Question: Is there a way to view my profit by type of customer?
Answer: QuickBooks has a function within it to allow segmenting your business in reports. It is called “classes.” You can create a set of classes, which you enter into QuickBooks and apply to customers, vendors or other categories. For instance, you can have “hospital customers,” “school customers,” etc.
You can run income statements by class. I don’t recommend running balance sheets by class, because I’ve seen too many times when it miscalculates, which is more harm than benefit.
One other word of caution is to set up classes for one purpose, such as customers or suppliers. Do not mix sets of classes, or your reports by class will become meaningless.
QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise can be modified to better serve ad specialty distributors. Harriet Gatter is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, a former accounting professor and a former ad specialty distributor. She advises ad specialty distributors to use QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, often in conjunction with other industry-specific software, to manage the complexities of the ad specialty business, with the results being time saved, errors eliminated and an overall accurate accounting of your business. Contact her at [email protected]
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