Sage 50 is a multi-featured accounting and bookkeeping program that allows you to create invoices, statements, pay your bills, write checks, track inventory, manage your payroll, and perform other accounting and business-related services.
Sage 50 is a terrific program to learn, as the skills that you learn in Sage 50 can save valuable time and money by automating, organizing and structuring the bookkeeping of your company. In this post, we will discuss setting statement and invoice defaults, quotes, invoices, and other topics related to managing accounts receivable.
Setting Statement and Invoice Defaults
You should set the default settings used for your customer statements and invoices by choosing “Maintain| Default Information| Statement/Invoices…” from the Menu Bar to open the “Statement/Invoices Defaults” window where you can change these settings before sending customer invoices and statements. In this window, there are two tabs: “Statement Print Options” and “Dunning Messages.”
On the “Statement Print Options” tab, select the options that must be met for a customer to receive a statement. You can also decide if the company information will print on the statements and invoices.
On the “Dunning Messages” tab, you can enter dunning messages to print on statements and invoices. You can enter one dunning message for each category listed. If a customer has multiple overdue invoices, Sage 50 prints the dunning message applicable to the oldest overdue invoice. When you are finished, click the “OK” button to apply your settings.
Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoicing
When you have a customer request for pricing for a prospective job, you can create a quote. In the quote, you can enter pricing information about your goods and services for the customer’s request. Since they haven’t agreed to purchase anything yet, they are only provided with a quote. Quotes do not affect the General Ledger. They also are very useful, as quotes that the customer accepts can easily be converted into sales orders or sales invoices later. You can enter a quote for a customer in the “Quotes” window by selecting “Tasks| Quotes/Sales Orders| Quotes…” from the Menu Bar.
Sales Orders are forms used when a customer agrees to buy goods or services that aren’t shipped immediately. The “Sales Orders” window allows for partial orders to be shipped and backorders to be tracked. Using this window, items can be shipped from inventory as they become available. To bring up this window, select “Tasks| Quotes/Sales Orders| Sales Orders…” from the Menu Bar.
The “Sales/Invoicing” form, however, is used to enter invoices and/or ship items entered into sales orders. Unlike the sales orders, the amounts entered into invoices actually affect the “accounts receivable.” To view your customer invoices, select “Tasks| Sales/Invoicing…” from the Menu Bar.
Entering Quotes
To create a quote, select “Tasks| Quotes/Sales Orders| Quotes…” from the Menu Bar to open up the “Quotes” window where you can create a quote to send to a customer that requests one.
Begin by entering the ID of the customer or prospect that will be receiving the quote using the “Customer ID:” field. You must have the customer in your customer list to create a quote for them. If you plan on printing the quote, leave the “Quote No.:” field blank. If you manually created a quote, and are simply recording it into Sage 50, then enter the quote number you gave to the customer in the “Quote No.” field. Enter the date that the quote was created into the “Date:” field. The “Bill To:” and “Ship To:” fields will display the information for the selected customer. You can change the “Ship To:” field by clicking the gray arrow next to that field, and selecting a different shipping address for the customer. You can also specify a drop shipment by checking the “Drop Ship” checkbox. The “Good thru:” field will display a date that is one month away from the “Date:” field’s value, by default. You can change this, if necessary.
In the “Customer PO” field, enter the customer’s purchase order number, if applicable. Select the shipping method from the “Ship via” field’s drop-down of choices. You can also select a sales rep ID from the “Sales rep” field. You can also enter the Accounts Receivable account that the quote will debit when it is converted into an invoice into the “A/R Account:” field. This field will default to the last account used in a sales transaction if shown within the form. Change it, if necessary.
Then enter the quantity of the first item ordered into the “Quantity” field. Select the item that they are ordering from the “Item” field’s drop-down of item choices. The description of the selected item will display in the “Description” field. You can enter a description for items that you don’t track through inventory. The “GL Account” field will display the account set up for the selected item if shown. When ordering items not in inventory, the customer’s sales account will display here. You can change this, if necessary. It is also important to remember that this will not affect the General Ledger until you convert the quote to a sales order or sales invoice. In the “Unit Price” field, you will see the sales price of the selected item. If it is an item that you don’t track as inventory, then you will need to enter the price in this field. The “Tax” field will display the tax type of the selected item. If it isn’t an inventory item, then you will need to select a tax type in this field. The “Amount” field will display the “Quantity” times the “Unit Price.” If you are entering a non-inventory item, enter the total price of the item order in this field. If the quote is for a specific job, you can also enter the job in the “Job” field. It will not actually be applied to the job, however, until the quote is converted into an invoice.
In the “Sales Tax Code:” field, you will see the sales tax code for the selected customer. If you need to change their sales tax code, select one from the list. Finally, enter any freight charges applicable to this transaction into the “Freight” field. When you are done, you can “Print” or “Save” the quote using the buttons on the toolbar at the top of this window.
