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Many entrepreneurs assume that capital expenditures are the same as expenses. While they can be classified as expenses, this doesn’t apply to all of them. Whether you run a small, medium or large business, you should familiarize yourself with the definition of capital expenditures. In this post, we’re going to break down this otherwise common accounting term, revealing it’s meaning and importance for business owners such as yourself.

Overview of Capital Expenditures

Also known as a capital expense, a capital expenditure is money spent towards a product or service for the purpose of improving a business’s long-term fixed assets. It’s not uncommon for businesses to reinvest their earnings back into their operations. When a business spends money on a product or service that extends the usable life of one of its long-term fixed assets, the purpose is considered a capital expenditure.

There are also operating expenses, which are located on the opposite spectrum as capital expenditures. While capital expenditures consist of business-related expenses — specifically those used to improve a fixed asset — operating expenses consist of money paid to acquire or inherit an asset’s operation. The main difference between the two is that capital expenditures are used to improve or extend the life of a fixed asset, whereas operating expenses are ongoing expenses associated with short-term assets.

Examples of Capital Expenditures

Now that you know the basic definition of capital expenditures, let’s take a closer look at some examples of them. Purchasing a fixed asset is a common example of a capital expenditure. If a product or service is designed to facilitate your business’s operations, it’s considered a fixed asset and, thus, a capital expenditure.

Upgrading a current asset used by your business could be considered a capital expenditure as well. A construction company, for example, may upgrade the model of a bulldozer or excavator. Depending on the model, construction companies may spend tens of thousands of dollars on bulldozer upgrades such as this, with each of these transactions being a capital expenditure.

Making repairs to a current asset owned and used by your business can also be considered a capital expenditure. If an asset, such as a machine, is damaged to the point where it adversely affects your business’s operations, you may want to repair it. If you spend money to repair an asset such as this, it’s considered a capital expenditure.

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Does your business bill its customers on a yearly or monthly basis? If so, you can set up recurring payments in Quickbooks. With recurring payments, customers will automatically be charged on their billing date.

You can easily set up recurring payments in Quickbooks by accessing Customers > Credit Card Processing Activities > Set Up Recurring Payments > Set Up Recurring Payments. But What if you need to edit one or more recurring payments? Even if you’ve already set up a recurring payment in Quickbooks, you can still change it. Quickbooks makes it easy to edit recurring payments. Here’s how you do it.

Steps to Edit a Recurring Payment

To edit a recurring payment in Quickbooks, you’ll need to first pull up the customer’s information. From the home screen, choose “Customers,” at which point you can locate the customer’s name. After pulling up the customer’s information, identify the section with the information that you want to change. You can then click the “Edit” button in this section to change the appropriate field or fields.

In Quickbooks, you can change information such as the customer’s name, phone number, the billing start date, the billing frequency, billing day of the month, billing end date, credit card number, credit card expiration date and more. Regardless, to change any of this information, you’ll need to locate the area in which it’s contained, followed by clicking the “Edit” button.

It’s important to note that Quickbooks only allows users to change yearly and monthly billing frequencies for recurring payments. You can choose an alternative billing, such as billing customers on a specific day of the month, but you can’t change the frequency if it’s not currently yearly or monthly.

In Conclusion

Setting up recurring payments is convenient for both businesses and their customers. With recurring payments, you won’t have to worry about manually collecting payments from customers. At the same time, customers won’t have to worry about paying their bill on or by the due date. Recurring payments automatically charge customers, making it a mutually beneficial way to sell products and services.

And if you use Quickbooks, you can easily set up, as well as edit, recurring payments for your business’s customers. Intuit’s popular accounting software fully supports recurring payments. If you need to set up or edit a recurring payment, refer back to this post for assistance.

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Quickbooks has become the definitive accounting solution among small business owners. It’s versatile, user friendly, and because it’s backed by Intuit, you can rest assured knowing that it works. Unless you’ve used it, though, you might be wondering how, exactly, Quickbooks can help your small business succeed.

