AccountAbility's Blog

A client recently asked a very good question. She states that “When we create a purchase order and the cost for that item has changed, it saves your changes. I know you can do this because you did it on my computer. However, on Jeanette’s computer, it does not save the cost. How can I set this to save the cost on her computer?”

The answer is in the Preferences. Have Jeanette go to Edit, Preferences, General, use the tab “My Preferences” and click on the box in the top right column that says “Bring back all one time messages”.

The next time she edits a price on the purchase order, she will see a pop-up message asking if she would like to update the item with the new cost. She will simply click Yes.

Note, however, the box “Do not display this message in the future”. In this case, do NOT click this box. She must have clicked it at one time in the past while signed in as her user name. By asking QuickBooks to bring back all one time messages, she will again have this option, along with all other “Lost Options”.

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Sales Tax Holiday

A recently enacted statute provides for a Massachusetts “sales tax holiday weekend” on August 14 and 15, 2010. The exemption applies to sales of tangible personal property bought for personal use. Exceptions include: any single item whose price exceeds $2,500.00, motor vehicles, motorboats, meals, telecommunications, services, gas, steam, electricity, and tobacco products.
Since this may occur at times in any state, the following steps should apply to setting up your QuickBooks Sales Tax items for these occasions.

FOR QuickBooks POS USERS

If you use QuickBooks POS, after signing in as the administrator, do the following steps:

1. Click on Edit, Preferences, Company.
2. Choose Sales Tax
3. Choose Add Tax Location
4. Type in the Tax Location Name: ST Holiday (or whatever name you prefer)
5. Click on the Shipping tax code, Non, Click OK
6. Under your new Tax Location name, choose Edit Tax Code
7. Use Code STH or whatever name you prefer
8. Use Tax Code Name: H
9. Print Mark “H”, Click Next
10. Choose Multi-rate tax if you sell any items over $2500 (or whatever rules your current sales tax holiday require) Choose single tax rate if you don’t.
11. Tax Component: write in Tax, Tax rate: write in 0.00
12. If using Multi-rate, click on the box “Apply this tax rate to a specific item range: Fill in 0 to 2499, and then click on “Apply tax to the amount of an item’s price within this range”.
13. Click Add another tax rate. Tax component: Tax Tax rate: 6.25% (if in MA), Tax Agency: whatever you have named the Dept of Revenue for your state. Click Apply this tax rate to a specific item price range: $2500.00 to $ your highest priced item.
14. Do NOT click Apply tax to the amount of an item’s price within this range.
15. Click Finish
16. On the bottom of this screen, see the Default Tax location for this store: Choose the new tax code you just created from the drop-down list. Only do this step on the morning of the sales tax holiday.
17. At the close of business on the last day of the sales tax holiday, change the default back to your usual default.

FOR QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise USERS

If you do NOT use POS, after signing in as Administrator, do the following:

1. Click on Edit, Preferences, and click on the Company Preferences Tab.
2. Click on Sales Tax. Click on Add sales tax item.
3. Choose the Sales Tax Item type from the drop-down.
4. Type in a name, such as ST Holiday and type in a Description.
5. Type is a 0.0% Tax Rate, and choose the Tax Agency you’ve named the Dept of Revenue.
6. When creating Invoices, or Sales Receipts, you will have to remember to go to the Tax Box at the bottom of the form, and choose from the drop-down the new tax code you’ve just created.
7. The exception to above is if you have only one or a few customers and you wish to edit the customer’s default tax code on their Additional Info tab. This may not be efficient if you have many existing customers you will be selling to on the sales tax holiday, since you will have to change them all back to their taxable status after the holiday.
8. Also, although I did not recommend changing the Company Preference “Your most common sales tax item” because it will not automatically suggest the new tax on existing customers. However, if you plan on creating many new customers, you could click on that, choose your new sales tax code from the drop-down and then click OK. This will also have to be reversed after the sales tax holiday concludes.

Best wishes for many sales!

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Many states and localities have recently increased their sales tax rates.  How can you be sure to collect and remit the correct amount in QuickBooks?

Here are the instructions:

While you could simply overwrite the rate on your existing sales tax item with the new percentage on the date it becomes effective, please consider the following warning from the QuickBooks Help Index:

“Note: If the sales tax rate for an existing item changes, do not change the rate. Instead, create a new sales tax item with the new rate, and make the old sales tax item inactive. If you change an existing rate, it will impact reports and transactions that occurred prior to the rate change.”

To do this task in QuickBooks Pro/Premier or Enterprise:

1. Go to the Lists menu and click Item List.
2. In the Item list, double-click the sales tax item you need to change.
3. In the Edit Item window, if necessary, change the Sales Tax Name to reflect the existing percentage.
4. Click the Item is inactive checkbox.
5. Click OK.
6. Next, Create a New Sales Tax Item.   Go to Lists, Item List, New Item.
   1. Loading, please wait . .
7. From the Type drop-down list, click Sales Tax Item.
8. Enter a sales tax name, Specifying the Locality and the new rate.
9. Enter a description for the way this sales tax item will appear as a line item on your sales forms.

10.  Enter the sales tax rate as a percentage.

11.  From the Tax Agency drop-down list, choose the vendor you’ve set up for paying the tax. Click OK.

12.  Finally, go to Edit, Preferences, Company Preferences, Sales Tax.  Change “Your most common sales tax item” drop-down to the new Sales Tax Item that you just set up.

If you use QuickBooks POS, do this task instead:

In POS:

1. Go to Edit, drop down to Preferences, then Company

2. Near the bottom of the list, click on “Sales Tax”

3. Choose the tax item for MA 5% Sales Tax and click “Edit Tax Code”

4. Click Next, click Next, then overwrite the amount of 5% to 6.25%

5. Click Finish

These instructions should apply to most of you, but feel free to e-mail or call me with any questions.

Have a good summer!

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