Tips & Troubleshooting

Sales tips

Keyboard shortcut—Receive Payments window

You can open the Receive Payments window using the keyboard shortcut, COMMAND+B in any window.

Keyboard shortcut—Sales window

You can open the Sales window using the keyboard shortcut, COMMAND+J in any window.

Customer information

A customer doesn’t have a card

You cannot record a sale without entering a card. If you want to record a sale for a customer who does not have a card record, you can:

■	quickly create one using the Easy-Add feature. See Adding records using Easy-Add.

■	create a ‘cash sales’ customer card. See Creating a customer card.

You should create a card for all your regular customers, however, to ensure that sales to them and payments you receive from them are recorded correctly in your accounts. You may also want to use the contact, selling details, sales history and other customer information to help you analyze this side of your business.

Setting up volume or quantity discounts

There are several ways to offer discounts to your customers.

■	Quantity breaks—Use the price matrix in the Selling Details tab of the Item Information window to set price levels.

■

Percentage discounts per line item—Enter a discount percentage in the Disc% column for each line item you want to discount. You can set a default percentage that will appear for all of a particular customer’s line items using the Volume Discount % field in the Selling Details view of the Card Information window for the customer.

■	Percentage discounts per invoice—You can enter a discount percentage in the Disc% column in the Sales window to enter a one-time discount for a particular invoice if the customer doesn’t normally receive discounted prices.

For more information, see Creating items.

Specifying the invoice layout for each customer

You can set up your customer cards to specify a particular invoice layout for each customer.

To do this, open the Card Information window for the customer, click the Selling Details tab and make a selection in the Sale Layout field. Depending on your company file setup, you can also select a default Printed Form in the field below.

The layout you select will be used automatically when you print an invoice from the Sales window.

See also, Customizing forms.

The invoice the customer is paying can’t be found

If the sales transaction doesn’t appear in the Sales Register, it may still have the status of a quote or it may have been fully paid already.

■	To check if the invoice has been paid, select the Closed Invoices tab. All fully paid (closed) sales will appear in the list.

■	To check if the transaction is still a quote, click the Quotes tab. If the transaction you want appears here, select it and click Change to Invoice. The invoice will now be available to pay in the Receive Payments window.

Displaying the customer’s purchase number, instead of your invoice number

To view bills by the customer’s purchase number, select the Show Customer Purchase Number in Receive Payments option in the Sales tab of the Preferences window.

Sales transactions

The customer payment transaction is unbalanced

Before you can record a customer payment, the payment amount must be fully allocated to the invoices that are being paid. For example, if the customer is paying for invoice 1001, locate that invoice and click in the Amount Applied column to apply the customer’s payment to that invoice. Customer payments can be split between two or more invoices.

When the payment amount is fully allocated, the Out of Balance amount should be $0.00, and you’ll be able to record the transaction.

Changing the credit terms for a sale

You can change the credit terms for a single transaction or for all future transactions.

To change the terms for a single transaction, select the customer card in the Sales window, then click the zoom arrow next to Terms. The Credit Terms window appears. Enter the terms for this sale and click OK. The terms will apply to this sale only.

If you want to change the terms for all future transactions with this customer, you do so in the Selling Details view of the customer card. For more information, see Credit control.

Some columns don’t appear in the Sales window

If some columns are missing from the Sales window, such as Item Number or Date, you may be using the wrong layout for the type of sales transaction you’re creating. Click Layout near the bottom of the window to view the choices available, and select another layout if you want.

For more information, see Entering sales.

When to use a Miscellaneous invoice

Use a Miscellaneous invoice for quick transactions that involve no items and require no printed documentation. For example, you can issue a Miscellaneous invoice to make a small adjustment to an invoice that you already issued, or to bill for charges on a sale. Note that you cannot print Miscellaneous invoices.

Miscellaneous invoices use a Sales Journal number rather than an invoice number, so they don’t affect the numbering sequence of your other invoices.

Changing or deleting a comment, shipping method, referral source or payment method

The default field information for comments, shipping methods, referral sources and payment methods can all be changed or deleted. Note that the comments and shipping methods are used for both sales and purchases transactions, and deleting them removes them from the Sales window and the Purchases window.

To change the field information, go to the Lists menu and choose Sales & Purchases Information, then choose the field information you want to change. Click the required tab and select the field you want to change or delete:

■	To edit the information, click Edit, make your changes, then click OK.

■	To delete the information, choose Delete [item] from the Edit menu.

Note that this change won’t affect any transactions you’ve already recorded.

 

An item doesn’t appear in the Select from List window

If this isn’t an item you routinely offer for sale, you may not have selected the I Sell This Item option in the Profile view of the Item Information window. Only the items that have been marked as sellable appear in the Select from List window.

