tips

Introduction

This topic was written to help you understand how to enter old checks and other banking related transactions into Total Office Manager. This work will help assure that Total Office Manager’s balance sheet and income statements are up-to-date and current as of your company’s start date.

Usage

When you enter A/P, sales, and payroll transactions, Total Office Manager automatically records the following checking transactions:

• Checks you wrote to vendors to pay bills

• Deposits of customer invoice payments

• Deposits of sales receipts

• Paychecks you wrote to employees

• Payments you made for payroll taxes and other payroll liabilities

Important Notes

After you’ve entered all of the sales related transactions (covered earlier) along with the remaining checks, deposits, fees, and other bank transactions from your start date to today, you can reconcile your bank statements against your Total Office Manager bank account , and the following data will be accurate:

• Balance in your Total Office Manager bank account

• Profit and loss statement for this year to date

• Balance sheet for this year to date

Gathering Information

• All checks and other payments written between your start date and today

• List of employees with all payroll related information

• Payroll checks written to all employees

• Record of deposits you made during that same period

• Bank statements showing fees and other charges during that same period

• Credit card statements showing charges and payments made between your start date and today

Entering Information

Enter your historical bank transactions using the date each transaction actually occurred. It doesn’t matter whether you enter checks before or after you enter deposits. Enter the following transactions:

Checks

In the Write Checks form, enter all miscellaneous checks written between your start date and today. Do not duplicate bill payments or payroll checks Total Office Manager has already entered. Enter the actual check number in the No. field, and clear the “To be printed” checkbox.

If the check is for an expense, enter the expense account in the Account field in the detail area. If it is a payment for a liability you track (for example, a loan), enter the liability account in the Account field in the detail area. If you track inventory and the check is for the purchase of items on your Items list, enter the item name in the Item A single unit in a collection, enumeration, or series.field of the Items tab.

If the check is for sales tax, you must use the Pay Sales Tax Liability form. If you don’t pay sales tax through this form first, your sales tax liabilities will be incorrect.

If you want to be able to reconcile your account, and your bank account opening balance is from the statement prior to your start date, you probably have checks and deposits for the period between that statement date and your start date. Be sure to enter them so that your bank account balance will be correct.

Payroll Checks

If you do the payroll instead of using an outside payroll service, you’ll need to know everything about each employee: social security number, all the information that goes into determining tax status (federal, state, and local), and which deductions are taken for health or pension.

If your employees are on salary, you’ve probably been repeating the check information every payday, with no need to look up these items. Get the W-4 forms and all your notes about who’s on what deduction plan.

You also need to know which payroll items you have to track: salary, wages, federal deductions, state deductions (tax, SUI, SDI), local income tax deductions, benefits, pension, and any other deductions (garnishments, for example). And that’s not all-you also have to know the name of the vendor to whom these withholding amounts are remitted (government tax agencies, insurance companies, and so on).

Don’t enter a year-to-date amount for your payroll as of your Total Office Manager start date. This is one place where you should go back to the beginning of the year and enter each check or each quarterly total. If you enter one total amount for each payroll item, and your starting date is July, what will you do when somebody asks “Can I see your third quarter totals”? If the “somebody” is the IRS, they like a quick accurate answer.

Deposits

Using the Make Deposits form, enter all remaining deposits made between your start date and today. Do not duplicate sales deposits Total Office Manager has already entered.

Fees and Transfers

Using a Journal Entry, enter any other fees or charges from your bank statement. Also enter any transfers between bank accounts.

Credit Card Transactions

There are two ways you can enter historical credit card transactions:

1. If you pay your balance in full each month, you can simply record a check for each payment.

2. If you entered a balance for your credit card account as of your start date, the first check should pay off that balance. In the Account field of the check, enter the name of the credit card account.

For checks written to cover credit card charges made between your start date and today, split the amount of the payment among the various expense accounts it covers.

If you don’t pay in full each month, or if you know of charges that have not yet appeared on your statement, use the Enter Credit Card Charges form to enter individual charges.

When you write a check to cover charges already entered in your credit card account (or for the opening balance of that account), enter the name of the credit card account in the Account field of the check. Don’t enter the expense accounts, because you are already tracking expenses in the Enter Credit Card Charges window .

If needed, you can enter interest and other fees directly in the credit card account through a Journal Entry.

Related Topics

Entering Beginning Balances

Entering Historical Accounts Payable (A/P) Transactions

Entering Historical Sales and A/R Transactions

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how to sell products or services to employees and deduct payments from their paychecks?  If the answer is yes; here is how to do it.

