Money Saving Tip When Mailing Accounting Paperwork

I’ve learned a few tricks I want to share about saving money when mailing paperwork to clients.

Especially at year-end I mail paperwork often. Here are my  tricks.

First is to always use a Priority Mail Box, as pictured here. It's not only faster but safer. I've never had a Priority Mail package lost.

Next, is to save money by using the Priority Mail box that does NOT say “Flat Rate” to save money. These boxes are harder to find so when I do find them, I stock up for the year. 

Top Picture Box One: This box Priority Mail Flat Rate costs $18.40. See how it says "Flat Rate" on the box? That's your clue that you'll pay more. 

Bottom Picture Box Two. (The picture that does not exist here because I cannot find one online) Seems as if the post office seems to want to keep a secret. It is different from Box One in one important way. It does NOT say "Flat Rate". It says nothing. Look for a blank area. That means it's by weight only. By weight has never cost me or the client more than $12.80, often closer to $10. If you’re mailing accounting paperwork, use the Priority box that's by weight only to save money. 

What does this box hold for this cost difference? A whole box full of paperwork. I put the papework in  file folders, then into accordian folders, with clips...whatever it takes to make a nice presentation. And usually a sheet of bubble wrap so it doesn't slide around noisily. I want it to travel through the post office inconspiciously so it gets there safely, which is always has so far. Thanks USA Post Office ! 

Radically Simple Accounting & Small Projects

After sitting at a computer for work, I love getting outdoors and doing landscaping in my free time. Mostly I am transforming my own small yard/garden but I also volunteer to improve my church and the Issaquah post office landscaping. 

After this year's Woodinville Garden Tour, I came away both disappointed enough in my own real estate/garden situation to cry at my next therapy session and inspired enough to get back to work on the yard/garden I do have to finish this summer's project. 

Every week I visit the library to pick up this week's books on hold that have finally come in. This week I am enjoying the perfect book titled, "Big Dreams, Small Garden". The book is about.... wait for it...."creating the garden you love when you can't afford the one you want". Synchronicity?

Books are important. It's important to me that I wrote a book in my area of expertise titled, "Radically Simple Accounting". Out of blue I’ll get an email from a reader about how much they appreciate my book, and how it helps them. I don’t have the budget to promote my book the way I’d like so the number of readers is small, as are my number of reviews. However, the reviews are mostly 5-star positive on the print book, 4-star positive on the audiobook. Readers say that it's a book worth reading or listening to.

It was important to me to contribute to the world of accounting just as it was important to her to contribute to the world of gardening. And I'm grateful for both. 

Is QuickBooks Desktop being Discontinued?

There is a rumor going around that QuickBooks Desktop is being discontinued. The rumor is that if you want to stay with QuickBooks you have to move to QuickBooks Online. 

This is 100% not true. QuickBooks Desktop has a huge following so you don’t have to worry about it going away. 

If you prefer QuickBooks Desktop but want remote access capability, you can get it by getting your QuickBooks hosted. To explain what hosting is, and where you can purchase that service I've included information and a link in my free white paper titled, Remote Access Options For QuickBooks. 

To get to the white paper, go to my website -> Public Relations -> Free Download. I’ll put a live link here: Remote Access Options for QuickBooks

I personally prefer QuickBooks Enterprise (Desktop) software but support both versions. Clients who have been with Quickbooks Desktop for years are staying with it. Newer clients to QuickBooks tend to go with QuickBooks Online so I know and support both. 

New Year - Time for New Filing System

New Years is when I make time to setup new file folders for the year--for both myself and all the clients I do regular work for. That requires a bunch of printing labels for manilla folders. I save the label templates so it's fast from year to year. 

I also start pulling my paperwork to go into a plastic tub for storage. (I only keep current year's paperwork in my desk drawer files). First, I burn (shred) the 4^th year’s paperwork to create an empty tub as the IRS only requires me to keep 3 years of paperwork. Clients’ paperwork I don’t return to them until they do their taxes, as there are sometimes questions from the tax preparer. I don't have to do this on New Year's but it's become a tradition with me because it's fastest if I have new file folders ready for the new paperwork that's to come in. 

Also, there is the mental preparation. The hardest part of a job is getting started. I perhaps enjoy filing more than most but only because I recognize its value. If I have to do it a little here and a little there, forget it. The emotional units it takes to get motivated are more than the task is worth. In the old days, I was not motivated to make nice labels at all because I thought it was busy work, not necessary. But professionals I respected did make them so which was right? Which was faster? After years of scientific research, I discovered that nice labels and a pretty filing system was faster because I never mis-filed and could always find paperwork immediately. So, when I start a new job and clients see me making labels and setting up a nice filing system, and they think I’m wasting my time and their money, they’re mistaken. I'm making them more profitable. 

