FAQ - Accounting and QuickBooks
I am having some kind of problem with a QuickBooks account. How do I find more details?
I took a partial payment in cash but now I can't finalize the invoice as a charge. What should I do?
I am having some kind of problem with a QuickBooks account. How do I find more details?
In Motive Power go to Reports | Logs | QuickBooks Log. Set the date and time range and click on List to see the details. Each entry will show details in the panels on the right. If you cannot figure out the problem, capture the screen and e-mail it to support@motivepower.biz along with details of what you were trying to do.
We let a select few of our customers charge. We are finding that some of them don't pay. We have been leaving the invoices undeposited in the cashbox until paid. How do we credit the bill to get it off our books?
If you are using the QuickBooks interface, or you want to be able to see the details in the future, here is a good way to correct all of your figures. This approach will reduce your income figures while still accounting for the actual parts used and tech time spent. You need to make a new invoice for the same customer that has part, labor, and sublet amounts which are the negative of the original unpaid amounts. Do not enter any costs or tech time. The invoice must be for the same account and paid the same way as the original. You can do this under the JobTitle Other or make a new job title for Other-BadDebt. Go into the Cashbox and select both the unpaid amount and the matching negative and deposit them. This will be a deposit with a zero total.
If you are not using QuickBooks, and you don't want to make the extra invoice, the simplest thing to do is to print a copy of the original invoice for accounting and then mark it deposited. Mark the copy as a bad debt and give it to your bookkeeper or accountant. Your accountant will deduct this bad debt from your sales for the period.
The Cashbox provides a way for you to balance each deposit and keep track of items until deposited. The act of making a deposit updates the payments log to indicate when the item was deposited. It does not change any other figures.
I took a partial payment in cash but now I can't finalize the invoice as a charge. What should I do?
You took the partial payment before giving the customer charge privileges. If you had established the charge account earlier you would have been directed to make partial payments for charge customers directly in QuickBooks. The problem is that QuickBooks is now holding an advance payment for a non-charge customer, and this payment will not show up on the customer's Accounts Receivable statement.
Pay this ticket by cash in Motive Power. Then go to QuickBooks and make the adjustments needed. The effect of these two steps is to move the "cash" payment you made in Motive Power to Accounts Receivable in QuickBooks.
1) In QB, go to Payments to Deposit (in the Banking area) and select the final (cash) payment for the ticket. Motive Power put this with your Undeposited Funds when you paid the ticket by cash. Click OK, then choose an asset account and OK the deposit of that line item.
2) Go to Invoices (in the Customers area) and add a tax exempt charge invoice to the customer. In the detail area, make just one line item. Choose an Item that's associated with the same asset account you used in step (1). The amount of this line item should be the same amount you just deposited in step (1), the amount owed after deducting the original partial payment. This should the invoice total, too.
This leaves intact the sales taxes and expense allocations made in QuickBooks by Motive Power when the ticket was Finalized, and moves the amount owed from an asset account to A/R.
I am getting errors reported by QuickBooks when I pay an invoice. Running validate accounts shows no problems. What should I do?
QuickBooks is locked against performing a transaction. If Motive Power printed out the report to hand enter the missing data in QuickBooks later, the problem is probably on the QuickBooks side. You have probably gotten a QuickBooks update but have not yet rebooted your computer. Close Motive Power and QuickBooks and restart your computer. If the problem persists look in Motive Power under Reports | Logs | QuickBooks Log for details on the exact problem. If you can't figure it out, choose Save in Text Format and email the file, along with a detailed description of what you were doing at the time, to support@motivepower.biz
I am getting a message from Motive Power that QuickBooks is not running when I can see it open on my screen. What should I do?
One of two things is wrong with QuickBooks. The most likely problem to produce this error is that you have not set QuickBooks to allow Motive Power to connect to it. This should happen automatically. If it does not then you may not have administrator privileges in QuickBooks or QuickBooks may not be in single user mode. The first time you try to attach to QuickBooks you should get a dialogue from QuickBooks and Motive power should get added to the list of applications that have requested to connect with this QuickBooks company. You can double check or do it manually, Go to Edit, then Preferences. Click on integrated Applications and change the tab to Company preferences. Change the checkbox to Notify the user. Pick Properties then Access Rights and give Motive Power permission to read and modify the QuickBooks company file.
The second problem could be that QuickBooks is in single user mode. QuickBooks will usually realize that and give you a dialogue to switch QuickBooks into the proper mode. Some security settings may prevent you from receiving this message.
My AR statements from QuickBooks show some invoices overdue on the day I am sending out the statements. How do I fix this?
You need to change the aging setting inside of QuickBooks to count from the statement date instead of the invoice date. In QuickBooks click on Edit and then Preferences. Choose Reports and Graphs and then Company Preferences. Change the Aging Reports selection to Age From Due Date.