customer

How Do I Receive a Special Order Item On a Sales Order In POS?

Chief Mechanic · August 26, 2010 ·

To receive a special order item into inventory that has been ordered by a customer (i. e., on a sales order in POS), start by clicking the Receive Items button or visiting the menu selection Purchasing->New Receiving Voucher. Note that the buttons visible on the toolbar are configurable, so you may need to modify your toolbar to see the Receive Items button.

This article is part of a related series of articles covering adding a new sales order with a special order item, generating a purchase order for that item and emailing it to the vendor, receiving the special order item into inventory, and recording the sale or shipment.

There are many ways to start the receiving process. In this example, we’ll begin by searching for or entering the purchase order (PO) number. That’s the number on which we ordered the goods being received. Once POS locates the PO, we have a choice of receiving All Items or Selected Items.

QuickBooks POS 8 New Receiving Voucher Sales Order

We’ll click Selected Items to enter the items and quantities received. If there were multiple items or partial deliveries from vendors, the Select Items to Receive window provides an ability to record exactly what was received. Since we only had 1 item on our order, and the quantity ordered was only 1, we’ll click Select All to speed up receiving the special order item into inventory.

QuickBooks POS 8 New Receiving Voucher Sales Order 2

Because this item was a special order for a specific customer, POS displays that customer and provides the ability to view the customer order by clicking the Show Cust Order button. This helps to insure that the goods received match what the customer ordered and to contact the customer to arrange for delivery or pickup.

QuickBooks POS 8 New Receiving Voucher Sales Order 3

Because the cost of this item ($50) is different from what we recorded when we added the special order item, POS provides an opportunity to update item prices before saving this voucher. This is a valuable tool to insure that costs and prices have a rational relationship.

Click Save Only or Save & Print to complete receiving this shipment into inventory. All that remains of the process of taking and fulfilling a customer order for a special order item is to deliver the goods to the customer and record the shipment.

(No Ratings Yet)

How Do I Export Transactions from QuickBooks?

Chief Mechanic · August 26, 2010 ·

QuickBooks supports 2 methods to export transactions:

The Export… button on the Find window
Exporting from a Center, such as the Customer Center

The first method supports exporting a transaction type for more than 1 customer, vendor, or employee. This is appropriate where you need to analyze or exchange a broad but filtered set of data. The second method is designed for exporting transactions for either a single or multiple customers, vendors, or employees. This technique provides the flexibility to produce an export file that would be useful to review one account to address a specific business issue, such as resolving a customer’s payment history, or to export a range of 1 transaction type. Both export methods are based on common elements.

We’ll demonstrate both methods.

Exporting Transaction Data from the Find Window

Using the Find window, transaction data can be exported for more than 1 customer, vendor, or employee. Filters can be applied to reduce the transactions to be exported down to just 1 customer, vendor, or employee. To get started, click the Edit->Find… menu selection.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Export Find Invoice

In this example, we’ll export all customer invoices. From the Transaction Type pull down menu, choose Invoice and then click the Find button. QuickBooks will locate and display the number of matches. For our sample data, there are 114 invoices. This data could be filtered further by choosing a Customer:Job, a Date range, a specific Invoice #, or an Amount. Additional filter options are available on the Advanced tab. Our goal for this export is to export all invoices, so we won’t enter additional filter criteria. To proceed, click the Export… button.

The Export window provides the ability to send the exported data to a comma separated values (.csv) file or an Excel workbook. Exports to Excel are only compatible with Microsoft Excel 2000 or later, and you can choose either a new or existing workbook. For this example, we’ll opt to export the data to a new Excel workbook.

On the Advanced tab, export settings can be customized further. To complete the export, click the Export button.

QuickBooks will automatically launch Microsoft Excel with the exported data loaded. Here’s a screenshot of Excel 2007 with exported transaction data loaded.

Exporting Transaction Data Starting in a Center

Using a Center, such as the Customer Center, you can flexibly export transactions for either a single customer, vendor, or employee or a filtered list of all transactions relevant to that Center. In this example, we’ll demonstrate exporting data for 1 customer, a common task to review a customer’s purchase history, as well as transactions for a range of customers.

To start, open the Customer Center and choose the customer whose data will be exported. In our example, we’ll choose “Abercrombie, Kristy” (an example only from the sample data) from the customer list displayed on the left.

QuickBoks Premier 2009 Customer Center Export 1

With a customer selected, click the Excel button in the toolbar, followed by the Export Transactions… menu entry in the menu that appears below. This will export the transactions displayed for this individual customer. These transactions can be filtered by changing the values in the pull down menus above the transaction list. Export to Excel will proceed as described above, with the ability to export the transactions to either a new or existing workbook. Note that this method doesn’t offer an ability to export to a .csv file. That’s not an important consideration here, since a .csv file would only be useful in exporting a large number of transactions.