Automatic Expense Recording

With Quickbooks, you don’t have to worry about manually recording all your small business’s expenses. You can take advantage of the software’s automatic expense recording feature. Basically, this involves synchronizing your business-related credit and debit cards to your Quickbooks account. Once sync, Quickbooks will automatically download all transactions from the respective cards, thereby eliminating the need to manually record all your small business’s expenses.

Payroll Management

Along with automatic expense recording, Quickbooks offers integrated payroll management. You can create and schedule paychecks for your business’s employees from within the Quickbooks software. When payday rolls around, your business’s employees will receive their paychecks.

Invoice Generation

You can even use Quickbooks to generate invoices for your small business’s customers or clients. Quickbooks features a built-in invoice generation tool that’s fully customizable. Using it, you can quickly create custom invoices for your small business’s customers or clients.

Inventory Management

If you run a retail business, you’ll be pleased to hear that Quickbooks supports inventory management. As a retailer, inventory management can make or break your small business’s success. If you fail to keep track of your store’s inventory, you may end up with a surplus of products that are difficult to sell. Quickbooks can help you manage your store’s inventory, however.

Desktop and Online Versions Available

You can choose from either the desktop or online version of Quickbooks. Known as Quickbooks Desktop and Quickbooks Online, respectively, they both allow you to easily keep track of all your small business’s revenue and expenses. Quickbooks Desktop, however, is more versatile in terms of features, whereas Quickbooks Online uses cloud technology to ensure a higher level of accessibility. Regardless, you can choose from either the desktop or online version of Quickbooks.

Improves Efficiency

Because of all these features, as well as other features, Quickbooks can improve the efficiency at which your small business operates. You’ll spend less time managing your business’s finances, and as a result, you can focus on tasks directly associated with your small business’s operations.

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Does your business have one or more employees on payroll? If so, you’ll need to compensate them for their labor. Intuit’s popular accounting software, Quickbooks, features a built-in payroll system. Using Quickbooks, you can easily create and send paychecks to your business’s employees. With that said, you may need to edit paychecks before sending them.

Editing Paychecks That Haven’t Been Submitted to Intuit

Assuming you haven’t submitted a paycheck to Intuit yet, you can edit it simply by clicking the “Back” button. Quickbooks’s Payroll Full Service allows you to make changes to your employees’ paychecks before you submit them to Intuit. Just click the “Back” button on the paycheck screen, at which point you can edit the fields.

Editing Paychecks That Have Already Been Submitted to Intuit

If you already submitted a paycheck to Intuit, you can still edit it — you’ll just need to perform a few additional steps. For Payroll Full Service, select “Workers” under the left-hand navigation menu and choose “Employees.” Next, find the employee’s name for whom you are creating the paycheck and click “Paycheck list.” You can then proceed to delete the paycheck, after which you recreate a new paycheck with the correct information.

The Basics of Creating Paychecks in Quickbooks Desktop

Creating paychecks in Quickbooks Desktop is a quick and easy process. Not to be confused with Quickbooks Online, Quickbooks Desktop lives up to its namesake by featuring a localized installation, meaning it’s installed and executed on your computer’s storage drive rather than over the internet.

To create a paycheck in Quickbooks Desktop, pull up the employee for whom you want to create it. Next, access the “Pay Employees tab.” From here, you can click “Create Paychecks” to open the paycheck creation window, followed by starting a scheduled payroll or an unscheduled payroll. After double-checking to ensure the information is correct, you can save and close the window to finish the process.

You can also edit paycheck numbers in Quickbooks. This is done by going back to the main home screen and clicking Banking > Use Register. Next, select the account associated with the paycheck. After opening the paycheck, you should see “Check Number” field, which you can edit to change the paycheck number.

In Conclusion

As your business grows, you may need to hire employees to accommodate its newfound success. Employees are the lifeblood that fuel a successful business’s operations. With that said, it’s important to stay on top of your business’s payroll when hiring and managing employees.

