How you can invoice customer with multiple branches?
I was in a meeting with a client once; we were discussing how he could use QuickBooks to help him in easing his invoicing process. My client was dealing with household products; his customers were mainly big supermarket that had multiple branches.
Purchasing were usually requested by the branch manager, thus, goods will be deliver to the branch but payment will be issue by the headquarters.
His questions were:
- How can he create invoices to his client with branches indicated in the Ship To address?
- How can he send the Statement of Account to his client indicating the amount owing by all the branches?
How you can create invoices to your client who has multiple branches?
Some user may consider editing the Ship To address as and when they created an invoice. This method is usable only when occasionally you need to send goods to a different location. It is impractical if constantly you need to ship goods to a different addresses as editing of Ship To address will be a waste of your time.
Although QuickBooks 2009/10 (Asia) allows you to have multiple Ship To address, this method will not allow you to print a Statement indicating the outstanding by Branches (Ship To address will not be consider in Statement of Account).
There are also user suggest to create multiple customer name. That is, every branch will be a customer name by itself. Again, I do not like to use this method, as I cannot present the amount owing in one single Statement of Account.
A better method to consider will be use the Job function in QuickBooks.
How you can use Job in invoicing?
From the Customer Centre, select your customer name and click the Customer:Job button and select Add Job. In this case, you will be able to add Jobs (Branch name) to the selected customer name (Job will be under the customer name). The Invoice To address usually will be the Headquarters address and the Ship To address you can change it to the branch address.
Next, you select this newly created Job (Branch Name) in your invoice, and add the rest of the items in your invoice.
In your Accounts Receivable report you will be able to see the Jobs owing under the main company name, besides, there is a total owing by this customer shows in the report. This method is good as you can clearly see the total amount owing without manually calculated the total.
Consolidate the amount owing from branches in one single Statement of Accounts.
This method allow you to print the Statement of Accounts with all the branches outstanding together in one single Statement. Instead of giving customer multiple Statement (if you create one branch as one customer name), you can print a neat Statement with all the branches clearly stated the amount outstanding and with a total Ageing for all the branches.
Join my QuickBooks training and you can find out more ways in how you can use QuickBooks for your business.