This topic deals with the subject of how to sell products or services to employees and make deductions or payments from their paychecks. You may also find ways to adapt this method to similar situations.

Step-By-Step

Step 1: Add Employee as Customer

1. Add the employee as a customer to the Customer:Job list. Use a nickname or put a “–C” after the name to designate this as a customer name, distinct from the employee name.

2. Create an Other Current Asset account and name it appropriately, such as “Employee Purchase Asset.”

Step 2: Create an invoice for the customer (employee) created in Step 1

1. From Total Office Manager’s main menu, click Customers | Invoice/Cash/Credit Sales List.

2. Click the Invoice button and select New Invoice.

3. Add the services or items purchased by the employee/customer on the invoice.

4. Click Save & Close to record the invoice.

Step 3: Create a payroll deduction item

1. From Total Office Manager’s main menu, click Employee | Lists | Payroll Item Lists.

2. Click the Payroll Item button, and choose New Payroll Deduction Item.

3. Deduction Types form, enter an ID such as “EMPLOYEEPURCHASES”.

4. Enter a description such as “Deduction Employee Purchase”.

5. From the Account ID drop-down list, choose the Other Current Asset account from step 2.

6. In the Vendor drop-down list select <Add New> and create a new Vendor called EMPLOYEEPURCHASES.

7. In the Calculation Type field, select Fixed Amount.

8. Make the item deduction from Net Pay.

9. Leave the Amount and Limit fields blank. Click Finish.

Step 4: Add the deduction item to the Employee

1. From Total Office Manager’s main menu, click Employee | Employee List.

2. Select the employee to modify, right click, and select Payroll Items.

3. Select the deductions area of Payroll Items and then select the deduction item created in step 4.

4. If the amount of the deduction is a fixed amount that the employee is paying at once enter the amount in the item setup otherwise leave the amount as zero.

5. Once the item setup is complete click Save and Close to close the setup form

Step 5: Verify the deduction in Process Paychecks

1. After processing pay groups, but before posting payroll checks verify Employee Deduction amounts in your payroll checks.

2. From Total Office Manager’s main menu, click Employees | Process Paychecks.

3. Select a paycheck for an employee that uses the deduction item created in step 4 and verify the amount being withheld from the employees check to ensure that the proper amount is being withheld from the employees check.

4. If you manually change the amount of the deduction you must recalculated the payroll check by selecting Paycheck Details ^ and then select Recalc Paycheck.

5. Click Yes when prompted to use your manual changes to recalculate the paycheck.

6. If the deduction item amount is no longer needed or the employee is set to a fixed amount and has repaid all monies owed, you should inactive the deduction item in the employee’s payroll items or change the deduction amount to zero

Step 6: Discount deduction amount from Invoice

1. Receive Payment against the customer invoice created in step 2.

2. From Total Office Manager’s main menu, click Customers | Receive Payments

3. Select the customer account created in step 1 for the Customer.

4. Check the Show Discount Information Box.

5. For the Discount Account select the Other Current Asset account created in step 1, for the Discount Amount enter the amount of the deduction withheld from the employees check, and for the Discount Date enter in the Pay Date of the employee Payroll Check

Tips

• After all payments have been made by the employee, if the Other Current Asset account results in a negative number, then either the deduction has been tracked from the paycheck without tracking the payment, or too much was deducted from the employee paycheck.

• After all payments have been made by the employee, if the Other Current Asset account results in a positive figure, either the payment was tracked without tracking the deduction from a paycheck, or too little was deducted from the employee paycheck.

• The vendor created in step 4 should not be used for any other business purpose including bills for employee purchases.

• The balance of the customer account created for the employee in step 1 indicates how much that employee owes you for Employee Purchases.

• The customer account created in step 1 should only be used for Employee Purchase transactions to ensure that the correct amount is being withheld from the employees paycheck.

Introduction

This is a general reference indicating who, what, when, and where to send it.

RESOURCES/ HELPFUL TIPS

The Internal Revenue Service has many publications helpful to small businesses and also provides small business seminars.

Business Tax Kit and Publications:

Phone Number: 800/829-3676

IRS General Information:

Phone Number: 800/829-1040

Introduction

This topic was written to help you understand how to enter old invoices and other transactions into Total Office Manager. This work will help assure that Total Office Manager’s related reports and lists are up-to-date and current as of your company’s start date.

