Question: In QuickBooks, do I set up my items as “non-inventory part” or “inventory part?” Answer: Most always, ad specialty transactions are of the “non-inventory part” variety. The items ordered are customized to our clients’ specifications—drop shipped directly to them, and we, the distributor, do not take physical possession. And in QuickBooks, these transactions are…
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Question: I want to be able to invoice and receive payments electronically from clients and have them entered automatically in QuickBooks. What are my options? Answer: Currently, the best two options you have are Intuit Merchant Services and a service that integrates with QuickBooks called “Bill&Pay.” Intuit Merchant Services, being a QuickBooks service, is the…
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Question: I need to change sales tax settings for a large number of my customers. Do I need to go into each customer to make the changes? Answer: No, fortunately! QuickBooks has a wonderful feature to save you time with that chore. Go to “Lists”>”Add/Edit Multiple List Entries”>”Select Customers” from the dropdown box at the…
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Instead of a question today, I’m going to pass along a tip from a client. I’m always interested in new ideas to simplify the accounting, bookkeeping and order management systems for ad specialty distributors. And recently, my client, Bruce Cunningham of Great Ideas in Santa Fe, N.M., shared an idea that reduces paper usage and…
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Question: What do you know about buying groups? Answer: There are variations of buying groups in our industry—from a couple of distributors banding together loosely to companies that offer other services and approaches. To answer this question fully, I went to Jamie Coggeshall, president of AIMastermind (AIM), a group that purely is a buying group.…
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Question: I have a vendor who has become a customer. QuickBooks will not let me use the same name. What do I do? Answer: You can use a variation of the name, such as “ABC Company” for the customer and “ABC Company Inc.” for the vendor. Alternatively, you can do something as simple as adding…
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Question: Why can’t I email out of my QuickBooks Premier 2013 anymore? Answer: “Software sunset.” Intuit, the company that owns QuickBooks, like other software providers, continually upgrades and improves its products. And, from time to time, it stops supporting the older software in favor of the more recent versions. The QuickBooks products have been evolving…
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Question: I am new to the business. Do you have any advice as to how to price items? Answer: Pricing is complex. On one hand, you want to maximize sales, but if you price items too low, you might end up doing lots of work and making very little profit. Also, if you are known…
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Question: I don’t like to show item numbers to my clients. Is there a way to avoid that in QuickBooks? Answer: Yes. You can customize templates to include only the fields you want and eliminate those you don’t. (And, it is a good idea to not show item numbers on customer forms, as it makes…
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Question: I use QuickBooks Premier. I have orders where copy or instructions are frequently the same. When I create these sales orders, is there a way to get these words onto the order without retyping them every time? Answer: Yes. You can save and reuse words or phrases that you use often by creating a…
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