Unique Entity Number (UEN)

Information from IRAS web site (http://www.iras.gov.sg/irasHome/page.aspx?id=7854):

From 1 Jan 2009, all entities that are registered in Singapore, such as businesses, local companies, limited liability partnerships (LLPs), societies, representative offices, healthcare institutions and trade unions, will have a Unique Entity Number (UEN) as its identification number. UEN shall be for registered entities as NRIC is for Singapore citizens.

The UEN shall replace all other identification numbers issued by different government agencies, including IRAS, and should be used for interaction with government agencies.

Note: more details can be found in IRAS web site.

Where shall we record the UEN in QuickBooks?

There are two Unique Entity Numbers (UEN) that we have to consider when we recording transactions in QuickBooks. One is your customer’s UEN and the other is your supplier’s UEN.

Usually, I recommend user to use a Custom field in the Name profile to customize it as an UEN field for recording UEN for both the customer and supplier.

From the Name profile page (can be either Customer Profile or Supplier Profile), under the Additional tab, you will see a ‘Define Fields’ button; click the ‘Define Fields’ button to add a new Custom Fields into your Name profile page.

In the Define Fields wizard, you are allow to create up to 15 custom fields, but Name profile will only takes up to 7 custom fields.

In the Label of the first custom field, enter ‘UEN’ in the space provided. Next, you check the check box for both ‘Customers:Job’ and ‘Suppliers’. By selecting these two check boxes, it will allow ‘UEN’ field to appear in both the Customer profile and Supplier profile page.

Once custom field is defined, you can start entering the UEN for both the customer and supplier from their respective profile page.

In my coming blog I will explain why Custom Field 1 is being use for UEN and how does it affects your reporting in QuickBooks.