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What Is a Sales Tax Item and How Should I Use One?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

A sales tax item is a special type of Item, the list of goods and services that you sell. It is used to specify the sales tax rate and the tax authority collecting it that will be charged on each invoice.

See our article on all of the Item types supported by QuickBooks for more information.

Sales tax items can be grouped into another special type of item, a sales tax group, to combine multiple sales tax items on a single invoice.

You should create 1 sales tax item for each tax authority for which you collect tax.

Sales tax items are maintained on the Lists->Items menu. There is a secondary method to maintain sales tax items by visiting the Edit->Preferences menu and choosing the Add sales tax item… button on the Company Preferences tab of the Sales Tax submenu.

Primary Method to Maintain Sales Tax Items

Secondary Method to Maintain Sales Tax Items

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Preferences Sales Tax Items

You can specify the default sales tax item for new customers in the Preferences window. To do so, use the pull down on the Your most common sales tax item selection.

When you add or edit a customer, you can use a sales tax item to specify that customer’s default tax rate. The sales tax item is on the Additional Info tab in the New and Edit Customer windows.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 New Customer Sales Tax Item

When an invoice is created in the Create Invoices window, the sales tax item can be entered for the overall invoice. This value defaults to the sales tax item for that customer, but it can be changed for this invoice only. For example, this capability could be used to apply a different tax rate on a single invoice for a shipment to a location different from the normal location of a taxable customer.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Invoices Sales Tax Item

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What Is a Sales Tax Code and How Should I Use One?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

A sales tax code is a list item that is used to set the overall taxable or non-taxable status of both customers and items (goods or services).

You should use sales tax codes to identify a customer, such as a reseller, from which you don’t collect sales taxes, or to identify goods and services that aren’t taxable even to customers who are otherwise taxable.

Sales tax codes are maintained on the Lists->Sales Tax Codes menu. There is a secondary method to maintain sales tax codes by visiting the the Edit->Preferences menu and choosing the Company Preferences tab on the Sales Tax submenu.

Primary Method to Maintain Sales Tax Codes

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Sales Tax Code List

Secondary Method to Maintain Sales Tax Codes

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Preferences Sales Tax Codes

There are only 2 types of sales tax codes: taxable and non-taxable.

If a customer is marked with a non-taxable code, all invoices for that customer are non-taxable. If an item is marked as non-taxable, no sales taxes will be charged for that item even for a customer who otherwise pays sales taxes.

When you add or edit a customer, you can use a sales tax code to specify that customer’s overall taxable status. The sales tax code is on the Additional Info tab in the New and Edit Customer windows.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 New Customer Sales Tax Code

When an invoice is created in the Create Invoices window, the sales tax code can be entered for each line item on the invoice and for the overall invoice. These values default to the sales tax codes for the item and customer, but they can be changed for this invoice only. For example, this capability could be used to eliminate sales taxes on a single invoice for an out-of-state shipment to an otherwise taxable customer.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Invoices Sales Tax Code

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How Do I Collect and Track Sales Tax?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

The first step to collect and track sales tax in QuickBooks is to enable the preference to do so.

On the Edit->Preferences menu, select the Company Preferences tab on the Sales Tax submenu.

Click Yes on the Do you charge sales tax? preference.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Preferences Sales Tax

Once the preference is set, you use:

sales tax codes to specify whether a customer or item is or is not taxable
sales tax items to specify the sales tax applicable to a customer or invoice
sales tax groups to combine multiple sales tax items into a combined rate for a customer or invoice

To collect and track sales tax, you’ll need to create at least 1 sales tax item, which you can do directly from the Preferences window.

If you are changing your sales tax preference after you’ve already created customers, inventory, or non-inventory parts, you’ll be given the opportunity to change the tax status of those existing customers and items. When the Updating Sales Tax window appears, choose what you’d like to update and click Ok.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Updating Sales Tax

This update process will update all customers and all items that are either an inventory part or non-inventory part, so make your decision to update carefully. Decide based on the characteristics for the bulk of your customers or inventory items, because the exceptions will have to be reviewed and changed individually.

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How Do I Choose the Adjustment Account When Adjusting Inventory Quanity or Value On Hand?

Chief Mechanic · September 11, 2010 ·

The adjustment account you choose depends on why you need to adjust inventory and how much detail you want in your GL.

Quantity adjustments can occur as a result of several common business situations, such as theft or discovery of damaged goods that have become unsaleable. If you want a great deal of detail in your GL, you can create adjustment accounts for each type of adjustment.

