Quicken Business and personal functionality for a non businessman

boyerfam

I have been using Quicken for 20 years of so for my personal bank accounts. Last year I started a business, and started using Business and Personal. This year, I started generating invoices in quicken. When I receive an invoice payment in quicken it shows as a negative, and when I go to the business tab, my profit/loss does not seem to show that I have any income. Do I have something set up wrong, or am I not looking at the paid invoices correctly? (In my mind, I perform a service, invoice for my work, and get paid. To me that should show as income)

UKR

The way they designed the Quicken Customer Invoice and Vendor Invoice processes, all invoice-related transactions are supposed to be entered directly into the respective Invoice account register:

• You create a customer invoice transaction
• You receive a payment for an invoice and deposit it into a banking account
• You record refunds or credits or finance charges

That's the old fashioned pre-Internet, pre-direct deposit, pre-PayPal, etc. method.
When you directly deposit customer payments into checking, credit card or PayPal accounts and record them as transfers into the Customer Invoice account register, these transactions will appear in the invoice register as refunds or credits and will not mark invoices as paid.
So, it's better to record payments the old fashioned way, using the New Customer Payment transaction dialog before you accept a downloaded payment deposit in a bank account. Now you can match the downloaded transactions to the recorded payments.

It is assumed that all your invoice line items are categorized to appropriate Schedule C tax line items. Payments you receive are recorded as transfers to the bank accounts.
All your customer invoices also need to be tagged correctly to the respective business tag.

By default, income or expenses are recognized using the Cash method, when you create an invoice, not when you receive payment (unless you change to the Accrual method).

In Manage Business Information, your business should be recorded with a proper business name and business tag. One of the businesses, if you have more than one, needs to be marked as the Default Business so that other untagged business-related transactions (e.g., business expense charges made on a credit card (business or private)) can be counted properly.

boyerfam

So using the invoicing functionality in Quicken will not generate the results that I am looking for? I am not sure that I understand what you are saying. step by step, I create an invoice in quicken and print it. I email the completed work with invoice to to customer. The customer generally pays me within a week. (I have 2 customers, one direct deposits in to my business checking account and the other mails a check, which I deposit it to my business checking through my phone app). Once I receive the payment, I match up the invoice number that was generated by Quicken, and on the "create invoice" drop down I choose "receive a customer payment". When I sync my registers with my bank those transactions show up in the business checking as deposits, as well as cleared on my invoice list. Is there something different than what I am doing, or something that I need to change in the settings to show these deposits as income in Quicken? I assumed that since I have used quicken for so long adding the business functionality would be an easy addition, but it it proving to be confusing.

Thanks again for your time and advise…it is appreciated!

volvogirl

Maybe this? For an income or expense category to show up under Business you have to assign it a Schedule C tax line number. Go into Edit Category and assign it one. If you need to see a schedule C, here's the blank form….
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040sc.pdf

You can either assign the tax line number to an existing category or you might want to set up a new category for it to keep the existing one under personal if you have the same expense for both personal and business.

To check the tax line assignment open the Category list by either clicking on the Category Icon or go to Tools-Category List or Ctrl+Shift+C. Then select the category and right click on it to Edit it. Click on the Tax Reporting Tab and check the box for Tax related and pick a Schedule C: tax line item.

boyerfam

OK, so I see what you are saying, but I tried to edit [invoices] and add Schedule C: gross receipts or sales for tax reporting, but I can't seem to edit it. I was able to create a new category and assign it this way, but I don't think that when I create an invoice I can assign it to the category…

Is using Quicken to track my income and expenses not the way to go, or am I just overthinking it? It is frustrating that the way it should work in my mind is not the way it actually works…(although it does help me keep better track of paid vs. unpaid invoices, so there is that)