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

are different. These sorts of bills are perfect for QuickBooks’ memorized transactions. QuickBooks can memorize bills and reuse them. You can even create a group of bills so that you can process all the bills due on the same day of the month. Even when some fields change, recalling a transaction with most of the fields filled in saves you time.

Memorizing a Bill

Here’s how to make QuickBooks memorize a bill:

1. On the Home page, click Enter Bills (or choose Vendors➝Enter Bills).

QuickBooks opens the Enter Bills window.

2. Fill in all the fields that will be the same on each bill, as shown in the background in Figure 9-4. If a field changes for each bill, such as the Amount Due, simply leave that field blank (or set to 0.00 for amount fields). Later, when you use the memorized bill to enter a bill, fill in the empty fields with the values on the bill that your vendor sent.

3. When the bill is set up the way you want, press Ctrl+M to open the Memorize Transaction dialog box (shown in the foreground in Figure 9-4). In the Name box, type a name for the memorized bill. QuickBooks automatically fills in the Name box with the vendor’s name, but you can enter a more meaningful name if you like. For example, naming a memorized bill “Rent” is more helpful than using the landlord’s name.

Figure 9-4:╇ For bills that are identical from month to month, such as rent, choose the Automatically Enter option in the Memorize Transaction dialog box. You can tell QuickBooks how many days before the due date to enter the bill, as shown here. When that date arrives, the program tacks the bill onto its list of bills waiting to be paid. When you choose Automatically Enter, the Number Remaining box becomes active so you can type how many payments remain, which is ideal for loan payments that—thankfully— don’t go on forever

4. If you want QuickBooks to remind you when it’s time to pay the bill, choose the Remind Me option and tell the program when to remind you. If bills don’t arrive on a regular schedule (like ones for snowplowing), choose the Don’t Remind Me option. Then, when you receive a bill, you can call up the memorized transaction. For bills that you receive regularly, in the How Often box, choose the frequency, such as Monthly, and in the Next Date field, choose the next due date. For example, if the bill you’re memorizing is set for 10/5/2011, choose 11/5/2011.

5. To memorize the bill, click OK. QuickBooks adds the bill to the Memorized Transaction List, closes the Memorize Transaction dialog box, and returns to the Enter Bills window. If you want to add the bill to the queue of bills to be paid, click Save & Close. If you created the bill only to memorize it, click the dialog box’s Close button (the red X in the top-right corner), and then click No when QuickBooks asks if you want to save the transaction.

 Using a Memorized Bill

How you generate a bill from a memorized transaction in QuickBooks depends on whether you’ve opted for total automation, a reminder, or no reminder:

• Automatically Enter. If you create a memorized bill with the Automatically Enter option, that’s exactly what the program does: When the next scheduled date for the bill arrives, QuickBooks creates a new bill and adds it to the list of bills waiting to be paid.

• Remind Me. When you ask QuickBooks to remind you and the scheduled date arrives, the program adds the bill to the Reminders List. In the Reminders List, below the “Bills to Pay” heading, double-click a bill to open the Enter Bills window. The bill that you see contains only the memorized information. Make any changes you want, fill in the empty fields, and then click Save & Close. ╉╉Automating Recurring • Don’t Remind Me. When you memorize a bill that you use only occasionally or that occurs on an irregular schedule, choosing Don’t Remind Me stores the bill in the Memorized Transaction List in case you need it. When you want to use that memorized bill, click it in the Memorized Transaction List (choose Lists➝Memorized Transaction List or press Ctrl+T), and then click Enter Transaction.

Creating Memorized Groups of Bills The first day of the month is the nemesis of bill payers everywhere because so many bills are due then. QuickBooks can’t ease the pain of watching your money go out the door, but it can at least ease the burden of entering all those bills in your company file. Memorized bills are a start, but why enter individual memorized bills when you can enter several at once? You can set up memorized transaction groups that act like their individual memorized counterparts—to remind you about all the bills due on a specific day or enter all the recurring transactions automatically.

Most QuickBooks features let you create new list entries whenever you need them by choosing <Add New> from a drop-down list, but memorized groups break that mold. When you first open the Memorize Transaction dialog box, the “With Transactions in Group” option and the Group Name box are tantalizingly visible, but they stay grayed out no matter what you click. That’s because, to add a memorized transaction to a group, you have to first create a memorized group. The steps are easy, once you know the right order:

1. Press Ctrl+T to open the Memorized Transaction List.

The Memorized Transaction List window opens.

2. At the bottom of the window, click Memorized Transaction➝New Group. QuickBooks opens the New Memorized Transaction Group dialog box—identical to the Memorize Transaction dialog box except that it doesn’t include the “With Transactions in Group” option and Group Name box.

3. Name the group something meaningful like Monthly Bills, and fill in the other fields as you would for a memorized transaction. Tell QuickBooks how and when you want to be reminded.

4. Click OK to save the group. Now that the group exists, you can add individual transactions to it.

5. To add an existing memorized transaction to the group, in the Memorized Transaction List window, select the transaction you want to add, and then press Ctrl+E to edit it. The Schedule Memorized Transaction dialog box opens.

 6. Select the “With Transactions in Group” option. In the Group Name box, choose the group you just created, and then click OK. When you add a memorized transaction to a group, QuickBooks tucks the transaction underneath the memorized group in the Memorized Transaction List, as shown in Figure 9-5.   

Inventory Figure 9-5:╇ Individual memorized transactions take on the schedule and reminder characteristics of the memorized group. So if you edit a memorized transaction that belongs to a group, the How Often, Next Date, Number Remaining, and Days In Advance To Enter boxes are grayed out. T