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QB 2009

QuickBooks 2011 Coming By September 17th

Chief Mechanic · September 16, 2010 ·

Intuit announced last night that QuickBooks 2011 and Enterprise Solutions 11.0 will be available by September 17, 2010, including via electronic download from our Buy QuickBooks page.

On tap for 2011 are:

  • A new Collections Center to make it easy to send overdue invoices to customers via email
  • Support for batch invoicing
  • Balance sheets by class – Intuit might have finally addressed the lack of support for fund accounting
  • Multi-instance capability in Premier Accountant Edition, allowing 2 company files from the same version open at the same time
  • A separate File Manager utility that can help firms running multiple QuickBooks files across multiple versions
  • Subtle improvements across multiple features accessed in everyday use
  • A variety of changes to Intuit services

New features have been added selectively to the different QuickBooks products, so check out our updated article describing the feature differences between Pro and Premier.

As with any new version, it will take some time for firms to change operating procedures to take advantage of the new features. For example, while the addition of a Balance Sheet By Class report will solve many business problems, it will trigger a lot of future posts in our KnowledgeBase describing how to use this feature because debits and credits will have to be balanced by class – something QuickBooks users haven’t confronted before QuickBooks 2011.

Here’s an overview of the new File Manager:

QuickBooks 2011 File Manager Overview

Some of the subtle improvements include:

  • the addition of a Customer tab to the Company Snapshot, showing (among other things) 2 key metrics: length of time as a customer and average days to pay
  • the addition of a History tab to important windows, such as Enter Bills, Create Invoices, and Create Credit Memos/Refunds; the History tab can be quickly opened and closed, and shows a Summary, Recent Transactions, and Notes for the vendor or customer
QuickBooks 2011 Enter Bills History Tab

Tweaks such as the added History tabs make it easy to get around QuickBooks in fewer keystrokes in less time. That drives productivity improvements in busy offices – and can help make the cost of upgrading a good investment.

Over the next few weeks, kook for more articles on the new QuickBooks 2011 in our KnowledgeBase.

It’s premature to say whether these changes make QuickBooks 2011 a worthwhile upgrade. This upgrade is definitely not like the introduction of QuickBooks 2009, which added a major new feature in the form of support for multi-currency. However, with each passing year and the addition of new features, QuickBooks becomes a more mature product, so there are fewer “blockbuster” features available to add.

Still, it is unfortunate that Intuit has decided to pursue some short-sighted ways to add revenue. For 2011, there are a variety of small fees, such as the $4.99 fee to revise a previously saved form design. They’ve also made changes to the QuickBooks Pro product, such as limiting it to a maximum of 3 users, which can effectively force upgraders to purchase the more expensive QuickBooks Premier.

The market reaction to higher costs without eye-popping new features is likely to be a yawn.

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Why Are Items On Sales Orders Marked Closed Before Invoicing On a Partially Fulfilled Sales Order?

Chief Mechanic · September 13, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks 2009 for releases prior to R6, there was a bug (which has since been fixed) where undelivered items on a sales order that had previously been partially fulfilled had been incorrectly marked closed and could not be unchecked to be invoiced.  This bug is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

The bug only affects Sales Orders or Estimates that have partially invoiced line items where Unit of Measure has been enabled or where the Sales Order or Estimate contains a Group Item (with or without Unit of Measure enabled).  For more information see our articles on the Unit of Measure preference and Group Items.

This bug has been corrected in the R6 release.  Although the bug itself has been corrected, you may have previously entered Sales Orders or Estimates affected by the bug that will need to be fixed.

To correct the problems created by this bug, complete these steps:

  1. Update QuickBooks to the R6 or later release
  2. Run the Verify utility
  3. Identify any incorrectly closed transactions
  4. Repair those transactions
  5. Rebuild
  6. Re-run the Verify utility

Step 1 – Update QuickBooks to the R6 or Later Release

See our article for more information on updating your QuickBooks release.

Step 2 – Run the Verify Data Utility

To run the Verify Data utility, click the File->Utilities->Verify Data menu selection.  See our article for more information on running the Verify Data utility.  You’ll need to identify and correct any incorrectly closed transactions if the Verify Data utility displays this warning:

Some Sales Orders or Estimates may be incorrectly marked as closed or display incorrect invoiced quantities.

This procedure is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

Step 3 – Identify Any Incorrectly Closed Transactions

If the Verify Data utility indicates that transactions were incorrectly closed, proceed to identify the affected transactions.  Open the QBWin.log file in a text editor and search for Invalid Received/Invoiced Flag.  Make a list of the Doc# for each affected Sales Order or Estimate.  This procedure is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

Step 4 – Repair the Affected Transactions

Using the list prepared in Step 3, find the first affected Sales Order or Estimate.  To find a Sales Order, open the Create Sales Order window by clicking on the Customers->Create Sales Orders menu selection.  Then, click the Find button and enter the first S. O. No. to be repaired.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Sales Order Find

The procedure to find an Estimate is similar to that for finding a Sales Order except it starts from by clicking on the Customers->Create Estimates menu selection.

On a new blank line after the last line on the Sales Order or Estimate, enter any text at least 3 characters in length in the Description field.  Save your changes by clicking the Save & New button and repeat these steps for each affected Sales Order or Estimate on the list prepared in Step 3.  When you’ve repaired the last Sales Order or Estimate, you can click the Save & Close button.  This procedure is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

Step 5 – Run the Rebuild Data Utility

Run the Rebuild Data utility by clicking on the File->Utilities->Rebuild Data menu selection.  See our article on running the Rebuild Data utility for more information.

