Help with Quickbooks...PLEASE

[Norm_Cabana]

Help!!!

If anyone read my rantings about financial software, a few months back, you'll know that I am not a fan of software that forces me to do things in a way that I am not comfortable with. For example, I sell things...I don't "Receive Payments"! I have Fotobiz but that doesn't really fit the way I do business. This program seems to be set up for the stock and advertising side of the business and that isn't me. I've just re-installed Quickbooks for the fourth time to try and give this another go.

At an event I might sell to 20-60 people and while I will have each customer fill out an order form, I don't want to enter each order into my financial program. What I DO want to enter into my finance program is, by event, my sales amount and my routine expenses like hotel, gas, food, salaries etc. What I want OUT of my finance program is what I've made and what I've spent so I can compare this event to the event I did last week, this event to the same event last year (if I did the same event) and a running total of sales and routine expenses. Currently I use an Excel spreadsheet for this and while that works fine I have a lot of expenses that are not directly tied to an event and those expenses don't get tracked right now.

So I guess what I'm asking is if you are using Quickbooks to manage your financial data, or have found a better way, please tell me how you managed this feat of magic, and no, I don't want to hear that your accountant does it all for you. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[MikeA]

Well, I'm not running it for a photo business, so feel free to ignore everything I say [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

If I understand you right, you want to track the detail of your expenses within QB, but not the detail of your sales per customer, right?

In that case, why don't you just total up the sales at the end of the event and enter them as a single sale. You could define a new customer per event or use the same customer for every event. You could put as much or as little info on the invoice as you like.

The only real downside of doing it this way, is that you have to go to your paper records if anyone wants to track a purchase, but you probably do that already.

It's all there to use as you please. My accountant says I put too much detail in, but then, I'd rather see it and be able to work out what went on by looking at the transactions on the computer than sheafing through old paper records, but that's just my preference...

MikeA

Mike hit on the idea I was going to pose. Add up all the sales and enter it under the event name (as the client/customer). The reports will then give you a breakdown by event.

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Currently I use an Excel spreadsheet for this and while that works fine I have a lot of expenses that are not directly tied to an event and those expenses don't get tracked right now.

and no, I don't want to hear that your accountant does it all for you. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Oh, I wish the account WOULD di it ALL. Then I wouldn't be behhind on getting it all done [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

You should be able to track all your expenses, but I'm not sure if you can directly tie them to specific events unless you set up seperate catagories.

Mark

[Norm_Cabana]

Mike, Mark,

Thanks for getting my thinking moving forward. This thing is such a beast. All the help and tutorials lead you towards the full blown accounting process when all I really want is a simple profit and loss statement. Right now I think that I will create a "customer" for each event organization, i.e. NASA, NorCal Shelby Club, BMW CCA etc. Then I will create a "Job" for each event. I know that I can show "sales" or income against a job so I am pretty sure that I can show expenses against a job as well. If that can work I can probably get what I think I want. The one thing that I am pretty sure I'll never get from this program is the average sale amount. I guess I'll still have to use the spreadsheet for some things..

The one thing I don't want to do is to spend every free moment tracking my money.

[David_Buzzard]

Instead of making a seperate customer for each invoice, create a customer called "cash sale", or "event sale", and use that. If you're doing 500 sales a year at $20.00 each, it shouldn't be a problem. With multible small bills, total them up and do a bulk posting of it. That's what we do with expenses such as parking reciepts. You don't want to do 50 postings a month for $1.00 each. Again, as long as you keep the reciepts, it shouldn't be a problem.

It's very important that you keep detailed accounting records. Because a) without it you won't know if you're making a profit or not, b) if you have a good book keeper or accountant, they will find stuff to write off that you never even thought of, and c) if you ever get a call from the IRS asking you to account for that income, you will be screewwwed if all you can produce is an excel spread sheet.

David Buzzard

[Norm_Cabana]

I think I've got it. Unfortunately I probably break about 9,000 accounting rules to achieve what I want and my ‘solution’ may not be the best one.

Here's what I have started to do. I created a customer listing for each of the event organizers I work with. It will be about 20 or so when I'm done. Obviously they aren’t actually ‘customers’ but for me it helps to group them that way. Then for each event I do I create a job and label the job according to the date and type of event. For example I create a job titled “Jan 22, 2006 NASA HPDE @ Laguna Seca.” I then create three "items" identified as Cash Sales, Check Sales and Credit Card Sales. Each item is tied to a separate income account. I do this so I can easily see which type of sales method is producing the most income. I can also easily see which events are grossing the most and the least.

The next step is where I was getting stumped. The way I see this is that I have expenses that directly affect the income from an event and I also have expenses that affect the total business income but shouldn’t be charged against a particular event. For example, I might order 400 sheets of glossy paper, because my general stock is running low, but I may only consume 40 sheets at an event and I don't want to show the cost of the 400 sheets against a particular event while at the same time I really don’t want to track every piece of paper used. However, I replenish my supply of ink before each event and that ink cost should be charged as an expense against the previous event because that is where it was used. I really have no desire to get into inventory management and cost of goods sold.

Here is what I came up with as a solution. For each event that I do I create the job as I said above and at the same time I create a bank account for the event. When I record my sales on the job it will show the sales income as being in an un-deposited funds account, which I then deposit in the bank account for that event. I then record each expense I want to charge against the event and when I am done I have an amount that corresponds to my profit from the event. After I am sure that there won’t be any more expenses or income from that event, I transfer the funds from that bank account to my master business account. This way I can charge expenses against the company funds and not get them mixed up with the event expenses.

I am sure that there may be a better way to do this but this is the only one I feel that I understand and that is what is important to me. I mention this solution because it may help others get a handle on the money management without going nuts doing it.

[Michael_Notar]

norm-
i use QB and fotobiz for my business. i do commercial to portraits and many misc kinds of photography. i use QB as my main invoicing, and when i ever i have a commercial job, make an invoice in QB refering to the fotobix invoice, to keep track of the money. i just got photobiz v2, which is much better and has a lot of features like QB. it has customizable titles of documents (est/inv), so you dont have to have a rights granted header on all invoices when you dont need this and may be a turn off to other clients, portratis jobs, etc. right now i am a small biz, but its working for now.
mn

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