Create a Sales Receipt in QuickBooks Online

Create a Sales Receipt in QuickBooks Online: Video

            This video lesson, titled “How to Create a Sales Receipt in QuickBooks Online,” shows how to create a sales receipt in QuickBooks Online. This video lesson is from our complete QuickBooks Online tutorial, titled “Mastering QuickBooks Online Made Easy.”

Overview:

            To create a sales receipt in QuickBooks Online, hover over the “+ Create” button in the Navigation Bar and then click the “Sales receipt” link under the “Customers” heading. Alternatively, select the “Customers” link under the “Customer Hub” app in the My apps bar to open the “Customers” page and then click the “Create sales receipt” link under the “Action” column’s drop-down for the customer for whom to create a sales receipt.

Select or Add a Customer:

            To select a customer and add their information to the sales receipt, select one from the “Customer” drop-down. Alternatively, to add a new customer, select the “Add new” command from this drop-down menu to open a “Customer” pane at the right side of the window where you can add the new customer’s information and then click the “Save” button within it to save the customer and close the pane.

Enter or Confirm the Customer’s Email Information:

            To the right of the “Customer” drop-down is an “Email” field which contains the customer’s email address, if you entered it when creating the customer’s record. You can enter an email here if you didn’t enter it when you created the customer. If needed, to email copies of this sales receipt to others, click the “Cc/Bcc” link by this field to show additional “Cc” and “Bcc” fields in a drop-down menu. Then enter the email addresses into these fields, as needed, and click the “Done” button. To mark this sales receipt to save but email later, check the “Send later” checkbox below the “Email” field.

Enter or Confirm the Sales Receipt Number:

            The “Sales Receipt no” field shows the next highest available sales receipt number. If you enabled custom transaction numbers in sales forms, then you can change this, if needed.

Choose Whether to Record a Payment or Charge a New Payment:

            Next, select whether to record a payment or to charge a new payment by selecting either the “Record payment” or “Charge new payment” option in the “Record or charge” section of the sales receipt. You select the “Record payment” option to record a received payment, and you select the “Charge new payment” option to charge a credit card or process a bank transfer.

            For both options, then select the date of the sales receipt from the “Sales Receipt Date” field in this section. If needed, to record a reference number, like a customer’s check number, enter it into the “Reference no” field. Then select the customer’s payment method from the “Payment method” drop-down.

            If you selected the “Record payment” option, then select the account into which to deposit the received funds from the sales receipt from the “Deposit To” drop-down. This field doesn’t appear if you select the “Charge new payment” option.

            Alternatively, if you select the “Charge new payment” option, to process a payment by ACH or credit card after completing the sales receipt if payment processing is enabled in QuickBooks Online and you select “Check” or “Credit Card” from the “Payment method” drop-down, then click the “Enter bank info” or “Enter credit card details” button that appears below here to open a new window where you can enter the bank or credit card details and then click the “Submit” button in the window.

Enter or Confirm the Customer’s Billing and Shipping Information:

            In the “Addresses” section at the right side of the window, the “Billing Address” field shows the selected customer’s billing address. If shipping is enabled in the company file, then a “Shipping to” field, a “Shipping date” field, a “Tracking no.“ field, and a “Ship via” field also appear here, where you can enter the shipping information, if needed.

Enter Any Custom and Optional Information:

            The “Additional fields” section below the “Record or charge” section shows custom fields and other fields that may or may not appear, depending on which settings you enabled in the company file. The “Shipping From” or “Location of Sale” field shows your company’s default sales address. You can change this, if needed. This field is used for automated sales tax calculations if there is no customer address entered.

            If you enabled location tracking, a “Location” drop-down also appears in the “Additional fields” section. If you enabled class tracking on a transaction level, then a “Class” drop-down appears here. Any custom fields you added to the sales receipt form then also appear in this section.

Enter the Line Item Information:

            The next area is the “line items” area where you enter the products and/or services sold. To enter a service date for a service provided if you enabled service dates in sales forms, enter the service date into the “Service date” column.

