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Quickbooks-Recording Sales

Hey square-lovers! 

 

I know there is a Square/Quickbooks integration but it doesn't seem to be well-reviewed. But I'm wondering if anyone else uses quickbooks and how they use it with square. Right now I have been just categorizing all of our deposits as sales; which is fine, except it doesn't give an accurate picture of everything. 

 

Also, has anyone found a good beginners quickbook course that isn't super expensive? I know I could better utilize quickbooks, but I don't need to go super in-depth like a book keeper and that's what most of the classes I've seen are for. 

Ali Kenis

Sugar Lab Bakeshop

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Hi @sugarlab thanks for your post. I use Quickbooks, and after reading some horror stories about integrations and the way imported transactions "could" really mess up your books, I opted to do everything manually. It has been a huge learning process and it's taken about three years to fine tune a system, but it works for my business. And learning how the transactions are recorded and affect my books has been a great resource in learning about accounting in general. Sometimes using automated processes the back-end mechanics get hidden, but they you don't really understand what's happening if you need to take a closer look at your transactions.

 

In a nutshell, here is what I do; if you'd like more specific examples please let me know and I can help more. I find that if I need specific category sales data, I can find that in my Square reports dashboard, so when I record sales, I use the daily report in the my Square sales dashboard and enter this into Quickbooks manually:

  • I do a daily sales receipt that captures taxable sales, nontaxable sales, sales tax collected, cash sales, and credit card sales. This is a manual paper log I fill in using Square reports from my Dashboard, and I then enter these figures into a receipt template I made for Quickbooks.
  • I also manually record on paper what the CC fees Square will take before they make my deposit into my account, so when I make a deposit entry into quickbooks and copy the amount of my bank deposit, minus Square's process fees. I have a Merchant Account Fee account setup as an expense in Quickbooks, So I can see in a report if I want the total of my fees for processing in a given time period.

It took forever to figure out how to setup some of the accounts in quickbooks, because for every transaction you have you need to have an "account" to "hit" for those figures. I always tell people to use some kind of accounting software separate from Square reports, because the whole financial picture of a business includes items NOT captured by Square. Any CASH sales, Any expenses like rent, overhead, supplies, electricity, utilities, etc need to show up in your account reports Profit and Loss, and Balance Sheet. Square does not include everything....so it's great that you are using Quickbooks in addition to the Square reports.

 

Hope this helps, and again if it's helpful to you, I can include some screenshots of my manual worksheets I use to keep track of my figures. I know it's not ideal because this technique requires some paper records, but once you have it inputted into quickbooks, you don't necessarily have to keep your worksheets (but I do just to be sure LOL.)

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Finally getting a chance to actually circle back to this and try to understand. 

 

So do I enter the daily sales as a sales receipt? Right now I have my transactions with my bank syncing and when I entered the sales as a sales receipt, it double counted. So it would counting both the sales receipt and the transaction

Ali Kenis

Sugar Lab Bakeshop

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@sugarlab,

As you can see from my post above I do a more in-depth sales receipt than HC_Charlie, but I think the accounting should be similar.  When you create a sales receipt the money has to go into a certain account, and when a deposit is made it has to come from something.  You create a sales receipt and create it as a deposit to your bank account, then when you upload your bank statement from your bank you match the sales receipt deposit to a deposit on your statement.  The biggest issue is the fees need to be taken out of your sales receipt to match the deposit in your bank statement.  So on your Square report you may have a Sale of $200 and Fees of $20.  So your Sales receipt if you did not include the $20 fee would be $200 and not match a deposit on your bank statement.  But if you have a sales receipt with the Square fees deducted then these totals can match.  I have to match my deposits with in Banking-Bank Feeds in QuickBooks.  I have rules setup that if from Square match deposits from a Holding account I created.  These steps help stop the double accounting.

Keith
Owner
Pocono Candle

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Hi @sugarlab , if you're bank is syncing then I wouldn't do a manual entry. Personally I prefer to do everything manually so I can control how/where the accounts are debited/credit. (I'm a bit of a control freak I must admit LOL.) If you want to do a manual daily sales entry, then I'd turn off the syncing from your bank; you're right it's going to come into Quickbooks twice then. If you want I can show you some screen shots on how I have my accounts set up. It took a bit of trial and error, but I now have a system that works for me.

 

I have a template that I open to record daily sales. I enter cash, credit, and gift card payments. I also enter sales by cash and also by credit card. It automatically calculates the sales tax and puts that amount into a liability account for when I pay my sales tax quarterly (note, it doesn't actually move any money, but puts the quickbooks amount that I will owe from my checking account to pay the sales tax). It also puts the cash sales into another account that I reconcile at the end of the month when I put my cash money into the bank to cover this.