So now it's this thing I commit to doing during the downtime of New Year's long weekend. If I do it all of mine and all of my clients in one day with some nice music in the background I can get into a groove and it all gets done beautifully. 

Clients who have massively disorganized filing systems asked my advice. I encouraged them to set aside an entire day for this task. If they have employees, a corporate-wide official day of paperwork client up and organization is a brilliant way to go. We discovered that if they commit one whole day to files (nothing but paperwork) they can create a whole new level of organization that they find easy to maintain. Creating a company-wide day for paperwork only is a winning strategy. If you're like me, you'll make it around New Year's. 

Easy Bounced Check Processing QuickBooks

This is the easiest way to process a bounced (NSF) check in QuickBooks. It works for all QuickBooks: desktop, enterprise and online because it takes into account what's happening business-wise, correct accounting, and how the sofware works. The numbered steps are what you do. The rest is context. 

1. Enter original Invoice

2. Enter Original Receive Payment

The bank informs you that the check bounced. There it is: Item returned undeposited, and a bank fee, often $12. Figure out who's checked bounced. You need to know which customer/client?

3. Enter an expense using the customers name. Post the expense to "Accounts Recievable". 

It'll show up on your Open Invoice report. You'll be able to reconcile your bank account. 

4. Go to the Original payment for the original invoice, and uncheck the payment against the invoice. Leave the payment as a credit. 

That invoice is now unpaid, which is correct. They still owe you for the original invoice. 

5. If you want to pass a fee onto your customer at this point, create a line iten in the Line Item List (Products Items List in QB Online). Your Item name might be "Bounced Check". Your descriptoin might be "Charge for NSF check processing". Your amount is what you want but $35 is the most businesess charge. 

6. Go into the original invoice, and add that line item, and charge. Some of my client's don't charge for this so they won't have steps 5 and 6. 

The customer gives you a new check/payment. 

6. Do a new Receive payment for the new check. Apply the new check to the original invoice by clicking that it's going to pay off the original invoice. 

Now in your open invoice report, you'll see the original payment and the expense. They balance to zero. To clear these 2 line items off your report, apply the original payment to the expense. 

7. Go into Receive Payment window (as if you're doing a new transaction) and enter the customer in question. That'll pull up both the original payment and the expense. You can click those off against each other so they no longer show up on the open invoice report. 

This is natural because you're following the linear steps that happen in the real world. No one likes having a bounced check, especially your customer/client, so be nice about it. This is what it means to have a successful business. 

The Winter of our Discontent

That line, "the winter of our discontent" keeps coming to me. It feels appropriate for what I expect for this coming winter. After all the stresses we've been through these last few years, businesses without good accounting may go down. Without great accounting, so much money is being lost that very few businesses can thrive, let alone survive hardships. When a business fails, it adversely affects the owner, their family, staff, vendors, customers, and the entire community. Before a new beginning, there is a "winter of our discontent". What's most important when losing financially is to hold onto your self esteem and goodness.  

For those of us who have great financial reports to review, it may be still be a difficult winter. This is the winter to invest in the improvement of your financial reports if ever there was one. 

Steinbeck used it as the title of a book I'm listening to now. The story is about a charactor who's father lost the family fortune. He is now an adult working a menial job. He's a good person with good values who's not bothered by his current financial situation. His wife and eveyrone around him are however. He gives up his integrity and plans to become a criminal to "get ahead'. Luckily, a couple of good people intervene, interupt his crime, and gift him with wealth. Their reasoning is because he's a good person. "Keep the light" is how it's worded. Most important during hardship is to "keep the light". 

WA State Salestax in QuickBooks Online is Broken

This is not a how-to or training blog. I’m assuming the reader knows how WA State Salestax works; that WA B&O is the state business income tax; and how to file both for one business at least.

If that’s not what this blog is about, then what is it about? It’s about the following:

1.     How I know Salestax Reporting is broken in QuickBooks Online.

2.     Why it’s Not likely to get fixed anytime soon.

3.     And lastly, What Can We Do About It?

1.     How I Know it's Broken:

a). The Salestax Liability Report is the one to run. It should match the P&L total for the same period, same basis. A recent QB Online construction-business client had $520k in sales on her cash P&L. On her cash Salestax Liability Report for the same period she had only $360 in sales total. Her invoices were done correctly.

