tax | Your Accounting Blog

Tax Rules for Selling Inherited Property

Sooner or later, you may decide to sell property you inherited from a parent or other loved one. Whether the property is an investment, an antique, land, or something else, the sale may result in a taxable gain or loss. But how that gain or loss is calculated may surprise you.

Your Basis

When you sell property like the vacant land in Swan Valley that you purchased, you generally figure gain or loss by comparing the amount you receive in the sale transaction with your cost basis (as adjusted for certain items, such as depreciation). Inherited property is treated differently. Instead of cost, your basis in inherited property is generally its fair market value on the date of death(or an alternate valuation date elected by the estate’s executor, generally six months after the date of death).

These basis rules can greatly simplify matters, since old cost information can be difficult, if not impossible, to track down. Perhaps even more important, the ability to substitute a “stepped up” basis for the property’s cost can save you federal income taxes. Why? Because any increase in the property’s value that occurred before the date of death won’t be subject to capital gains tax.

Example. Assume your Uncle Harold left you stock he bought in 1986 for $5,000. At the time of his death, the shares were worth $45,000, and you recently sold them for $48,000. Your basis for purposes of calculating your capital gain is stepped up to $45,000. Because of the step-up, your capital gain on the sale is just $3,000 ($48,000 sale proceeds less $45,000 basis). The $40,000 increase in the value of the shares during your Uncle Harold’s lifetime is not subject to capital gains tax.

What happens if a property’s value on the date of death is less than its original purchase price? Instead of a step-up in basis, the basis must be lowered to the date-of-death value.

Holding Period

Capital gains resulting from the disposition of inherited property automatically qualify for long-term capital gain treatment, regardless of how long you or the decedent owned the property. This presents a potential income-tax advantage, since long-term capital gain is taxed at a lower rate than short-term capital gain.

Be cautious if you inherited property from someone who died in 2010 since, depending on the situation, different tax basis rules might apply. Give us a call for details.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

Using a Vehicle for Business: Q&A

IRS rules and exceptions abound, but there are some questions we can answer simply.

Next to your home, your car is probably the most expensive investment you make. And the costs of paying for and maintaining it can be considerable. Can you recoup some of your investment by claiming vehicle expenses on your tax return, it also depends where you have purchased the car since many people do car deals and the car is not in the best condition

Sometimes. The IRS has many restrictions on the business use of a vehicle, and those restrictions have many exceptions. Better to know these upfront than to have to correct a tax return after you’ve filed it.

Here are some questions and answers that may help you decide whether you’re eligible.

How does the IRS identify a “vehicle”?
A car, van, pickup, or panel truck.

What are transportation expenses?
These are “ordinary and necessary expenses” incurred when you, for example:

Visit customers,
Attend a business meeting held at a location other than your regular workplace, or
Go from home to a temporary workplace that is not your company’s principal location.

The daily commute to and from your regular office is not deductible. The IRS considers this personal commuting expenses.

What if I’m on an overnight business trip away from home?
The IRS considers these travel expenses, and they’re reported differently. Your car expense deduction, though, is calculated the same way in both situations.

What if I use my car for both business and personal purposes?
You’ll calculate the expenses incurred for each by determining how many miles you drive for business and how many you drive for personal reasons.

I work in a home office. Can I deduct any driving expenses?
Yes, you can deduct the cost of driving to “another work location in the same trade or business.”

How do I calculate my deductible expenses?
There are two options. Using the standard mileage rate, you can claim 54 cents per mile (2016 tax year figure). You are required to use this method for the first year you use the vehicle for business purposes. After that initial year, you can choose between the standard mileage rate and actual car expenses. These include depreciation, oil and gas, insurance, and repairs.

Depreciation? Isn’t that difficult to calculate?
Yes, especially for cars. If you plan to take this kind of deduction, please let us handle your tax preparation for you. Depreciation is very, very complex, and sometimes requires more than one calculation method.

