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Here we are in our custom zero homepage going into the new company file we set up in a prior presentation that being get great guitars and prior presentations we set up the company file and now we want to be entering the beginning balances into the system as well as the foundational items necessary to make the data input forms that are in the plus item up top as easy as possible to populate. Now these are the beginning balances we're going to enter into the system not with one big journal entry but rather going to each account you like one at a time and looking at the specific needs related to each of those accounts. Now with the inventory account here we have a specific issue with relation to it and that is going to be the inventory items if we're tracking those within the zero system in a perpetual inventory method to put those in we have to use items or inventory items that will support this number by inventory items if we're tracking it within the system. Now before we actually enter the inventory items which are probably the most difficult items to enter into the system let's first think about service items. The service items represent things that we sell that are services that don't have an underlying inventory component so we don't have to track them in inventory but they're going to be input in a similar fashion and they are easier to input than the inventory items so then we'll go into the more difficult inventory items following the service items. So in other words if I go back on over to zero over here the service items primarily are designed to make your data input for the invoices and the money in receive money which are which are kind of like the cash register type of transactions easy. So if you imagine someone like out of cash register saying they're going to receive money and they're trying to input that into the system well to do that I have to enter a bank account. So let's go up to that again if you imagine that they're going to have an invoice and you're trying to make the invoice as easy as possible to populate you would like down here for them to be able to select the item so instead of just creating the item as you go that's going to be much more complex you want the item in the system. Now a lot of times if you're a service company like an accountant or like a like a lawyer then you often think you're just gonna you're gonna charge people on an hourly rate but just note that anytime that if you're in a service industry that you can standardize your billing system that's usually gonna make it easier for you to do the billing process. So for example if you're a bookkeeper and you're able to say hey look I'm gonna charge people for however many transactions I happen to do so that you have a quantifiable amount then you can set up a service item that represents that number of transactions which will populate the amount for the work that was done in that format. Otherwise you can try to fill people if you're in like a job cost service industry like a like a CPA firm or a tax firm or law firm you can have a different billable rate for the different individuals that you are billing for and that's a common way that you would have that as well and again you would set up the service items so that you can just select those items possibly when you're actually doing the billing process. So let's go through that setting up the items we can go to the business drop-down and we want to then go into the products and services products and services and so we're gonna be looking at the service items you've got the little video that you can use to have the service item here we can enter the service items one at a time so if you just have a few of them you can say new item and this is the population screen you have a code you've got the name if you're tracking the inventory in the system then you're gonna select track inventory so we'll talk more about that later tracking inventory makes it more complex of a thing to be doing with these ones we're not tracking inventory because we're just talking about service items and not inventory items purchase add item to bills purchase orders and other purchase transactions now if you're talking about non inventory items you might not even have purchase type stuff you're only gonna have the sales stuff where you have add items to invoices quotes and other sales transactions you've got the sales price the account that's gonna be hit when you put that into the system if there's tax related to it you've got the tax rate and then the description that way whenever you make an invoice this will populate basically automatically however we have many of them we want to enter so so this is our list here and so if you have a lot of stuff you're gonna enter into the system you might want to import it using a CSV file or a spreadsheet so that's what we'll do here so to do that and this could work with different things as well you might have a similar system if you're importing a lot of customers you're importing a lot of vendors your inventory inventory items that we might be importing we might use a similar type of process instead of doing them one at a time we can pull that information in you can imagine getting this information from your prior accounting software possibly possibly exporting it to an Excel worksheet and then trying to put it into your current system in this fashion or you might just find it easier to populate this in an Excel worksheet than to do each of these one at a time in this kind of format so let's go to import and I'm gonna say import items and it says prepare file to import download the template and add your items to update items already in zero export items to CSV and edit them in spreadsheet existing items will be uploaded when the value in item code matches the code of an item that already exists up to 1000 items can be imported each time so here's their template here their tips don't change or delete the column headings enter the account code only enter the tax rate exactly as it appears in zero if you're adding tracking inventory items enter both the inventory asset account and cost of goods sold account codes okay so let's go ahead and download the template so notice that that there's two ways that you might do this if you have your information this is the template if you have your information in a spreadsheet already you might try to save this spreadsheet as a CSV file you might go to the file tab up top and save as and try to convert this to a CSV file which is quite easy to do a comma deliminated and then upload it however it's likely that your headers are not exactly the same as the headers on the example file so so another way that you might do it is you might take the example file and just copy and paste what's on your worksheet to match the headers on the example file you can't really see the headers right now because this is a CSV file instead of an Excel file but we can select for example these columns I'm gonna double click up top and so there's there's our headers and so there we go now I can add some formatting to it but the formatting will be deleted when I save it as a CSV file so sometimes it might be easier to save it as an Excel file and then save it again as a CSV file once you're done formatting it so let me show you how that might look you might go to file save as and then I'm gonna go to the old desktop desktop and we're gonna put this into zero these are gonna be the inventory items notice it's saving it as a CSV file even though I opened it in Excel I'm gonna save it as an Excel file so it will put my formatting in place just temporarily until I get my formatting the way I want it then I will change that back to a CSV file all right so here we have it now one thing you might do is wrap the headers because that might make it a little bit easier to see so I might wrap the headers which is that which is a something that won't be in the CSV file won't pull through but it's useful that wasn't wrap wrap is there it is so now maybe I can get all these kind of on a on a page hold on a second I'm gonna make them all the same size here there we go all right so there is that all right so then we have the item code we've got the item name we've got the purchase description so we don't really need