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K
Kalee Guzzo
July 17, 2020
Question

Linking Customers to Vendors also including partial payment to another location.

  • July 17, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

So I feel as though I have a very unique question(s). 

I am currently reviewing Quickbooks Desktop:

If I have a customer, let's call him John Smith, am I able to link a vendor, let's call her Jane Doe, to this customer?  So if John Smith makes a payment to me, the portion of the money he paid will actually go towards Jane Doe when a check is written?  Further to that question, say I want to take 10% of the John Smith payment and keep it for the company as a surcharge payment.  So I would in turn have something like this:

~John Smith (ultimately will be paying the vendor Jane Doe, back directly, but payments will come through my company.

~With the $100 payment that John Smith paid, am I able to link Jane Doe directly to my customer John Smith? 

~Further, if I only want $90.91 to go to Jane Doe and the balance of the $9.09 to go to my company as a surcharge for being the middle man, can I/ how do I set something like this up?

Thanks in advance!

Kalee 

 

1 reply

L
LauraAB
July 17, 2020

Hello Kalee,

 

Thanks for going into so much detail with what you're looking to do in QuickBooks Desktop. With the examples you've given, I have a fairly clear sense of what you'd like to accomplish and I see why you would want to handle the transactions that way. I'll get you started with how you can approach this.

 

In QuickBooks, customer and vendor transactions are handled separately. This means you won't be able to automatically link the customer payment to the vendor transaction the way you're describing. There are a couple of options.

 

The first is going to be to record each transaction individually. To use your example, you'd have the customer invoice at $100 and receive that payment, but then the vendor bill would only be $90.91, which you would then pay. That leaves the remaining $9.09 in the business account by default.

 

The second option is to consider making the vendor bill billable to the customer. With this option you can set a default markup rate in your preferences, mark a vendor bill as billable, and assign it to the customer. When you then go to create the customer transaction, you'll see the option to add the billable cost to the invoice. Here's how you can set up the billable details.

  1. Select Edit from the top menu in QuickBooks Desktop.
  2. Choose Preferences.
  3. Click Time & Expenses.
  4. Click the Company Preferences tab.
  5. Check off Create invoices from a list of time and expenses.
  6. (Optional) Check off Mark all expenses as billable. (Note: When this option is selected, it simply means when a customer is chosen on the vendor transaction that the program will automatically mark it as billable. When this option isn't selected, the billable box would have to be checked off manually on the transaction.)
  7. Set the Default Markup Percentage.
  8. Set a Default Markup Account.
  9. Click OK.

Please note that the markup applies to expense transactions. When you mark a vendor bill with inventory or service items on it, the program will use the sales price for the billable portion to the customer rather than simply a markup percentage.

 

Here are a few articles that can help with these processes.

Based on what you've described here, it sounds like your business would benefit from exploring our job costing article. This guides you through setting up projects that you're completing for customers and how to handle the related vendor transactions. Job costing also uses the billable expenses model I just described, but also goes over other details. Read this article for full details: Tracking job costs in QuickBooks Desktop

 

Otherwise, your best resource for this situation is going to be an accountant. They'll be able to discuss all the specific details of what you're looking to do and let you know the best course of action. If you don't currently have an accountant, feel free to check out the QuickBooks Find an Accountant page where you can enter your city or postal code to search for QuickBooks-certified accountants near you.

 

I hope this has been helpful to you!

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