Can I take a Section 179 deduction for my vehicle?
Possibly, if you use the car for business more than 50 percent of the time — and only for the first year.

What kind of vehicle expense records do I need to maintain?
You know the drill here. If the IRS ever wants to examine your return, it will expect evidence like receipts, cancelled checks, and credit card statements. You’ll need to document the date and location where you incurred the expense. You’ll need accurate mileage records (milesdriven, purpose of trip, etc.).

These requirements scream for some kind of organized computer log or written diary, along with a safe place for any paper receipts, bills, etc. There are numerous mobile apps that can help you with this task. We can steer you in the right direction.

If you’re planning to deduct car expenses, it’s important that you keep careful paper or electronic records.

Where will I be reporting transportation expenses?
If you are self-employed, you will report business-related vehicle expenses on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040). Farmers should use Schedule F (Form 1040). You’ll also want to complete a Form 4562, which is used to report depreciation and the Section 179 deduction.

If you cause a wreck in your personal vehicle, you are liable for your damages and the other party or parties’ damages.

However, if you were driving as part of a work-related task at the time of the accident, your employer might also have liability. That does not take away your liability, however.

After any car accident, no matter who is at fault and whether you were driving for work or personal business, you should speak with an attorney. A car accident lawyer can advise you of your rights, help shield you from liability, and work with you to pursue compensation for your damages; Even if you were driving under the influence of just a few or several substances.

When Is My Employer Liable for My Car Accident Damages?

Under certain circumstances, your employer has vicarious liability for your actions behind the wheel, meaning that if you cause damages to another person or property, whether you were negligent or not, your employer may be liable alongside you.

The circumstances under which your employer could have vicarious liability for your car accident damage are as follows:

You were on the job and onthe clock when the accident occurred.
You were driving as part of a work-related task.
You were driving tocarry out a task your boss or employer asked you to do.
You took part in an activityfrom which your employer stood to benefit.

In other words, if you were on the clock, completing an activity that your employer asked you to do, then your employer probably has vicarious liability for your car accident.

Not only that, but your employer could be liable for your injuries — even if the car accident were your fault. If you sustain injuries doing anything work-related, you might be able to file a workers’ compensation claim and pursue damages from your employer. Your attorney can review your situation and offer advice on this process.

Maintaining accurate records for car and truck expenses is time consuming and detail intensive. And that’s once you understand all of the IRS’s rules and exceptions surrounding this deduction. To avoid having to fix completed tax documents that the IRS has questioned, talk to us before you put a vehicle into business use. We’ll be happy to evaluate your transportation situation and guide you through the process.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

Stock images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Using Sales Receipts: The When and How

Some types of businesses always use sales receipts. Some use them occasionally. Here’s what you need to know about them.

How do you let your customers know how much they owe you, and for what products or services? In these days of ecommerce and merchant accounts, your customers may provide a credit card number over the phone or on a website. Or perhaps you send invoices after a sale and receive checks or account numbers in the mail. QuickBooks can help you both create the invoices and record the payments.

There’s another type of sales document that you can use in certain situations: the sales receipt. You’d probably be most likely to use one of these when customers pay you in full for products or services at the same time they receive them.

If you receive full payment for a product or service at the same time the customer receives it, you should use a sales receipt.

Completing a sales receipt is similar to filling out an invoice or purchase order. Click Create Sales Receipts on QuickBooks’ home page or open the Customers menu and select Enter Sales Receipts. A screen like the one above will open.

Choose a Customer from the drop-down list and a Class (if applicable). If you have created more than one Template (more on that later), make sure that the correct one appears in the field. Verify that the appropriate Date and Sale No. read as they should. Click on the type of payment you’re receiving, and enter the check or credit card number where necessary (a small window will open for the latter).

Note: If you are working with a type of payment that does not appear in the four icons, click on the arrow below More to add it.

