Comments on: Paying a Bill Before Receiving Inventory in QuickBooks

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:05:06 +0000

Marge, I have never heard of Zipingo in QuickBooks – that was something in Quicken. And Intuit shut down Zipingo back in 2007. What QB product and year of product are you using?

By: Marge

Marge — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:08:31 +0000

Help!I noticed while making invoices this morning that on the bottom left text to the total there is an advertisement Rate our business @ ZIPINGO.COM. mY HUSBAND I ARE THE ONLY ONES WITH ACCESS TO THE COMPUTER IT IS A HOME BUSINESS. hOW DO I GET RID OF IT / STOP IT FORM HAPPENING & HOW DID THIS HAPPEN WE HAVE ACTIVE ANTIVIRUS ECT . iAM SORRY IF THIS IS POSTED IN THE WRONG AREA. THANK YOU

By: Charlie

Charlie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:40:50 +0000

An interesting approach, Anne. The advantage of QuickBooks is that it is very flexible and there are a lot of ways that you can do that might not be possible in a more rigid system. The disadvantage of QuickBooks is that was often is a common and relatively simple occurance might not have a simple answer, so we have to come up with all of these workarounds.

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:48:16 +0000

I forgot to mention that my client wants to see the invoice in A/P which is why we have implemented the “A/P in-transit” method and not some of the other ideas mentioned.

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:47:18 +0000

What we have done is input a temporary bill into an account called “A/P In-transit” and DO NOT process it against the PO we have out there. We pay that bill when due. Later, inventory is received against the PO as an “item receipt only”. We then delete the temporary bill, leaving the payment as a credit. Next we enter the bill again using “enter bill for received items” using the original bill date. Lastly, we pay the bill using ’set credits’.

This method seems to be working but it is a lot of extra steps and has room for error. Was just hoping to find a simpler solution

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:18:36 +0000

Anne, the solution I outlined is better suited to situations where you have a relatively short period of time between the bill and the receipt. If you are talking about multiple months between them it might not be the best solution. Unfortunately, the alternatives tend to be more complicated.

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:15:34 +0000

Question – with this solution, doesn’t the inventory become on-hand on the bill date? For example, if you pay for the items in June but don’t receive them until August, doesn’t the bill date of June put the items into inventory as of June? I guess you could change the bill date to reflect the day you are receiving the inventory but then you lose the original bill date.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:25:24 +0000

Mark, the whole reason for doing all of these manipulations is to make it valid for accrual accounting. You post the bill to Accounts Payable vs a holding account, which could be an offsetting asset. You later move the value from that holding account into inventory assets.

The bank account only comes into play when you PAY the bill for the items, not when you post it to accounts payable. So if your bank account won’t balance, you have to look at it to see if you paid the bill at the correct time, or if you are using that bank account in a transaction improperly somewhere.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:38:50 +0000

Charlie , is this appropriate if you’re using the accrual method for accounting?

I’m trying to reconcile the fiscal year end and the only difference between the bank account and my books is a payment I had to make prior to receiving the inventory (paid in September but received inventory in October).

Cheers!

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:03:34 +0000

Debbie, that is fine, as long as that is the account that you want the expense to be posted to…