Typically, the adjustment account you enter will be an expense account for negative adjustments; for positive adjustments, you may want to choose an income account. Unless your general ledger has different accounts for different types of inventory variances, such as defects and shortages, we recommend assigning all inventory adjustments to the same GL account to provide for consistent reporting and to simplify tracking transactions.

In the screen shot below, we’ve selected GL account # 69000, Miscellaneous expenses. However, this account selection won’t provide much detail to allow us to manage inventory adjustments at the financial statement level. If your inventory adjustments are frequent enough or material enough, you may want to create a separate expense account for inventory adjustments. For even more detail, that account could have multiple sub-accounts. Adjustments would be recorded to these sub-accounts based on why inventory was adjusted.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Inventory Adjustment for Quantity On Hand

When you enter a negative quantity adjustment, the inventory asset account (shown on the Edit Item window) for the item you are adjusting is credited (i. e., decreased), and the expense account that you entered as the adjustment account is debited (i. e., increased). For positive adjustments, the debits and credits are reversed. Both Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet accounts are affected by inventory adjustments.

In QuickBooks, while the Adjust Quantity/Value on Hand window is selected, you can press Ctrl + Y to display the Transaction Journal of the debits and credits entered.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Transaction Journal Negative Inventory Quantity Adjustment

Keep in mind that for each adjustment, you can choose only 1 adjustment account or enter 1 memo. You can also enter a Customer:Job or Class. Therefore, you’ll need to group your adjustments based on why you’re making the adjustment.

The debits and credits of value adjustments behave the same as quantity adjustments. Typically, there’s a different reason for a value adjustment. The most common is discovery of a value impairment. In other words, the firm still has the same quantity of an item on hand, but because of changed market conditions or the passage of time, the value of those units has declined. Switching from the default quantity adjustment to a value adjustment is accomplished by checking the Value Adjustment checkbox in the lower left of the Adjust Quantity/Value on Hand window.

Quantity adjustments to fix on hand levels that have become negative are a special circumstance of inventory adjustments. Because QuickBooks uses the average cost method, the impact on accounts from allowing inventory levels to go negative can be far reaching. To gain a better understanding of the impact, read our blog post on the subject.

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How Do I Resort Lists?

Chief Mechanic · September 11, 2010 ·

Lists are one of the foundations of QuickBooks, and from time to time they can become out of order. That’s when they need to be resorted. Some common indicators that it’s time to resort your lists include:

the list itself is out of order
an element is missing
new entries in a list appear at the top of the list instead of in their sorted order
you can’t turn on the account number preference
selecting a Customer:Job, Vendor, or Employee in a Center fails to display existing transactions for that name
Names don’t properly auto-fill when entering a Name filter on the Advanced tab of the Edit->Find… function

Resorting any list will undo any special order you’ve applied to the list, and this activity can’t be done in multi-user mode. It’s always a good idea to backup your company file before undertaking an action that can’t be undone.

There are 8 lists that can be resorted. They are:

Customers:Jobs
Vendors
Employees
Other Names
Accounts
Items
Memorized Reports
Memorized Transactions

Since this technique is often used to address possible data corruption, we’ll outline the most efficient technique to resort multiple lists, but you can also choose to resort an individual list by opening up a Center and right clicking on a list element.

The first 4 lists are collectively referred to as Names or Entities, and there’s an easy way to resort these 4 lists:

Open the Write Checks window by clicking on Banking->Write Checks or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
In the Pay to the Order of field, click Ctrl + L
Opt to include inactive list entries by clicking the Include Inactive checkbox
Click the Name button and choose Re-sort List from the menu
Click Ok to resort the lists
Uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox

The screenshot below shows the combined Name list in Step 4:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Resort Name List

Our related article explains how to provide easy access to this combined list of all Names.

Resorting the Chart of Accounts and Items lists follow similar procedures, except each of these lists will have to be resorted individually. To access the Chart of Accounts, click the Lists->Chart of Accounts menu selection or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A. To access the Items list, click Lists->Items. Opt to include inactive list entries, resort the list from the button in the lower left of the window, and uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox before proceeding to the next list.

Resorting Memorized Reports and Memorized Transactions are similar to the above steps, except there’s no need to include inactive list entries since they’re not allowed on these lists. To access Memorized Reports, click the Reports->Memorized Reports->Memorized Report List menu selection; to access Memorized Transactions, click Lists->Memorized Transactions or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T.

After resorting lists, close and reopen your company file (.qbw) to insure that all changes are successfully written to disk.

Resorting lists is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

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