EdSurly Posted September 6, 2014 Share Posted September 6, 2014 Trying to figure out which accounting software is the best to use, I have been using outright (now godaddy bookkeeping) but it stopped importing my bank information and didn't have the report functionality I wanted. So now I'm trying out Xero and QuickBooks but I had a couple of questions; How do you guy's account for change that you put in your changers? I'm putting approximately $300 a month in dollar coins into the machine and have been listing it as "Cost of Goods Sold" which was what I figured was the best place to put it under godaddy...however I know that isn't cost of goods sold and would like to place it in the correct "box" so to speak. It's not really a cost...but how do I account for it? I get the coins every Friday when I make my deposits. I tell the tellers to take it out separately from the deposits so I can account for them. Maybe I need to just start having them deduct the dollar coins from the deposit instead? Another problem I'm having...I imported the bank account information and reconciled all the transactions (the max amount my bank would export) in both Quickbooks and Xero (yea, I reconciled all the transactions for both services to see which one I like the best...great way to spend a Saturday ehh?) and are showing all the expenses correctly but when I go to income or sales nothing is showing up at all. Both services have "invoicing" but as a vend business that deals in cash I don't have any invoices. What do you guys do? And where did my income transactions I imported from my bank go!? My business has been up for one year as of Aug. 30th and I want to run some reports about my years expenses and income...like percentage of utility costs etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZVendor Posted September 7, 2014 Share Posted September 7, 2014 It sounds like you might be using QB online version which is kind of limited in what it does as I understand. Back in the day I used QB Pro in conjunction with my Routesail accountability software - they had to be run separately as QB doesn't do vending route stuff well. QB still won't do any detailed vending accountability even now so don't expect too much from it. I can't speak to the issue of downloading bank info as I manually enter all my expenses and income (I do invoicing) but the way to handle your changer funds (referred to in vending as "Imprest Funds" is to create a separate bank account for it. Call it what you want but it will be handled like a petty cash account. Outflows are from the account to the changers, inflows are broken out of your deposits and transferred to the account. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted September 7, 2014 Share Posted September 7, 2014 Oh wow... sounds like you are trying to account for everything perfectly. I am going to have a difficult time answering your question here but let me start with a few things first... I use quickbooks and your dollar coin deal shouldn't even be recorded if you ask me. I think we all want to cover our butts when it comes to the IRS but you probably shouldn't DEPOSIT the $300 and then WITHDRAW $300. You should simply have the $300 exchanged. For example, if you have $1,000 in cash to deposit, Deposit $700 on your deposit slip and exchange the $300 for dollar coins. Otherwise, it is going to look like you have $300 in additional revenue every month and you simply take out $300 for some sort of expense.. when in reality, there is no $300 in additional revenue nor is there $300 in some expense. Furthermore, by putting that $300 in COGS, you are making it look like it really is an expense.. which skews your numbers greatly and would come across as a huge red flag against you. Lets first figure out what that $300 is.... it is nothing. When you EXCHANGE $300 in BILLS for $300 in COINS, there was no change in your books. You subtracted $300 in CASH and added $300 in CASH for a net difference of $0. You should simply exchange the currency and NOT RECORD ANYTHING. You could make a note for your records but there exchanging currency is not something to be recorded. Plus, when you use your bookkeeping program to show your net profit, it will be reduced by $300/month in dollar coins. Lets say you had a profit of $1,500 in a month but recorded $300 as COGS for your dollar coins.. that reduces your profit to $1200/month. That's simply not correct. By the way, by simply EXCHANGING the coin, there should be nothing on your bank records... so if you decide to import information from the bank, it will be more accurate than it is now. Secondly... the way you are doing this is very confusing. Regarding your dollar coin, if you put $20 in dollar coins into a machine, you should SUBTRACT $20 in revenue from that machine when you collect the money.. otherwise, your revenue will be artificially inflated. Think about it this way: if you go to a machine and collect $40 in CASH and it needs $10 in coin put into the coin mech. The machine GAINED $40 in revenue but PAID OUT (lost) $10 in dollar coins. That means your revenue was only $30. To make it even more simple, imagine you sold ONE BOTTLE OF SODA for $1.50. You open the machine up and pull a $5 out. Did you make $5 from that bottle? NO! You made $1.50, but there should be $3.50 MISSING from the coin mech. $5.00 - $3.50 (paid from coin mech) = $1.50 in REVENUE. You need to account for this whenever you put coins in the coin mech. The EASIEST way to do this is to EXCHANGE coins for cash. If you put $10 in quarters in the coin mech out of your "quarter bag" (if you have a bag of quarters for this very reason), then you should put $10 in CASH back into the coin bag! There should always be enough cash to cover your coins paid out unless you had some sort of a jackpot or something. At the end of the day, if you started with $300 in dollar coins and ended up with $200 in dollar coins and $100 in dollar bills, you know that everything added up correctly. Then, when you go to the bank, you can EXCHANGE the bills from your COIN BAG for more coins. Now.. onto your revenue... oh wow... You need to be accounting for every MACHINE that you have. Let's forget about refilling the coins for the moment. Now, if you collect $72.30 from a SODA machine and $53.85 from a SNACK machine, those should be two separate "accounts" for most programs. You might name them something similar like ABC - Soda and ABC - Snack. In quickbooks, you go to "record deposits" and you enter the name of your account (ie. ABC Soda), select "merchandise sales" to explain the type of sale it is, and select "Cash" as the form of revenue. Now you record $72.30 at the very last bracket (unless they've changed it). The bottom of the "ticket" should show the current total once you have moved to a new line. If you record ABC Snack with $53.85, the grand total for the ticket will be added up to $126.10. That is REVENUE!! You COULD combine all of your equipment into one account but, depending on any sales taxes in your state, you might be making things very difficult for yourself. There is NO WAY I could reconcile my entire business on a new program in a day, let alone TWO programs. I'm afraid you are doing a lot of things wrong!