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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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How Can I Display a List of All Names?

Chief Mechanic · September 5, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks, Customers, Customer:Jobs, Vendors, and Employees are called Names. In transaction entry screens, the selection of a Name is filtered to include only the type of Names normally associated with that transaction type. For example, when entering a Vendor Bill, the selection of a Name is filtered to only include Vendors.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to be able to review a list of all Names in one place, especially when trying to follow a consistent pattern if an entity appears on more than 1 list.

To display a list of all Names, follow these simple steps:

Open the Write Checks window by clicking on the Banking->Write Checks menu selection or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
In the Pay to the Order of field (ie, the check payee), use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L to display a list of all Names
Add the Name List window to the Icon Bar by clicking on the View->Add “Name List” to Icon Bar… menu selection
Assign a Label and Description to the new window
Optionally, change the default icon selection that will appear in the Icon Bar to represent the Name List
Click Ok

You now have a list of all Names in an easy-to-access window. The list provides a consolidated window of 4 pieces of information: Active Status, Name, Name Type, and Balance Total.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Name List

Note that the Write Checks window was used to access all Names because a check can be written to all of the different Name types and by-passes the filtering set by QuickBooks on different transaction types.

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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.

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What’s the Best Way To Track Affiliate Sales in POS?

Chief Mechanic · August 26, 2010 ·

Sales by affiliates are an increasingly common phenomenon, especially in online sales. Typically, these sales need to be tracked much like sales by a commissioned salesperson, both to monitor the commission to be paid to the affiliate and to track the effectiveness of that marketing channel.

We recommend using 1 of 2 methods to track affiliate sales in POS:

Define the affiliate as an employee
Enter a Promo Code for the affiliate on receipts and sales orders

Our recommended approach is to define the affiliate as an employee and enter that employee code in the Associate field on each receipt and sales order. This is analogous to recording a sales rep on a transaction. Although POS doesn’t use the Sales Rep from QuickBooks financial, software, using an employee code in this fashion serves a similar purpose.

Both of these approaches allow you to track affiliate sales by using the built-in reporting features of POS.

Method 1 – Define the Affiliate as an Employee

To track affiliate sales by defining the affiliate as an employee, keep in mind that employee data is not shared between QuickBooks financial software and POS. Also, an employee (or Associate on the New Sales Receipt window) is not the same as a Cashier. To define a new employee, click Employees->Employee List, followed by the New Employee button. Enter an employee for each affiliate whose sales you want to track.

One important consideration in using an employee code to track affiliate sales is to accurately record the Commission %. If a single affiliate gets a different Commission % for different sales, you’ll need to enter multiple employee codes for that affiliate. When you record receipts or sales orders, you’ll need to enter only those items on that receipt or order that receive that commission rate, since you can only enter one employee code (or Associate) on a receipt or sales order. Moreover, the Commission % only applies to receipts and sales orders recorded after the Commission % is recorded. If you record a Commission % of 0.00 (which is the default), POS won’t calculate any commissions on receipts or sales orders until you change it, and then it will only apply to new transactions, not those already entered. If there’s a change in the commission for your affiliate, it’s important to update the affiliate’s employee record immediately on the effective date of the change, before new transactions are entered so that your commission reports are accurate.

The commissions that POS calculates aren’t shared with QuickBooks financial software, so you’ll have to use POS reports as an aid to record commission expense in QuickBooks financial software on your own.

QuickBooks Point of Sale Employees New 2

During transaction entry, enter the employee code for the affiliate responsible for this transaction in the Associate field. Because the employee code is selected from a pre-defined pull-down menu, there’s less chance for data entry error. However, POS can’t require entry of an employee in the Associate field, so there’s some risk that all affiliate sales data won’t be captured.

QuickBooks Point of Sale Make Sale Employee

There are a variety of built-in reports showing sales by employee found on the Reports->Employees menu, and these readily lend themselves to reporting on affiliate sales. In addition to reports, POS offers a basic pie chart showing the sales contribution of employees.

QuickBooks Point of Sale Employee Sales Report

Method 2 – Enter a Promo Code for the Affiliate on Receipts and Sales Orders

To track affiliate sales by entering a Promo Code on each receipt and sales order, just enter the code for each affiliate in the Promo Code box.

QuickBooks Point of Sale Make Sale Promo Code

Optionally, to insure affiliate sales data are properly captured, consider requiring a Promo Code on receipts and sales orders by checking the Sales preference Require a Promotional Code on receipts and customer orders on the Edit->Preferences->Company menu.

QuickBooks POS 8 Company Preferences Promo Code

Using a Promo Code can be an effective way to capture and report on affiliate sales because of the availability of an off-the-shelf report on sales by Promo Code. To generate the report, click on the Reports->Sales->General Sales – Promo Code Summary menu.

QuickBooks POS 8 Reports Menu Promo Code Summary

Here’s that report:

QuickBooks POS 8 Promo Code Summary Report

The drawbacks to using a Promo Code to track affiliate sales are twofold. First, Promo Codes are not defined and selected from a list, so extra care needs to be taken to consistently use the same code and avoid data entry errors. Secondly, if a Promo Code isn’t required, there’s a chance it will be omitted from a receipt or sales order inadvertently. On the other hand, if a Promo Code is required and affiliate sales aren’t a large portion of transactions, there’s an extra step in transaction entry that otherwise wouldn’t be required on the majority of transactions.

We recommend defining each affiliate as an employee to capture affiliate sales. It’s more reliable, and there are better reporting tools. However, for firms that don’t want to include affiliates on employee lists, using a Promo Code is a workable alternative.

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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.

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