Now you’re ready to select the products or services you sold by clicking on the arrow in the field under Item to open the available list (if you have not created a record for what you’re selling, select <Add New> and complete the fields in the New Item window that opens). Enter the quantity (Qty.). The Rate, Amount, and Tax fields should fill in automatically, based on the information you entered when you create the item’s record.

When you’ve entered all of the items that the customer is paying you for, you can choose which Customer Message will appear on the sales receipt (you can see your options in the drop-down list found in the lower left corner of the screen). Anything you enter in the Memo field will be for your internal use only; it will not appear on the printed or emailed sales receipt.

Click Save & Close or Save & New.

Customizing Sales Receipts

QuickBooks provides tools for customizing forms, including sales receipts.

QuickBooks’ forms contain the fields most often used by small businesses. But you can alter them in numerous ways to meet your company’s needs. To customize a sales receipt, open the Sales Receipt window and click on the Formatting menu. Select Manage Templates.

You’ll want to make a copy of the original sales receipt so that the original will always be available. Click the Copy button in the lower left. “Copy of Custom Sales Receipt” appears in the list of templates. In the Preview pane on the right, click in the field next to Template Name and replace the existing name with a new, more descriptive one if you’d like. Click OK.

The Basic Customization window opens. Click on Additional Customization at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see a window like the one in the image above. Click the Columns tab. The list on the left displays all of the columns that can be included in the body of your sales receipt.

Click in the boxes below Screen and Print to indicate which columns should display on your QuickBooks screen and which should appear on the customer’s copy. The numbers in the Order column can be changed to reflect which column will come first, second, etc.

Numerous Options

There’s a lot more you can do to customize your QuickBooks forms. And there are other situations where you might want to issue a sales receipt. We’ve only been able to touch on both topics here, but would be happy to schedule time with you to explore these elements of QuickBooks.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

Protecting Your Company’s S Corporation Election

Like many business owners, you may have structured your business as an S corporation because of the tax benefits it offers. An S corporation provides the same limited liability as a traditional C corporation, but it generally avoids the double taxation associated with a C corporation. You and the other shareholders (if any) pay income taxes on corporate income directly.

Once you have an S election in place, it’s important to make sure you avoid taking any action that would put the election in jeopardy. Your corporation’s failure to meet certain tax law requirements on an ongoing basis could result in the IRS’s termination of its S corporation status.

Ownership.
An S corporation generally may not have a corporate shareholder. (Exception: An S corporation may be wholly owned by another S corporation.) All shareholders generally must be individuals, estates, certain trusts, or taxexempt 501(c) (3) charitable organizations. However, a partnership may hold S corporation stock as a nominee for an eligible shareholder. Nonresident aliens may not be shareholders.

Number of shareholders.
An S corporation may not have more than 100 shareholders. For purposes of this limit, a husband and wife are treated as one shareholder, as are certain other related individuals.

Stock.
An S corporation may have only one class of stock. Generally, a corporation is treated as having only one class of stock if all outstanding shares of the corporation’s stock confer identical rights to distribution and liquidation proceeds.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

Lock In Those Business Deductions

If you run a small business, you already know of the importance behind business accounting services. The last thing you need is for the IRS to question any of your business expense deductions. But it could happen. And that’s why having records that prove your expenses is so important. Even deductions for routine business expenses could be disallowed if you don’t have appropriate records.

What Records Are Required?

Except in a few instances, the tax law does not require any special kind of records. You’re free to have a recordkeeping system that is suited to your business, as long as it clearly shows your expenses, I suggest working with the ACT Group as both accounting management and financial consulting. In addition to books that allow you to track and summarize your business transactions, you should keep supporting documents, such as:

Canceled checks
Cash register receipts
Credit card sales slips
Invoices
Account statements

The rules are stricter for travel, entertainment, and transportation expenses. You should retain hotel bills or other documentary evidence (e.g., receipts, canceled checks) for each lodging expense and for any other expense of $75 or more. In addition, you should maintain a diary, log, or account book with the information described below.

