Simplify credit card entries for travel

I have a lot of clients. Pretty much all of those clients have a credit card or two (or three, or four...) that they use for business purchases. Clients take business trips. And on such business trips, they use their business credit card(s). A lot.

All these entries to record the purchases made while traveling can take a lot of time to enter, especially if the client patronized a lot of independent business.... "mom & pop" type places.

In the Vendor List in QuickBooks, you cannot delete a vendor once they have been used in a transaction. They can be made inactive and therefore hidden from view, but they cannot be deleted.

Many of the places my clients patronize when they travel, I do not expect them to return to in the future. To save myself entry time (and bookkeeping fees for my clients) as well as keep their Vendor Lists as lean as possible, I enter a lot of their travel expenses to generic vendors that I set up.

I generally set up four generic vendors in my clients' QB files for use when entering their travel expenses:

• Travel Meals
• Travel Entertainment
• Travel Misc
• Taxi/Shuttle

Let's say I'm working on the bookkeeping for a client who is based in Oregon. I'm entering transactions from their credit card statement and I see some entries from restaurants that are located in Las Vegas. If I see charges to Starbucks, I'll enter that under a vendor called Starbucks and coded to Meals as there are Starbucks located all over and chances are, the client will visit another Starbucks in the future if it's not already in their QB file from previous entries. The same goes for places like Burger King, The Cheesecake Factory, Red Robin, Taco Bell, etc.

But if I see a purchase from "Rosemary's Restaurant" and see from the statement that the restaurant is located in Las Vegas, I will enter it to the vendor Travel Meals, code it to meals, and enter Rosemary's Restaurant - Vegas in the memo area.



If there are purchases on the credit card for entertainment during the trip to Vegas such as a tour of some kind, tickets to a show, etc I will book those to Travel Entertainment, code them to Entertainment Expenses and notate in the memo who the charge was actually to.

Taxi and shuttle fares I will code to a vendor simply called Taxi/Shuttle and entered to the Travel Expense account. Clients who travel for business will use a lot of different cab and shuttle companies and it's not necessary to have all of them entered as separate vendors.

When it comes to the lodging expenses, it depends on what company the clients stayed with as to how I will code it. If they stayed at a major-name hotel such as Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, etc then I will code it to vendors named as such. I will not create separate vendors for the same hotel chain in different cities such as "Marriott - San Francisco" and "Marriott - Seattle." I will just name the vendor "Marriott."

But if they stay at an independent place such as "Little Blue Moon Inn," then I will code to to the Travel Misc vendor and enter it to the Travel expense account, again notating in the memo area the actual name that appears on the CC statement.

Other odd expenses incurred when traveling such as gift stores, souvenirs, etc I will code to the vendor Travel Misc and then to an appropriate expense account depending upon what was purchased. If it was a personal purchase and non-deductible for their business, I will enter it to their Draw or Distribution account, depending upon the individual client.

I hope this helps give you guidance as to how to make credit card entries a bit more simple!

~Cathi

Backup, Backup, Backup!

I'm sure all of you out there are very good about backing up your QuickBooks datafile and other accounting records. You backup well and you backup often. Right?

But is your backup safe?

There are many ways to backup your data.....you can burn it to a CD/DVD, save it to a USB drive, save it to an external hard drive or upload it to a secured web location. Of the methods I've mentioned the safest place for your data is the secured web location as long as the actual file server is not at your main location.

Recently a colleague of mine who was religious about backing up his files lost everything. He thought he was secure since he backed up all his pertinent data to two different external drives. Then he came home from a dinner out with his family to find his laptop and both external hard drives a smoldering pile of ashes due to a power surge from a lightning strike. Everything was gone.

For local backup purposes of a large amount of data, I do recommend an external hard drive system that is formatted to automatically backup important data once per day (preferably in the middle of the night). This will help protect you in case your PC decides to die or your main hard drive fails. But test your backup system often to be sure it is working properly.

But if your home or office burns down or is otherwise damaged, the data on the external drive will be lost as well. It is here that data backed up to a secured web location will save your butt.