 

I also use Quickbooks to enter deposits; I record the credit card daily sales, minus the credit card Square transaction fee. That deposit amount should match my bank deposit that Square auto deposits into my banking account.

 

Hope this helped, please let me know if you want more details on anything. I could go on and on, LOL!

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@sugarlab ;

Before you mess up your QuickBooks accounts by trying new things to become more organized, may I make a suggestion and create a fake Company QuickBooks File to play with and test in.  Here is How you can create another Company QuickBooks File.... Call the Company TEST File or whatever you like.

set-up-multiple-companies-in-quickbooks 

 

By setting up the test file, you can try different suggestions in the test file, and see what works the best for you, or try something that may not work and figure just do not do that.

 

I know when I setup my QuickBooks file I had problems understanding the Undeposited Funds account.  Which is a holding account for a sale, until you actually make the deposit (transfer) to you bank account.  The reason I mention this is because I believe this is what your are having problems with, since you put the money from a sale into your business account and then again when the bank does it by having it connected. 

Here is QuickBooks wording for an undeposited account:

How does undeposited funds work in QuickBooks?
 
The Undeposited Funds account holds customer payments in QuickBooks until you deposit them at your real-life bank. Once you have your deposit slip, you can combine these payments into a single record so QuickBooks matches your bank records.
 
For me I created my own Undeposited Account called Square Banking or something similar.  So all my Square Sales get deposited to that "checking account" and all fees charged by Square are removed from that account.  So I make a Credit Card sale at my store via Square, The $ goes to a Sales receipt to record what I sold, the $$ is deposited to Square banking.  Then the Fees can either be removed as an expense on a sales receipt OR paid out of the Square Banking account as an expense.  This is also helpful to do if you decide to take out a Square Loan in the future or have one now.  
 
So lets say you have a sales Receipt you created.
Items Sold -----------------------------$500
Sales Tax-------------------------------- $30
Square Fees-----------------------------$50   ( just a made up number to keep math simple)
 
The Net Deposit would be $480 because the $50 was an expense for this transaction which reduces the Total on the Receipt.
 
QuickBooks automatically puts the Sales Tax collected into a Liability account of Sales Tax Due, but you still get the money now.
Now in the above example you have Square Fees assigned to an Expense account.
So now you have a $480 deposit that needs to go some place.  $530 (items sold + Sales Tax) - ($50 Square Fee)
For this QuickBooks can puts it to Undeposited Funds (Square Banking is what I use same philosophy)
Sounds like you might be putting this right into your Business Checking account.
Now when your Bank statement imports to QuickBooks, it will show the Deposit of $480 which you can match to either the amount in Undeposited Funds since this is when you are actually getting the funds into your bank not when you made the sale.  Then when you import you match the deposit from Undeposited Funds with what Square Deposited to your account.
 
Same example above:
So lets say you have a sales Receipt you created.
Items Sold -----------------------------$500
Sales Tax-------------------------------- $30
Square Fees of ------------------------$50
 
 
Now put the $530 into the Square Banking account. Because again the $30 Sales Tax went to the Liability account but you still have the $ now.  Now you can create an Expense of $50 for Merchant Fee and Pay that from the Square Banking account and a Square Loan From this account if you ever have one.  Then when you transfer your Money into QuickBooks From your banking, you do a Deposit to your Business account and that money came from a Transfer from your Square Banking account.   At the end of the day or beginning of the next day your balance in the Square Banking Account should = $0.00. 
 
Square Bank Account 
Deposit  Square sales From 7-7-2022   $500                                    Balance $530
 
Wrote "Check" 7-7-2022 for Merchant Fees of $50                          Balance $480
            
Transferred $480 7-8-2022 to Business Checking                             Balance $0.00
 
This last line should be equal to what Square Deposits to your account.
 
Now lets say you have a Loan with the same example above:
Square Banking account Register would be like:
Square Bank Account 
Deposit  Square sales From 7-7-2022   $500                                    Balance $530
 
Wrote "Check" 7-7-2022 for Merchant Fees of $50                          Balance $480
 
wrote "Check"  7-7-2022 for Square Loan of $30                              Balance $450
            
Transferred $450 7-8-2022 to Business Checking                             Balance $0.00
Again this account should be Equal to Zero
 
If you ever have a balance or a negative in this account you know you need to check where the mistake is, I call it my checks and balance. 
Currently this account for me is showing a Positive Balance which is equal to what Square is reporting for my next Transfer (Balance). The reason for this is Square sent the money but it does not show on my bank statement, but shows as Pending at my Business Checking account.  Pending amounts do not get exported by my bank till it is no longer pending.  So when I wake up before doing any sales, if I import my Bank information to QuickBooks my Square Banking account will be $0.00 because after midnight is when my bank switches Pending to Deposited.
 