Travel. Your records should show the cost of each separate expense for travel, lodging, and meals. For each trip, record your destination, the dates you left and returned, and the number of days spent on business.Also record the business purpose for the expense or the business benefit you gained or expected to gain. Incidental expenses, such as taxi fares, may be totaled in reasonable categories.

Entertainment. Record the date the entertainment took place and the amount of each separate expense, along with the name and address or location of the place of entertainment. Note the business purpose for the expense or the business benefit you gained or expected to gain and the nature of any business discussion or activity that took place. Also list the identities and occupations of the individuals you were entertaining or other information that indicates their business relationship to you.

If the entertainment was directly before or after a business discussion, be sure to indicate the date, place, nature, and duration of the discussion and the individuals who took part in both the discussion and the entertainment activity. For a business meal, you must prove that either you or your employee was present.

Transportation. As with travel and entertainment, you should record the amount and date of each separate expense. Note your business destination and the business purpose for the expense. If you are deducting actual car expenses, you’ll need to record the cost of the car and the date you started using it for business (for depreciation purposes). If you drive the car for both business and personal purposes or claim the standard mileage rate, keep records of the mileage for each business use and the total miles driven during the year.

Don’t Mix Business and Personal Expenses
Things can get tangled if you intermingle business and personal expenses. You can avoid headaches by having a separate business bank account and credit card.

One more thing you should consider is commercial business insurance that can take care of property, liability and workers’ compensation. Check out https://www.hightowerrisk.com/ for exclusive insurance programs.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).
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Tax-smart Ways To Take Cash Out of Your Corporation

Owners of closely held C corporations are often interested in withdrawing profits from their companies in ways that minimize taxes thanks to the financial advisor help they receive. What are the options?

Pay Salary/Bonus.
If the owner is a company employee, taking more salary or a yearend bonus is an option, as long as the total amount of compensation the owner receives is reasonable. The company deducts the payments as a business expense; the owner is taxed on the money. The “cost” of this option depends on the corporation’s and the owner’s tax rates. Payroll taxes are an added expense.

Pay Family Members.
Reasonable amounts paid to an owner’s family members for services actually rendered to the company are deductible by the corporation and are taxable at the family members’ own tax rates. Often, these rates are much lower than the owner’s. Pay a Dividend. Dividends the company pays out will, in effect, be taxed twice — once at the corporate level (dividends are nondeductible) and once to the owner personally. No payroll taxes will be due. With the individual tax rate on qualifying dividends currently capped at 20% for taxpayers in the 39.6% regular bracket (and 15% for most other taxpayers), this option may have more appeal.

Utilize Fringe Benefits.
Certain fringe benefits are deductible by the corporation but not includible in the owner’s gross income. Examples include qualifying group life insurance, health care benefits, and disability insurance. (Most fringes must be provided on a nondiscriminatory basis to other company employees.) To the extent an owner is paying for these items individually, having the company pay for them increases the cash available to the owner.

Take a Loan.
If an owner borrows money from the corporation, the owner is not taxed on the loan amount. The loan must be a legitimate debt, with proper documentation and timely interest and principal payments. How myinstantoffer.com works is a useful resource in this respect.

Lease Assets to the Company.
An owner might consider leasing property to the corporation. The company deducts the lease payments; the owner includes the amounts received in income and deducts expenses associated with the rental activity.

Check for possible thefts
Finally, hire an expert from Identity Theft Orlando to ensure that everything is alright and under the law.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

All About the Earned Income Tax Credit

Individuals who are working and who have low-to-moderate taxable income may qualify for this income tax credit.

When you think about ways to offset your income as you’re preparing for income tax time, do you primarily consider the deductions you can take? Things like home mortgage interest, charitable donations, and taxes you paid that can be claimed? And if you are in India make sure to fill out the pan card application online.

Allowable credits can also work in your favor. If you meet the Internal Revenue Service’s seven criteria, you may be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (sometimes called Earned Income Credit, or EIC).