            To select an existing item from the “Products & services” list, click into the “Product/Service” column and then select the item from the drop-down menu. If SKUs are enabled, the selected item’s SKU appears in the “SKU” column. Its description appears in the “Description” column. You can also type a description here, if desired.

            Then enter the quantity of the product bought or service provided by typing it into the quantity field, labelled “Qty.” The rate for the product or service, per quantity unit, appears in the “Rate” field. You can change it, if needed.

            The “Qty” field is multiplied by the “Rate” field to show the total amount for the line item in the “Amount” field. If entering a product or service without a rate or quantity, you can simply enter the total amount into the “Amount” field, if needed.

            If the product or service is taxable, ensure the “Tax” field checkbox for the line item is checked. If classes are enabled and assigned by one to each row in transactions forms, then you can select a class from the “Class” drop-down. After entering the first line item, continue adding line items until all the items are added to the sales receipt.

Add or Edit the Line Items, as Needed:

            To add a new line item row, click into the bottom line item row to automatically add a new row. Alternatively, to add 4 new rows at once, click the “Add lines” button under the line items area. To delete all line items, click the “Clear all lines” button in this same location.

            Note that when you click into a line item row to make it the active row in the line items area, a plus button appears at its left end instead of the 9-dot handle icon. You can click this button to insert a new line item row above the current line item row.

            At the left end of each non-selected or non-active line item row is a 9-dot selection handle. To change the order of the line items you entered, roll your mouse pointer over this handle until it turns into a “hand” icon. Then click and drag the line item up or down and release it to reorganize the line items, if needed. To delete a line item, click the “Delete” button at the right end of the line item row to delete.

Enter Any Optional Messages or Attachments:

            Below the line items area, to enter a message to show on the sales receipt, type it into the “Message displayed on sales receipt” field. To enter a message that appears for this sales receipt in the customer’s statement, type it into the “Message displayed on statement” field. In the lower-left corner of the sales receipt is the “Attachments” field, which lets you attach a file to the sales receipt. You can drag and drop files onto the field or click the field’s name or icon to open a “File Upload” dialog box that you can use to browse for, and then select, the file to attach. Note the 20MB file attachment size limit.

Confirm The Sales Receipt Totals:

            In the lower-right corner of the sales receipt is the subtotal, taxable subtotal, sales tax, discount, shipping and tax on shipping, total, amount received, and balance due field information, depending on which sales form features you enabled.

Select or Confirm the Sales Tax:

            The “Select tax rate” drop-down lets you select either the default “Automated based on location” choice if using the automatic sales tax feature or select a custom sales tax rate, if you created those. Based on your selection, the sales tax to collect appears to the right.

            If using the automatic sales tax and the “Automated based on location” choice, then you can click the “See the math” link under the sales tax amount to see the sales tax information and calculations and correct it, if needed, in the pane that appears at the right side of the window. We’ll discuss this pane in detail in a later lesson in this chapter.

            For now, note that if you need to override the automatic sales tax calculation, you can click the “Override this amount” link in this pane’s lower-right corner to open a section at the bottom of the pane. Then click the “Edit” link in this new section to show fields where you can enter a new “Rate” or “Amount” to charge for sales tax and then select a “Reason for override” from the adjacent drop-down. Then click the adjacent “Apply override” button to confirm the override. You can then close the pane by clicking the “Close” button in its lower-right corner.

            Alternatively, to apply a custom sales tax rate if you created one, select the sales tax rate from the “Select tax rate” drop-down in the sales receipt window. The amount of sales tax to collect then appears in a field to the right, which you can change, if needed.

If Needed, Apply Any Discount to the Sales Receipt’s Total:

            On a related note, to apply a discount to the total sales receipt if you enabled a “Discount” field in your sales forms, use the “Discount” drop-down that appears next to the “Select tax rate” drop-down to select either the “Discount percent” or “Discount value” choice. Then enter the discount percentage or amount into the field to the right.

            The discount is related to sales tax because you can click the button that looks like two connected right-pointing arrows, and which appears to the left of the sales tax rate and discount fields, to switch the order of the two fields in the sales receipt each time you click it. Doing this changes whether the discount is applied after sales tax is calculated or before sales tax is calculated, based on the order in which the fields appear in the sales receipt.