The problem with accounting is there are a few different ways to get the same results and you will need to find a system that works for you.  Maybe HC_Charlie's way is too simple and mine is too complex, but yours might be a combination of ours that works for You.  This is why I am suggesting you create a Test QuickBooks file before you mess up your real books.  
Keith
Owner
Pocono Candle

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I use Zen Cart for our website:  https://www.shadowsinthedark.com When I receive a customer order notification, i copy and paste the Transaction information into Quickbooks Pro Desktop.

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Hello, HC_Charlie, I have been researching QuickBooks desktop journal entries to create from Square POS. Your thread is the closest situation to mine and I wondered if you would share a little more about it. I thought creating journal entries was the only way but I like the Daily Sales Receipt idea so I will try it. Is it possible to include a screen shot or picture of the two steps you do? the daily sales receipt one and the deposit with square fees one? This is an old thread so you may never see it! Thank you!

 

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@VG26 ;  Welcome to the Square community forum.  I am going to step in for HC_Charlie till he sees this.  If you want someone to see a Post here use the "@" symbol when you do that a drop box will show up with people in this thread or you can start typing someone's id here like I did with yours to find them quicker.  Now on to you Question.

 

I used a video that was on you tube from an accountant out of Florida named Hector Garcia. https://youtu.be/xxksQLwBhEc?si=jTz4BVZI22W4YaV7  Watch the 1st 8 min the rest is too confusing lol. He does a lot of accounting videos but the one he did of a sales Receipt in QB Desktop is no longer visible or he removed it.  The reason why could be that he was explaining also about a program that no longer exists or is owned by the same company.  The thing is he explained having Credit Card sales from any processor very well.  What he did was, use Sales Receipts for Cash sales and also one for Credit card sales.  The ones with Cash Sales went to Record Deposits for when you made the actual Deposit.  The Credit Card Sales were setup to go into a "holding" account.  Basically think of Square as the Holding company.  Payment came in, but Square is Holding it till it is deposited to your account.  When he did the video in QuickBooks desktop you could actually look for a Bank called Square 1.  This is what I use, then when I get the deposit from Square to my bank the $ is transferred out of the Bank called Square 1 to my bank account.  By setting things up this way you have a Check and Balance for what you expect from Square and What was transferred to your bank.  Example:

CC Sales                       =  $500.00

Square Merchant Fees =    $25.00

 

Amount transferred to Square 1 Bank is $475.00

On your Bank statement there better be a deposit for $475.00 also and when this transfers from Square 1 to your bank Square 1 will be at either $0.00 or the amount of todays sales that you entered.  

 

If you combine the sales of cash and credit card to 1 Sales Receipt then you will not have this same check and balance.

 

Now I will enclose some screen shots of my QuickBooks Desktop of both a Cash and a Credit card Transaction the way I have it, and also two from my Test QuickBooks file.

 

To get the sales Receipt to Show Square Sales Receipt, go to the formatting Tab in the Sales Receipt Popup window in QBD and then Choose Custom Design.  

 

This picture shows entering data from the Daily Sales Summary.  The Cash and Credit Card amounts are Positive and Income accounts.  The Merchant Account Fees, Discount Fees, and Sales Tax will be Negative numbers.  The Merchant Account Fee is an Expense, The Discount is a reduction in what you actually would earn from the Gross amount, and the Sales Tax is moved to a Liability account that you will owe to the state for sales tax.  The Tax here is Negative since Square includes it with their amounts in the Sales Summary for BOTH cash and Credit Card Sales.

 

 

Combined cash and cc sales.png

 

The Next two images are how I import each sale, not at the end of the day.  This first one is a Credit Card sales example, the customer used a Discover card, Bought 4 items, Square had their Fee and The state wants their Sales Tax.  In this since the Items show their sale price without sales Tax, we add sales tax here. But still subtract Squares Fee.  The $47.46 is what I actually will have deposited from this transaction plus the other sales from that date. Which will all be put in as a Deposit to the Holding Square 1 bank till my bank shows the deposit from Square. 

