QuickBooks Online Budgeting - How to Get Year to Date and Current Month Actual vs Budget

The question of how to customize the budget option in QuickBooks Online is a common question. Here is my shortest video ever that will show you how to customize your budget to get current month and year to date information for actuals as compared to budget in less than two minutes.

How to Enter Vendor Bills using QuickBooks Online

Accounts Payable Preferences

The first thing you need to do is to turn on the accounts payable feature in the preference section and then  watch my  short video, see below. 


The following is a list of the procedures to you need to perform to set  up this important preference.

1.     Choose Vendors > Manage Bills.

2.     This will bring up a Mini-Interview window.  Say Yes to the question "Do you want to keep track of bills you owe, but wait to pay them later?".

3.     Click Finish.

Once this feature is turned on you will be able to use the QuickBooks Online accounts payable features in your business.


The video below will show you how to enter a bill into Accounts Payable using QuickBooks Online. Just in case you need the instructions I have included  the instructions to enter a bill below:


Choose Vendors, then select  Enter Bill.

1.     Vendor- The company that you owe the money to.

2.     Ref # - Enter the invoice #

3.     Amount Due - total amount of money you owe on this bill.

4.     Terms - when the vendor expects payment. For example: "net 30" means payment is due in 30 days, that is 30 days after the invoice date.

5.     Due Date - calculated based upon the Terms you have listed.

6.     Memo - note on the bill. This will not appear on the bill payments.

7.     Account Enter the category that the bill should be charged to i.e. supply expense,insurance expense

8.     Click Save.

Procedure - Bills are generally  processed by a bookkeeper  who enters them as payables in QuickBooks. These bills should be  paid every week or every two weeks.


Tip  - Bills should be approved by management or the owners  prior to their entry into accounts payable by the bookkeeper.  The approved invoice or billing should then be attached to the check and presented to management for signature when processing the bill for payment. This procedure and related approval can be performed either in a paper format or paperless format. If  there is no prior approval of the bill before entry into QuickBooks payables  there is the risk that unauthorized payments may be processed and paid.  

QuickBooks Online Plus Auto Fill Feature

This video will address a topic that I took for granted for companies using QuickBooks Online Plus or Essentials until a client today,expressed her frustration when entering a vendor bill.She was accustomed to QuickBooks Pro and the learning curve was frustrating here. So I thought other people might also be having a similar issue.  Using the auto fill feature to search and populate the following fields in QuickBooks Online Plus.

• Vendors
• Customer
• General ledger accounts

Please view this short video for using  QuickBooks Online Plus or Essentials to see the two alternatives that you can select within the preferences and how to do it .

Using QuickBooks Online and Form 1099

QuickBooks 1099 Time

It's QuickBooks 1099  time  and you need to prepare your business’s Form 1099s which  is due February 28.   Hopefully you haven't waited for the last moment to use  QuickBooks 1099 module, which is typically the case for most small businesses. Although this blog post is designed for users of QuickBooks Online, the QuickBooks 1099  tips may be used for other versions of QuickBooks and other small business accounting software. This article will not discuss what payment qualifies as a 1099 recipient or how to print the form 1099. It discusses a way to check the information and provides some planning tips for next year.

It's important to make sure that the information appearing in each form 1099 is accurate and represents the cash transactions that occurred for the year that has just ended. The furthest thing from your mind  is to have a vendor or stockholder or any person who received the form 1099 to  call you up to complain that the QuickBooks 1099  they just received is incorrect. Not only is that embarrassing, it’s a  waste of time because now you have to amend the QuickBooks 1099  and probably pay fees to have the QuickBooks 1099   amended.


Verify the information  being used  to file the QuickBooks 1099 with the IRS

It’s important to make sure the QuickBooks 1099  information is correct before you send it out. You can perform this check by  reviewing the information that is in the form 1099. Fortunately, QuickBooks 1099  makes this easy, by allowing you  to drill down for each  1099 recipient and you will see the detail payments  for each 1099 recipient before its transmitted to the payee.  It's important that the information appearing in the form 1099 is an actual cash payment made during the preceding year. The information in the Form 1099 should not include  accounts payable or anything else. You can verify the QuickBooks 1099  information  in two ways. The first is look at the QuickBooks 1099  detail transactions comprising the 1099 summary amount directly from a 1099 report,  and the second, is to look at the accounts payable detail as of December 31 to make sure that the payables are not included in the amounts being reported in the form 1099. From within QuickBooks Online you do this by drilling down on the amount shown in the summary QuickBooks 1099  form.