Enter or Confirm Shipping Amounts:

            If shipping is enabled, you can enter the amount of shipping into the “Shipping” field. The “Tax on shipping” field, if enabled, shows the shipping sales tax. The “Total” field shows the sales receipt total amount. The “Balance due” field below that shows the remaining balance due, which is most often zero.

Save the Sales Receipt:

            The toolbar at the bottom of the sales receipt lists the actions you can perform on it. Different options appear here when creating a new sales receipt versus opening an existing one. When creating a new sales receipt, “Cancel” and “Clear” buttons appear at the left side of the toolbar. Clicking “Cancel” cancels the sales receipt’s creation. Clicking “Clear” clears all the fields but keeps the window open. In the middle of the toolbar are the “Print or Preview,” “Make recurring” and “Customize” buttons.

To Save and Print the Sales Receipt:

            Clicking the “Print or Preview” button shows a pop-up menu that lets you check a “Print later” checkbox or click either the “Print or preview” or “Print packing slip” commands. To mark the sales receipt to print later if you batch print sales receipts, check the “Print later” checkbox. To save the sales receipt and show a PDF preview of it that contains buttons in a toolbar at the top of the PDF preview that let you print or save it, click the “Print or preview” command.

            To save the sales receipt and show a PDF preview of its packing slip that contains buttons in a toolbar at the top of the PDF preview that let you print or save it, click the “Print packing slip” command. To close the PDF preview window if you select either print command, click the “Close” button in its lower-left corner.

To Create a Recurring Sales Receipt:

            To create a recurring sales receipt, clicking the “Make recurring” button to open the “Recurring Sales Receipt” window, which has the same options as a recurring invoice that we previously discussed. If needed, to cancel the recurring sales receipt and return to the main sales receipt screen, click the “Cancel” button in the toolbar.

To Change the Sales Receipt Template:

            To select a different sales receipt template, edit the current template, or create a new template, click the “Customize” command in the toolbar and then select the desired command in the pop-up menu that appears. Creating form templates is discussed in a separate lesson.

To Record or Charge the Sales Receipt:

            To record or charge the sales receipt after creating it, click the “Record” or “Charge” button in the toolbar. Alternatively, to record or charge and then send the sales receipt by email, click or select the “Record and send” or “Charge and send” command using the drop-down button at the right end of the toolbar.

            Alternatively, to record or charge the sales receipt and then create a new sales receipt, click or select the “Record and new” or “Charge and new” command using the drop-down button at the right end of the toolbar. Alternatively, to record or charge the sales receipt and then close the sales receipt window, click or select the “Record and close” or “Charge and close” command using the drop-down button at the right end of the toolbar.

How to View Saved Sales Receipts in QuickBooks Online:

            After you save a sales receipt, it appears within the list of all sales transactions in the “Sales transactions” page in QuickBooks Online. To open the “Sales transactions” page in QuickBooks Online, select the “Sales transactions” command under the “Sales & Get Paid” app in the “My apps” bar. To open a saved sales receipt in the sales transactions list, click the sales receipt in the list to show information about it in a pane at the right side of the window.

How to Edit a Saved Sales Receipt and Perform Actions on a Saved Sales Receipt:

            To reopen the sales receipt for editing in the sales receipt window, click the “Edit” button at the bottom of the pane. Alternatively, to select an action from a full menu of possible actions to perform on a saved sales receipt, click the “More actions” button in this pane and then select the desired action, like “Print,” “Duplicate,” “Send,” “Print packing slip,” “Void” or “Delete.”

            Also, if you reopen the sales receipt for editing within the “Sales Receipt” window again, you can click the “More” button that then appears at the right end of the commands in the center of the toolbar at the bottom of the window to show a similar menu of possible action choices for the selected sales receipt, if needed.

            Clicking this button shows commands for “Copy,” to copy the sales receipt; “Void,” to void the sales receipt; “Delete,” to delete the sales receipt; “Transaction journal,” to open a report that lists the accounts and credit and debit amounts for the sales receipt; and “Audit history,” which shows an audit history of the sales receipt. You can click any of these actions to perform the related activity.