 QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Check form. Let's do it within 2-its. QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Support Accounting Instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more, like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Here we are in QuickBooks Desktop Sample Rock Castle Construction Practice file provided by QuickBooks going through the setup process we do every time, maximizing the home page. View drop-down open windows list open on the left. Reports drop-down company and financial profit and loss. I'm going to hit Tab to change the dates from 01.01.24 to 12.31.24. Tab January through December. I'm going to customize that report so I can go on over to the fonts and numbers and change that font, bringing it up to 12. Okay. Yes, please. Okay. And then reports drop-down again company and financial this time looking at that balance sheet standard changing the date 12.31.24. Customizing that report up top going to the fonts and numbers changing that font size on up to 12. Okay. Yes, please. Okay. That's our normal setup process going back to the home page and prior presentations. We've been focusing in on this vendor section. Remembering that vendor represents someone that we're paying from a QuickBooks terminology standpoint for goods and services. That means that money is ultimately going out from our company to some other company for the goods and services we're purchasing for our business needs. Now we talked about some of the icons up here. The easiest way to pay a vendor would be to pay them with an electronic transfer or to pay them with a check. That's going to be the check form down here. You might be saying, well, why, if that's the case, if that's the form often used to pay vendors, isn't it up here in the vendor section? Why is it down here in the banking section? One possible reason might be that you might use this check form, which is a decrease to the checking account to have other things other than paying vendors, like possibly having a draw to yourself, for example, or paying a loan or something like that. So that might be why they put it down here, but it is the form that will often be used when you're paying basically vendors directly, when you're using the most automatic format of payment. Now a few things on the check form. The check form, usually we think of as a physical check that we're writing a physical check, but the check form with regards to QuickBooks is going to be something that's going to be a decrease to the checking account. So whenever we say there's going to be a decrease to the checking account, whether that being electronic transfer of some kind or a physical check that we write, then a check form is often the go to place that you will go, unless there's some other form that's specialized to the transaction you're looking at, which would be, for example, the pay bill form we talked about in a prior presentation, which would be paying down the accounts payable. We saw that the pay bill form is a form of check form, looks like a check. It's just that it's going to be special check that it will be used all the time to pay down the accounts payable. We saw a similar thing with the sales tax form. So we got the sales tax form paying down the payable of the sales tax payable. So if there's a special widget, these two, there's also one down here we'll talk about later for paying down the payroll liability form. So if there's a special widget, then we want to use that. Otherwise, we're going to typically be using the check form. Now, when you're going to actually have a decrease to the checking account, this is also someplace where you might be using, for example, the bank feeds. So if you have a system where you're kind of more on a cash based system with regards to the vendors section, and even further from a cash based system, one in which all of your expenses that you're buying for the business are electronic transfers, that's the easiest system to be using, say bank feeds for, because the electronic transfer is going to clear the bank pretty quickly, possibly automatically, it's getting quicker and quicker these days, and therefore you could kind of rely on the bank before you record the transaction and pick up the bank feed, record the transaction from it. Just note that as you do that, when you add the transaction from the bank feed, it will still be using a check form. So in other words, when you look at it from the end point of view, the balance sheet, and you entered your data with a bank feed, everything that decreased the bank was like a check form, or 10124, then that's going to be your decreased amounts here are going to be basically check forms. So you're still going to want to understand what a check form is when you're using something like the bank feeds. So if I go back on over, the other thing to notice for going back to the homepage is that if you're writing physical checks, if you're not using bank feeds and you're recording some kind of decrease to the checking account, then sometimes it's easier to actually use the check register. That could be a faster way to do the data input. So if I'm writing physical checks or I'm writing multiple things that are going to be a decrease to the checking account, possibly use the check register, which would be here, or you could go to the banking dropdown and use register, and then you could go to the checking account is the general register you will be using. You could use a check like a register kind of format for other accounts too, but most people think of the register first applying to like a checking account similar to the kind of thing that you would see in the old days when you had your checkbook and you're kind of recording your check transactions down in your checkbook. This kind of should remind you of that. So I'm going to close this out and so you can enter the activity for the checks directly into here. So for example, this is a bill payment. I'm going to scroll up and say we had just a normal check. Where's just a normal check like this one here, although it's split. Let's look at this one. So you could just enter the information this way. It's a payment type of form. And then the other side is going to accounts receivable for some reason that's kind of an odd one, but you can have all the data and then this would be kind of like the easiest way to enter the transaction. If I double click on this little check form, then you could still see it's a check. It'll be a similar kind of thing with the bank feeds, meaning the bank feeds will not look like this big large form. It will look more like a check register form, but it's still basically going to be a check type of form in the end result. When you go back to it, when you search for it, it's going to be a check form. Whenever there's a decrease to the checking account, it's going to be a check form unless there's some other specialized widget, like the accounts payable form or something like that. Opening up the form here again, let's go back to the balance sheet and let's go into the checking account and just and seal some of the activity 010124. So if we see decreases to the checking account, the things that are decreasing the checking account, we've got the bill payment form. This is like a check form except that was one of those special forms. You can see down here, it's a little bit different at the bottom. That's the only difference, still decreasing the checking account. And then if I scroll down, we've got a paycheck form. That's another one, which once again is basically a check form because it's decreasing the checking account, but it's a special one because it's going to have to deal with all the payroll transactions, therefore having its own little special widget. And then if I scroll down, we've got the sales tax payment. Again, basically