Quickbooks Online Version

[beejaykc aka Munch A Bunch]

Anyone using the online version? This is a pretty simple business, and I'm not looking to track individual inventory at this point in my business. When I grow - I might. But not right now.

Money in, money out.

If someone can help guide me to getting QB (online version) set up and ready for proper use - I would sincerely appreciate it. Their "free" support might be something I should check into as well.....

THX

[Greatdane]

I use QB 2012 to track individual machine investment, sales, and costs.

In Quick books I receive inventory and I list each machine (location) as a customer that uses inventory and is billed mileage like a real customer. In the beginning, I charge the cost of the machine to the Customers account as a loan and it receives product inventory and is billed for any service costs such as mileage. When I receive payments from the machine sales it is credited to the customers (machine account). At the end of my fiscal year, any depreciation is credited to each customer's account. I do this to see if a location is making money or is a dud. Works great so far. Easy to track COGS over time and each machine (account) profitability. My tax guy loves it. He just downloads my accountants copy and auto inserts info into tax/corporate forms and done. No hard paperwork to keep as I take the wholesalers receipts and it is scanned to each transaction so all paperwork is included in a little quick books file. I double back up my QB file including offsite too. Would hate to lose all income/purchase receipts due to a hard drive crash.

Greatdane

Quick books makes it pretty easy to adapt to your business. So far easy going.

[WhiteRoom]

Greatdane, do you track every item that goes into the machine to get COGS per machine? And do you treat each machine as a customer or each location as a customer? Just curious, I like the idea but I wonder how scaleable it is...how many "customers" are you tracking now and what do you think the upper limit would be?

[Greatdane]

I have nine Saeco SG200's coffee vending so inventory is minimal. Coffee, French vanilla coco powder and cream. I have one machine at each location.

I would receive 2 cases of each powder at a set cost and place in main inventory. I would then sell say 1 cream, 1 cocoa and 1lb of coffee to the customer (machine/location). The customer has to pay the bill including fed mileage out of the machine sales. The customer (machine) always has a negative balance until the cost of the vendor, inventory and refill/service mileage is paid. My set up is as a corporation and I do not receive pay but pay myself federal mileage instead of actual vehicle costs. I have a second job for income.

You could do location as a customer and group all the machines at that location as one customer. I do not know how this would work with lots of inventory like say this customer (machine) received 7 Snickers 12 milk duds etc and keeping track of that many individual items. It appears to be scaleable as each customer is just a new machine/location. One nice feature is you have a log of each machine (customer) any parts and repair service to the customer is billed at your customary tech rate say 65$ an hour. Customer is billed and payment is taken out of the machines sales. A nice way of figuring out if a machine is quality over time.

[Happy Vending]

I know that you're asking about quickbooks specifically, but I use GNUcash and its free. Always good to keep costs down when you're just starting out

[dogcow]

I use QB 2012 to track individual machine investment, sales, and costs.

In Quick books I receive inventory and I list each machine (location) as a customer that uses inventory and is billed mileage like a real customer. In the beginning, I charge the cost of the machine to the Customers account as a loan and it receives product inventory and is billed for any service costs such as mileage. When I receive payments from the machine sales it is credited to the customers (machine account). At the end of my fiscal year, any depreciation is credited to each customer's account. I do this to see if a location is making money or is a dud. Works great so far. Easy to track COGS over time and each machine (account) profitability. My tax guy loves it. He just downloads my accountants copy and auto inserts info into tax/corporate forms and done. No hard paperwork to keep as I take the wholesalers receipts and it is scanned to each transaction so all paperwork is included in a little quick books file. I double back up my QB file including offsite too. Would hate to lose all income/purchase receipts due to a hard drive crash.

Greatdane

Quick books makes it pretty easy to adapt to your business. So far easy going.

i hate to drag this up from the grave yard but i am trying to set up QB to help accounting /taxes

go easier. can you explain how to set up the equipment as a "loan" to the customer (location)

i used to design business software for a living an QB totally baffles me, i cant wrap my head around it

thanks!

[AZVendor]

I have been using QB since 1999 when I first tried to use it for route accountability. I wanted it to replace the Routesail program I used from Validata and I had already found that I couldn't get MS Excel and Access to work together to do what Routesail could do. So anyway, I have since used QB continuously for my service and repair business. I am currently on QB2011 and I have inventory turned on but don't use payroll.

QB is pretty easy to get used to but if you are trained in accounting it is hard to accept that you don't have to worry about debits and credits - QB takes care of it for you. It's best to have an understanding of accounting and then let QB do the work. It can definitely be convoluted at times and downright stupid at others, but mostly it works just fine.

I have no idea what you are actually doing within QB so far and what you want to achieve with it. Can you give some examples of specific things you want to accomplish so I can relate to how I do things? I suspect you will need to use the inventory system and if so, you will have to put some forethought into how you are going to set it up because the detail with which you track stuff can require various levels within inventory, hierarchys if you will.

[dogcow]

I have been using QB since 1999 when I first tried to use it for route accountability. I wanted it to replace the Routesail program I used from Validata and I had already found that I couldn't get MS Excel and Access to work together to do what Routesail could do. So anyway, I have since used QB continuously for my service and repair business. I am currently on QB2011 and I have inventory turned on but don't use payroll.

QB is pretty easy to get used to but if you are trained in accounting it is hard to accept that you don't have to worry about debits and credits - QB takes care of it for you. It's best to have an understanding of accounting and then let QB do the work. It can definitely be convoluted at times and downright stupid at others, but mostly it works just fine.

I have no idea what you are actually doing within QB so far and what you want to achieve with it. Can you give some examples of specific things you want to accomplish so I can relate to how I do things? I suspect you will need to use the inventory system and if so, you will have to put some forethought into how you are going to set it up because the detail with which you track stuff can require various levels within inventory, hierarchys if you will.

trying to do what is described in the post above mine

. In the beginning, I charge the cost of the machine to the Customers account as a loan and it receives product inventory and is billed for any service costs such as mileage.