Q: How do I back up or restore my data?
Q: How do I write off a bad debt?
Q: How do I enter GST balance adjustments ?
Q: How do I set up Budgets and Budget Reports?

What reports will my accountant want ?


The exact reports that your accountant will want to see depends on the nature of your business and will vary from company to company. However, the list below should give an idea of the minimum information that your accountant is likely to require:

Profit and Loss:

Go to Reports and choose Profit and Loss. This report gives you a global view of your company's income, expenses, and net profit or loss over a specific period of time. You can also run more detailed variations of this report, for example a Previous Year Comparison which is like the standard profit and loss statement, but with one column for this year to date and a second column for last year to date.

Balance Sheet:

Go to Reports and choose Balance Sheet. This report shows the financial position of your business by listing assets, liabilities, and equity. You can also run more detailed variations of this report, for example a Comparison which has columns for today, a year ago, £ change, and % change.

Trial Balance:

Go to Reports and choose Other Reports then Trial Balance. This summarises your debits and credits, sub-totalled by each account on your chart of accounts. This report is most useful for people familiar with double-entry accounting.

General Ledger:

Go to Reports and choose Other Reports then General Ledger. This report lists month to date transactions, grouped and sub-totalled by each account on your chart of accounts. This report is similar to the transactions by account report. You can change this report to show columns for Debit and Credit rather than Amount by clicking on the Customise button and selecting the columns you wish to display.

Accounts Receivable - Open Invoices:

Go to Reports and choose A/R Reports then Open Invoices. This report lists each unpaid invoice, grouped and subtotalled by customer. An open invoice report can only show invoices that are open at today's date - you cannot go back and ask to see invoices that were open at the start of the year.

Accounts Payable - Unpaid Bills Detail:

Go to Reports and choose A/P Reports then Unpaid Bills Detail. This report lists each unpaid bill, subtotalled by vendor. An Unpaid Bills Detail report can only show bills that are open at today's date - you cannot go back and ask to see bills that were open at the start of the year.

Stock Valuation Summary:

Go to Reports and choose Stock Reports then Valuation Summary. For each stock item, this report shows the quantity on hand, average cost, asset value, sales price, retail value, % of total asset value, and % of retail value.


There are many more reports available in QuickBooks which can be customised to suit your business needs. If you would like to find out more information about customising and filtering reports, contact Jim by email or ph 07-847 7955;
5-10 minute calls are free of charge

Q: How do I back up or restore my data?

Backing Up Company Data

QuickBooks Backup compresses your company data into a compact file that has the same filename as your company with the extension QBB, rather than QBW.

back-up

Restoring Company Data

If your working data is damaged, your hard disk has malfunctioned, if you need to put the data on another computer, or for any reason you want your data to revert to the state it was in at an earlier date, you need to restore your data.

restore

Additional Notes

At PCSS we highly recommend that you back up your data regularly to protect against loss due to unexpected power failure, disk damage, or other mishap. Please consult your QuickBooks Users Manual for additional information regarding backing up.

Q: How do I write off a bad debt?

In order to clear a customer's balance for invoices that will never be paid:

1. Create a new item called Bad Debt . Make it an Other Charge type and leave the rate and GST blank. Assign it to an expense account called Bad Debt.

2. Go to Create Credit Memos and call up the Customer:Job for the invoice(s) you wish to write off.

3. Select the item "Bad Debt" and enter the NET amount to be written off.

4. Select the proper GST code so the total on the Credit Memo and the total amount to be written off match.

5. Click OK.

6. Go to Receive Payments, call up the Customer:Job and apply the credit to the proper invoice(s).

7. Click OK.

If you have any further questions on the above situation please do not hesitate to contact Jims QuickBooks Technical Support.


Q: How do I enter GST balance adjustments ?

Entering an opening balance for the GST Control account must be handled differently than other asset or liablility accounts. This is because there is no GST code associated with an opening balance entry and therefore won't show on the GST reports. It will show in the register however which can cause some confusion when comparing register balance to report balances.

You must enter a zero balance journal to make your reports match your register. Enter a journal like the example shown below to accomplish this:

Account Debit Credit GST GST Amount
dummy S -12.50
Opening Bal Equity 12.50

Select "show on VAT reports as" Input.

The GST Control register will reflect an increase of $12.50 and the net GST amount on a GST summary report will not be affected.

Income, Expense and GST Balance Adjustment

To update your books for previous periods that have no transactions entered but occured in your current financial year, you'll have to create another zero balance journal.

This example increases your year-to-date Sales income, Supplies expense and adjusts GST to reflect the net increase.

Account Debit Credit GST GST Amount
Supplies 50.00 S 6.25
Sales 100.00 S 12.50
Opening Bal Equity 56.25

Select "show on VAT reports as" Input.


The GST Control register reflects both lines of this cheque, an increase and decrease.



If you have any further questions on the above situation please do not hesitate to contact Jim's QuickBooks Support.

How do I set up Budgets and Budget Reports?

If you need to budget for either income, expense or estimated balances in QuickBooks we suggest that you use the 'Set up Budget screen' under the Activities menu.

Setting up Budgets:

You can set up budgets for either one or two of the three allowed criteria. Account, Customer:Job, or class. The reason you can only choose 1 or 2 of the 3 is because the budget reports that QuickBooks creates are strictly two dimensional reports and if you were to select information from all three fields QuickBooks would be unable to create an understandable report.

budget-setup

If you want to go back to a previous budget that you have created and saved you need to select 'Set up Budgets' from the 'Activities' menu and then select the same year and criteria that you selected for your original budget. When you have chosen the same information QuickBooks will display the budget amounts that you entered.

To delete a budget that you have previously set up and saved you need to bring up the budget figures by following the above process and then manually blank (delete) the amounts in each of the month fields.

Creating Budget Reports:

The budget reports in QuickBooks are 'two dimensional' reports. This mean that the reports require two information sources and two only. If there are more than two information sources or an information source is chosen that is not used the information on the report may not be correctly displayed.

These are the budget reports that you can choose from:

The 'dimensions' of the budget reports are displayed in the form of axis (x/y) or you could think of it as columns and rows (columns across the top and rows down the side)

When you create your budget reports it's a good idea to remember what criteria you selected when setting up your budgets originally in the 'Set up Budgets' screen. When you create a budget report you may need to click on the 'customise' button on the top menu bar of the report, (you may also want to check this if your figures are showing incorrectly.

customise budget

If you have created a budget report and the budget amounts are showing incorrectly you should check the date range that the report is running over. QuickBooks simply divides the total yearly amount of the budget you've set up by the date range of the report.

Example: If you set up a budget of $100.00 per month for 12 months the total budget figure is $1,200.00. If you then set the date range on the budget report to 'Today' it will show a budget figure of approximately 3.3. You are only running the report over a single day so it's approximately 1/365th of $1,200.00.

If you have any further questions on the above situation please do not hesitate to contact Jims QuickBooks Technical Support.