QuickBooks Custom Fields
One thing that I love about QuickBooks is its
versatility. By that, I mean how you can
customize it to fit almost any industry.
Accounting and bookkeeping are relatively the same across the board, but
what additional things do want or need to track?
Some people like to track Date of Birth in order to send out
cards to their customers. They can run a
customer list report and add the DOB column to it for the month or week they
are beginning for a list of cards to be sent out.
Advertising source report is another great thing to track in
your QuickBooks…where are your customers coming from? (I.e. word of mouth, yellow pages, google,
etc.)
Another option is tracking serial numbers or part numbers
for a customer or there are so many different types of tracking that you may
want to do, the possibilities are almost limitless. I did say almost, when you start tracking too
many serial numbers and such you may need to look into alternative solutions
that work 3rd party with QuickBooks.
So what are these custom fields exactly and where are they
located?
From your home screen you can click on ‘Customer Center’ or ‘Vendor
Center’ on the toolbar or it’s at the top of the list under ‘Customers’ or ‘Vendors’. Once you get your customer list pulled up you
can double click on any given customer to edit their record. Notice the multiple tabs: Address Info, Additional Info, Payment Info,
& Job Info. To get to the custom
fields you’ll want to open the tab labeled Additional Info.
On the right side of the Additional Info tab you’ll notice a
box called ‘Custom Fields’…that is how you get to it.
To set up new fields you need to click the button at the
bottom labeled Define Fields. Now fill
in the Label and check the box where you want these fields to be available
(i.e. Customers, Vendors, and/or employees.)
One important note; depending on how you choose to use these
custom fields, if you are going to be using this data to sort by, it is
important to be uniform in some of your custom fields. Obviously this does not apply for serial
numbers and custom numbers you’re tracking for customers, but if you are
tracking customer information, advertising sources, etc. you want to spell
and/or punctuate everything identically every time otherwise you will not get a
report that is very usable.
This is really the tip of the iceberg with custom fields;
these custom fields can be incorporated into invoices, receipts, and other
forms within QuickBooks. If you have
questions regarding custom fields, please send us your questions and we will
field them as time allows.
