QuickBooks Journal Entry Method Setup

The setup tool for the Journal Entry posting method is broken down into three main areas: Options, Account Mappings, and Integration.  (Click on the section name to jump to that part of this page.)

 The descriptions and instructions given here are provided with the understanding that the user has a basic understanding of accounting principals and has a basic understanding of the use and functionality of QuickBooks.  If you need further instruction in the use of QuickBooks, please consult the help files provided by Intuit in the QuickBooks program you are working with.

 Options

This area is where the lion’s share of the setup will be taking place.  The options page itself is made up of four sub areas, Mapping Options, Transactions, Entities and Class.  Each of these areas have information related to the options available in that area.

Mapping Options

This area allows the user to select specific variations as to how information will be distributed through the chart of accounts in QuickBooks should the DeskManager default method not be sufficient.  By enabling options in this section, DeskManager is not necessarily going to create the desired accounts, but it will provide options for these accounts to be mapped using the Account Mappings tool, described later in this document.

 It is highly recommended that these options are not changed unless absolutely required by the accountant or bookkeeper who will be working with your QuickBooks desires this level of break down.  The more of these options that are enabled, the larger the Chart of Accounts can become to accommodate the resulting breakdowns.  If after reading the descriptions and instructions here you are still unsure of your need for any of these items, do not enable them, you will probably not need them.  It is much easier to enable these items in the future in the event you learn you do need them than it is to disable them when you decide you really did not!

 When making changes to these options, the system does not immediately generate the necessary items in the Account Mapping table.  This will be done during the next transaction transfer.  To generate the mappings, select an item from the QuickBooks Transaction list and then use the send to QuickBooks button.  During the transfer the QuickBooks Direct Interface will check the settings and if any new items have been selected it will then generate the new account mapping options.  If the item selected for this process posts to an account that is going to be changed in the mapping tools, after the mapping tools have been updated send that item again and DeskManager will make the necessary corrections.

• Verify/Recreate each account every time a new connection is established (Default: Marked) – This is the option that builds the items in the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts as you post your various transactions.  Depending on the transactions you are sending to QuickBooks when you first start using the tool, DeskManager may not create every account that will be needed.  After the creation of the ‘common’ accounts, DeskManager will generally only create the more specialized accounts as they are needed by the transactions being posted to QuickBooks.  For example, when posting Cost items from a vehicle in inventory, the system may not build some specialized Deal related accounts, because you are posting Costs.  Later when you post a deal that will take advantage of one of these specialized accounts, then DeskManager will create that account.  Because of this action, it is recommended that you leave this option enabled.  Should you find that the verification of the Chart of Accounts takes too long when you are posting, after you have sent a handful of each transaction type (Costs from Inventory, Deals and Payments received from customers) you should have most all of the specialized accounts created, provided the activity they will track for you is commonly used in your DeskManager.  At this point, if you wish to disable this option to speed up the posting process, you may safely do so.  In the future, should you attempt to post anything that needs an account that has not been generated you will receive an error message from the tool when attempting to post that item.  In that situation just enable this option again and attempt to post the problem transaction again and the system will now be able to create that account.

• Separate Accounts Receivable and Income for Finance, Cash, In-House and Wholesale (Default: Unmarked) – This option was created for the customers who absolutely insist that they have to see the cash sale values from the various DeskManager deals broken down in QuickBooks.  DeskManager already has reports that can provide this same information so it is recommended to leave this option disabled.  Customers who feel the need to have the different sale types tracked in separated A/R and Income accounts can enable this and the system will track them separately from that point on.  By marking the box, during the next transaction transfer the system will create four sub accounts to the Accounts Receivable account, one each for Cash, Finance, Wholesale and In-House deals.  The system will also generate mapping options that can be used to assign different income accounts based on the same sale types.

• Separate Accounts Receivable for categories of Payments (Default: Unmarked) – DeskManager has a number of different income categories that a payment can be applied towards when receiving money from a customer to determine how that figure will be distributed within a deal.  Should you find it absolutely necessary, DeskManager can breakdown these categories so that they can be tracked in different receivable accounts in QuickBooks.  If this option is used in conjunction with the previous option (breaking down A/R and Income for sale types), the system will create breakdown options for each payment type within each sale type.  By default DeskManager has eighteen (18) different income categories used for tracking payment collections that are built into the software.  This does not take into account any custom categories created by the user.  This will mean that eighteen different mapping options will be created four times, once for each deal type, potentially increasing your chart of accounts in QuickBooks quite rapidly.