Step 6 – Re-run the Verify Data Utility

To confirm that these steps have corrected the problem, re-run the Verify Data utility as described in Step 2 above.  If the Verify Data procedure displays the warning discussed above, repeat Steps 3 through 6.  If no warning appears, proceed to run inventory and sales reports to confirm that inventory data is now correct.

Prior to the availability of the R6 release, Intuit posted a description of this problem on its Wiki.  See FAQ 14.

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What Is a Sales Tax Group and How Do I Create One?

Chief Mechanic · September 12, 2010 ·

A Sales Tax Group is a type of Item that is maintained on the Item List.  It’s used to combine multiple Sales Tax Items (which are themselves another type of Item) into a single sales tax charge on a customer invoice. 

See our article on all of the Item types supported by QuickBooks for more information.

Since QuickBooks only supports 1 sales tax code (item or group) on an invoice, a Sales Tax Group is a way to reduce the number of codes needed to invoice a customer.  In turn, that reduces the chance of data entry error while at the same time calculating all required sales taxes.

Before you can set up a Sales Tax Group, make sure that you have:

  1. Set the preference to collect and track sales taxes
  2. Already created all of the individual Sales Tax Items that will be combined into a Sales Tax Group

With those steps completed, you can create a Sales Tax Group by completing these steps:

  1. Open the Item List from the Lists->Item List menu selection
  2. Click the Item button in the lower left corner of the Item List window
  3. Select New from the menu or press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + N
  4. When the New Item window appears, choose Sales Tax Group from the pull down menu
  5. Enter the Group Name and Description
  6. Add all the single Sales Tax Items that make up the Sales Tax Group
  7. As you add the Sales Tax Items, QuickBooks will update the Group Rate, the total tax rate for this Sales Tax Group
  8. Click Ok to save your work

Note:

You may observe a minor display bug in early releases of QuickBooks 2009.  Here’s a screenshot from QuickBooks 2009 Premier Accountant Edition R3P.  Instead of displaying the Sales Tax Group as a percentage similar to a Sales Tax Item, the Sales Tax Group is displayed as a rounded decimal.  In this example, the Sales Tax Group is shown as 0.08 even though it is a combination of East Bayshore and San Domingo, for a total of 0.078, or 7.8%.  However, although the Sales Tax Group is displayed incorrectly, QuickBooks calculates the tax total for the Sales Tax Group correctly.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Sales Tax Group Display Bug

Here’s a similar display from QuickBooks Premier Accountant 2008 R6P, where the Sales Tax Group is shown as a percentage accurate to 2 decimal places:

QuickBooks Premier 2008 Sales Tax Group No Display Bug

This display bug was fixed in later releases of QuickBooks 2009 and doesn’t affect QuickBooks 2010.  If you’re running an old release of QuickBooks 2009, update your QuickBooks to the latest release.

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How Do I Enable Sales Orders?

Chief Mechanic · September 11, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise Solutions, in order to use Sales Orders, you first have to enable them in Preferences.

To do that, choose Preferences from the Edit menu.  Next, choose Sales & Customers from the Preferences menu and check Enable Sales Orders.  Once this preference is selected, you can configure how QuickBooks handles sales orders.  A screen shot from QuickBooks Premier 2009 appears below.

Note that QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Online Edition (both Basic and Plus) do not support sales orders or back orders. If you need support for sales orders, you’ll need to upgrade to QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise Solutions.  To review the features of QuickBooks products, see our related article on the feature differences between QuickBooks Pro and Premier or the product descriptions at our Buy QuickBooks page.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Preferences Sales and Customers
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Where Is the QBW.INI File Located?

Chief Mechanic · September 10, 2010 ·

The QBW.INI file is normally located in the default QuickBooks installation directory.  That location depends on your QuickBooks version and your version of Microsoft Windows, which are outlined below.

To avoid searching for files, the easiest way to locate the QBW.INI file is to open the Tech Help window.

With QuickBooks open, open the Tech Help window and do the following:

  1. Click the Open File tab
  2. Click the Path On/Off button to display the full path
  3. Scroll down to the QBW.INI file in the list

See our related article for more information on using the Tech Help window.  If you need to edit the QBW.INI, the Tech Help window provides an easy way to do that, so it’s a great place to start working with this file.

For QuickBooks 2007 or later running under Windows XP, the default is:

C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataIntuitQuickBooks [Version]

Replace [Version] with your version of QuickBooks, such as 2009.  For example, the default location for QuickBooks 2009 is:

C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataIntuitQuickBooks 2009

For QuickBooks 2007 or later running under Vista, keep in mind that the folder C:Documents and Settings is a legacy folder that you can’t access, because the actual location is elsewhere.  In Vista, dimmed shortcut links are referred to as junctions, and they exist only to provide program compatibility.  The actual location for files normally located in the C:Documents and Settings folder is another folder, typically  C:Program Data.  We recommend that you use the Vista search function to find QBW.INI on your system.

For QuickBooks 2006 or earlier running under Windows XP, the default is:

C:Program FilesIntuitQuickBooks

QuickBooks 2006 and earlier are not supported on Vista.

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