How to have QuickBooks enter transactions for you

Do you have many transactions that are repeated day to day, week to week, month to month in your business? What about repeat transactions that need to be done once or twice a month? I’m sure if. After all, if you have to pay rent or pay for a car, then you have a repeat transaction. But what about invoices or sales receipts? Do you bill any of your clients the same monthly, weekly, daily amount? What about deposits? Do you receive a specific, preset amount of money in a timely manner (such as an insurance payment, disability, social security, or just a flat fee for services rendered)? What about vendor bills or credit card entries that are charged to your account every month?

All of these things, no matter how big or small, can be “memorized” by QuickBooks. In other words, you can set them up so QuickBooks does the data entry for you. Too easy. All you have to do is set up the transaction as if you were about to enter it, then “Save” it. Once you do, QuickBooks will automatically enter the transaction as a check, invoice, invoice, deposit, etc., as soon as the preset date passes. Then when you open QuickBooks after that date, you will be notified that the transactions were entered. This small step can save hundreds and even thousands of minutes in data entry time.

Here’s how to “Save” a transaction in QuickBooks:

1. Create your transaction, but do it NOT press “OK” / “Enter” / “Save and close”. (You can also open a transaction that you have already saved if you don’t want to re-enter the information.)
2. With the transaction open, press Ctrl M.
3. The screen that appears should look like this:
4. Choose “Enter automatically”, then the frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) in the “How often” section.
5. Choose the next date you want the transaction to be entered (which will be the transaction for NEXT month, so you would choose February if you are entering the January transaction).
6. Choose the number of transactions remaining (which is useful for items like car payments that are only paid for three years) and the number of days to enter the transaction in advance if you are going to mail that transaction in the future.
7. Click “OK” to go back to the original transaction.
8. press Ctrl Enter to save that transaction for THAT MONTH.
9. That’s. The next time you need to enter that entry, QuickBooks will enter it when you open the program.

Quick important note: Once the transaction is memorized, you can simply close and then reopen QuickBooks and QuickBooks will automatically enter ALL of those transactions from the first entry through TODAY. That means if you create an entry for January 2007, but it is May 2010, this transaction will be entered multiple times until all transactions have been entered up to today. What this means for anyone behind on their accounting is that they only need to memorize one of each transaction and amount, then close and open QuickBooks for instant updates.

Now go out and take advantage of this fabulous tool. It will save you OODLES of time!

Let me know how it works for you.