Solving Sales Tax Problems for QuickBooks Clients

Transactions Other Than Sales Forms Affect Income Accounts
Only sales forms (Invoices, Sales Receipts or Credit Memos) will affect the sales amounts on the Sales Tax Liability and Sales Tax Revenue Summary reports. Using the Find command, search by “Transaction Type” for all transactions other than Invoices, Sales Receipts and Credit Memos, by “Account” for “All Ordinary Income Accounts”, and by “Date” for the current fiscal period. If QuickBooks finds any transactions you will need to reverse their affect on Income before the two reports will reconcile.

Are some lines on the Sales Tax Liability Report missing a Sales Tax Item? If so there may be several causes:

The Client Probably Used Write Checks or Pay Bills Instead of Pay Sales Taxes to Create Sales Tax Payments.
To correct this, replace the check (CHK) with a sales tax payment transaction (TAX PMT).

The list of possible problems goes on, but these are the most common problems we find with client data. There are many trouble spots you’re likely to hit when helping clients with Sales Tax in QuickBooks (or any other accounting software for that matter). It pays to school yourself on the tiny details of their setup and confirm it works correctly before you release the client to enter his or her own data.

One thing is for sure, and that is – with sales tax problems, the troubleshooting and corrections are often very time-consuming, painful, and require lots of expertise to correct. So make sure you get sales tax set up correctly from the beginning and save yourself from headaches down the road.

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Mr. Sleeter is the founder of The Sleeter Group, a national group of QuickBooks and accounting software consultants who serve small and medium-sized businesses. He is the author of several books including the QuickBooks Consultant’s Reference Guide, and the market leading college textbook “Learning QuickBooks Step by Step.” For more information, call 888-484-5484 or visit www.sleeter.com.