Reporting
Customer prepayments,
when a liability account is used, can get complicated, and a report should prove helpful. The report will be set up to look only at the prepayments account:
- Click
Reports|Transaction Detail|By Account.
- When the report comes up, click
Customize, find Total by
and select Customer.
- Click the Filters
button and in the Filter
column, select Account. In
the center, click the down-arrow on
Account. Scroll up and click
Selected Accounts, then select the
Customer Prepayments
liability account, and click OK
two times.
- Back at
Customize Report,
select a suitable date range. A custom date range may be needed to get all of the customers with open prepayments. Then click
OK, and view the report.
These reports tend to be a
matter of individual preference. You may
want to try some other reports.
Transaction Detail by Date
is good, but you would have to work through a different customizing sequence.
Transaction Report by Customer
works, if customized with the Detail Level
as all.
Memorizing
is a good idea, when you have a report that does the job. Before memorizing, change the title. Click
Header/Footer
and enter a title XE "report:customer prepayments" such as
Customer Prepayment Balances.
Then check the date. If the date says
Custom,
the report would be memorized with exactly the dates shown. A generic date range, perhaps
This Fiscal Year to Date,
would be a better idea. Finally click
Memorize,
to bring up that window. The title displayed there will appear in the list of memorized reports, and you may change it, is you wish. Click
OK to finish memorizing the report.
Invoice Number Report
can be generated to list invoices XE "invoice:listed by number" in order by number. It is not difficult, but there is a little trick. To make it work, you must first clear the screen, with
Window|Close All. Select
Reports|Other Reports|Missing Check Report.
The next box that pops up should
allow a selection of Account,
which will, of course, be
Accounts Receivable. When the
report comes up, you may need to select
Filters, and set the Amount to
All. If you were not able to select
the account as the report started, select
Account as Accounts Receivable.
(In QuickBooks 4.0 and earlier, the
Source must be All accounts.
) The Invoice Number
field is alphanumeric, so the numbers are alphabetized, rather than set in numerical order. That means that 1234 will be ahead of 2, which you can live with, if you are forewarned (you have a choice?)
Are the payments really rolling in?
Businesses with only a few
customers know who is paying and who is
not. Other companies make many small
sales to numerous customers. When the
customers don't pay, they usually don't tell
you that they are not paying.
QuickBooks can help with the A/R aging
reports. Select Reports|A/R Reports.
A summary aging report tells if
things are generally unpleasant; a detail (or
transaction) report identifies your problem
customers. Please refer to the chapter
on reports. Unfortunately, I can
provide no more service. Getting
customers to pay is one of the skills
of being a business person.
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