Income is not accurately showing in Profit/Loss

Question

Hello, I just started using the quicken business software (not quickbooks) and I am having trouble seeing my profit/loss reports. we own a paver/landsacping business and I put our invoices under the Quicken generated 'Customer Invoices' and I put the materials that we purchase for the jobs in the 'Vendor Invoices' I am assigning everything to a customer with a project/ job from the project list. When a customer pays us, I go into the invoice and click on the 'Receive Payment' button. This will zero out my invoices. However, this doesn't track as a profit. I am showing no income what so ever, despite the invoice saying that there is no money owed and the money is deposited into the bank account. In fact, the only income i do show is a discount I gave a customer as a line item on their invoice (which I categorized as a discount through the quicken categories in the business expenses). What am I doing wrong?

PBD-Aly · Answer

I use the Cash Basis and I titled the owner draw for my records but it is assigned to the Sch C tax line 'Other Business Income'. I know that at the end of the year all profits, whether drawn or not is our annual income for the year. I just wanted a way to keep track of the withdraws.  As of right now, I am only using the Quicken Business categories that already have a Sch C tax line assigned, I have only created a few subcategories.

But there is not way for the payments I receive to change the category to income, because it shows as a transfer account from the account [customer invoices] therefore the reports don't categorize it as income but as a negative expense.

UKR · Answer

Using the "New Customer Payment" transaction dialog in your Customer Invoices account is the correct way to mark customer invoices as paid.

The same applies to Vendor Invoices and paying them by using the New Payment to Vendor dialog.

Please ensure that all categories used in your business are assigned to Schedule C tax line items and marked as taxable.

Because your small business is taxed using Schedule C of your personal federal 1040 form, there really is no such thing as Owner draw or Owner Contribution or paying yourself a salary. It's just transferring money from a business to a personal checking account.

What method have you chosen for recognizing Income or Expenses? Cash-basis or Accrual basis?

Read more about it here: https://help.quicken.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3216999

PBD-Aly · Answer

So here is a screenshot of my P/L report. Everything that is in red, when I click on them to explore deeper, are connected to the invoice payments. That is why they are negative expenses. I just don't get why they are negative expenses? Should I instead of using the 'Receive Payment' button, just add a new line to the invoices that is an income line item for payment received?