Retail edition - POS import

[Lindy]

When using the POS program with the retail edition of QuickBooks and upon retreiving data from the POS how is the information posted to the General Ledger? Are the sales automatically posted to the sales accounts in the General Ledger? Does the cash, visa, m/c etc. then get posted automatically to the funds available for deposit? If so, then does another entry need to be manually made to take the dollars out of funds available for deposit and post deposits to the bank? If so, why does the visa/m/c go to a different account instead of funds available for deposit like the cash? Which part of the program is necessary to post the deposits or can a simple Journal entry be sufficient?

[gibbo]

The POS program that has been available in Canada is the QuickPOS program written in Australia. I am an Accredited Trainer on it, but it does not come with my blessing. Reckon Australia and I have had a number of discussions regarding this program since it's release.
It extracts Customers and Items from QuickBooks and makes all the transactions in the POS program. At the end of the day it allows you to do a reconciliation, but does not post the reconciled amounts. It posts either all the transactions or a single transaction containing all item sales (grouping the sales of each item as a single line). It posts the money as each transaction or as the sum of the payments (by payment method) as they occurred on the transactions. Any differences have to be entered manually.
We hope to have a fully integrated and fully reconciled solution we have developed using end-of-day summary transactions out with several developers before Christmas. The developers of QuickPOS have always believed that they had the correct approach. I disagree, and so do a lot of users!

[Lindy]

Thanks for answering my message. It is not a very user friendly system. I am new to this program and and trying to Help out this young girl with her new business. I have been a bookkeeper for over 20 years and have never encountered such a more complicated system. All would be good if I could get her to switch to something else but her system and inventory is so complicated that she would just have to start over from scratch. As far as the POS bringing transactions into the main program I would not be able, and I am sure she has never, reconsiled daily as I am only there a few hours each week and am trying to do a year and a half's worth of work as she has been open since Sept of 03 and not done any bookkeeping. I just started helping 2 months ago. I will keep ploding along. I find that the Journal Entry is the fastest way but notice in the reports that there is never any description about the transaction (which I input into the memo section of the transaction so why does it not appear?). Also, I have to try and run reports for her PST & GST. She has never taken her compensation on PST for over a year. I feel sorry for her. Not a clue about keeping proper records.
I thank you for your help, it is too bad it is such a horible system.

[gibbo]

I would suggest that you never bring the transactions into QuickBooks. It causes more problems than most people are capable of solving. A summary at the end of the day is the best way to do it.
The problem with journal entries is that they do not show information correctly in reports, even though the information is correct in the Profit and Loss.
What we have done is to work out how to enter summary transactions and auto-import these into QuickBooks, together with Purchases as Bills that have been made into the POS as item purchases. Everything is fully reconciled. Two of the main areas we expect to work in are Hotels and Supermarkets. The Point of Sale will supply the end-of-day info and we dump it into QuickBooks - in about ten seconds. With one developer we can even post amounts to the correct Bank Accounts. There will be absolutely nothing else to do.
But the funny thing is that it has taken a long time to get POS developers to see the need for this.
If you need any assistance on the program, email me, my address is on this forum.