service item

How Can I Record Vehicle Mileage As a Reimbursable Expense?

Chief Mechanic · September 6, 2010 ·

To record vehicle mileage as a reimbursable expense, you first need to set up the vehicle in the Vehicle List and the Service or Other Charge Item that represents the rate at which customers will be invoiced for mileage.

Once these preliminary steps have been completed, click on the Company->;Enter Vehicle Mileage… menu selection to record the mileage for a trip.

To make this trip a reimbursable expense, be sure to check the Billable checkbox, specify the appropriate Customer:Job, and choose the Item you previously created that is the source for your invoice description and the rate at which you will invoice your customer. Enter your Notes for the trip – you’ll have the option of incorporating this information into the customer invoice later.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Enter Vehicle Mileage Billable

Click the Save & Close or Save & New button to save your work.

Next, click on the Customers->Invoice for Time & Expenses menu selection to start a new customer invoice and add mileage expenses to it. Select the Mileage tab. Unlike reimbursable expenses that appear on the Expenses or Items tabs, you have more control over how information is transferred to a customer invoice for expenses that appear on the Time or Mileage tabs.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Choose Billable Mileage

Click the Options… button to specify how information will be transferred to a customer invoice. You can opt to use the Notes you entered when you recorded the mileage (Transfer activity notes), use the description you specified when you created the Item (Transfer item descriptions), or both (Transfer both notes and descriptions). You can also choose to have each trip appear as a separate line item or to combine trips that use the same service item and rate. If you opt for the latter, only the item description will appear on the customer invoice.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Options for Transferring Billable Mileage

Click Ok to close the Options for Transferring Billable Mileage window.

Select the mileage expense items that you’d like to include on a customer invoice and click Ok. The expense items you selected will appear using the options you specified. Complete the invoice and save your work.

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How Do I Prepare To Charge Customers For Mileage?

Chief Mechanic · September 6, 2010 ·

The first step to charge customers or clients for vehicle mileage is to create a new Item with a type of Service or Other Charge. The Sales Price that you enter for this Item will be the price charged to the customer for mileage.

QuickBooks maintains a separate list of Mileage Rates, but these rates are not automatically used to invoice customers. Instead, they’re just a reference for the historical rates allowed by taxing authorities.

Click on Lists->Item List to add a new Item. Be sure to specify the Type as Service or Other Charge, and to select the This item is used in assemblies or is a reimbursable charge checkbox just below the Item Name/Number field.

Specify both an Expense Account and an Income Account for the Item you create. Enter the description you’d like to appear on customer invoices and the rate you’d like to charge customers for mileage in the Sales Information block.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 New Item Mileage

Click Ok to save the Item.

You’ll use this item code on customer invoices and to identify those mileage expenses that will be billed to a customer as a reimbursable expense.

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What Is an Inventory Assembly Item?

Chief Mechanic · August 23, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks an inventory assembly item is a specific type of Item that is the result of putting together a new inventory part out of a bundle of individual items to enable tracking finished goods separately from individual components. Normally, an inventory assembly item is used when separate raw materials are assembled, packaged, and sold as an inventory item that is separate from the component parts.

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

The inventory assembly item type is only available in QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise Solutions. It’s not available in QuickBooks Pro.

It is similar to – but different from – a group item, another approach to managing a bundle of individual items. A group item is a way to quickly add a bundle of items to a form while preserving the ability to track those items individually. Where an inventory assembly item functions like a pre-assembled kit, a group item functions like an “on the fly” kit.

An inventory assembly item is made up of a Bill of Materials (visible by clicking the Full View… button) which can contain a range of item types: service, inventory part, another inventory assembly, non-inventory part, and other charge. Note that a subassembly can be nested within an inventory assembly. However, the Bill of Materials cannot contain these item types: subtotal, group, discount, payment, sales tax item, or sales tax group. Further, there’s a limit of 100 items in the Bill of Materials for an inventory assembly in QuickBooks Premier; for Enterprise Solutions, that limit is 500 items.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Bill of Materials Full View

The Cost shown for an inventory assembly item should normally not be entered. When a Cost is not entered, QuickBooks will use the Bill of Materials Cost that appears at the bottom of the table.

An inventory assembly is built from its components parts by clicking on the Vendors->Inventory Activities->Build Assemblies menu selection. During the build process, the Quantity on Hand of the inventory assembly item is increased by the Quantity to Build, and the Quantity on Hand of each component is reduced by the product of that item’s Qty in the Bill of Materials and the Quantity to Build.

Builds in QuickBooks can be either pending or final. If there are insufficient quantities of the component parts, a build will automatically be marked as Pending. You can also manually mark a build as pending by clicking on the Edit->Mark Build As Pending menu selection while the Build Assemblies window is displayed. The Pending Builds report (Reports->Inventory->Pending Builds) supports managing future build requirements.

