Paying Bills

[autocraft]

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'm a new user of 4 weeks and an engineer so treat me gently!!

1) I have entered all my purchases/bills and am now entering my payments i.e. cheques & cash. When I enter my cheques in 'print cheques' they don't seem to reduce the balances owing to my suppliers.

2) Also I have a regular supplier who delivers product and invoices each day. At the end of the month I receive a statement. Should I enter the statement as a single entry or enter each daily purchase? If the latter how do I show each daily invoice as paid from one cheque for the month?

I must be stupid but building racing cars is a lot easier then getting my accounts right!! Any help would be appreciated, thanks Ralph

[esentziak]

You have to allocate the payments against the invoices in the Suppliers -Pay Bills- window.
Highlight the bill you want to pay and put a click in the left-hand margin - a tick will appear
If you make a mistake highlight again, click again and the tick disappears, ie the invoice will not be paid with the cheque you are allocating
Just keep clicking until all the invoices covered by one cheque are ticked. QB keeps a running total at the bottom of the screen.
Choose the bank account and the date of the payment

Unfortunately if you have been writing cheques to pay bills which you also posted in the Enter Bills window, you are in effect paying twice as far as QB is concerned.
You only write cheques when you have not also posted a bill.
I suggest you void or delete (voiding is best as it leaves a trace of what you have done) and pay the bills again using the pay bill window.

I also suggest you buy a guide to QB and read it as it is well worth the effort. Past releases of QB had fairly comprehensive manuals but QB 2002 manual is limited.

2) it's up to you, and how much details you want to keep on purchases, and if you want to match your purchases to sales to get a profit and loss per item.
You can post a statement covering a month's invoices, and analyse the different items or expenses by entering the correct amount against each item/expense code. This way, you only do one entry but you know exactly which item has been invoiced to you.
It's not a bad idea to do it this way as it will save you entering 30 invoices if you receive an invoice every day.


Hope the above helps, but do get a manual. I bought the Idiot Guide which is OK but US based and there are a few differences (e.g. you cannot use discounts on the UK version, there is no VAT in the States, etc). I live in Ireland and bought the guide through Amazon as there was not a lot on offer in Dublin, but if you live in a UK major town, you'll have more choice and will be able to check out the book before you buy.

Good luck and don't despair, it's not that complicated.
Regards
Esentziak

[autocraft]

Thank you, you have just turned on a light in my brain!! I will check (pun intended!) to see if I have double entered my payments.

I spent last night going through the sample account trying different things and have come to the same conclusion as you - I need a book!! So I will visit Amazon today and see what is available.

Many thanks for your help, Ralph