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As a QuickBooks seminar
leader, what we feel is most important to convey to the
attendees is the need to master the reports that give
the information required to achieve business success and remain
competitive. By working with the reports
in QuickBooks you will achieve an understanding of
the difference between transaction and item types and how
they work with accounts. It will bring light to errors
and irregularities as well allow you to make good
business decisions. So we hope to shed some light
on what you should be looking for.
The
consistency principle is one of the basic
accounting concepts that enable managers to interpret
business results and prevents the distortion of
financial results. It states that the accounting
procedures used should conform with the accounting procedures
previously used for that activity. Such consistency
allows data of different periods to be compared.
Comparing business results from month to month, year to
year, and actual versus budgeted will help the business
manager move the business forward in a timely and
prudent manner.
But to
make the right business decisions, reports must portray
accurately the results of your operations.
Before you can depend on your reports, office
procedures must be in place and followed to help weed
out inconsistencies.
To set up
the office procedures that will work for your business, you
will need to understand where, how, and why QuickBooks
points data to specific reports. We cannot convey
this knowledge in one article, or one day,
but it will come as you build, filter, save
and review the same reports month to month and
year to year. Take the time to work through this
exercise in this article and those that appear in future
articles and your expertise and understanding will
mature.
In our last newsletter, we walked you through the
exercise of creating a checking account report by
Quickzooming (double clicking) on the account balance on
the balance sheet report. Our instructions
included adding columns, changing column locations,
resorting the report, changing fonts, report
headers, modifying printing options, and memorizing the report for
future use.
For each report you develop that provides meaningful
financial information, save the report format by clicking on the 'memorize' button
at the top of the reports window. Memorized
reports can be rerun from the Reports menu > Memorized reports.
By consistently applying business transactions to
the same chart of accounts, you can easily
identify when an expenditure is running away with
your profits. Lets take an easy example. Has
the cost for internet service been coded to the
telephone account, or an account named computer
services, or an outside service account? Any of
these accounts will do. They are expense accounts
and will have the same affect on business net
income.
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But if you were to
categorize some monthly internet expenses to office, and
other months code internet expenses to computer, and
occasionally select telephone as the account for your
monthly bill, you would have a hard time determining if
your expenses have gone up or down.
By selecting one account
and consistently applying this cost, you improve
the comparability of monthly totals against prior month
totals and against year to date average monthly totals.
This comparison will red flag problems with income &
expenses before its causes significant damage to
profitability.
It may seem like an
ongoing battle, remembering which account to choose, but
it does not have to be. First, from the Edit menu >
Select preferences > Click on General in the left
margin > Click on My Preferences tab and place a
checkmark next to 'automatically recall last transaction
for this name' > Click OK. Next, modify the name of the accounts
in your chart of accounts so that the name is more
helpful in identifying what should be included in the
account. For example, change 'office supplies' to
'office expenses' a broader category name that can
include miscellaneous small expenses pertaining to
running of an office. For the above example change
the account name of 'telephone' to ' telephone &
internet'. To change an account name, List Menu >
Select Accounts > right
click on the account to change and select edit > modify
the account name. It is very simple to run a
report that will sort and subtotal the 'telephone &
internet' transactions by name . From the Profit & Loss report, you could quickzoom (doubleclick) on the account ' telephone &
internet' and at the top of the report window, from the
option box labeled 'Total By' select 'Payee', producing
the detailed information you seek.
For reporting techniques and a report that will help
you find errors and inconsistencies each month -
click to read more
In each newsletter, we will add another report that will
help you spot errors and irregularities. We specialize
in helping small business owners correct and understand
their reports. And we help them customize QuickBooks to
reduce future errors. If you need assistance, give us a
call
800-216-0763 and allow us to demonstrate how our support
works.
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Employees must meet both the minimum salary
requirements plus meet specific job duties to be considered exempt
from overtime payment regulations. Job titles will not
determine exempt status.
In order to be exempt the employee must meet certain tests regarding
their job duties as executive, administrative, professional
(learned and creative professionals), and outside sales
employees, and computer professionals.
The following website, has 4 free online
video seminars discussing each of the exemptions:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/main.htm
Below is summary of important points from the
seminar
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