Here’s an example of invoicing for the inventory assembly item Interior Door kit shown above. Unlike a group item, which automatically adds other items to a form and controls whether these other items are printed, the inventory assembly item appears as a single line item on a form.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Create Invoices Inventory Assembly Item

The price of an inventory assembly item is specified, just like the price of an inventory item, and can be changed directly on a form.

Sales tax for an inventory assembly item is calculated based on the single Tax Code assigned to the inventory assembly.

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What Are Service Items and How Should I Use Them?

Chief Mechanic · August 23, 2010 ·

Service Items are one type of Item and are maintained on the Lists->Item List menu selection.

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

Generally speaking, Items are designed to pre-fill invoicing and purchasing forms. Service Items normally include charges for labor or professional fees that your firm buys or sells. You should use Service Items for those charges for labor and professional fees that you plan to included on invoicing and purchasing forms.

Once you’ve created a Service Item, you can’t change the type to another type of Item, so use care when choosing the Item Type.

The New Item window appears below. How you record values in these fields depends on whether you’re creating a Service Item that you purchase or an Item that you sell. Some fields only appear if you’ve set a preference.

If you’re creating a Service Item used in purchases, record your vendor’s unit price as the Rate and choose an expense account for the Account. If you’re creating a Service Item you sell, record your typical selling price as the Rate and choose an income account for the Account.

Since you’ll have a chance to change the Description on invoicing and purchasing forms, you can either leave the Description blank, enter the most common Description, or create different Service Items for each unique description. QuickBooks stores the actual description recorded on each line of every invoicing and purchasing form, so the Description you enter when recording the Item is only an aid to filling out a form.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 New Item

If the Service Item is used in assemblies or performed by a subcontractor or owner, click the checkbox indicating This service is used in assemblies or is performed by a subcontractor or partner. Doing so will allow you to record both the revenue and expense for each Item in separate accounts. Such Items can be used on both sales and purchase forms.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 New Item Subcontractor

When you’ve recorded all relevant fields, click Next to save your changes and enter another Item or click Ok to save your changes and close the window.

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Can I Add or Edit Multiple List Entries In QuickBooks?

Chief Mechanic · March 25, 2010 ·

Starting with QuickBooks 2010 and Enterprise Solutions 10.0, you can add or edit multiple list entries by clicking on the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries menu selection on the Lists menu.

QuickBooks Premier 2010 Add Edit Multiple List Entries

However, only certain lists can be manipulated with this feature and not all fields on these lists can be modified. These 5 lists can be edited:

Customers
Vendors
Service Items
Inventory Parts
Non-inventory Parts

For Customers, 6 fields can’t be manipulated with this tool: Sales Rep, Ship To address, Cc (Email), Preferred Send Method, Price Level, and Preferred Payment Method. In addition, 6 fields can be added for new customers, but can’t be edited for existing customers: Currency, Customer Balance, Opening Balance as of Date, Terms, Tax Code, and Tax Item.

For Vendors, 3 fields can’t be manipulated: Cc (Email), Billing Rate Level, and Accounts to pre-fill transactions. In addition, 3 fields can be added for new vendors, but can’t be edited for existing vendors: Currency, Vendor Balance, and Opening Balance as of Date.

For Inventory Parts, the screen shot below shows the available columns which can be modified. Columns in both the Available Columns and Chosen Columns list can be included. In this example, Shelf and Warehouse represent custom fields, so custom fields can be edited using this technique. At least 1 column can’t be edited for either Inventory or Non-inventory Parts: Unit of Measure.

QuickBooks Premier 2010 Add Edit Multiple List Entries Inventory Parts

Similarly, here are the available columns for Non-inventory Parts:

Using this tool, you can choose the columns in the window by clicking the Customize columns… button and use either the Copy/Paste features of Windows or the context menu (discussed below) to quickly duplicate values in a column. You can also create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that exactly matches the column layout you’ve selected for the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries window and paste that spreadsheet into the window to quickly add new list entries.

QuickBooks Premier 2010 Example of Add Edit Multiple List Entries

For editing existing entries, you can access the context menu by right-clicking in a cell to gain access to menu choices to insert a new row, copy the value in existing cell down to all of the rows below it (which will overwrite data), and to duplicate an existing row (to prepare it for further editing).

QuickBooks Premier 2010 Add Edit Multiple List Entries Context Menu

The Add/Edit Multiple List Entries tool includes data validation to insure that your pasted data is in the format expected by QuickBooks for that data element and that you haven’t attempted to save a duplicate list entry. Data validation is extremely important in a tool that can easily add or modify large amounts of data.

For the first time starting with QuickBooks 2010, QuickBooks users have a tool to easily and safely add or edit multiple list entries from within QuickBooks itself.

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service item

Accounting

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Intuit