To make an item sellable, open the Item Information window for the item you want to sell. In the Profile tab, select the I Sell This Item option and select an income account for tracking sales in the adjacent field.

For more information, see Creating items.

Sending items to more than one location

You cannot enter multiple shipping addresses on a single invoice. Instead, you need to either enter separate invoices, or if your business’s shipping policy allows it, enter the separate locations in header lines above each line item. Later, when you print your invoice or packing slip, the shipping addresses you specified will appear in the Description column above the items that are being shipped.

The currency is wrong for this sale

Sales transactions will, by default, appear with the currency assigned to the customer in the Profile view of the Card Information window. You need to change the currency here to change it for the transaction. Note that you can change the exchange rate used for a particular sales transaction by clicking Rate at the bottom of the transaction window.

tip : If you do business with the customer in multiple currencies, create a separate customer card for each currency you use.

 

Fixing errors in a sales transaction

To fix a transaction error, you can:

■	edit the transaction in the transaction window if your company file settings allow this.

■	reverse the transaction and reenter it.

■	delete the transaction and reenter it.

For more information, see Changing or deleting a transaction.

The tax amount on an invoice is wrong

If the tax amount is wrong, check that:

■	the correct tax code has been selected. This code appears to the right of the tax amount. If it’s incorrect, type or select the code you want to use in the Tax column.

■	all taxable items have been selected in the Tax column.

■	the check box that appears to the right of the freight amount is selected, or deselected if the freight isn’t taxable.

If the tax amount is still wrong, click the zoom arrow next to it. The Tax Information window appears. If the amount assigned to the tax code is incorrect, change the amount and click OK. The change will be applied to the sale.

If you want to change the Tax amount back to the default, click Recalculate in the Tax Information window.

Sales records

Tracking reimbursable amounts

If you want to track reimbursable expenses, you need to:

■	Set up a job

■	Assign expenses to the job (and link a customer to the job)

■	then, Bill the customer.

For more information, see Tracking reimbursable expenses.

Duplicate invoice numbers

You can assign the same invoice number to multiple sales transactions in your software.

If you want to be warned before duplicate invoice numbers are recorded, select the Warn for Duplicate Invoice Numbers on Recorded Invoices option in the Sales tab of the Preferences window.

If you want to delete a duplicated invoice number, open the transaction with the duplicated invoice number in the original sales window. You can edit the invoice number or reverse the transaction as your system allows. For more information, see Changing or deleting a transaction.

Saving a sale as a recurring transaction

If you have transactions that you record time and time again—for example, regular sales to a customer—you can set them up as recurring transactions and save them for future use.

To do this:

■	in the Bank Register window—Select the transaction you want to make recurring, then go to the Edit menu and choose Save as Recurring.

■	in the Sales window—Enter the sales transaction as you normally would, then click Save as Recurring instead of Record.

The Edit Recurring Schedule window appears. Enter the recurring details of the transaction and click Save.

For more information about recurring transactions, see Recurring transactions.

Entering historical sales and opening balances

Customer opening balances reflect the amount that a customer owes you as of your conversion month. If you want to add a sale that occurred prior to conversion, go to the Setup menu, choose Balances and then choose Customer Balances. In the Customer Balances window that appears, click Add Sale. The Historical Sale window appears. Enter the details of the sale and click Record. This will create the outstanding invoice amount for the customer.

If you want to enter paid pre-conversion sales amounts for your customers, you can do this in the History tab of the Card information window.

Some customers don’t appear in Customer Balances window

The Customer Balances window only displays customers that use the selected currency. If you use the multicurrency feature, try selecting a dif ferent currency in the Currency field.

The tax amount on a historical sale is wrong

To change a historical sale that has been recorded, your transactions need to be changeable. For more information see Changing or deleting a transaction.

Open the historical sale through the Historical Sale window. Check that the selected tax code is correct. If not, select a different code. If the tax code is correct and the tax amount still is wrong, click the zoom arrow to the left of the tax amount. The Tax Information window appears. You can change the tax amount for each tax code used on the sale. Make your changes and click OK.

Historical sales and purchases differ from the history entered on customer and vendor cards

When you enter historical sale and purchase information, you are entering amounts that are unpaid as of your conversion month. These entries affect your receivables or payables accounts.

When you enter historical sales or purchase information in your cards, that data is used for reporting purposes only and does not affected your receivables or payables accounts.

A pie graph doesn’t show every item (or account) when I analyze sales

Pie graphs can be divided into a maximum of 13 sections. The 12 largest amounts are shown in individual sections. Everything else is combined in the 13th section. If you are displaying a graph for over 13 items (or accounts), not all of them will be represented.