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Post Info TOPIC: Bookkeeping for Market Trader/Cafe


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Bookkeeping for Market Trader/Cafe
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Morning All,

I've just got a new client who is a market trader and also waiting to hear back about another potential client who owns a cafe.  Both businesses are purely cash receipts.

Obviously you wouldn't set up individual customers so should I just set up one client called Miscellaneous or something like that and post all takings to that?

The market traders uses  one market only so could open customer under the market name.

Does that sound like the right thing to do?

Regards,

Elaine



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E Roscoe


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Hi Elaine,

I do likewise with retail clients. Just setup a customer called sales or similar. If you use the market name and they open another stall at a different market it will let you see the differences between the sales of the two.

Kris

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Seconded

Excellent tip Elaine,

that would definitely assist with management reporting.

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I would be tempted just to enter these sales as 'cash sales'.......so no customer set-up.

If I wanted to distinguish between types of sale I would create different sales nominal codes (e.g., for a café there might be VAT and non-Vat sales) and if I needed to analyse the sales (in the case where the market trader opened other stalls at different markets), I would tend to create different 'departments' for each.

Maybe there is a good reason for setting up a customer account that I have missed??

 



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I was thinking the same thing. It seems a touch OTT at first - but if, as I assume, the takings are going to be entered as a single transaction for each day, it's probably not going to create much extra work; just an extra transaction for each day's takings, so no big deal.

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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software

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I look after a cafe now. Ive not set up any customers - I just drop everything into sales (one figure for the month) although I do distinguish between hot and cold food as he is VAT registered.

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It depends a lot on your software. QB, for example, can't process a sale without a customer.

Kris

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Hmm.

How does it cope with other types of receipt, such as an insurance pay-out for example?

At the end of the day, it's should just be a straightforward transaction: A receipt, with a debit on the bank account, and a credit to one or more arbitrary nominal accounts - e.g. insurance claims, sales and VAT, bank interest received, and so on.

I suppose I could just get it installed and try it for myself, but where's the fun in that?

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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software

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Yes... It should be....

Try it and let's know how you go.

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I'm not sure I want to now. It's starting to sound like (i.e. this is what I'm inferring from what you have said) it has more faults than I remember* - with this one being what I would class as fundamental.

* Not that I would remember this one: When I used it before, the client in question only had account sales.

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Hi Everyone,

Think I may have over priced a job. Approximately 47 receipts per week plus takings, rent, bills etc. Rent etc is set up to be paid direct from bank along with other bills.

I've said it would take me around 3 hours each month. Does it sound like i've over estimated?

I did say I would reconcile the bank monthly as well and will have to post entries to match with the bills coming direct out of bank.

Not heard back from client but I guess they don't all rush in do they?

Elaine

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E Roscoe


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I don't see it as a fault, Vince, more a design feature. I still like the software like any you just need to negotiate these easter eggs.

Elaine, if anything I think you may have under estimated the time it will take you if you use traditional methods.

Kris

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Easter egg?

In software terms, an easter egg is typically a hidden/bonus feature - generally, something good. (Hence the term is also used for hidden extras on DVDs etc.)

And that's exactly what the "design feature" you describe is not, IMO.


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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software

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Welcome to the world of sarcasm vince!

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Heh.

If you want *real* sarcasm, you're talking to the right person. I've almost let loose my sarcasmatron weapon a few times on this forum, but held back - because when I let loose I can be very nasty with it, so I have to handle it with a great deal of care.



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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software

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lol,

... But with great power comes great responsibility Vince.

Yes, at times it can be quite a difficult power to contain, but, as with the president of the united states just because you have a big red button does not mean that you should press it.

Hows it going with Quickbooks? Have you had a play yet? Have you had the phone call yet where their support desk / sales person phrases the registration as if signing up for support is an integral part of the process?

Actually bought myself the dummies guide to quickbooks this week as its the only book that seems to be written for the UK rather than the US market (they have a different variant of the same book).

I know that it should be intuitive (ah just got where Intuit got their name from) but I'm one of those bods who wants a book to point me at the things that I may be missing and to ensure that I'm not making up my own way of doing things (as I have with VT).

Happy Saturday,

Shaun.

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Shaun

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Phone call? Unless I've missed a trick, there didn't seem to be any requirement to phone them as part of the registration process.

Oh, right. A quick look and I see that I would have been prompted to register by phone if the software had been unable to contact the registration server - but I had no problems connecting to the server.

That book sounds like it might be a useful purchase - but a quick look at it on Amazon reveals that the author "belongs to the American Institute of CPAs" - so it seems unlikely to have been written for the UK market! In fact, from one of the reviews:

"Only complaint is that it is obviously written for the american market and not amended for English, but it doesnt cause too much of a problem."

If there is a different version for the English market, do you happen to have a link?






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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software

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Elaine R wrote:

Hi Everyone,

Think I may have over priced a job. Approximately 47 receipts per week plus takings, rent, bills etc. Rent etc is set up to be paid direct from bank along with other bills.

I've said it would take me around 3 hours each month. Does it sound like i've over estimated?

I did say I would reconcile the bank monthly as well and will have to post entries to match with the bills coming direct out of bank.

Not heard back from client but I guess they don't all rush in do they?

Elaine


 I don't think so no.  I have a cafe client with a similar amount of receipts etc and its 3.5 to 4 hours work a month.



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Hi Vince,

there are two versions by the same author, one for the US and one for the UK market.

Mine arrived today after I had already posted.

Quick glance through....

VAT, check

VAT Cash basis, check

References HMRC rather than IRS, check

forms referenced : P6, P11, P14, P32, P35, P45, P46, P60

At first glance through it all looks to be UK based with no US slant to the writing.

Downside is that it's the 2012 version and there's no 2013 version of the book. Then again, don't think that there's actually that much difference between 2012 and 2013 versions.

For me having the VAT bits in the book were more important than having thecompletely up to date version as even if things have moved if they were ever in the product and important enough to document in a dummies book then its a fair bet that they will still be there and people such as ourselves shouldn't have too much of a problem with things like that.

Also, only £11.51 so well worth a punt even if not for the version that we are running.

It may be that the person writing the review purchased the wrong version of the book.

Here's the link to the UK version :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/QuickBooks-2012-Dummies-UK-Edition/dp/1119968941/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371927090&sr=8-2&keywords=quickbooks+dummies

On the support registration it allowed me to sort everything out to start with and play with the software for a while but after a couple of weeks I got the message coming up that I needed to call them to register the software.

Might be the version that I have which was the freebie from the Intuit roadshow (QB Premier Accountant edition).

HTH Vince,

kind regads,

Shaun.



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Shaun

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Ah... I specifically looked at the 2013 versions of the book. Similar sort of price when I looked earlier - but I agree; the difference between the 2012 and 2013 versions are probably insignificant in the grander scheme of things; I'll pop that in my basket ready for the next time I complete an order. Cheers for that.

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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software

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I have this book UK version for 2012 and found it very useful.  Especially as my first Quickbooks client was the most complex!

Sylvia



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