Entering Historical Transactions in QuickBooks

Posted by Dave Dunn on June 25, 2008 | 0 Comments

Tags: QuickBooks Tutorials, QuickBooks

Historical transactions should be entered into QuickBooks in chronological order. For example, you can't pay a bill in QuickBooks until you have entered the bill, and you can't receive payment against an invoice until you have created the invoice. Follow the instructions below when entering historical transactions:

1) Start with bills and accounts payable transactions

• enter bills
• enter bill payments
• record the correct check numbers in your checking account register
  
  NOTE: it is especially important to enter AP before AR transactions if you bill some of your expenses back to customers. The reason is that you need to get these expenses in so you can add them to invoices as appropriate.

2) Enter your sales and accounts receivable transactions:

• enter invoices and/or sales receipts
• receive payments against invoices
• record deposits of payments received
• in the Pay Sales Tax window, record payments of sales taxes you have made.

3) Enter year-to-date payroll information.

4) Enter bank and other transactions
NOTE: many of your transactions should already show up in your bank register from the above entries. Be careful not to enter historical trnasactions into QuickBooks twice!

• enter any bank fees or miscellaneous checks directly in the bank register or in the Write Checks window
• enter any interest received or other miscellaneous deposits directly in the bank register or in the Make Deposits window
• enter credit card transactions

5) Reconcile your bank account.