On QB Desktop the P&L and Salestax Liability Report match exactly or within 1%. I debugged that 1% difference once. It was how the software processed the payment/invoice dates. Took me hours to clean up and the discrepancy would show up on a past or future report. Just always go with the Salestax Liability Report all the time. Print a hardcopy of that report. Staple it to the back of the State Return which you print out. In case of an audit, this proves you filed correctly and with the best intent. 

b). The client imagined that all of her out of state sales were on the P&L but excluded from the Salestax Liability Report. That explained the difference. However, all of the out of state sales should have been totaled in the line item “no salestax” at the bottom of the report. There was a value in that field on her report.

Non-taxable sales for WA B&O taxable customers (everyone located in the state of WA) should be totaled in the non-tax column across from the city where the customer is located in WA State. 

I clicked on the value in the “non-taxable” line item. It should have been all out-of-state sales. What information went where didn't follow any format I could see. 

c). Another mistake was that the various cities total was greater than the state total. Technically this can’t happen as each invoice has only one state and one city. 

Some cities were duplicated with different tax rates. The client exported the Salestax Liability Report to Excel and deleted what she decided were the “wrong” cities line item.  She then massaged the numbers in the “right” cities so that that city total = state total. That was a good start. 

What she did in reporting the difference between Sales Tax Liablity Report and P&L (same basis, same time) as out-of-state sales is also a good idea...given you're working with what you're working with. You'll see why below.

However, no one using QB Online who needs the Salestax Liability Report to be correct can defend their numbers in case of an audit.

 

2.     Why It's Not Likely to Get Fixed Anytime Soon:

Various features of the Salestax Liability Report have been buggy in QB Online for a long time now. This doesn’t seem to be a priority if the report is broken now.

When users had access to the city tax rate fields, I, as a user, could clean them up a bit. Now users are locked out. Intuit exclusively has control of the various cities and salestax rates for the state of WA.

This is the NEW salestax module so Intuit thinks they’re moving in the right direction.

I called to report the bug. I have Advanced VIP tech support. The tech was awesome in many ways except he did not believe me.

He repeated that no one else was complaining. I've often been the first to report a bug. Of course, he didn’t know that.

Then he said that he would have to work with me by remote access in that particular client’s database in order to verify the bug. What that means in tech language is that only after hours of exhausting every possibility of proving me wrong would he send this bug report up to Senior Tech Support. I don’t have hours to donate, period. And I don’t want to donate hours when my past efforts have been fruitless.  

I asked if he was sure no one had reported anything? For one thing, I’ve reported problems before. Where they not there? Could he research this again?

He finally admitted he had one bug report. “Crazy thing. One has to click on the non-tax field inside the invoice a 2^nd time for it to register on the Salestax Liability Report as a non-taxable sale. I think he may have said for out of state customers”. At this point I was losing interest.  

If that’s true, that could explain why the P&L was higher, just like the client imagined. But imagine fixing that bug for invoices for $500K in sales? Imagine going into each invoice to ‘click on this one field again”, then back to your Salestax Liability Report to make sure it was now registering? And then doing it again if it didn't register. Is that not a major bug that should be fixed asap?

Plus, even if one did that perfectly it would only improve the Salestax Liability Report in QB Online, not fix it all the way. 

What Can we Do About it?

a). 50% of my clients use QB Online. The new 50%. Clients who have been in QB Desktop for many years don’t switch. The get their QB Desktop version hosted for remote access.

The Salestax Liability Report works perfectly in QB Desktop. 

When a client asks me to recommend which software they should use, if salestax reporting is important in their business, I morally have to recommend QB Desktop. 

Which is a crying shame since sometimes they have compelling reasons to go with QB Online. But 10% salestax on $520K is $52K, and that’s not pocket change. In addition, the business has to pay WA State taxes on state sales. Then there is the threat of an audit. 

b). If anyone has time, please do report your Salestax Lability Report problems. Why not let Intuit dial into your computer and help you debug it? Once they realize they can’t fix it, they should send the bug up to Senior Tech Support to fix. You won’t hear back from Senior Tech Support, but you’ll have done your good deed for the day. 

Lastly, does the Salestax Liability Report in your QB Online version work perfectly? Do you have various WA state customers with and without saletax, and out of state customers too? Does it work perfectly for your business? I would love to hear that it does. Love to!