 

Credit Card Sale.png

 

The below is how you could enter Cash sales, the Ebo42sil and Oils would be reduced to your one line of Cash sales.  No merchant fees needed since Square does not charge on Cash sales.  The Government still wants their sales tax and that is what gets transferred to Undeposited Funds.  The problem is Square does not tell you on on report unless you filter it for Cash only sales and the Credit Card Sales. Which I can not find.  The other is to manually subtract your Summary Reports Sales Tax from your Balance Transfer Sales tax for that day to get your Cash Sales tax.   My Summary report for 8-30-2020 showed $39.88 for Sales tax but my Balance Transfer showed $36.58 or a difference of $3.30.   Now my Cash sales may have included non Taxable items T-shirts or Fudge for example in the total sales, and using the full $58.26 times my sales tax rate would give me $3.4956 for the sales tax on cash sales at my 6%.  That would have been a 20 cent difference in this example.    

 

Cash Sale.png

 

So after all of this splitting the cash and Credit Card sales gives better book keeping abilities but for simplicity the combined method will work just fine. But just know that the books between Square and QuickBooks may not match completely for deposit records.  

 

 

Keith
Owner
Pocono Candle

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Thank you Keith for your response. It is another approach that I will think about; it's all so complicated and taking me months so far and I still don't quite have it down (how to record Square daily summary into QuickBooks Desktop). It's good to see that you don't also try this with journal entries which is what I had been trying but failing at 🙂 I think the right path instead is the daily sales receipt (as a summary for the month) as you do. I was hoping to also get @HC_Charlie reply as it seemed to kind of mesh with my current thought process. Thank you!

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Hello @VG26 thanks for your post. I understand your frustration with this...it took me a while to figure this all out...I'll post screenshots later today and hope to help you figure this all out. It takes time, but once you have a routine it will be easy! stay tuned, I'll post later today or in the a.m.

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Okay @VG26 here's my procedure for recording daily sales from Square into my Quickbooks Desktop. Note, I use a Mac so the screenshots may look different. I hope I don't miss any steps; it's kinda automatic for me know so I'll try to remember each step along the way.

 

First thing, check out the attached .pdf file. It's a paper I print out on my b&w printer at the start of each month. Then I manually write down the sales for each day. i use REPORTS in the Square Dashboard. I'll reference the Square report and record CC (credit card) sales, Cash sales, any misc amount like Checks, as well as the CC merchant fee that Square charges and takes out of the final bank deposit.

 

I also use the TAX tab in the report area, and record Non-tax sales, taxable sales, and total sales tax collected. I fill in all of these amount on my paper form. See the screen shots below. I know it looks confusing, but keep checking it out and see where the numbers match and it may start to make sense where the report numbers go on the paper form. I do the paper form so i can manually input the figures in Quickbooks.

 

explanation chart copy.jpg

 

OKAY, now going to Quickbooks. When I first setup my accounts, I had to create ITEMS to use to make a daily sales receipt entry. You'll see those below. For some reason, I had to make those items NON-INVENTORY PARTS; Quickbooks didn't like it when I used "Payment" even though the cash, credit, etc are payment methods. Somehow it still works setting them up as non-inventory parts. I put the *asterick beside the names so I could easily identify which items I wanted to use for the receipt. You only need to set these up once.

create item list.jpg

 

Then  for each daily sale, go to the Create Sales Receipt on the home screen of Quickbooks. (You can also create a memorized transaction that will auto populate these fields)

 

sales receipt quickbooks.jpg

 

You'll notice the Total equals ZERO. That's how you know it's correct. The SALES are entered as positive figures, and the PAYMENTS are all entered as negative numbers. The negative numbers will hit your corresponding ACCOUNTS in Quickbooks, so when you do a deposit entry it will correctly hit those accounts in the ledger. (I'm sorry I don't remember how I set up my initial accounts, if you need to know that, I'll try to go backwards and figure it out.)

 

So you'll see the amounts from the Square reports, that I write on my paper form, match what I enter in Quickbooks. There is also a column on my paper form for Square Deposit$ /Date. Here I record the deposit amount (which should be the Credit Card sales MINUS credit processing fee, and if you use Square Loans and/or Square Savings, those are taken out. I use the Check Box to keep track when I record the deposit in Quickbooks. That is shown below.

 

sample deposit for quickbooks.jpg

 

I deposit my CASH sales at the end of each month because I don't have many cash sales, but you could do it more often. You'd do a separate Deposit in Quickbooks...and I use a "Cash Sales to be Deposited" account that I use in Account section. Then this entry will zero out the "Other Current Asset" account in my general ledger, which shows how much cash I've collected but have yet to deposit.