Note: As you read the rules that the IRS has established, keep in mind that, as with many of the agency’s regulations, there can be exceptions. We can help you determine whether you are a candidate for this credit.

If you can answer “Yes” to these seven questions, you may be able to fill in and file a Schedule EIC:

Is your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) less than the IRS’s limits? For 2015, this is:
- 3+ qualifying children: $47,747 ($53,267 for married filing jointly)
- 2 qualifying children: $44,454 ($49,974 for married filing jointly)
- 1 qualifying child: $39,131 ($44,651 for married filing jointly)
- No qualifying children: $14,820 ($20,330 for married filing jointly)If you qualify for the Earned Income Credit, you’ll need to complete a Schedule EIC, which can be filed with either the Form 1040 or 1040A.
- Do you have a valid Social Security number? If you are filing jointly, both you and your spouse are required to have valid Social Security numbers issued by the Social Security Administration (SSA) by the date your tax return is due (including extensions). Any qualifying child claimed must also have one to be able to use a credit counseling company to assist with credit building later in life.
Is your status “married filing jointly” or “head of household”?Couples whose filing status is “married filing separately” cannot claim the EIC. An exception here: A couple is married, but one spouse did not reside in the home at any time during the second half of the year. The spouse who remained might qualify for the EIC if his or her filing status is “head of household.”
Were you or your spouse a U.S. citizen or resident alien for the entire tax year?This is complicated. If one of you was a U.S. citizen or resident alien but the other was a nonresident alien for any part of the year, you may qualify for the EIC if your status is “married filing jointly.” If that’s the case, you will be taxed on your “…joint worldwide income.”
Was your income earned only in the United States and/or a U.S. possession?If you earned income in a foreign country and you plan to exclude it from your gross income, you cannot claim the EIC. Filing a Form 2555 (Foreign Earned Income) or Form 2555-EZ (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion) disqualifies you (learn what to do if your pancard lost and how to pay taxes on income in India).2015 Form 1040, lines 66a and 66b (EIC information appears on lines 42a and 42b of the 2015 Form 1040A)
Is your investment income $3,400 or less?Simple enough. For the Form 1040, this includes:
- Interest and dividends,
- Capital gain net income, and,
- Royalties and rental income from personal property.
Do you have earned income? This means wages, salaries, tips, other taxable employee pay, and net earnings from self-employment. But you may be in another situation that would make you eligible for the EIC. For example, nontaxable combat pay, ministers’ housing, and strike benefits provided by a union are considered earned income. Do you have any benefits of the best umbrella company?

Only Part of the Equation

If you believe that you’re able to claim the Earned Income Credit, or if there are other tax-related topics that you don’t fully understand, we’ll be happy to look at your entire financial scenario. If you’ve filed an extension for 2015, we can work with you to make sure you’re taking all of the deductions and credits that you’ve earned. One year, I was careless enough to lose my pan card and I panicked a little, thankfully the system is well in place for such occurrences, if you find yourself in this situation, don’t panic everything will be fine if you contact the right people.

As always, tax planning should be a year-round process. Let us know if we can help you start preparing now for next year’s filing.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

Retirement Plans for Sole Proprietors

Granted, retirement plans are usually easier if you’re a full-time employee. But if you’re self-employed, you can still contribute to a retirement plan like the physical gold IRA, for example.

It’s expensive to be a sole proprietor. If you’ve been one for any length of time, you already know that. There’s the self-employment tax. Business insurance. Computers and mobile devices and applications. Office expenses. Health insurance premiums.

Although you can get some of that back by documenting it on your Schedule C, you still have to pay for a lot of things that full-time employees don’t. Plus, you don’t get those nice employer-match contributions to your retirement plan that many workers get these days, if your way to go is to invest in gold as many others check out Buy Gold Bullion Online for information.

But you can still set up a retirement plan as a self-employed individual. The IRS offers a handful of options, including:

401(k) plan

Yes, you can set up one of these even if you’re not a full-time employee. They’re sometimes referred to as “one-participant 401(k) plans” (though your spouse can also participate). And since you’re both the employer and employee, you’re allowed to make contributions as both.