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Quickbooks offer seamless email integration so that you can receive copies of invoices, bills and other accounting reports via email. Once configured, Quickbooks will send these reports to your email account where you can easily access them at a later date. First, however, you’ll need to configure your email preferences in Quickbooks to take advantage of this feature.

How to Set Up Quickbooks for Outlook

If you use Microsoft Outlook as your email client, you’ll need to configure Quickbooks to use it. Start by logging in to Quickbooks and once on the home screen, choose “Edit,” followed by “Preferences.” Next, click the “Send Forms” link in the main menu, followed by “My Preferences.” From here, you should be able to select “Outlook” as your default email client. Click “OK” to save and complete the process.

How to Set Up Quickbooks for Webmail

You can configure Quickbooks to use webmail in just a few easy steps as well. If you prefer webmail over Outlook, go back to the Quickbooks home screen and click “Edit,” followed by “Preferences.” Next, click “Send Forms,” after which you can choose “Web Mail” and “Add.” You’ll then be asked to select your webmail provider from a drop-down list of available options. After selecting your webmail provider, you’ll need to enter your email address.

Assuming your webmail is secure, you should tick the option for “Use Enhanced Security.” This option will create a secured tunnel to protect your data from exposure. When finished, click “OK” to save and complete the process.

Troubleshooting Email Problems

You may encounter the following error message when attempting to send emails from Quickbooks to your Outlook account: “QuickBooks is unable to send your email to Outlook.” If this occurs, you’ll need to edit your admin privlidges.

To edit your admin privileges in Quickbooks, you’ll need to locate the Quickbooks.exe file on your computer’s hard drive and view its properties. After locating the file, right-click it and choose “Properties.” From here, you can choose the “Compatibility” tab, followed by unchecking the option for “Run this program as Administrator.” When finished, click “Apply,” followed by “OK.”

The reason for this error message is typically that Quickbooks is set to run in administrator mode. By disabling this option, you shouldn’t encounter the aforementioned error message.

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Does your business allow customers to pay after their product has been delivered or their service has been completed? If so, you should consider setting a due date for invoices. While the popular accounting software Quickbooks automatically sets a due date for invoices, you can specify your own due date in just a few easy steps. So, how do you set a due date for invoices using Quickbooks?

Steps to Setting a ‘Due Date’ for Invoices

To set a due date for invoices using Quickbooks Desktop, fire up the accounting software and choose Lists > Customers & Vendor Profile Lists > Terms List. Next, click the “Terms” drop-down menu in the upper-left corner and select “New.” From here, you can specify a name for the payments terms, after which you’ll need to choose from one of several types of payment terms.

Quickbooks supports several types of payment terms. Standard, for example, is a traditional format in which the customer has a specific number of days to pay his or her invoice, such as seven days or 14 days. You can also elect to offer customers a discount for paying their invoice within a specific number of days.

Another type of payment terms available in Quickbooks is date driven. As the name suggests, date driven requires customers to pay their invoice by a specific day of the month, such as the 1st or the 29th. Like with standard invoices, date-driven invoices support discounts for early payments. You can encourage customers to pay their invoices earlier by offering them a discount. Even if it’s just a 1% discount, it gives customers an incentive to stay on to their bills so that your business isn’t left with a mountain of unpaid invoices.

After specifying the due date for your business’s invoice, click the “OK” button to complete the process.

Of course, you’ll need to record invoice payments after customers make them. In Quickbooks Desktop, this involves clicking “Receiving Payment” from the home screen, followed by the drop-down menu for “Received From.” You can then scroll through the list of customers until you find the one who made the invoice payment. After locating the customer, enter the payment amount in the “Amount received” field. After verifying the date is correct, select the method of payment the customer used to pay the invoice. You can then choose the invoice that the customer paid, followed by “Save & Close.”

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