a purchase description yet because we're not purchasing the service items that's really for the inventories items we got the purchases unit price again purchasing isn't really what we're gonna have here for the sales items this is where it gets more complex for inventory another purchase account purchases tax rate sales description sales unit price so we need the sales description we need the sales unit price we need the sales account the sales tax rate we don't we possibly don't have one I'm gonna imagine we don't have one here I will deal with sales tax in future presentation inventory account and then cost of goods sold we don't have any inventory of cost of goods sold we have to deal with either all right so I'm not gonna have any item code I'm not gonna have and then the item name I'm just gonna copy in these columns as we go now these are very generic names they sound more like like if I was a dealing with a car or something then a guitar shop but we'll also deal with other service items later when we get to when we get to imagining that we have guitar instructors which will mirror a system that you might have in like an accounting firm or law firm but for now just to get some items in there we're gonna use these I'm gonna copy this and I'm just gonna put that in the description boom make this a little larger there's that and then that's gonna be the the item name I should have put it in the item name let's put it there and the purchase description it doesn't really matter I'll put it there but I don't really need it the sales description is what I need I'm gonna put the same thing there that's what's gonna show up on the actual sales area and then the the sales price the sales price I have here are gonna be these so I'm just gonna copy the amounts of the price from my worksheet this is how much we're gonna sell them for so sales sales unit price and then the sales account now I want to make sure I pick up the proper account from my chart of accounts so I'm gonna go into my chart of accounts here let's go into the drop down and say where's my chart of accounts under business and then we want to go down to the I'm sorry accounting and then go to your chart of accounts and let's check out what they gave us for revenue accounts it's kind of cool that they give us this little breakout up top which is a little bit easier to kind of jump over to revenue over here and then we have sales now normally sales is used for inventory items oftentimes so I'm gonna have service that's the name of the account so I'll just copy that here will they let me copy it I'll just service I could spell service without copying it that's not to service it's not beyond my spelling capabilities is it sales account possibly it is possibly it is sales tax inventory asset account we don't need an inventory and we don't need cost of goods sold so the only question is on the item code should I put the same thing in the item code on the name let's put this in the item code to we'll just have the same item code because that's this is the shorthand thing that that pulls it up and this is the the item title the full title and in the purchase description we don't really need but it would be basically the same here sales description that's what's gonna actually show up on the invoice in the description the sales receipts and so on so let's save this and I'm gonna say how do I say where's my save button save it and then I'm gonna say save as and save it as a CSV file converting it from this point to a CSV file the format used to upload to zero so I'm gonna say file save save copy browse I'm gonna put it in the same place but this may this time make it a CSV comma deliminated file boom shock a locker let's save it auto save for yeah here alright let's close it up now I put it into this file so if I go into this file now I've got hold on it's not there okay so here they are so this is my actual Excel file and this is the CSV file so you'll notice when I open the CSV file it looks similar but it's not exactly the same it's it'll erase the formatting so you see I opened it up and it basically took all the formatting away because that's the cleanest file in essence to be able to upload to not mess zero up when it's trying to upload it so let's go ahead and upload it now so I'm gonna go back on over here and we're gonna go back into our our products and services and then simply upload our products and services let's import items and import we downloaded so I'm gonna select the item boom and there it is so the CSV file is showing up so let's pull that in inventory item save it and it's giving me an error saying my sales account service isn't a valid code from the chart of account so I think they want the code number so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back into my chart of accounts and say all right chart of accounts let's check that out I'm going back to my revenue say k so so service I think they want the account number 4 3 0 0 let's go back on over here and say sales account 4 3 0 0 let's try the account number because I I put service I spelled it right didn't I I knew it I didn't spell service see service and I'm gonna copy that down let's try that let's see if it gives me another error save as a little trial and error to see if it gives me an error double error on that this is gonna be numero trace this time and then we will give it another shot give it another shot all right so back on over here we're gonna go to the we're gonna go back to the products and services and we will then go into the import items and select inventory item 3 and cross the fingers there it is import summary foot 404 items will be imported all right do it do it 0 you go 0 so if I go into that there they are here's the code here's the diagnostic here's the sales price so if I go into these items here I can archive it or I can delete it if I go into to them says your product service has a new look so here's the purchase here's the description sales price sales account latest transactions down below so it gives us a nice little summary of the transactions and then we can edit the item if we so choose and now we see it in that format we saw before where we have the diagnostics you know I just put a generic thing no inventory tracking we don't really need the purchase stuff at all because we're not gonna be purchasing night these items but it's not really gonna hurt anything so we'll leave it checked off sales items sales price there's the account at one of the code or the number we're not gonna deal with the taxes for this one we might get into sales tax in the United States which is similar to like a usage tax in other parts of the country it so there's a similar concept to it but I'm gonna imagine here that we have the tax on the inventory items and not the sales on the service items so we'll talk about sales tax later and then we've got the diagnostic so this didn't do anything to the actual financial statements because they're not inventory items but it does make it easier for us when we enter an invoice for example to populate the invoice because now we should be able to select the item here and the item should be driving the amount so you can imagine then when you do your billing or when you have someone else doing the billing that it should be straightforward if you have your items set up properly and again I would recommend if possible to move away from just a simply billing rate based on hours if you can like bill based on what was done if you can quantify your billing so that you can you can easily figure it out you can show exactly what you did to the client and possibly have someone else do the billing process because they can quantify you know the billing on something other than just hours but sometimes you can't get away from the hours and again you make your service items for hourly service or something like that and you just got to count the hours and bill out the hours so this this leads into the next step which we will do which is the inventory items which has an added level of complexity if we have beginning balances already because the inventory items and cost that we have on our system should add up to this amount and we should be able to generate a sub ledger report showing those inventory items by item that will tie out to what's on the balance sheet