• Separate Accounts Receivable for categories of Adjustments (Default: Unmarked) – When applying adjustments to a DeskManager deal, the system provides for a number of different categories of adjustments for the purpose of tracking why deal balances are being altered at any point.  By default, DeskManager will track how these adjustments alter the balances of any deal by increasing or decreasing the Accounts Receivable for that specific customer depending on the type of adjustment applied to that deal.  By enabling this option, DeskManager will no longer track deal adjustments within the Accounts Receivable account that the original deal has been recorded in, but instead these adjustments will be applied specifically to individual A/R accounts as mapped by the Account Mapping tool.  Each category of adjustment will be given a mapping option that can be used to determine where any A/R for adjustments using that category will be tracked.  As with the previous option related to payments, there are by default sixteen (16) different adjustment categories that are generated by DeskManager, not including any custom categories created by the user.  As with the Payments option above, selecting this in combination with the Deal Type breakdown will cause each of the adjustment types to generate mapping options for each of the different types of deals with the same potential to increase the number of accounts in your QuickBooks chart of accounts rapidly.

• Separate Income accounts for categories of Adjustments (Default: Unmarked) – Similar to the previous option, when applying adjustments to a DeskManager deal, because these items are used to alter the deal balance through the payments to be collected and are generally applied after the deal has been marked sold and as such can no longer be edited, these adjustments will also affect the income as a result of the deal.  By default these adjustments to the customers income are recorded in an income account called Adjustments and will increase or decrease the customers income for any period based on the type of adjustment applied to the deal.  Selecting this option will create mapping options in the Account Mapping tool that will allow the user to map the different adjustments to different income accounts.  Similar to the previous two options, when selected in conjunction with the Deal Type breakdown, every adjustment type will have an option created for every sale type that can then be mapped to individual accounts in QuickBooks.

• Separate Inventory Asset and Cost of Goods Sold accounts for categories of Vehicle Expenses (Default: Unmarked) – This is the most commonly used of the different account breakdown options that are offered in the DeskManager QuickBooks Direct Interface.  Selecting this option will create mapping options for every expense category that can be used to breakdown the Inventory Asset or Cost of Goods Sold accounts.  Again, with the previous options, selecting this option will just create the mapping options after the next transaction has been posted.  The user can then make the necessary changes to the Account Mapping tool and if necessary send the last transaction again should any of the mappings that were changed have also affected that last transaction, sending the item again will allow DeskManager to correct for those changes.

• Separate account mappings for negative expenses (Default: Unmarked) – When a negative expense is found in the Vehicle Cost table, the system uses the ‘Write Off’ key to post these items into QuickBooks.  By default this write off account is mapped to the Accounts Payable account so that any negative expenses applied to a vehicle will become a credit to the vendor they are associated with.  Other acceptable uses of this account are mapping to the Undeposited Funds so that the negative expense can be handled as a refund, or by mapping to an actual ‘Write-Off’ expense account where it will be viewed as a ‘loss’.  By enabling this option, the system will create ‘write-off’ mapping options for every expense category so the user can determine how the negative expense will be handled based on that expense category.

• Journal Entry lines for Inventory Asset/Expenses should be set as Billable (Default: Marked) – Users who have selected to map their Inventory Asset account to an account other than DeskManager’s desired default account may encounter error messages from QuickBooks regarding the billable status of items posted into the non-default account.  This option was added should it be necessary to not mark these items as billable due to the non-default account selection or an unexpected configuration of QuickBooks.  This option should only be unmarked if you experience errors when attempting to post inventory regarding billable items in a non-billable situation.

• Top Level Chard of Accounts Break-Down (Default: None) – This option will reproduce an entire chart of accounts based on the option selected for each variation within that option.  Selecting this option will significantly increase the number of accounts created within the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts.  The options work as follows: None will disable this feature.  By Lot will build one set of DeskManager accounts in the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts for every Lot Profile the user has in DeskManager.  By Vehicle Type will build one set of DeskManager accounts in the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts for every vehicle type as defined by the type list found in the QuickBooks section of the DeskManager Setup tool (vehicle types are selected by marking the check-boxes next to the desired types).  By Vehicle Location will build one set of DeskManager accounts in the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts for every Location found in the Locations section of the Inventory Setup portion of the DeskManager Setup tool.

 Transactions

This area of the settings is where DeskManager is instructed as to how to treat different transactions between DeskManager and QuickBooks as well as to allow the user to select some of the optional transactions that the DeskManager to QuickBooks interface is capable of generating.

• Always check if a Deal Invoice is already sent to QuickBooks using Billing/Invoicing Method (Default: Unmarked) – This option should only be used by customers who are being converted from the old Billing/Invoicing Method, it will cause the transfer process to take more time to complete.  The old Billing/Invoicing Method did not keep good track of items that were sent to QuickBooks and items that were not.  As a result, sometimes the Journal Entry method cannot tell the status of an item.  In this situation DeskManager decided to err on the side of safety and treat the item as though it had not been sent.  As a result there is a possibility during the switch over from the old method to the new method that items could become duplicated.  By selecting this option, the system will perform a much more thorough search of the QuickBooks data for the items being posted by the Journal Method to verify they do not already exist in QuickBooks.  This search can cause the transfer to take some time depending on the amount of data in the QuickBooks company you are working within.  This option will become unavailable if the option to convert a transaction from Billing/Invoice to Journal Entry method has been selected.

