How Do I Record Historical Accounts?

If you have not been using any accounting package nor have any electronic data to convert, you might have to manually enter and set up historical invoices, payments or opening balances. You can use an A/R listing with invoice and payment information or a separate invoice and payment listing.

The purpose is to:

• Set up historical invoices for a record of revenue (invoices) by project and client.
• Establish the A/R balance for each invoice, project and client. You can do that by entering a payment per invoice or a cumulative payment for all invoices.
• Set up opening balances per project, which would be the net of all invoices issued for the project less all the payment applied to them.

The Manual Invoice screen in BillQuick Online enables you to create an invoice for a project that has no time or expense logged to it. If you have a series of transactions, we recommend entering the historical ones first and then the current ones. For example, if today you receive a payment for an invoice not yet entered in BillQuick Online, you should enter the invoice first.

You can also enter historical data in the Enter Opening Balance screen from the Project-History tab.

Enter historical invoices:

1. Open Manual Invoice screen from the Billing menu.
2. Click New to create a new invoice.
3. Select the Project ID whose historical invoice you want to record.
4. BillQuick Online pre-fills the billing address, displaying the client information. You can see it by clicking ‘Billing Address’.

5. In the Invoice Date fields, select the date of the historical invoice. You can enter the date or change it using the drop-down lists or calendar.
6. Replace the default invoice number with that of the historical invoice. BillQuick Online will not allow duplicate invoice numbers. If desired, you can add a prefix to historical invoice numbers for easy identification.
7. Click Add Item at the bottom of the grid to add an activity or expense item.
8. In the Description field, enter the name of the service or expense.
9. Enter the Amount charged for the service or expense (without taxes or discounts). You can also enter the Tax percentage if desired.
10. Check the Exp option for expense items.
11. You can also apply a Misc Amount, Discount and Retainer to the invoice using the fields at the bottom.
12. If the client has paid all or part of the invoice, enter that amount in the ‘Paid Today’ field. This is a quick way of recording a payment associated with the historical invoice.
13. As soon as you have finished, click Process to save your manual invoice. After being processed, you can preview or print it, or apply historical payments from the Payment screen.

Edit Historical Invoices:

If you want to edit or delete historical invoices, there are two possible scenarios for that.

Scenario One:

You have selected the wrong project in the Manual Invoice screen for the historical ‘balance forward’ information. In this case:

1. Open Invoice Review screen from the Billing menu.
2. Click the incorrect invoice.
3. Click Action and select Reverse. The invoice is now gone.
4. Return to the Manual Invoice screen and record the correct information.

Scenario Two:

You have selected the right project but entered the wrong ‘balance forward’ information. In this case:

1. Open Manual Invoice screen from the Billing menu.
2. Click the Project ID.
3. Now choose the desired invoice from the Invoice Number list.
4. Edit the incorrect invoice amount and then click Process.
5. It asks you to overwrite the invoice or create a new one. Choose Overwrite.

Record Historical Payment Against a Manual Invoice:

1. Open Payments screen from the Billing menu.

2. Select the View By: Invoice option and choose the Invoice # created above.
3. Choose the Date for the payment.
4. Enter the total Amount of payment received.
5. In the grid, enter the payment or a portion of it in the Amount Applied field against each invoice. Else, use the Auto Apply option to automatically apply the payments to the invoices in the ‘older first’ order.
6. When you have finished, click Save and then Close.