 

I hope all of this wasn't too confusing. I know it's a LOT. I spend several days with an accounting professional going over how to set up my accounts for my particular retail business. So as I said, I don't remember exactly how those may have been setup in Quickbooks. But this procedure for recording my daily sales correctly hits all of the accounts I have setup to keep track of Cash, Credit card sales, Merchant account fees, Square Savings and Square Loan accounts.

 

Please let me know if you want more clarification on anything here. It may even be possible to zoom or something and I could show you exactly where I find/click things in Square or Quickbooks.

 

 

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Hi @HC_Charlie Thanks so much! I'm at work right now but will read all the details later or tomorrow morning. Much appreciated!

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@HC_Charlie I gave your plan a go (and tried on a week's worth of sales) and really liked it. Thank you! Unfortunately, I met with my new accountant today and she prefers the journal entry method instead so I'm back to that way. It's all been confusing to me, and she explained that there are many ways of doing this and everyone wants different details so there isn't "one way" to do this. What a challenge and I just wanted to say thanks again so much for your and @Candlestore suggestions. You've both were very generous with your time and explanations.

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@VG26 ;

You're welcome, and like your accountant said there are many ways to do the same thing, it all depends on how in depth your accountant wants to be.  Now can you do me a favor and show me what a Journal entry looks like in your Quickbooks with a screen shot?  I just like to keep my options open in case an easier way comes out to do the same process I am doing.  TIA.

Keith
Owner
Pocono Candle

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@Candlestore Hi Keith, no problem. This is the journal entry we decided on. It will be a one-step journal entry that will cover everything. On the Credit side are two sales categories that I need, shipping to customers, and sales tax collected. Then, on the Debit side are Returns, Refunds, Discounts, and Cash payments, Credit Card payments.  One moving item that could be debit or credit is gift cards. If a customer purchased a gift card then it's on the Credit side. If they redeemed (paid for a purchase using a gift card they already have then) it's a Debit instead. The Debits total should equal the Credit total.  The total number at the very bottom does not actually agree with any total on the Squares Sales Report. It won't because the numbers are being collected from different parts of the Square report.  Hope this helps! I was super relieved to have a plan finally. Now to go back over a few months and fix things 🙂  In addition to this daily summary entry, I will have to do a COGS entry monthly to bring over that info into QuickBooks desktop, etc. 

VG26_0-1694007927930.png

 

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@Candlestore I forgot, on the Debit side is also the Square fees. It's on the screen shot above.

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@VG26 ;

Thank you, that just seems harder than what I am doing but I think I know why.  Since your sales are not going to an Item like mine do, it is not Technically a Sales Receipt.  So yes you would need to also bring in your COGS report.  Since I enter my purchases with COG in QuickBooks, my system adjusts for that.  Thanks again, now I also understand why your Account prefers the Journal entries in your case.  

Keith
Owner
Pocono Candle

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@sugarlab ;

I use QuickBooks Desktop with an integration called Transaction Pro Importer.  It can load any csv file basically into QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online.  The desktop version is a 1 time purchase the Online version for QBO is a monthly fee.  Once you get the csv file formatted correctly, and figure out Excels Power Query.  My import to QuickBooks Desktop from when I set down at the computer till it is completed is about 5 to 10 min depending if I do 1 day of imports or 1 weeks of imports.  I delete files from Squares csv file that I previously down loaded, download the new CSV files, copy them to a folder, open Excel, click REFRESH and my data gets automatically formatted within seconds.  Save the new formatted csv file.  Then open TPI, chose the newly created csv file, choose my Sales Receipt as the import type. Then choose my saved data mapping, click next 4 times.  Go get a coffee, come back and its all been imported.  If there are errors TPI lets you know which ones had errors and did not import them.  For me this happens when I import too far back and that transaction is already in QuickBooks and can not be edited since those funds have been deposited to my checking account in QuickBooks already.

 

I posted Screen shots of 2 imports I did with TPI in another post here.  The simple one I was just posting total Credit Card Sales and Squares Fees. The other Sales Receipt, has a lot more information filled in right from the import:

Items

     Discount 

     Square Fee

     Sales Tax - to stop rounding errors

Quantity

Date

Transaction ID

Payment ID -if CC Sale

Sales ID 

Deposit ID

Deposit Date

 

Here is a link to the screen shots and more information from the other post I made about Importing to QuickBooks with more details.

Questions-How-To/App-for-COGS-and-inventory-import-to-Quickbooks/td-p/344255 

 

Keith
Owner
Pocono Candle

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