- Customizing Your Home Page for Vendor Activities
- Preferences That Affect Accounts Payable
- Working with the Vendor Center
- The Accounts Payable Process
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Working with the Vendor Center
QuickBooks makes adding, modifying, and researching vendor activity easy using the Vendor Center. Vendors are individuals or companies that you purchase services or products from and they are managed in the Vendor Center as displayed in Figure 7.4.
)
Figure 7.4. Complete common vendor tasks from the Vendor Center.
From the Vendor Center, you view contact details for your vendors and can access many tasks including:
- Create a new or edit an existing vendor.
- Access the Add Multiple Vendors dialog box (using the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries feature discussed in Chapter 4).
- Record commonly used vendor transactions.
- Print the vendor list, information, or transactions.
- Export the vendor list or transactions; import or paste vendors from Excel.
- Prepare a vendor letter and customize the vendor templates.
- Filter your list of vendors to include All Vendors, Active Vendors, Vendors with Open Balances, or a custom filter of your choice.
- Attach documents to the vendor record, such as attaching a copy of the signed subcontractor agreement.
- Access a map and driving directions to the vendor’s location.
- Add and edit vendor notes and to do reminders.
- View and filter the list of transactions by vendor or by transaction type.
- Prepare a QuickReport or Open Balance Report for the given vendor.
Use the Vendor Center to access many of the common vendor transactions and reports you will learn about in this chapter and in Chapter 8, “Managing Vendors.”
The following sections provide more details about creating a vendor and using the Vendor Center for researching transactions.
Adding or Modifying Vendors
When you are ready to purchase materials or services for your business you will need to create a vendor. You might already have a head start on adding vendors to your file if you used the Adding Contacts feature available with the Express Start QuickBooks setup discussed in Chapter 1, “Getting Started with QuickBooks.”
However, there is also another less used list in QuickBooks worth mentioning here titled the Other Names list. One reason you might choose to add a payee to the Other Names list might be when you are recording a one time purchase. Later if you begin using the vendor regularly, you have the option one-time to remove the payee from the Other Names list and add it to your Vendor list.
This section offers instruction specific to setting up vendors. If your company will be using the Enter Bills process, you will have to use a payee from the vendor list; the bill will not allow you to use an Other Names list item in the Payee field.
Adding a New Vendor
To practice adding a new vendor record, open the sample data file as instructed in Chapter 1, “Getting Started with QuickBooks.” If you are working in your own file use these instructions to begin entering the vendors you purchase goods and services from:
- Click the Vendors button on the Home page. Alternatively, select Vendors, Vendor Center from the menu bar.
- If the New Feature message displays, read the information provided. Optionally, select the Do Not Display This Message in the Future box. Click OK to close the message.
- Select New Vendor from the New Vendor drop-down list in the upper-left corner of the Vendor Center.
- The New Vendor dialog box displays (see Figure 7.5). Enter ABC Cleaners in the Vendor Name field. It is important to mention that no two names from any of the lists in QuickBooks can be the same.
Figure 7.5. Completing the contact information for your vendor is good practice for your record keeping.
- Leave the Opening Balance field blank. Chapter 3, “Accounting 101,” discusses entering beginning balances in a new QuickBooks file (when there have already been previous accounting transactions recorded in some other accounting software or method). If you are a new business, you will later enter a vendor bill to increase the balance owed to the vendor instead of entering an Opening Balance amount in the New Vendor record.
The As Of (date) field will not have any effect in your QuickBooks file if no dollar value was entered in the Opening Balance field.
- On the Address Info tab, consider completing the salutation, first name, and last name fields so you have the option to send letters to your vendors in the future.
- Complete any remaining fields you deem applicable, such as contact information and address.
- Click the Additional Info tab. In the Account No. field enter the account number your vendor has assigned to you, if applicable. This account number can optionally be printed on the memo line of a vendor bill payment check.
- Use the Type field in Categorizing and Defaults to create or assign a vendor type, which you can then use to filter your vendor and transaction reports.
- Select the appropriate payment terms, such as Net 30 days, your vendor has assigned to your account. If the specific term needed is not displayed, click Add New to create a new term.
- When applicable enter the Credit Limit established by your vendor.
- If your vendor qualifies for receiving a Form 1099-MISC at the end of the year, enter the vendor’s Tax ID and place a check mark in the box for Vendor Eligible for 1099. Note that if you do not have this information handy when you are first creating the vendor, you can add this information at later date without any loss of tracking the details.
