Accounting for Bad Debts

One of the unfortunate issues that companies need to deal with at year-end is accounting for bad debts. Bad debts are not an issue for a company that operates on a cash basis; if you haven’t collected the money, then it isn’t included in your income. For companies that keep their books on an accrual basis, however, it is an important part of their year-end process, since you book your revenue as it occurs or is billed out, not when you receive payment. Read More »

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Accurate Accounting Will Boost Your Bottom Line

Many business owners see only the costs involved with keeping accurate accounts. They see employee costs and service fees related to recording data and creating financial reports. They know it is a necessity of business, but they only see it as an overhead cost to be kept as minimal as possible. What is often overlooked and minimized is the financial benefit of keeping accurate, up to date, accounting records.

Maintaining accurate records and reviews of financial reports is like preventative maintenance on your vehicle. It costs money to have the oil and filters changed on a regular basis. Having your tires rotating and balanced can seem like just one more thing to fit into your schedule. However, if you don’t take the time to have these things done on a regular basis, the end result can cost you much more in vehicle repairs and new tires, than if you’d simply paid for the maintenance as it was needed. Accounting works the same way.
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Tags: Accounting Records, Accurate Accounts, Accurate Records, Bottom Line, Business Failure, Business Manager, Business Owners, Cash Flow, Crunch, End Result, Finance Charges, Financial Benefit, Invoices, Overhead Cost, Payables And Receivables, Preventative Maintenance, Spiral, Tires, Unnecessary Expense, Vendor Statements

Fixed Asset Records

Your fixed asset purchases are an important part of business for a number of reasons. They are capital investments, which show how you’ve invested profits back into the company. That is part of the reason why they are listed on your balance sheet and not as an expense. The other reason is because they have an expected life of more than one year. Because they will be providing benefits to the company over a longer period of time, the expensing of their value is spread out over the useful life of the asset. We do this by recording depreciation expense for each of your assets.
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Handling Credit Card Processing Fees (or PayPal Fees) in QuickBooks

There is always that never ending problem, where you just don’t get all of your income

Many merchant accounts (these are the people that permit you to accept credit cards) just take a monthly debit out of your bank account at the end of the month, these are easy to account for, you simply enter a withdrawal in your account register for the amount debited and categorize it as Merchant Processing Fees, which should be a COGS or an Expense (this varies by where you are located and your industry, check with your accountant if you are unsure).

However, what about those merchant accounts that take the percentage before you even get the money, similar to Paypal? This makes it more difficult to track, however, I do have an answer.

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Tags: Accountant, Accounting, Cash Receipts, Chase Paymentech, Checking Account, Checkout, Cogs, Credit Card Processing, Credit Cards, Google, Invoices, Lump Sum Fees, Matter Of Fact, Merchant Account, Merchant Accounts, Monies, Paypal Account, QuickBooks, Three Ways, Worry

Making FreshBooks work with QuickBooks and vice versa

Part 1: Dealing with Income

QuickBooks is an accounting application and FreshBooks is an invoicing application. They are two different things, but in the end to have your data matching in both, there could be a ton of double entry resulting in valuable time consumed and strenuous effort.

You can have your data accurate in both, while not matching in both. Matching and accuracy are two different things. For all of the numbers to match up, it is a matter of accuracy. To have all of the details such as sales items etc. it would be a matter of matching.

In this blog post, I will begin to show you ways to get accurate data from FreshBooks into QuickBooks.

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Tags: Accounts Receivable, Accuracy, Accurate Data, Customer Center, Entities, Freshbooks, Invoices, Invoicing, Journal Entries, Main Menu Bar, Quickbooks Accounting, Receivable Balance, Receivables, Short Cuts, Strenuous Effort, Two Different Things, Vice Versa