Usage

After you’ve entered the historical sales and accounts receivable (A/R) transactions between your start date and today, the following data will be accurate in Total Office Manager:

• Records of what you sold during the period

• Customer balances as of today

• Records of which historical invoices are unpaid

• Sales tax liabilities as of today

Important Notes

• Order of entry is very important. Be sure that you enter past sales and accounts receivable (A/R) transactions before entering any past checking or bank transactions. As you enter payments received from customers and then enter the deposit of such payments, Total Office Manager updates its bank balance appropriately.

• As you enter your sales transactions, be sure to enter the original date of the transaction – not the date you are entering it.

• When entering any sales form ( invoice , sale, credit /refund), be sure to accurately enter items in the Item field so Total Office Manager can track your sales income in the correct accounts. You may need to add items to your Item list as you work. Total Office Manager may display a message indicating that you do not have enough items in stock to sell. Ignore these messages for now. When you enter purchases of inventory (later), Total Office Manager will automatically adjust the quantities.

• If you collect sales tax from customers, it’s very important that you add sales tax appropriately to each of the sales you enter. If you need help understanding how Total Office Manager handles sales tax collection and payment, please see the appropriate help topics.

• Enter past sales and accounts receivable (A/R) transactions before entering any past checking or bank transactions. As you enter payments received from customers and then enter the deposit of such payments, Total Office Manager updates your bank balance accordingly.

• You can enter sales and A/R Abbreviation for Accounts Receivable transactions before or after accounts payable ( A/P ) or payroll transactions. However, if you want to put reimbursable expenses from bills on your historical invoices, you should enter accounts payable (A/P) transactions before you enter A/R transactions. This does not apply to most Total Office Manager users.

Gathering Required Information

You will need to gather the following information for Total Office Manager:

• Copy of paid and unpaid invoices written between your start date and today

• Copy of statement charges made between your start date and today

• Copy of credit memos/refunds issued during that period

• List of payments received

• Record of deposits for customer payments during that period

Entering Information

Enter your historical sales transactions in the following order:

Invoices

Enter a copy of each historical invoice written between your start date and today.

Sales Receipts (cash sales)

Enter a copy of each historical Sales Receipt written between your start date and today.

Credits and Returns

Enter returns for sales recorded previously.

Customer Payments

Record each payment received from a customer for an outstanding invoice. Be sure that you apply the payment to the appropriate invoice, and that the Date field shows the payment date. If the payment was for all or part of the customer’s open balance as of the start date, you see a Total Office Manager invoice for that balance.

Deposits

Record each deposit of payments. In the Payments to Deposit window , select all customer payments (whether for invoices or sales receipts) deposited on one date. In the Make Deposits form, be sure the Date field shows the deposit date.

Related Content

Entering Historical Accounts Payable (A/P) Transactions

Entering Historical Bank and Related Transactions

Introduction

This topic will teach you how to handle a case where the customer over pays an invoice. In other words, they send you more money than they owe you for a certain sale.

Step-By-Step

This is a multi-step process. The first thing you need to do is enter the sale.

1. Enter the invoice as you would normally would. Be sure that the sale is for the correct amount.

The next step is to write the customer a check for the difference.

1. Click Banking | Write Checks.
2. Click the Checks button and select New. The check form should open.
3. Select the customer that over paid their invoice.
4. In the Amount field, enter the amount of the over payment.
5. Using the Memo field, please enter a memo describing what you are doing (yes this is boring but we highly recommend it).
6. In the Expenses tab, select your accounts receivable account. You must select an A/R account! This is a very import step!
7. In the Customer/Job column, select the correct customer (the one that over paid you). This is a very important step!
8. After you double check your work, click the Save & Close button.

Now you need to receive the payment from the customer.

1. Click Customer | Receive Payments.
2. Click the Payment button and select New. The payment form should open.
3. In the Customer field, select the correct customer (the one that over paid you).
4. Select the payment method and add other information as needed.
5. Using the Memo field, please enter a memo describing what you are doing (highly recommended).
6. In the Amount field, enter the amount of the check the customer gave you (this is the check that was too much).
7. In the Applied To area (at the bottom of the form), select BOTH the invoice that was over paid and the check that you wrote to cover the over payment. Both of these items should now have a black [X] next to them.
8. After you double check your work, click the Save & Close button.
9. Mail the check to the customer.

Tips

• If they have over paid you a very small amount (like a sales tax over payment), you may wish to consider adjusting the invoice up and avoid this process completely.

Related Content

Write Checks

Manual Deposits List