Intuit is preparing for some exciting changes for the QuickBooks Payment (merchant services) customers that will provide improved billing, simplified pricing and give them more ways to accept payments.

In order to make this change, Intuit will be updating the PIN pads used with QuickBooks Point of Sale software at their expense.

What Intuit Payment Solutions customers can expect: 

Beginning in the end of August, Intuit will let their Payment Solutions customers know that they will be exchanging their PIN pads.  Shortly after the customers are notified, Intuit will ship a PIN pad with installation instructions and a request that they return their old PIN pad. This is to ensure that the PIN pad will be compatible with the changes they make to their systems.

What you need to do: 

Customers will need to connect the PIN pad to their Point of Sale hardware and return their old PIN pad.  Intuit will provide instructions to…

In our more than 10 years of experience with QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS), one of the most problematic issues is the inability of QuickBooks Point of Sale to synch to a QuickBooks File (QBF) that is not on the local network. What that means practically is that the owner/bookkeeper has to do their accounting work on a machine at the store.

There are several approaches to work through this limitation. Will English has been testing the various configurations and thinks he has determined the best one for the Point of Sale User. In this article, he provides a thorough explanation with step-by-step instructions and screen shots.

Due to the length of this article, we have provided a it as a PDF. Click on Attachment below.

Formerly known as OFA Short Course, Cultivate '14 continued to offer premier educational & networking experiences, & more than 7 acres of trade show exhibits including technology, new products & services, & new plant varieties. They also expanded the products & services for retailers, nursery production, & landscaping. They expected thousands of people to attend from more than 20 countries.

As seen on their website, “The word 'cultivate' reflects what happens at the event. Thousands of people attend each year to cultivate their businesses and professional networks,” said Michael V. Geary, CAE, the President and CEO of AmericanHort. “Updating the brand of the 85-year-old event makes sense for the vision of AmericanHort. Cultivate captures the essence of what the experience is for our attendees.”

Will was invited to attend this U.S. premier convention and marketplace from July 12-15th.  He was available to assist all QuickBooks customers…

There is still time to join us for our upcoming QuickBooks POS webinar "Physical Inventory with Tips & Tricks" on Tue. July 22nd from 9-11:30am PST.

Doing a few things in advance of your Physical Inventory will really help with the accuracy of the count. Learn the three methods available to take an inventory count, how often a count should be done, security considerations, and much more to ensure a successful inventory count.

Learn how to properly plan and prepare, use the scanners- avoiding manual entry, and tips and tricks.

Agenda:
Overview
Terminology and Concepts
Planning, Preparing and Training
Manually Adding Counts
Saving and Applying Changes
Installing and Testing Physical Inventory Scanners
Navigating the Physical Inventory Scanner
Counting with the Physical Inventory Scanner
Updated QBPOS with the Physical Inventory Scanner Counts
Multi-store…

Like most industries, retail has its share of buzz words.  It's important to know the common retail industry words so you are properly managing your inventory and finances. Will wrote an article talking about some of the most common ones and how to use them in your business.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
This is not specifically a retail term, but is useful to understand so the rest of these terms make sense.  A number of clients think that their COGS is what they paid for inventory during any given period of time.  This is not correct.  COGS is the cost of the items that were SOLD during a period of time. The easiest way to explain this is to think about what happens when you buy inventory.  You are exchanging one asset for another.  You use your cash (an asset) to buy inventory (another asset) there is nothing that should show up on your Profit and Loss.  Then when we SELL our inventory, we reduce our inventory asset and increase our COGS.  One of the…

Introduction

While assemblies will do a great job of kitting multiple items into a new product when the contents of the kits remain the same or rarely change, there are certain times when you will you want to have an item in your data file that is made up of one or more items where the contents may vary.  The variation may have to do with weight or size or some other component(s).  In many cases, creating new assemblies for these items may be more work that it is worth.  Therefore, in some cases it may be better to perform what we refer to as a Product Conversion.

A Product Conversion will allow you to create a new product from one more other products, while maintaining the proper inventory values and quantities on hand.

Example

Our fictional company, Landscape Makers Demonstration Company (LSMDC), sells potted flowers, the pots they might go in, and the planting mix their customers would need to create their own flower pot arrangements as individual items.  Recently,…

Our office will be closed Friday, July 4th. QuickBooks customers who require technical assistance or have an emergency during this closure may do one of the following:

Contact Us:
Toll free 877-467-0451 or local to San Diego 858-467-0400 and follow the automated prompting for emergency help, or send an email to info@englishmgmt.com. Our billable rate will apply.
*For non-emergencies, leave a message at our office number or send an email and we'll return your call the following 
business day.

Contact Intuit Support  Fees may apply:
* Point of Sale: 1-800-4INTUIT (800-446-8848)
* Enterprise Solutions: 866-340-7237
* Merchant Services: 800-558-9558

Monthly Promotions

Is there a way in QuickBooks Point of Sale (QBPOS) to manage rental equipment? If so, what is the process? Let’s take a look.

Identify the equipment you will rent out.In QBPOS, create a rental department and create inventory items for the equipment assigning them to the rental department. (You can tag the rental items if you want to speed the checkout process, but consider the abuse these tags will receive. We do sell a tag printer and tags that can stand up to the abuse, so contact our office for more details). If you are using QuickBooks Financial software connected to your POS, consider changing the accounts that POS is using for sales and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) to something like “Rental Inventory Sales” and “Rental Inventory COGS”  In this way, if you see these accounts, you know that a mistake was made or you have sold off your rental inventory.Set the selling price to zero and receive in the inventory using your normal receiving process, if this is…

We get to work with numerous retailers and it’s our goal to provide information that will benefit their business. AZ Retail is our premier source for store supplies. They recently wrote a blog geared towards retailers about the importance of having signs and price tags throughout a store. And it is so true that when a customer is shopping, they will be much more satisfied and willing to purchase from your store if the product information and pricing is readily available.

Signs and price tags are a very important part of your business.  They call attention to your promotions, they provide product information and ideas about how to use the product.  But the biggest help they give you is letting your guests know the price of the items they are interested in purchasing.  Having prices on your merchandise keeps customers from having to track down a sales associate to find a price on an item and creates a better shopping experience (in some states, it’s also required by law.) Read…

One of the highlights for Will at the recent Scaling New Heights conference was speaking with and taking a selfie with Brad Smith, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Intuit, the makers of the QuickBooks Point of Sale and Accounting software. Brad was was promoted to this role in January 2008, culminating a five-year rise through the company where he successfully led several of its major businesses. Read his executive profile.

The SNH conference was great as always. Will taught several sessions on the Point of Sale (POS) Certification Exam. It's important for Intuit ProAdvisors to maintain their certification because Intuit releases new versions of the software. This also allows the ProAdvisors to remain on the Intuit Find-A-ProAdvisor website where there are more than 500,000 visits annually from potential clients. See our previous post about this.

This year's conference was held in San Antonio, TX and next year it'll be in New Orleans!