Tips for Setting up Vendors

 Setting up vendors you use in a logical manner is important to prevent errors and duplication on vendors.  It is probably best that the setting up of vendors on the vendor list in Quickbooks be done by only one person. These are some of the time savers I use to prevent some problems.

Vendors are set up alphabetically in Quickbooks. If you have vendors that start with the name “The”, such as The Home Depot, shorten it to just Home Depot, because when you are looking for the name you probably won’t remember that the vendor’s name starts with “The”.

If a vendor has a ridiculously long name, shorten it to what you know you will remember.

I personally don’t set up an individual name for each gas station that a client has gone to, unless that is some kind of vital information to them (which it usually isn’t, unless they are a Trucker). I set up a vendor called “Gas Stations” and then in the memo field put the name of the gas station. This will keep the list of vendors a little shorter.  You will find that the vendor list can get very long, and some of them may be a gas station visited once and never again when traveling.

I do the same for restaurants, I set up a vendor called “Restaurants” and in the memo field put the name of the restaurant.

I also set up an account called  “Transfers”  that I use to record bank transfers done between banks within the company.  That way they all appear under one name.

Next, what information should I record on the check?

By Alamo Bookkeeping Associates.

Recording Checks

Even though we are in the age of debit and online transactions, businesses still write a lot of checks, usually made out to individuals and small businesses. My recommendation is to order check forms that have duplicates. Most banks these days make you request that your bank statement include an image of your checks. They do not send you the actual check back. Banks will offer copies online. Some of them charge for this service and others may offer it free for up to 90 days, but after this period, you have to pay for a copy of the check. So save yourself future trouble and have duplicate check copies. This is especially true in these days of bank consolidations. Washington Mutual for example, which was bought by Chase Bank, is charging $7.00 per bank statement or check copy requested, which is ridiculous.

Most bookkeeping software offers you the option to print checks from the software. However many businesses don’t use this and still use bank checks then go on Quickbooks and record the checks. Generally this will require that you set up a list of vendors that you use, and then choose an expense account.

You can either set up the vendors as you write checks, or if you have a list of vendors that you use and want to set them up all at once, you can do that as well.

Next, tips to set up vendors.

By Alamo Bookkeeping Associates San Antonio