These solo plans work similarly to employer-provided 401(k) plans; they have comparable rules and requirements. And they’re complicated. For example, you can make elective deferrals of up to 100 percent of your earned income until you hit the annual contribution limit of $18,000 in 2016 (or $24,000 if you’re age 50 or older).

Warning: “Earned income” as the IRS defines it for self-employment is a complex concept that requires some advanced calculations. If you want to explore this option, please let us work with you on it from the beginning. You want to be sure that you don’t exceed the maximum contributions as both employer and employee.

Simplified Employee Pension Plan (SEP)

If you’ve ever worked for another company as an employee, you may already be familiar with this concept. SEPs are traditional IRAs (“SEP-IRAs”) that employers can set up for employees; they can also contribute to them. They’re bound by the same rules for investment, distribution, and rollover as traditional IRAs.

Here, too, you can make contributions as both employer and employee. And like one-participant 401(k)s, the calculations required are daunting. We can help with these.

Traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs

These options are of course available to self-employed individuals. Each has its own tax implications, and they’re not as difficult to understand and implement as SEP IRAs and one-participant 401(k) plans. If you’ve never explored these retirement vehicles, you can get more information here. Again, we’re available to help you cut through the IRS language.

Not Necessarily a Good Option

If you’re self-employed and plan to be for the rest of your career, retirement planning is absolutely critical for you.

Some sole proprietors say that they just plan to work forever, so they don’t need to have a sizable nest egg ready for retirement. This line of thinking always throws up red flags for us. Depending on your vocation, your physical health, and your overall attitude, this may work for you.

But we’ve seen clients who feel this way hit 65 or 68 or 70, only to discover one of a variety of realities:

Their friends are all retiring, and they feel like a failure because they’re unable to.
They don’t have the energy they expected, and business is suffering.
The fast-paced, ever changing world we live in has passed them by, and there’s little need for their product or service anymore.
They feel bad because they haven’t amassed an estate that they’ll be able to leave for their children or grandchildren.

You’re in a tenuous situation as a self-employed individual planning for retirement. It’s simply harder for you to sock away the amount of money you’ll need for a comfortable retirement due to the many expenses required of sole proprietors that want to retire at Nazareth Living Center is a retirement community in south county St Louis that offers a continuum of care options..

We want you to have the option to retire at a reasonable age and to do so comfortably. If you expect to still be flying solo at the typical retirement age, we’d really like to help you create a workable plan to do so.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

What is a PEO?

The acronym PEO stands for “professional employer organization.” These organizations help business reduce costs by allowing them to outsource the management of important company functions, such as workers’ compensation, payroll, employee benefits and human resources. By partnering with a PEO, a company can grow its bottom line and focus on its core tasks, such as marketing, production and customer service, which inconspicuously but effectively contribute directly to the quality of customer engagement of the company.

The Function of a PEO

When a company begins working with a PEO, the PEO takes over many of the company’s most cumbersome human resource responsibilities. In addition to handling everyday human resource tasks, the PEO also assumes some of the employer’s legal responsibility for human resource issues, such as unemployment and healthcare, thus reducing the employer’s level of risk.

Once the employer establishes his relationship with the PEO, the PEO begins functioning as a second employer for its clients employees. Instead of coming to their legal employer with human resource concerns, employees will go to the PEO. The PEO manages all of the company’s human resource dealings on a daily basis, and the company no longer needs to worry about the accuracy of its payroll or whether its healthcare plan complies with federal regulations. Many PEOs even offer a comprehensive benefits package for employees that allows the PEO’s clients to become more competitive within the industry.

Benefits of a PEO

The business industry is always evolving. Congress enacts new laws, such as the recent change to healthcare regulation, and businesses must alter their procedures to comply with the new guidelines. When a company is small, keeping up with the constant changes can be nearly impossible. Instead of focusing on their most important tasks, employees are forced to spread themselves too thin. Furthermore, because employees are inexperienced in these areas, tasks are not completed as accurately and efficiently as they should be.

