Daily Sales Summary

by Dave
(Ottawa)

Our company has a website selling a high end product. As the company bookkeeper I enter each sale into our accounting software as a receivable. Once payment has been received from the credit card company ( 3-5 days later) the receivable is paid.

My problem is that our site is so successful that I can't keep up with the volume of sales (and returns). Is it possible to batch the sales each day and make one entry instead of many? Can I do the same with payments?

Hi Dave,

Yes you can use a daily sales summary to enter your sales.

As I'm not sure how simple or complicated your product sales are, or what software you are using, you may have to tinker with my method which is as follows:

1. In QuickBooks, make sure all your product is setup in the Item List. This also assigns the appropriate income account for each product item.

1a. Remember to setup items for refunds, discounts, etc.

2. Create a customer called Daily Sales-Canada … or something similar. If you sell outside Canada, I also create a Daily Sales-Foreign customer if you sell in US dollars.

2a. Remember, in general, you must track your sales tax by the shipping address so if you have sales outside Ontario, you will will have to enter your daily sales for each product by sales tax code. You could create Daily Sales by Province customers if you want … it all depends on the idiosyncrasies and volume in your business.

2b. Another alternative would be to choose to create your customer name by method of payment instead of where the product was shipped.

3. Enter your sales on Sales Receipt forms (not Invoice forms), tracking quantity, price and the appropriate sales tax, with your deposit default to the Undeposited Funds account. You'll have one Sales Receipt for each Daily Sale customer you setup in step 1.

4. Memorize the Sales Receipts so you don't have to recreate them every day. Don't worry, you will still be able to modify them to match your daily data entry needs.

5. When you receive your credit card payments, go to Bank Deposit. When it opens, a window should pop up showing all the cash receipts that haven't been deposited to the bank yet. Select the sales/cash receipt you want to receive payment against. I do one line for each payment type … use the drop down box to track.

6. Complete the bank deposit form by selecting the correct bank account, etc. You can deduct any merchant fee / service charges on this form ... on a separate line.

As I said earlier, I tinker with this process depending on what information I receive, volume, and complexity. I use this method when I need/want to track physical inventory or quantity of e-items sold. I'd setup daily sales from a POS a bit differently.

If you are more comfortable using Invoices instead of Sales Receipts, feel free to setup an Invoice using the same basic procedure. When the money is received from the payment source, I enter a Customer Payment for each type of payment … that means one invoice could have a number of payments against it. I then proceed with the bank deposit.

The thing you will need to keep an eye is your Undeposited Funds accounts to make sure it is clearing properly. Do you think this would work for your situation Dave?






P.S. I would like to remind you there is a difference between information and advice. The general information provided in this post or on my site should not be construed as advice. You should not act or rely on this information without engaging professional advice specific to your situation prior to using this site content for any reason whatsoever.