First, I want to say thank you to all of the participants who shared their comments and questions during the sessions. I really appreciate the positive feedback and the cheering section. I love it and it definitely makes doing these sessions worthwhile! And a big thank you to Leslee who makes the whole thing such a hoot by visiting with me online prior to the start and provides such an uplifting introduction to set the tone! After five times, it feels like this has become a habit and I don't want it to stop. We're talking about the next workshop, so keep your ideas coming.
I hope that if you enjoyed the series, and you are a member, you'll consider purchasing the video series for $39.80 for all five, or $79.80 for all five if you aren't an IPBC member. Also don't forget to visit to access the free stuff the resources page. I loaded the *.QBB file, but you'll need 2012 loaded to restore it, and the PDF of the PowerPoint is now up there too.
The OneNote file is for sale and for members there's 10% off on your member page.
You can purchase your videos on DVD. Of course, I hope you know that you can burn your own DVD if your computer lets you, using Windows Explorer. But if that technology eludes you, I understand, as it took me a while to figure out how, I do provide that as a service and will mail you the DVD complete with a label burned on the front.
In no particular order as the questions seem to come out of the system in garbled order...here are the answers for today's sessions.
Q: How do I purchase the one session that I missed?
A: Go to the Partner page (click on the title above) and find the link to purchase, and there you will find the individual videos as well as the series is now posted for sale.
Q: Can you declare a dividend with negative equity?
A: No, and how much you can declare depends on your corporate law and your share structure. It's always best to check with your lawyer before declaring dividends and have your books drawn up to current to ensure that you aren't off-side
Q: What date should be used when auto-applying credits?
A: Credit application isn't dated separately. The effective date of the credit is the date of the deposit.
Q: How long with the Working Paper articles be available on your website?
A: Good question. Until I stop being the TaxDetective, or until someone buys the rights from me or until you forget the password to the Resource page? Being cheeky, but I have no intention of removing this resource page, but would recommend that you download those articles and save them on your own computer just in case I drop dead and my husband decides not to pay the bills.
Q: How often can you rebuild?
A: I have been told not to rebuild more than twice without checking with support as the more you rebuild, the more tangled up the file could get.
Q: I treat my bookkeeping files in a similar manner to my year-end working paper file, more work but leaves me with a comforting feeling.
A: I like your attitude.
Q: If you use a postscript on a name (e)(c)(v)(o) is there a way of not having this postscript show if you print a cheque or invoice?
A: Yes, just edit the Customer or Vendor information in the Edit screen to change what prints / shows on screen
Q: Is there a summary of best practices for checking the data file?
A: I gave you one screen of info, and if you want more, buy my ten part video series on how to Master QuickBooks Software available for sale on my website. If you are an IPBC member, access the special pricing page through the link on the Partner page on the IPBC website, just make sure you log in first, as it's half price. Where else can you get 20 hours of training for $9.95 per hour? And 30% of the proceeds go to IPBC.
Q: Intuit advises to include all Inactive Customers/Vendors/Accounts/Items before re-sorting
A: I agree and I've had trouble with inactive names on lists so I prefer not to inactivate in the first place as I remember having issues way back. *I've been at this for a while in case you haven't guessed that.
Q: Just wondering why you have some names starting with and _Underscore
A: I use _NAME to accent which of my names are in USD
Q: Regarding use of ?Vendor, I have put a transaction to Suspense until I find out what it is. Then if I reconcile the bank and later find the answer, I have found that if I put ? Vendor and then go to change it, it unreconciles the transaction. How do you get around this?
A: Sometimes when you change the transaction it will unreconcile it, and you'll have to re-reconcile to get back to where your opening balance is what it's supposed to be.
Q: How do you treat cash over/short?
A: I said that's a whole session on it's own. In part because how to treat petty cash and floats is a whole topic all on it's own that I could spend an hour on. To answer your question, I would treat the daily cash count as being over/short when there is excess or short float, and always bring the float back to what your flat amount is for the float. Now your float may go up and down over your seasons or your days, depending on your business, but keeping your float as a fixed amount, even if it's a floating fixed amount, will help you to determine what is over/short. That amount should be expensed and watched and if it's consistently short or over, investigated. If you want a private consult on how to handle money in your business, I can be tricked into a consult, but I do charge by the hour.
Q: Thank you, Thank you, no more monthly envelopes
A: I love your attitude!
Q: Retained earnings, adjustments for prior years..
A: There should never be anything posted directly to Retained Earnings. All adjusting entries should adjust to show that the books and records tie to the tax return. Otherwise, when you are audited, how will the auditor begin to audit your books if they don't tie to what was filed? That's why we do adjusting entries line by line to income statement lines and balance sheet lines. We don't just amend Retained Earnings and call it good. Sorry, not going to cut it in an audit.
Q: What if you have clients who want to sort their files according to expense categories?
A: The way that growing business's sort purchases shows their intention to grow. If they sort by expense category, they have no intention of growing their business. If they sort alphabetically, the system will grow with them, as fast as they grow, and it won't stop them from finding something quickly. Ask them how they are going to sort a receipt that has three or four different categories on it, and how will they reconcile their accounts, or find the transaction slip again when they need it without paying your an exorbitant amount per hour to hunt through all of their paperwork to find the paper they need.
Q: Instead of using a Clearing Account instead of Suspense, why not just post things you don't understand to the Owner's or Shareholder's Draw account?
A: Because anything posted to those accounts should also be approved before it is posted there. Shareholder debit balances result in S. 80.4 deemed interest benefits so you don't want to be posting things to those accounts without approval.
Q: Just a suggestion but next time do 1.5 hours instead of an hour as this was too short
A: There are varying schools of thought about the attention span of both children and adults when it comes to learning. We decided two hours was too long, and now there are some who feel an hour is too short. You're right, the hour whizzed by today. I couldn't believe how fast it went.
Q: When naming how do you differentiate payments to Receiver General?
A: If you look at the various modules, they will each put out a different type of payment screen with the payment produced by the module. Sales taxes, payroll, but Income Tax doesn't have a module. You could set up a separate Receiver General-Income Tax vendor name to differentiate. Just don't fiddle around with the vendor set up of the Sales Tax module as if you do, it can terminate the whole GST/HST Payable account and establish a new one, cutting you off in mid-period or whenever you adjust it. I did that recently by mistake and was thankful I'd taken a backup before I fiddled with it.
Q: Where is there help on defrag?
A: Check with your computer maintenance people, or your local computer geek
Q: I had an employee repay an expense by personal cheque. Using the deposit feature there is no name on the entry.
A: Not true, there is a name on the Deposit window, but when the employee repays an expense, you must invoice them and add the tax as it's reimbursed expenses. You get the ITC and they pay again. This means setting up the employee as a Customer (c) and then you can use the Payment window to offset the invoice with the Payment.
Q: Why in some cases does a name not show up in the GL when the source is the General Journal?
A: If you don't put the name on all the lines of the entry it won't show up in the GL where it isn't on that line.
Q: How do you record bank charges using names if you don't use the general journal?
A; Set up TD Bank Charges (o) as your name and then key it into your register directly to bank service charges. It will show up as a Write Cheque rather than a journal entry.