When a company hires a PEO, most of these problems disappear. Instead of relying on its own overworked and under-prepared employees to handle unemployment insurance claims, payroll tax compliance, workers’ compensation claims and issues with employee healthcare, companies can rely on a PEO’s experts to take care of all of these obligations. Not only are these facets of the company’s operations dealt with more effectively, but employees also find themselves with more time to concentrate on activities that produce revenue for the company. Furthermore, all human resource management tasks are completed with efficiency, and the company’s bottom line improves.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).

Tracking Products and Services in QuickBooks Online, Part 1

Inventory management requires precision, constant attention, and smart decisions. QuickBooks Online can help.

If you started small with your business, keeping track of your product inventory was probably pretty easy. Maybe you kept your stock in a few boxes or a closet, and it was easy to tell at a glance what needed replenishing.

As you grew, the process of inventory-tracking started to get unwieldy. You were selling too many products in too large a volume; a casual look at your inventory no longer sufficed. And physical inventory counts took a lot of time. So you found yourself with too many of some items and not enough of others.

Keeping inventory items at financially-responsible levels is a delicate balance. If you have too much on hand, you tie up money. Too little in stock, and, well, you know what happens: you wind up with unfulfilled orders and unhappy customers. QuickBooks Online can help.

Building Inventory Records

QuickBooks Online’s inventory-management tools help you:

Create thorough records for each product and service that you sell.
Fill out sales and purchase forms – like invoices and purchase orders – quickly and accurately using these item records, and,
Generate reports that provide the real-time status of your inventory.

Figure 1: You can build a database of product and service records using QuickBooks Online’s inventory management tools.

Here’s how to get started. Click on the gear icon in the upper right, next to your company name, and select Products and Services. Once you start adding records, this screen will display a table containing critical details about your inventory and non-inventory items as well as the services you sell.

Click New in the upper right corner. A vertical pane will slide out of the right side of the screen, asking you what type of item you want to describe. Select Inventory item, and the Product/Service information window opens. Enter the name of your item in the first field and its SKU (optional) in the next. You can upload an image if you’d like, too.

The line below this information reads Is sub-product or service. You should only click in the box in front of it if you have already created a parent product or service and want to put this item in a sub-category of it. In the example above, Writing tools is the parent category and 3 4×6 journals, multi-color is one member of that product category. (Questions? Ask us.)

As you can see, you can modify some options here without completely starting over. If this item should have been classified as a Non-inventory item, click Change type and select the correct one. You can also delete your image or replace it with another.

Figure 2: You need to be absolutely sure that your Initial quantity on hand figure is correct in this window,since it will affect transactions and reports.

How many units of this item do you have right now? Enter that number in the field and then choose today’s date from the calendar that’s available in the As of date field. Your Inventory asset account should be pre-selected to Inventory Asset. Account designations must always be correct in QuickBooks Online.

Warning: If you are unfamiliar with assigning items to accounts, let us walk you through the early stages of setting up your inventory records. We can help you understand the Chart of Accounts and how it relates to various tasks you’ll be doing.

Enter the description you would like to appear on sales forms in the Sales information field. Then complete the Sales price/rate box. This is the price that you will charge customers for the item. If sales tax will be applied, click in the box in front of Is taxable to create a check mark. Sales of Product Income will probably already appear in the Income account field.

Go through similar steps in the Purchasing information fields, keeping in mind that the Cost field should reflect your cost to buy the items you sell, if indeed you do purchase and resell inventory. When you’re done, click Save and close or Save and new.

This is a lot of work, but it’s important work. You’re building the foundation for your inventory management system.

Next month, we’ll look at how you will be using your item information in transactions and reports.

…from the Team of Professional at RE-MMAP We are just a click or call away. www.re-mmap.com and phone # (561-623-0241).