Paying Sales Tax
Sales tax can be complicated, particularly in states where the
number of tax authorities has exploded. You might have to pay sales taxes to
several agencies, each with its own rules about when and how much. QuickBooks
sales tax features can’t eliminate this drudgery, but they can help you pay the
right tax authorities the right amounts at the right time—and that’s something
to be thankful for. After
Paying with Cash in QuickBooks
If you carry company cash around in your wallet (called petty cash) or if you receive a cash
advance toward travel expenses, you eventually have to record the details of
your cash transactions in QuickBooks. For example, on a business trip, you
might pay cash for meals, parking, tips, and tolls. When you return with your
receipts, your bookkeeper can enter a transaction documenting those
Producing Checks in QuickBooks
Paying Selected Bills
When you’re done setting up
bills to pay, click the Pay Selected Bills button. When you do, QuickBooks
closes the Pay Bills window, displays a Payment Summary dialog box showing the
payments you’ve made, and adds those payments to your bank account register.
Here are the actions you can take from the Payment Summary dialog box,
depending on how you produce checks:
Applying Discounts and Credits to Payments
Most companies like to use
their discounts and credits as soon as possible. By far the easiest way to deal
with discounts and credits you receive from vendors is to let QuickBooks
automatically handle them. Here’s how you delegate applying early payment discounts
and available credits to QuickBooks:
Paying Your Bills in QuickBook
Entering bills in
QuickBooks isn’t the same as paying bills. The bills you enter are a record of what you owe and when,
but they do nothing to send money to your vendors. Pay Bills is the command
that actually pushes your money out the door. With this command, you can select
the bills you want to pay, how much to pay on each one, the payment method, the
payment account, and the date for the payment. If you have credits or early
payment discounts, you can include those, too.
Purchasing Inventory
Purchasing and paying for
inventory items is mostly the same as paying for other expenses. But as you learned in
Chapter 4, inventory always seems more complicated than the other things you
sell. Part of the problem with inventory is that you have to keep track of how
much you have. As inventory wends its way from your warehouse to your
customers, it also hops between accounts in your chart of accounts; An income
account tracks the money you make from selling inventory; a
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Automating Recurring Bills
Many of your bills are due
the same time every month, and some are even the same amount every month. For example,
your electric bill is due the 19th of the month, but the amount varies each
time, whereas your rent check is due the first of every month and it’s always
$1,000. Each time you reorder office supplies or inventory, the items you buy
are often the same, but the quantities and cost totals
Pay Expenses and Enter Bills in Quickbooks
Although most small
business owners sift through the daily mail looking for envelopes containing
checks, they usually find more containing bills. One frustrating aspect of running a business is that you often
have to pay for the items you sell before you can invoice your customers for
the goods. If you want your financial records to be right, you have to tell
QuickBooks about the expenses you’ve