To export transaction data for more than 1 customer from the Customer Center, click the Transactions tab. A list of the available transaction types is shown on the left, with all of the transactions that meet the filter conditions on the right. Change the filter conditions as needed. In our example, with no additional filters, this transaction export will mirror the results we exported using the Find window. To proceed, click the Export… button on the toolbar.

QuickBoks Premier 2009 Customer Center Export 2

Transaction export will proceed as described in our discussion using the Find window. In other words, you’ll be able to export to either a .csv file or an Excel file.

(-1 rating, 1 votes)

Does QuickBooks Have Limits On the Number of List Items and Transactions That Can Be Entered?

Chief Mechanic · August 26, 2010 ·

Yes. There are 2 kinds of limits: physical and practical. Let’s consider each in turn.

QuickBooks faces these physical limits:

2 billion transactions
10,000 accounts in the GL chart of accounts
14,500 names (customers, vendors, employees, and other names – combined)
14,500 items (which include inventory items)
10,000 classes
100 price levels

The above list highlights the most important physical limits of QuickBooks; it’s not an all-inclusive list. The physical limits of Enterprise Solutions are considerably higher. For details on all of the physical limits of both QuickBooks and Enterprise Solutions, consult this Intuit knowledge base article.

To find out how your own company file stands relative to these limits, press F2 from within QuickBooks to display the Product Information window. On the right side, you’ll see the List Information. In this example, the company file has 134 (out of 10,000) GL accounts, 217 (out of 14,500) total names, and 106 (out of 14,500) Items.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Product Information List Information

There are important practical considerations as well. According to Intuit, QuickBooks is designed for small businesses with fewer than 20 employees and $2 million in annual revenue. However, those are general guidelines. Bigger firms reliably use QuickBooks. What impacts whether you should use QuickBooks or its more powerful relative, Enterprise Solutions, is the size of your data file today and how that data is expected to grow over the time period for which you want to keep all transaction data in 1 file.

Intuit suggests estimating 2 Kb per transaction and projecting the size of your data file over several years. Keep in mind that a sale paid for with 1 check results in 3 transactions (invoice, payment, and deposit), and each AP transaction results in at least 2 (vendor bill and payment). This estimate does not include the data that list elements themselves (e. g., customers, vendors, or items) will add to overall file size.

In our experience, the performance of QuickBooks can degrade if overall company file size exceeds 100 Mb. Intuit suggests a practical limit of growth of 15 Mb per year (or about 7500 transactions).

As a company grows, QuickBooks includes a utility to remove fully paid and reconciled transactions in a process referred to as “cleaning up.” This process reduces the size of the QuickBooks company file. That’s why it’s important to consider the time period you’ll keep old transaction data in your company file. If you’ll clean up your company file every 18-24 months, the number of transactions you can store without hitting the practical limitations of QuickBooks will be considerably greater.

Some longtime QuickBooks users engage in a process of making a backup copy of a company file and then cleaning it up with a cutoff date. The backup copy preserves history transactions for those rare instances where they may be useful, but the company file for everyday use has been cleaned up and no longer includes stale, fully paid transactions. That results in improved performance.

The guidelines on practical limits we’ve discussed here aren’t unbreakable rules, and the limits are influenced by factors we didn’t mention, most notably the hardware performance of the computer on which you run QuickBooks.

(-1 rating, 1 votes)

What Data Is Exchanged Between POS and QuickBooks Financial Software?

Chief Mechanic · August 25, 2010 ·

When you enable the company preference Use with QuickBooks Financial Software on the Edit->Preferences->Company->Financial menu, certain information is exchanged between POS and QuickBooks financial software.

POS 8 Company Preferences Use QuickBooks

Exchanges take place by initiating the exchange from POS by clicking on the menu Financial->Update QuickBooks.

The results of a successful exchange are shown below.

The Financial Exchange window summarizes what has been exchanged.

Some information is exchanged in both directions:

customer information excluding account balances
active vendor information

Once POS is installed and running, inventory transactions are managed in POS. Therefore, most information exchanges occur from POS to QuickBooks. These exchanges are:

customer payments
cash register payouts
sales and order deposits
receiving vouchers
financial impact of inventory adjustments
freight charges on inventory transfers between stores (POS Pro Multi-store)
time clock records (POS Pro)

To provide the ability for management to record some transactions that affect account balances and change customer credit limits, QuickBooks financial software exchanges this information to POS:

customer account balances
customer credit limits

Certain information is not exchanged in either direction:

inventory items and quantities after the initial import from QuickBooks financial software to POS
employees
employee commissions and tips
purchase orders

This information is summarized in this Intuit knowledge base article.

(No Ratings Yet)

Zoovy Web Store

Chief Mechanic · August 25, 2010 ·

A web-savvy client just drew our attention to a QuickBooks compatible web store, Zoovy.

The company says they support bi-directional communication of invoices, sales receipts, customers, products and inventory with QuickBooks in this Zoovy overview.

For QuickBooks customers looking to increase sales from a web store and not have to re-enter information, Zoovy might be worth a closer look.

(+1 rating, 1 votes)

customer

Accounting

Developer

Intuit