• Transfer Commissions as Payable for 1099 employees (Default: Unmarked) – If you pay commission to your sales people as straight checks, as you would for a ‘1099 employee’ you can select this option and DeskManager will use the information found in the Employee Records for any sales person assigned to a commission slot of a deal as a Vendor in QuickBooks and the commission amount will then appear as a bill to be paid to that Vendor.  If you pay any of your sales people their commission through a payroll program do not select this option.  Doing so will cause the information you are placing into the Payroll program to become duplicated by the bills we will create in this process.  The DeskManager program does not interface with the QuickBooks Payroll program.

• Create a bill for trade pay-off (Default: Unmarked) – When DeskManager is posting a deal to QuickBooks that includes a Trade In Vehicle with a Pay-Off amount, by default we place that payoff amount into an Other Current Liability account called Payoff.  Some customers have requested that we create a bill in the QuickBooks Pay Bills area for that payoff.  If this box is marked DeskManager will add an additional journal entry for the user that will take place between the Payoff liability account and the Accounts Payable account, using the Financing Company information found in the deal in the Balance Paid To field as the QuickBooks Vendor so as to create that bill.

• Use due date as date of bill for sending vehicle expenses to QuickBooks (Default: Unmarked) – By definition, the Accounts Payable account is a place where bills are recorded and held until the time these bills are to be paid.  A number of customers absolutely insisted that DeskManager must not put bills into their Accounts Payable until that bill is actually due.  This completely defeats the purpose of having an Accounts Payable account in any accounting system.  Unfortunately accepted accounting practices have lost the battle on this one.  If this box is marked, DeskManager will use the Due Date that was entered in a vehicle cost as the date that item will use in the journal entry DeskManager creates when the item is posted to QuickBooks.  Depending on the way your QuickBooks is configured this may cause errors if QuickBooks is not allowing future transactions to be entered into the QuickBooks Company file you are using.

• If a transaction is already sent through Billing/Invoicing method, convert it to Journal/Entry method (Default: Unmarked) – If a customer has accidently changed their system to use the Billing/Invoicing method or if a customer is being converted from the old system, this option if selected will check to see if a transaction was already sent using the Billing/Invoicing method and if QuickBooks will allow the transaction to be converted, we will remove the old Billing/Invoicing transaction from QuickBooks and replace it with a Journal Entry method transaction.  If this option is selected, the first option will become disabled.

• Don’t re-send the bills which are already paid in QuickBooks (Default: Marked) – When a customer uses the Pay Bills tool in QuickBooks to pay for an item that was posted by DeskManager, QuickBooks will place a link between the journal entry created by DeskManager for that bill and the Check that was issued to pay that bill.  Unfortunately due to our need to remain backwards compatible to the older versions of QuickBooks that are still in use by some customers, the interface tools that Intuit has available are unable to detect and preserve the link between that check and the bill, but the tools do detect and report back to DeskManager that there is a difference.  Unfortunately that difference is enough to make DeskManager think that something in the QuickBooks entry has changed and that we need to correct that item.  For DeskManager to make this correction we need to remove the old journal entry and create a new journal entry.  If we let DeskManager make that correction, we will accidently will sever the link between that check and the bill.  As a result the bill will reappear in the QuickBooks Pay Bills tool and it will appear that the vendor has a credit for the amount of the check because that check is no longer associated with the bill.  To correct this users had to use those credits on the bill.  By default, if a user selects to send a vehicle cost that was previously sent to QuickBooks successfully, DeskManager will attempt to verify if that bill has been paid.  If we find the bill has been paid DeskManager will not attempt to post this item again.  By clearing the selection of this item, DeskManager will not attempt to verify if a bill was paid or not and in the situation that we detect a difference between the data DeskManager has for that cost and the data in QuickBooks, DeskManager will automatically remove the old journal entry and replace it with the updated information.  You will be responsible for re-associating the bill with the check that was issued when it was originally paid.

• Increase the speed by only checking the bills with same Date as current expense Date (Default: Marked) – By default, when DeskManager is verifying if a previously sent vehicle cost was already paid, in order to save time we are only checking against bills that were created on the same date as the item we are attempting to send again.  By clearing the mark on this option DeskManager will verify against all bills that have been paid for any date.

• Increase the speed by only checking the bills with the same Vendor as the expense’s Vendor (Default: Unmarked) – By default, we are not searching within a specific vendor when doing this verification process.  There are times when a wrong vendor has been entered into a vehicle cost and must be corrected.  If this box is marked, DeskManager will limit the search to the Vendor found in that vehicle cost item.

