Quickbooks Pro and external billing A/R

[DA Quality Lawn & YS]

Guys,

I have been doing my own acct on Excel with homemade bills done on Word. Works and is cheap, but when the end of the month rolls around, I am doing bills for like 3 hours cause I have to print each customer account separately. So, I am looking into Quickbooks for next season.

I do have a question. How does Quickbooks handle billing done outside the program. For instance, for applications biz, I incorporate my app record and billing all on one form that would not be produced by QB. Will QB allow me to incorporate this information into A/R or must you bill EVERYTHING from QB? I also bill some misc. odd jobs with a receipt pad and would want that to jib with QB as well.

I suppose one option is to take a laptop and printer in the truck. I really don't want to do that. Too much risk of theft having your computer in the truck.
I want to continue my on-the-fly billing methodology as it is now - any help is appreciated.


DA

[djagusch]

If you make a hand written reciept you will still need to type it in. The main thing that gets a person hung up is the invoice numbers. Your hand ones won't match what is in quickbooks. The way to get around this is to set aside a number set (all hand invoices are 5000 and on), and then have the computer ones another number set (1 to 4999). When the computer ones get to 5000 then you need to readjust the number sets but that will be long down the road. Another way I have not tried is putting a letter at the beginning or end of the invoice number.

In short you will be able to get around the hand written invoices, just need to figure out the procedure for your company.

As for billing for 3 hrs. It will still take sometime but should be cut down (don't expect 20mins and done). Reports are really nice, especially comparing from past years.