Recording Daily Sales

Mastering Your Daily Sales: Recording Register Data in QuickBooks Online

As a small business owner, your daily sales are the lifeblood of your operation. You’re handling countless transactions, whether it's cash, credit cards, or other payment methods, all flowing through your point-of-sale (POS) or digital register system. While your register provides incredible detail about individual products sold, efficiently translating that granular data into your tax-level books can seem daunting. The good news? You don't need to record every single customer's transaction in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

Assuming you have a modern digital register system as your primary data collection source, we can utilize its power to maintain transaction-level detail. This allows your tax-level books to focus on bulk data, simplifying your daily accounting while still providing the necessary insights.

Theoretically, you could create a new customer account in QBO for every single person who buys something, record their individual transaction, their payment, and sum all these entries to get your daily sales. However, as any busy business owner knows, this is logistically infeasible and a massive waste of time. Instead, we streamline the process.

Step 1: Create a "Daily Sales" Customer

To simplify, we create one customer account in QBO named "Daily Sales." This single customer account will house your entire day's sales activities.

Step 2: Configure Your Daily Sales Report from Your Register

Your digital register system is key here. Every system is different, so you'll need to configure a daily sales report that provides the necessary bulk data.

• Categorization Level: Your report should show you total categorized income at the level of detail you need for your tax books. For example, your register might track sales by individual item (e.g., "Latte," "Muffin"), but for your QBO, you might only need a department-level view (e.g., "Coffee Sales," "Bakery Sales"). Select the categories that align with your Chart of Accounts.
• Income Delineations: This report should break down sales by how you want to see them in your QBO income accounts.
• Payment Methods: Ensure the report also details total payments received by general payment type (e.g., total cash, total credit card, total house account, total gift card, etc.).

Step 3: Prepare Your QuickBooks Online for Sales Entry

Before you enter your first daily sales, a quick setup:

• Products & Services (Recommended): If your QBO subscription includes access to "Products and Services," it's highly recommended to use them. You will need to create a product/service item for each income delineation you want to record (e.g., "Coffee Sales," "Merchandise Sales"). Remember, these are not for individual product sales, but for general category or department-level detail.
  • Also create a product or service for cash payments (e.g., "Cash Payments"). Attribute the income account for this "Cash Payments" product/service to your "Cash on Hand" account in your Chart of Accounts.
  • Hint: For more comprehensive financial analysis, you'll also want to have matching Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) accounts for each income account type, if applicable to your business. This allows you to track profitability by product or service category.
• Direct to Accounts (Alternative): If you do not have the "Products and Services" feature, you will simply categorize your income directly into the relevant income accounts in your Chart of Accounts when creating the invoice.

Step 4: Set Up a Recurring Invoice

This will greatly simplify your daily entry.

• Go to your "Daily Sales" customer account.
• Create a new Invoice.
• Make it Recurring: Configure this to be a recurring transaction that generates every day.
• Match Format: When setting up this recurring invoice, aim to mirror the wording and format of your daily sales report from your register. This "template" will make daily data entry much easier and reduce errors.

Step 5: Entering Daily Sales and Payments

Now, let's bring that daily sales report into QBO:

• Categorize Income: On the invoice, enter your total daily sales for each income category as per your register report.
• Handle Discounts: Some "income" from your register may actually appear as a negative value, such as discounts. Be sure to take note of these and enter them as negative amounts under your relevant income or discount accounts.
• Separate Payments: Create a subtotal line (if using products/services) or simply make distinct line items to clearly separate your income totals from your payment applications at the bottom of the entry.

Applying Payments from Different Methods:

Most businesses accept multiple payment methods. Let's say you had $1,000 in total sales for the day, with $250 in cash and $750 in credit card payments.

• If Using Products & Services (Recommended):
  • Cash on Hand: In the payment section of your invoice, attribute -$250.00 to your "Cash on Hand" account. Entering a negative amount here effectively reduces the amount owed on the invoice (just like a partial payment) and increases the balance in your "Cash on Hand" account in QBO.
  • Other Payment Methods: You may have other payment methods like gift cards, loyalty points, or house accounts. These can also be added as negative adjustments at the bottom of the invoice, attributed to their respective payment or liability accounts.
• If NOT Using Products & Services: You will be unable to incorporate your cash payment directly on the invoice as a negative line item. Instead, you will create the full invoice for the day's sales, and then apply separate payment entries to it for each payment method (cash, credit card, etc.).
  • You will create one payment entry for the cash collected (attributing it to your Cash on Hand account).
  • You will create a second payment entry for the credit card sales (attributing it to your real bank account where CC deposits are made).
• Credit Card Fees: Note that not all credit card fees are subtracted directly from your deposit on the day of the sale. Sometimes they are paid out monthly in a separate transaction from your processor. Ensure you understand how your specific processor handles fees.

Handling Cash Over/Short:

Hopefully, while you are entering your daily sales, you are also physically counting the amount of cash that was ACTUALLY collected and deposited. There is often a slight difference between what your register says was collected and what was actually turned in. We call this Cash Over/Short.

• Recording Over/Short: If your register indicates $250 in cash payments, but only $240 was physically turned in, your cash entry would be -$240.00 to "Cash on Hand." The missing $10 would be entered as a -$10.00 entry to a "Cash Over/Short" expense account (you may need to create this if you don't have one). This accurately reflects the discrepancy.

Reconciling Credit Card Deposits:

After accounting for cash and any other non-CC payments, you should now be left with a total invoice balance that precisely matches your daily credit card deposit.

• Option 1: Record CC Payment Directly: You can enter a payment for the remaining balance directly on the invoice. Set the payment account as the real bank account where your credit card deposits are made. For easier troubleshooting later, consider setting the date for the same or the next day to create a consistent pattern.
• Option 2: Match to Bank Feed: Alternatively, you can leave the remaining balance on the invoice. When the credit card deposit hits your bank transactions feed in QBO (which might be a day or two later), QBO should intelligently suggest a match to that open invoice. If it does not, there is an error or issue somewhere in your setup or entry. The main downside to this method is that dates from the bank feed will usually be delayed and partially out of order from your daily sales entries, which can break the pattern and make diagnosis of problems at later dates more difficult.

By meticulously recording your daily sales using this method, you gain control over your income streams, keep your cash and credit card accounts accurate, and ensure your books reflect your true daily activity without getting bogged down in individual customer entries.

Need help setting up an efficient daily sales recording system for your business? Dane Consulting has extensive experience in establishing these processes, creating clear Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and empowering you or your qualified staff to manage them seamlessly. Contact us today so we can help get this vital process moving for your business!

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