a check type form, but the bottom is different because we use a special little widget for the sales tax payment form. And then we have some normal checks down here, which are indicated just by a check. Notice those differences in this type field can be useful because they can tell you exactly what you're doing just by the type of form that you're using. So if I go into this one, double clicking on it, there's our standard check form. Looks like similar to if you're just writing a check, we're going to be decreasing the checking account. Typically, that's usually the default. And then the check number will be automatic that it will populate. That's an internal control. If you're actually physically writing checks, then you're going to want to be able to put the checks into the printer and then print the checks and the internal control of having a check number here and the printed checks comparing the two will help to give you that safeguard on your checks would be the general idea. If you do not have a check and you're using the check form just to decrease the checking account, then you wouldn't put a number here or you might put like other or something like that because it's not an actual check. It's just a form that's decreasing the checking account. So then and so that would be like an electronic transfer or something like that. You might use that for that purpose. And then you've got the date, of course, this is going to be who you're going to be paying. Now notice if you use bank feeds, sometimes it might be possible for you to enter the transaction without actually putting a vendor here. This is a vendor that we're setting up. But you don't want to do that because even though you can still record the transaction and record it to an account, you won't have the added detail of being able to search who you paid by vendor. So if you're using bank feeds, make sure that you fill out the vendor field whenever you can because that gives you a bit more information. Also note that if you've never used the vendor before, you could just add the vendor as you're entering the data into the system. So you could just that's usually how you add the vendors as basically you go. And also just realize that you want to keep the vendor names. You don't want to have five names for the same vendor. So if the vendor names a little bit different, you want to be consistent with the prior what's been entered in the past so that you don't have a muddled up system. So then we're going to have it. So then we've got the amount, of course, the address. This could be optional because it'll be dependent upon the vendor because you're going to enter the address in the vendor information. And so you might not need the address for some vendors because you're just trying to enter the transaction and how much you paid for the utility bill or something like that. But if you're mailing it, you might need more information. If you're buying something like inventory, then you probably want to have more information about the vendor which will populate automatically when you choose the vendor. You could have a memo that you can enter here that's often good whenever you can add a memo that would add value as to what you're doing so that you're providing an audit trail. That's often a good practice. Then we choose the we have the expense or items. Notice this bottom half looks a lot like a bill now that we looked at in the past. We got the expense side and the item side. The expense side is going to be used whenever you're paying for something and you just want to charge it to an account, usually an expense account such as repairs and maintenance here. Also realize that it'll populate this kind of automatically depending on your settings in terms of did you set things up so it kind of memorize the account that went to last time or memorize the last transaction. So we'll talk about the settings more in a future presentation, but that'll help you to kind of be consistent. But it doesn't have to be an expense because you might be buying like property plants and equipment, which in that case you put an asset account in here. But anytime you're charging just an account itself and you don't need some other sub thing then it would be down here. That's usually everything except inventory. So that's where you have the items tab. If it were inventory, just like with the bill, then you can choose the inventory part. The reason you have to use the item is because you're not just charging the account of inventory. In that case, if you're using a perpetual inventory system tracking inventory within QuickBooks, you also want the sub ledger to be impacted. Just as we talked about for the bill side of things when we talked about inventory. So in that case, same stuff. I'm going to close this back out and say no, I don't want to record it. And obviously we hit the check is now in here. The other side is on the split field. You can see went to the income statement in this case for the fuel account 60110. That's typically what's going to happen with the checks. I'll close this back out, open up the carrot here. So typically what will happen if I go back to the homepage is you'll write a check. Usually you're writing checks for expenses. Oftentimes like utilities, the phone bill and so on. What happens there in terms of the transaction, you can have a decrease to the checking account clearly. And the other side usually goes to the PNL profit and loss income and expenses. So we'll get into like the layout of the profit and loss and the reports later. But usually the other side is going to go to an expense. Income statement represents income minus expenses. The bottom line being the net income. You always want to think about the accounts that are being impacted as you enter the transactions. Because the end result, the goal that you're trying to do here with entering this data into the system is the creation of the balance sheet, the income statement, which you're going to need for whatever your needs are such as taxes and whatnot at the end of the year and just analysis of your business to see how it's going. So I'm going to go back to the homepage. So quick recap that when you're paying a vendor, you could pay them with a check. If you're paying them with a check, that might be an electronic transfer. The easiest way could be that an electronic transfer is being made. You tie it to the bank feeds. It's still going to use a check form to decrease the checking account. You might write the physical check. If you write a physical check, you want to write the check. You want to enter it as you're writing the check. Not wait until it clears the bank because the whole point is you want to be able to track those outstanding checks. And then you're going to have to go through the bank reconciliation process to do that. So if you're not writing checks, then you can go to the accrual component, which we talked about last time, entering a bill, which increases the accounts payable and records the expense at that point. Then you pay the bill with, in essence, a check. But it's a special check, not just decrease in the checking account, but the other side is always going to the accounts payable, decrease in accounts payable, which is indicated by the bill type. That's why it's kind of nice that it's going to be indicated that way. And then if you have inventory again, you could have the bill related to inventory and the pay bill, which is a similar fashion. And you could have other forms that are special, that are like checks such as the sales tax, but it's going to be an indication that it's a special check, decreasing the checking account for sales tax, decreasing the sales tax, or payroll taxes, which is going to be like a check. We'll see in the future special check though, decreasing the checking account, decreasing the liability accounts.