There are tons of options out there from setting up your own FTP file server (with the actual file server kept in a separate location from your main computer) to using one of the many companies out there that provide storage solutions. There are a lot of options out there on the web. In prior years I tried the automatic product from XDrive.com and GoDaddy's Online File Folder but both were slow when using to manually upload/download and were cumbersome to use.

About 18 months ago, I switched to Carbonite and am so glad I did. Carbonite comes highly recommended in both the IT and Accounting communities and for less than $60 per year (per computer), I have complete piece of mind. Several times last year my main computer had to go to my IT guy for repair or upgrading. Each time, I hardly missed a step in my daily workflow as I was able to instantly switch to my laptop and download the files I needed from my Carbonite account and my external hard drive.

So, whatever you do.... backup and backup often!

~Cathi

What to put in that Check # field when there is no check #...

A question my clients ask me often is "how do I enter debit card purchase into my QuickBooks file?" What is stumping them is that on the Write Checks screen, what do they put in the check # field? The initial reaction of some clients is to put the reference # or approval # from their debit card receipt in that field. NO NO NO! Don't do that - not only is it a giant waste of time typing in all those #'s but it will make reconciling your account (you do reconcile, right?) a nightmare!

When entering items into your bank accounts (checking, savings, etc) the check # field above (the field next to "No.") can be used very effectively if you develop and use a concise list of codes for the different types of transactions that you have.

Here is the list of codes that I use for my own books and all my clients' books:

(the actual check # used) = check

DC = debit card purchase

EFT = electronic funds transfer (items that come out of your bank account either electronically, automatically, or both). Examples of this would be electronic payments of payroll taxes, bank fees, automatic telephone or utility payments, etc.

BP = bill payments made with online banking

TX = a transfer between bank accounts if the receiving bank account is not a bank account that is tracked in your QB file. To record a transfer between bank accounts in the same QB file us the Transfer Funds function located under the banking menu. An example of when you would use the TX code would be when the owner of a sole-prop or a shareholder of an S-Corp transferred funds from the company bank account to their personal account. The actual transation what a transfer of funds online or via the phone. Use of the code "TX" will help track that.

WD = a withdrawal from the bank account. Use this code when in-branch withdrawals are made or the bank makes an adjustment to your account.

ATM = an ATM withdrawal from the bank account. Use this code when monies are withdrawn from the account via the ATM machine.

ADJ = an adjustment that you make to your bank balance. This code should not be used very often, if at all!

The codes above ARE case-sensitive in that you need to be consistent. Either use all caps (DC) or all lower case (dc) on ALL the entries. Don't mix using upper and lower case. Doing so will cause QB to sort your entries incorrectly in the Reconcile window.

Using consistent codes will help you in reconciling in that QB will group all the like codes together in the Reconcile window by ascending date (although in the newer versions of QB, you can change the sort order of the entries in the Reconcile window). Reconciling your account will be much easier when you can easily find the transactions in your reconcile window to match to your bank statement.

The list above are the codes that I have found thru my 17+ years of experience to be the easiest to both use and remember. Feel free to leave comments with any codes that you find useful.

~Cathi

The Diva is In....

Hello QuickBooks Users!

I am the QuickBooks Diva and I'm here to help YOU! I am a trained accountant with over 17 years of experience. I have been using QuickBooks since 1995 (Ver 4.0) and am a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. I own a business that provides accounting, bookkeeping and payroll services to small businesses and individuals. I spend my days working in QuickBooks and helping my clients in their QuickBooks files.

Although I work with a lot of "regular" small businesses, my specialty niche is in working with businesses who sell on the Internet such as eBay, Amazon, Etsy and E-Commerce website sellers. I have clients in every state in the US and have helped hundreds of internet businesses with their accounting and QuickBooks. My webstore that is dedicated to this niche of my business is located at Web-Bookkeeper.com.

My main website is located at Allegro Accounting.

I plan to give some quick lessons and commentary on common errors and issues in the use of QuickBooks. I welcome your comments and you can also reach me directly via a contact button on the sidebar.

~Cathi