QuickBooks Asia

Document Date vs. Posting Date

When entering a transaction such as bill, shall we follow the document date or the posting date?

In some accounting software, it does provide a document date (date stated in the bill) and a posting date (the date when you post the transaction into the account). However, in QuickBooks, there is only one date field for you to record the transaction. So, in this case, how shall we make use of this ‘Date’ field in QuickBooks? Shall we use it for document date or simply use it as a posting date?

If you use it as a document date, this bill transaction will age accordingly, but this will affect your month- end or year-end closing figure.

If you use it as a transaction date, although it does not affect your closing figure, but your Accounts Payable Ageing will be wrongly calculated.

Is there a solution or a workaround in QuickBooks to resolve both the Closing figure and Accounts Payable Ageing calculation when a bill dated in previous month needed to record after the book is closed?

In QuickBooks, to resolve it is simple. Since the account had already closed, we shall not record a transaction before the closing date and affects the Closing figure. In the Bill form, other than the Date field, there is also a Date Due field (below the Amount Due field). We can use the Date field as a Posting Date and base on the payment terms given, select the Date Due accordingly.

For example:

Your year-end closing is as of 31 December 2009 and you have closed the accounts. On 20 January 2010, you received a bill from your supplier. The bill dated 26 December 2009 with 30 days payment term. Base on 30 days payment terms, this bill should be due on 25 January 2010.

In the Bill form, you enter 20 January 2010 in the ‘Date’ field (Posting date) and 25 January 2010 in the ‘Bill Due’ field (date when this bill is due). You may consider entering the original document date, 26 December 2009, in the memo field for references.

This transaction will not affect your year-end closing figure, since it does not record before your closing date (31 Dec 2009). Besides, from your Accounts Payable Ageing report it will show the transaction correctly aged.

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Why can't I enter the opening balances in QuickBooks of a customer which I had created previously?

Once your account or name list such as customer or supplier name had a transaction, you will not be able to enter the opening balances from the account or any name list profile window.

The only way to enter the opening balance is via a Make General Journal Entries or a transaction such as Invoice or Bill.

When you created transactions with an account or name, the Opening Balance field in the profile window will be closed. Hence, you cannot enter the opening balances by editing the account or name.

As for the item list, the opening balance field will be closed once the item name is being saved. The only way to enter the opening balances for the item is to enter via “Adjust Qty/Value on Hand” feature.

If you are not sure in General Journal (double entry), I suggest you prepare your opening balances before you start your company file.

I will try to create a new company file check list in my future blog. Do come back to my blog for an update.

Import of list item into QuickBooks

I had a customer who was always very busy with meetings. She doesn’t even have times to create the name list in QuickBooks. She asked me whether QuickBooks allowed her to import those customer and supplier name list from a spreadsheet.

What are those things that can be imported into QuickBooks?

At user level, QuickBooks does allow you to import list item such as:

• Chart of account list
• Customer:job list
• Supplier name list
• Employee list
• Item list

During the implementation stage, creating of name and item list usually takes up most of the time. By importing list item it helps to reduce the implementation time and focus on your day-to-day operational task such as invoicing and enter bills.

How to import?

How am I going to capture those bits and pieces of claims into QuickBooks?

In my previous blog, I did mention that bosses usually had lots of bits and pieces of claims. How are you going to capture these claims into QuickBooks?

I preferred to create the Amount Due account as a Credit Card type of account. This method is easier because I don’t need to create any General Journal entry. Besides, to a layman, it will not be easy to understand the rule of double entry.

Below is an example to illustrate how to use a credit card account to capture the claims.

Create a credit card account

From your chart of accounts list, add a new Credit Card account for yourself. Example:

• Account type: Credit Card
• Account name: Amount due to EHLim