Greetings The CPA911 Newsletter May 2010 ------ > Contents < ------ QuickBooks Tips Update R6 for 2010 New Poll - VOTE! Contact Info Subscription Info ------ > QuickBooks TIPS < ------ *** Tracking Progress Invoicing *** A frequent question from readers is, "How do I track the invoices against estimates, including the line items on the invoices"? You have two ways to do this. To track progress invoicing for a specific estimate, open the estimate and click the History icon at the top of the transaction window. All of the invoices linked to the estimate are listed and you can open any individual invoice to see the line items. To track progress invoicing for a group of estimates, choose Reports, Jobs, Time & Mileage, Job Progress Invoices vs. Estimates. You can modify the report to filter by date range, customer, or any other criteria. Then double-click each listing to drill down to the details. *** Fix Deposits Made to Wrong Bank Account *** A reader wrote to ask how to correct an error he made. His online merchant card report shows the deposits for each day, and he uses Make Deposits to select the transactions and deposit them in the bank. However, he didn't remember that his credit card sales were being deposited to a different bank account. He wants to know how to move the deposits to the correct bank account without undoing all the customer payments he received. To change a deposit to a different bank, open the bank account register for the account you used to make the deposit. Right-click the deposit entry and choose Edit Deposit. Then change the bank account by selecting the appropriate account from the drop-down list at the top of the window. *** Memorized Invoices Don't Update Price Changes *** Readers write to complain that when they update an item price their memorized invoices don't automatically pick up the new price. When they have a hundred or more memorized invoices this is a real problem. You have to define the word "memorized" literally. A memorized invoice is frozen, the data that's in the invoice when you memorize it doesn't ever change. If you have a great many invoices to send to the same customers each month, memorizing invoices for every customer works as long as nothing changes (the item price, the terms, the customer's address, and so on). If your memorized invoices contain items that are likely to change periodically, consider using a third-party add-on for automatically creating invoices. You can find add-ons at http://marketplace.intuit.com/. We recommended an excellent invoice creation program from Karl Irvin (a developer we rate highly and never hesitate to recommend) to a client who runs a condominium association and they've been extremely pleased with it. Unlike memorized transactions, you don't have to create a transaction for every single customer being invoiced; instead, a "model" invoice is automatically applied to all customers you select, and all the data (current price, current terms, current billing address, etc) is applied when you generate the invoices. You can learn more about this application at Karl Irvin's website at http://www.q2q.us/idoverview.htm. *** Major Deficiency in Audit Trail *** We occasionally do forensic consulting that exposes a problem in the QuickBooks Audit Trail feature. The problem is that when a user is removed, the user name is removed from the audit trail report (the name linked to the transaction is replaced with "Unknown User"). Since it's common to remove a user you've caught stealing, when you are developing evidence to pursue an embezzlement case this makes the audit trail pretty much useless. When one business owner called QuickBooks support to complain, the support technician recommended that the business owner create a rule that when a user changes his/her password they have to notify you of the new password. Then, when the user leaves you can change the password to secure the file against that person instead of removing the user. The flaw in that solution is that a user who is stealing from you probably won't hesitate to keep his/her password a secret. Existing data in an audit trail should never be changed; if it is changed it's not an audit trail. We consider this a serious design flaw (in fact, we'd be comfortable calling it a bug). *** Follow Up on Last Month's Newsletter Tips *** In our last newsletter we directed you to an article on our web site that explains how to fix vendor bills paid with direct disbursements. Several readers wrote to remind us that when you remove the direct disbursement check and replace it with the bill payment you must pay attention to the "cleared" status of the check you're removing. If a deleted check had been cleared during reconciliation, your opening balance will be incorrect when you next reconcile the account. We've updated the article to reflect a fix for this problem: http://www.cpa911.com/read_article.asp?ID=147 Thanks to our alert, knowledgeable readers for this correction. *** Transferring a QuickBooks License *** Many users have asked us whether it's possible to transfer a QuickBooks license to another business (most of the users who write to ask this have decided not to use QuickBooks, are upgrading to more powerful accounting software, or want to make a contribution of their previous version to a nonprofit after they upgrade). You can transfer a license by filling out a form on the following web page: http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/Support/transfer/transfer.aspx Intuit charges $25.00 as a "processing fee" for this service. ------ > R6 Update for QuickBooks 2010 < ------ Intuit has released Update R6 for QuickBooks 2010. This update fixes some problems and also makes changes resulting from user feedback. The update is available for manual download now, and should be available for automatic updates from within QuickBooks in several days. More information is available at: http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Pages/KnowledgeBaseArticle/898561 ------ > New Poll < ------ We have a new poll on our home page (www.cpa911.com) in which we're continuing our survey of the changes/fixes you want most. As with the previous polls in this survey, the poll questions reflect those things we most frequently hear about from readers. Here are the results of our last poll of changes you want to see: Separate settings for tax rate, REP, etc. for jobs (instead of using the data in the customer record)= 59% Turn off automatically inserted check numbers = 27% Print Vendor Bills = 14% ------ > CONTACT INFO < ------ Copyright 2010 CPA911. Comments or questions? Write to: editor@cpa911.com. Visit our web site: http://www.cpa911.com. ------ > SUBSCRIPTION INFO < ------ You can forward this newsletter to anyone, as long as you forward it in its entirety. If you received a forwarded copy, subscribe for yourself (it's free) at http://www.cpa911.com/newsletter.asp.