You can watch  a very short video explaining the drill down procedure or skip the video and look at these screenshots. Here is the video

QuickBooks 1099 Planning Tip
The most important tip, is to  plan to gather all of the payee information such as correct name, address and Taxpayer ID number in advance of preparing the form 1099s and more importantly to carefully read the IRS Instructions for Form 1099 –MISC and make sure that you are reporting the correct types of  payees . The way you can do this, is to set up a policy and procedure for the book keeper to prepare a  simple one-page new vendor setup form, that has the vendor’s name, address, email,website,tax payer ID number,account to be coded and budgeted amount for the year.The new vendor set up form should be approved by the owner . This form ensures that your bookkeeper is obtaining the vendor and the  QuickBooks 1099  information timely and more importantly that only vendors known to the owner are being properly set up and paid.

If you are like most users, it’s hard to believe that you cannot prepare the Form 1096 from QuickBooks Online. We are waiting for Intuit to make that change to their QuickBooks 1099  drop down.

Stockholder Loan Transactions in QuickBooks Online Essentials or Online Plus

QuickBooks Online Stockholder Transactions

This video will will briefly explain a typical stockholder/business owner transaction and show you how to record the transactions for QuickBooks Online. For more information about each type of transaction i.e. capital investment,Stockholder Advances,Loans to the business,Draws,Dividends and Stock Subscriptions, please see my other post on this topic. The logic and general classification will be similar for QuickBooks Pro, Premier or just about any other accounting software program.

Big Tip..Make sure that you maximize the screen in YouTube while you view the video

t

Customizing QuickBooks Online(QBO) Reports for checks and other withdrawals

What Happened to the Free Online Version of Simple Start ?

QuickBooks Online accounting provides the essential accounting tools necessary to operate a business and the freedom to access financial information from work, the road or home. Simple Start is a free and bare bones version offered by Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks. Simple Start may be able to assist you in the operation of your business and even your personal finances. But before you start searching for Simple Start its important to know that Intuit has decided to begin to phase out the the free version of Simple Start.

As the Intuit website simply states, Simple Start can (a)Track sales, expenses & customers, (b)Instantly create invoices, (c)pay bills, & print checks and (d) Organize your finances in one place-ready for tax time. All this sounds good, but when you take a close look, Simple Start has serious limitations, but for some people or businesses, it might have a place.

Intuit has a free QuickBooks Online option, called QuickBooks Simple Start. Its free but has limited functionality. i.e. limited to 5 customers(but unlimited vendors) and lacks accounts payable recording and reporting,lack of budgeting,estimating,financial reporting and I can list more and more. Notwithstanding, these critical shortcomings, it may work for some.

I have installed Simple Starts on both Macs and PC's. My clients that use both Macs and PC's like the ability to use QuickBooks on either platform. I have seen Simple Start work for a few of my very small business clients, who use it to summarize their business activities for their tax returns rather than for real time financial information. If you use PC in your office and a Mac at home, you can share the data which is kept in the cloud. Most business owners really like this feature. I have been able to set up their chart of accounts from my PC and then my clients are able to instantly use the software.

During the sign in process for Simple Start, Inuit asks for your credit card. Don't think this is a scam to get you sign up or sell you more products. They actually do not charge your credit card, until you purchase it. You will quickly realize how well it captures your cash activities, and will probably want to upgrade to either QuickBooks Online Basic or QuickBooks Online Plus because of the software's function shortcomings.

Unfortunately, another shortcoming of both Simple Start and QuickBooks Online Basic is their inability to properly record and monitor accounts payable,monitor and pay multiple vendors at once.This is important if you want to be able to track your payables and be able to pay multiple vendors at one time Also, Simple Start does not offer a Statement of Cashflows. This statement shows you where and to what accounts your cash was spent.Its a very important financial statement to help a small business owner understand the sources and uses of cash in the operation of their business.

In summary, some people like Simple Start because its free and "simple". Once again, like all QuickBooks Online products it works with any PC and Mac. If you want a free version of Simple Start, simply visit my website and go to the Quickbooks online page and you will have direct access to an Intuit link for free a version of Simple Start, which is currently available as of the date of the writing of this blog post.

Learn how QuickBooks Online provides the essential online accounting tools to manage your business and the freedom to access your financials from work, home, or the road. Sandor Lenner, C.P.A./M.B.A has been providing accounting services for 35 years. He is also a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and works as a part-time consultant for a Miami Accounting CPA firm.