Ask the Accountant… Question: I am thinking of hiring a bookkeeper who knows QuickBooks Online, but I use QuickBooks Premier. Are they the same, only one is online? Answer: No, QuickBooks Online and QB Premier are very different programs. They do not look alike at all and have very different functionalities. When hiring a bookkeeper,…
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Intuit will be offering QB Desktop products via subscription-only, beginning with the 2022 releases. They (except for QB Accountant) will no longer be available by way of a one-time payment as they have in the past. QB Desktop products include QB Pro, Premier and Enterprise. Enterprise was converted to a subscription product two years ago…
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Ask the Accountant… Question: Do I need account numbers in addition to account names? If so, are there particular numbers? Answer: I like using account numbers with account names for accounts in the chart of accounts (COA) because it makes it easier to distinguish one account from another more readily, as some account names are…
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A chart of accounts is a list of financial accounts set up in a company to record financial transactions. Accounts fall into six general categories. When your financial transactions are recorded into your accounting system, they are assigned or recorded into the appropriate categories…
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QuickBooks Online (QBO) is one of several options from QuickBooks. It is very different from QB Premier or Enterprise, which are more robust and better suit our industry. For instance, QBO does not have customer sales orders, which are pivotal in QB Premier and Enterprise. That being said…
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Ask the Accountant… Question: I need to charge my customers 7.5% in sales tax, but 6% is for the state and 1.5% is for my county. How do I handle that in QB Desktop so I can file with the state, but just show the 7.5% to my customer? Answer: Sales tax is complicated, and…
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Ask the Accountant… Question: What report will tell me what orders are in progress with suppliers? Answer: Open purchase orders in QB Premier are orders that have been submitted to suppliers and are in production. Once you receive the invoice from the supplier, you adjust the purchase order to match the supplier invoice exactly, and…
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Ask the Accountant… Question: How can I find out if and when I emailed an invoice to a client out of QB Premier? Answer: QuickBooks has a nice feature on its invoices called “See History.” It is a button on the top left of the invoice template just to the right of the word “Invoice.”…
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Ask the Accountant… Question: I had some accounting in college. Can I enter transactions in QuickBooks as Journal Entries instead of learning the software? Answer: QuickBooks is designed to follow their designated flow so that your entries are recorded correctly. By doing this, the debits and credits are recorded automatically in the background of the…
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Ask the Accountant… Question: I have been using my personal checking account and credit card for my business transactions. Are there any problems with doing that? Answer: Yes! You are creating myriad problems by using personal accounts for both personal and business use. The term for this is “commingling of funds.” The first problem is…
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