculator to calculate the tax amount, based on the
invoice total showing and enter that into the unit price field for that line
item. This way, all PST (or any OTHER taxes you need) will sort and sub-total on
your Sales Report. This is the key, seeing the totals for each tax type on your
report. Our program will only automatically calculate one tax rate, but you can
set up and handle as many taxes as you need, using the product codes method. We
have some customers who have 3 and 4 extra taxes and handle it this way.
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