- If you are using QuickBooks Accountant, Premier, or Enterprise you have the option of selecting a Billing Rate Level for your vendor. Billing rates allow you to mark up billable time you will later add to a customer invoice.
- If you have created a Custom Field, complete the value for that field. In Figure 7.6 a custom field is displayed titled Discount Available. Custom fields allow you to track supplemental information about your vendors, such as if an additional discount is available beyond what you entered in the Payment Terms. Click the Define Fields button to add or remove custom fields.
Figure 7.6. More useful information can be recorded on the Additional Info tab.
- Click the Account Prefill tab as shown in Figure 7.7. Assign the Repairs, Building Repairs expense account. You can assign up to three different accounts that will display automatically when you create a new transaction using this vendor as the payee. If you also download transactions from your bank or credit card, click the link (not shown) to review the information provided about how Account Prefill works with Online Banking.
Figure 7.7. Streamline your data entry by storing the default accounts to assign to transactions for this vendor.
- At any time you can select or deselect the Vendor Is Inactive checkbox. In such cases the vendor still appears on reports, but will not appear in drop-down lists you use for creating new transactions.
- Click OK to save your changes and close the New Vendor dialog box, or click Cancel to discard your work. You can also click Next to add another new vendor.
)
)
)
TIP
Want a quick way to complete multiple name fields at once when creating a new vendor? Start with entering data in the Company Name field. When you move out of the Company Name field, QuickBooks will automatically populate the Vendor Name, Company Name, Billed From, and Print on Check as fields.
The Vendor Name field in QuickBooks is a “look-up” name; this field also controls how your vendors are automatically sorted in the Vendor Center.
If you prefer to use a different vendor “look-up” name, be sure to enter the proper vendor name in the Print On Check As field.
Now that you have created a new vendor in the sample file, you are prepared to create a list of your own vendors. Return to the Vendor Center any time you need to update a vendor’s information.
Finding Vendor Transactions
The Vendor Center not only provides access for adding to or modifying your vendor’s records in QuickBooks, but also includes convenient access to finding vendor transactions.
With the Vendor Center open, select a vendor to display a list of their transactions on the right. In the previously displayed Figure 7.4, vendor A Cheung Limited is selected and to the right are individual transactions for that vendor.
Caution
QuickBooks does not keep a time stamp on revisions made to your vendor’s contact information. Once you make a change, all previous records will reflect the change to the address or contact information.
However, changes to the Account Prefill selection will affect newly created transactions.
You can filter the resulting transactions by selecting options in the Show, Filter By, and Date drop-down lists. The options in the Filter By list change as you make a selection from the Show list.
Figure 7.8 shows representative vendor transaction types. Your transaction types might differ from the displayed types if you do not have the related feature enabled in Preferences. The only transaction type that can have a vendor record assigned that is not included in these options is Make Journal Entry.
)
Figure 7.8. You can filter vendor transactions based on multiple criteria.
For more information, see “Correcting Accounts Payable Errors,” p. 235.
This chapter will discuss how to handle various situations, including incorrect journal entries that affect a vendor record.
The Transactions tab in the Vendor Center allows you to group transactions by type, rather than by vendor.
Researching Vendor Transactions
To practice finding vendor transactions by type, open the sample data file as instructed in Chapter 1. If you are working in your own file use these instructions to easily locate vendor transactions:
- On the Home page, click the Vendors button to open the Vendor Center. Click the Transactions tab.
- Select the Purchase Orders type as shown in Figure 7.9.
Figure 7.9. Use the Transactions tab of the Vendor Center to find like transaction types.
- Optionally, from the Filter By drop-down list, select Open Purchase Orders.
- Optionally, filter for a specific date range. This might be useful if you are looking specifically for older dated open purchase orders.
- Optionally, click any column header to sort that column.
- To view a transaction, double-click it, or right-click, and select Edit Transaction.
- Click the Print icon to print the listed transactions.
- Optionally, click the View Vendor Info button and click OK if the New Feature message displays. QuickBooks opens the Edit Vendor dialog box for the currently selected vendor. Click OK to close and return to the Vendor Center:Purchase Orders listing.
- Click the Export icon to export the list of transactions to an Excel worksheet or to a comma-separated value file.
)
The Vendor Center provides one location to create or modify your vendor records and even research vendor transactions.
Next, you will learn about the proper Accounts Payable process so you can successfully track your vendor business expenses.