Setting up QuickBooks Pro 2008

[chris_elevate]

Hi,

You've seen my posts here before and are aware that I've been trying to get QuickBooks Pro 2008 up and running for our registered charity, with some difficulty!

We're a Church running in the South East and basically we've had a local top accountant charging us £1,500 per year and as we only take £40,000 ish we're really missing that money.

Obviously we still need to pay out some money to someone to prepare the accounts for the charity commission and obide by the rules and regs they specify so I'll be asking about that when we're up and running. Eventually I'll need to know what services we require and what we don't from an accountant.

For now I'm simply trying to setup QuickBooks am struggling to get my head round how to make our business and information fit the programme. I've gone through the setup interview and told the software we were a church/religious organisation and answered all the questions as it suggested. It's now customised the software screen for our company and given us the following screen.



All I need to know (for now) is how to proceed and enter in the information we've been collecting since the 1st April 2009.

Income
We take income in one of two ways.... either gift aided money given to us by standing order or by cash/cheque in the sunday morning collection - this money is all marked and noted as gift aid claimable. Secondly we have cash, cheque and standing orders coming in which we can't claim gift aid on because the person doens't pay the tax etc.

Looking at QB it looks like you have to create an invoice and then recieve the payments from the invoice and then record deposits to the bank account. Is this the case? Is there no way to instantly deposit the money to a certain section of the - chart of accounts?

If I am having to create invoices then what information am I putting into that screen? And when I'm setting up 'an item' what information and I giving QB's? Looks like I need to give it a 'type'?

Expense
We pay bills via direct debit, cash, cheque and we have a petty cash of £300 per month taken from the account and recorded. How do I process there? Every payment we make we insist has a receipt - our poilicy is that if you don't have a receipt then you get no payment.

I've setup a small form to clip to the receipts so there a paper trail of what the expense was and the details regarding it. These we are currently storing in chronical order. Here's an example of the form...



The plan is to get QuickBooks up and running and installed at the church so we can ask for a volunteer to come in every so often and enter all the information. We need to start producing print outs from the software showing where we are at any given moment in time and where the money is being spent. But I want to set it up correctly and start entering the information correctly rather than just bashing it in and finiding it's not right.

I'm lucky to have a chart of account example from a previous church so I can go into QB and edit the chart of accounts to match this example. Obviously QB has given me categories that I really don't need and/or will never use!

Happy to setup the company from scratch again if you think I've done it wrong! lol

Really appreciate you help... thanks guys!

[chris_elevate]

Anyone know?

[James Smith]

Chris,

Much of what you ask could probably be solved using the tutorials that come with QB and also there is a specific QB forum if you google for it. Generally If you break your questions down into ones which can be answered in 2 minutes you will get a better response - a long post if very off putting for respondents I am afraid.

Regards,

[AccountingBasics]

Chris

I have used and set up Quickbooks Pro before. The questions you ask are fairly long. I will try and answer them as best I can. Setting up Quickbooks is different for each company.

I use Quickbooks Accountant so it may be slightly different. Here are some quick answers:

Add in any accounts you need from the chart of accounts you have been given. The ones which you do not need you can just leave, they will not appear on any reports unless an amount is posted to it.

With regards to receipts. It is possible to receive money direct into the bank account - Banking - Make Deposits.

Petty Cash - Set up a separate Cash account and post all your petty cash items through there. You will treat it like an additional bank account.

Payments - You can either post the receipt as an invoice received and then make a payment or you can do - Banking - Write Cheques

You will need to split up money received from people who gift aid and those who do not, hopefully this is already done in your chart of accounts.

It is important that each month when you get a bank statement you reconcile the bank. This will ensure that all your transactions are posted.

One good thing about Quickbooks is that if you make a mistake it is easy to correct it or to delete the transaction.

I hope this helps.

[chris_elevate]

Brilliant! Thanks for your help guys - think I'm getting the jist of what you're saying.

So in other words...

To recieve the money from the offering on a sunday morning, individuals and or any other cash we have given simply use.... 'Banking' ---> 'Record Deposits' and enter the information in there. Only if we need to raise an invoice for someone to pay for room hire and or other service we may sell do we need to use 'invoices' ---> 'Receive Payments' ---> 'Record Deposits'.

How would you get money into 'Petty Cash' on QB?

Again with Payments it sounds like seeing as we pay a bill as soon as it arrives we can simply enter on our payments directly as 'write cheques'.

[AccountingBasics]

You've got it.

If you set up a new bank account - calling it Petty Cash. You can do this through the chart of accounts and new.

Ensure when you are posting that you use the correct bank account or petty cash. If you do get it wrong, it is possible to go back into the transaction and change it.

You can use the write cheques method, this will save some time. You may find it useful to enter the invoice number or reference in the memo section. This makes it easier to find again.

[chris_elevate]

Right I've setup a new bank account called Petty Cash.

How do I transfer money into this account from the current account I've got setup? i.e. how do I account for this on QB?

So when money is paid out from Petty Cash who do I say it's paid to? I guess I just charge the outgoing money to the relevant section in the chart of accounts as normal?

Thanks

[AccountingBasics]

For transferring money from the bank to Petty cash, there is a transfer tab which makes it simple. Banking - Bank transfer.

For recording Petty cash, record it as you would any other transaction. i.e name on receipt or who it is paid to and than use the chart of accounts to use the correct account code.