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdSurly Posted September 7, 2014 Author Share Posted September 7, 2014 Well, to be honest..I'm not a "real" vending business owner in that I only have one machine. It's an ice vending machine so the transactions I had to reconcile weren't all that many. So thanks for all the help. I will stop withdrawing the $1 coin money and start taking it from the deposit. I had done that previously but started asking the teller to take it out separate from the deposit...I won't do that anymore. And I didn't think of creating an "account" for the machine within the software, I'll do that also. It will help when/if I get another machine. And I hope I'm not doing too many things wrong! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryChris Posted September 7, 2014 Share Posted September 7, 2014 Well, to be honest..I'm not a "real" vending business owner in that I only have one machine. It's an ice vending machine so the transactions I had to reconcile weren't all that many. So thanks for all the help. I will stop withdrawing the $1 coin money and start taking it from the deposit. I had done that previously but started asking the teller to take it out separate from the deposit...I won't do that anymore. And I didn't think of creating an "account" for the machine within the software, I'll do that also. It will help when/if I get another machine. And I hope I'm not doing too many things wrong! Sorry, I was under the impression that you had lots of machines. If you need 300 dollar coins for an icecream machine every month, you are doing alright. This makes sense because your credits (deposit) should equal your revenue.. and your debits (withdraws) should equal your expenses. The important thing to know here is that, should you grow, your credits may no longer equal your revenue and your debits may no longer equal your expenses. Sometimes you need to use your CASH to buy something right away. If you use the cash right away, then your bank account will not reflect that and you will have to simply reconcile each time that happens. Except for huge companies, I don't know of any vendor that doesn't use some cash for expenses. I don't import anything from the bank. My books are everything. My bank would probably should 80% of my revenue and maybe 80% of my expenses as well. Should I ever get audited, I am going to show MORE revenue and MORE expenses from my books. That is a good thing if you ask me. Just don't ever let the revenue at the bank ever exceed your actual business revenue. That would make for a difficult explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdSurly Posted September 7, 2014 Author Share Posted September 7, 2014 It's not an ice cream machine, but an ice machine. It vends 20 pound bags of ice and filtered purified water. The only real "Cost of Goods Sold" is the monthly water bill and the plastic bags...in fact I have thought about just putting the water utility bill into the "cost of goods sold" column but as of yet it's still in the utilities column where it will probably stay lol. I currently have an excel file where I put every cent taken out of the machine on the day I take it out. That file isn't what I use for the accounting software...and it is on-line btw....for the accounting software I use the data from the bank after my weekly deposits Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beach Bum Vending Posted September 7, 2014 Share Posted September 7, 2014 How profitable is ice vending I have looked at it but I wouldn't know where to place one and they are costly 20,000-100,000 for a decent unit. And then have pay rent for location I am sure and all power they draw and utility bills. What can someone gross with one of these machines? And what are the margins like the one in my town is $1.75 per bag what is profit on bag of ice after all expenses? I moved down south about 2 years ago now and see them pretty regularly here. Just curious how that type of vending works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdSurly Posted September 7, 2014 Author Share Posted September 7, 2014 How profitable is ice vending I have looked at it but I wouldn't know where to place one and they are costly 20,000-100,000 for a decent unit. And then have pay rent for location I am sure and all power they draw and utility bills. What can someone gross with one of these machines? And what are the margins like the one in my town is $1.75 per bag what is profit on bag of ice after all expenses? I moved down south about 2 years ago now and see them pretty regularly here. Just curious how that type of vending works. I have a pretty lengthy post in "Other Vending" on that very topic. I'm pretty candid in that thread so stop by and take a look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allen watson Posted September 7, 2014 Share Posted September 7, 2014 I use quickbooks. I put the coins in petty cash and then balance it out when I pull the money. All my locations are categorized under "Lists" then "Class List" and then my individual machines are then listed under each location. Every day I record my route income in "Banking" / "Make Deposits" and the individual machine amount is put in the "class" section. This way I have a detailed record of what each individual machine is doing and also what the location is doing. For sales tax purposes I set up separate snack/soda/non-carbonated/food categories under an "Expense" account and just add "snack" if it came out of a snack machine or soda if it came out of a soda machine to the "From Account" line in the "Make Deposits" page. This way when I run my "profit and loss" report I get a quick total of taxable and non-taxable (California) goods sold. An easy way to see if you have it set up right is enter some transactions and then go to "reports" and look at your P&L, it should be there. It's all about your P&L report. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BTVLJDV Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 Was not sure where to post or ask this question so I am placing it here. I am trying to find a telephone number to call in regards to AccQ-Trak Vending Software. If anyone can please let me know. The website does not not have a telephone number listed. Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.