• Attach the state abbreviation (e.g. CA, NY, …) to the beginning of reference number of journal entries (Default: Marked) – The old Billing/Invoicing method was configured to always use the state abbreviation for reference numbers on transactions generated by DeskManager.  A number of customers were disappointed that the new method did not also use that state abbreviation so this option was added.  Marking the box will cause DeskManager to use the state abbreviation based on the profile that was in use when the transaction was generated in DeskManager.

• Don’t Send Voided/Bounced Payments (Default: Unmarked) – If you discover a mistake in a payment that was collected by DeskManager and posted to QuickBooks, if that payment has not been deposited in QuickBooks then DeskManager is able to make corrections if necessary.  Once the payment has been included in a deposit transaction in QuickBooks, the QuickBooks program itself will not allow us to make any changes to that item.  Since most checks that bounce do not do so immediately, we needed to find a way to send this information to QuickBooks when it did happen.  When an item needs to be voided or bounced, instead of altering the original transaction, DeskManager will send to QuickBooks a reversed journal entry.  This reversed entry needs to then be applied in QuickBooks to the bank account where the deposit took place.  Unfortunately the Make Deposits tool in QuickBooks will not recognize these reverse journal entries, the customer must manually apply them to the bank account.  A number of customers decided they would rather deal with the bounced check in QuickBooks in their own way and no longer wanted DeskManager to post those item .  By marking this box, the system will no longer display Void or Bounced items in the transaction list.

• Don’t Send Repo/Buy-Back Transactions (Default: Marked) – Currently the QuickBooks tool does function for Repossession or Buy-Back vehicles.  You will need to manually deal with these items in QuickBooks.

Recording Sales Tax using the QuickBooks built-in Sales Tax Payable liability account (Not Recommended) – By default, DeskManager will create an account in the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts in the Other Current Liability section called Sales Tax for the recording of the taxes collected in deals that have been posted to QuickBooks.  QuickBooks has it’s own sales tax account called Sales Tax Payable.  We try to avoid using this account because it changes some of the rules for posting journal entries.  If the user insists on using this built in account, then when DeskManager posts the different transactions into the various Liability accounts in QuickBooks we can no longer use the Customer/Job information to track where this liability came from.  This account forces us to have to supply a Vendor name in the transactions.  By enabling this box, DeskManager will use Vendor Names as found in the Deal Item Mapping area of the QuickBooks section of the DeskManager Setup tool.  If we need to post to a liability account and that account does not have a vendor associated with it in the DeskManager Setup tool, we will use one of the names found in this area depending on the type of transaction (Either Deal or Service) that we are posting.  The defaults can be edited in the windows here.  ***Warning***  If you enable this option and do not take the time to setup vendors you may receive error messages during posting.  If you map your sales tax liability account to the QuickBooks Sales Tax Payable and do not enable this option you will receive error messages.

Entities

Use Stock Number as a Job for Customers within QuickBooks (Default Marked) – By allowing DeskManager to use the Stock Number of a vehicle as a Job in QuickBooks, this allows us to keep your QuickBooks Customer Center more organized.  Customers who purchase multiple cars will have each stock number listed below their name in the Customer Center and while the main customer name will display a grand total of the amount outstanding for every vehicle purchased, each stock number will display their individual balances.  When this option is unmarked and the system posts a deal to QuickBooks you will only be able to see grand totals for that customer.  We will no longer track individual totals per stock number in QuickBooks.

Keep Track of Customers and Vendors by storing the QuickBooks Internal IDs (Default Marked) – QuickBooks has internal ID’s assigned to everything, they just don’t display these ID’s within the program.  Our interface has the ability to view these ID’s and record them so as to allow us to follow an item even if later that item is edited.  So if DeskManager creates a customer using our standard, Last Name, First Name, Zip Code format of ‘Doe, John, 90001’ and this customer should move and now become ‘Doe, John, 90101’ should this change be recorded in only one location (ex Updated in DeskManager but not in QuickBooks or the opposite, updated in QuickBooks but not in DeskManager), DeskManager will still be able to continue to work with that same Customer.  The same applies to Vendors because once that internal ID is assigned by QuickBooks it will stay with that customer or vendor as long as that entity exists in QuickBooks.

Use Customers as Entity in Additional Journal Entries when reducing asset and increasing CoGS (Default Unmarked) – The Generally Accepted Accounting Practice when it comes to dealing with Cost of Good Sold items is to leave these items associated with the Vendor from whom the cost was incurred.  This can be very important come Tax time because knowing the vendor costs that have made it into Cost of Goods Sold during the year will let you accountant easily see if you have cross a threshold that due to some city, county, state or federal law require you to file extra or different paperwork with your tax return, your accountant would easily be able to determine this.