As a business owner, time is one of your most valuable assets.
And at the end of the week, the last thing you want to get caught up doing is a whole bunch of journal entries!
And when it comes to saving time, one of the easiest and quickest ways to do that is by automating your business, or just implementing regular, recurring entries - that you were going to have to make anyways.
One of those is your sales journal entries.
Creating a recurring sales entry can not only save you from having to click through a whole bunch of different line items that are pretty normal, such as daily sales, and even sales tax withholding, but it also works as a really nice reminder that it's something you need to enter.
To make a recurring sales entry:
1. Click "New"
2. Click "Journal Entry" under "Other"
Hint: you can create a sales journal entry from a sales entry you've already created. You can do that by clicking into the search bar at the top right and look for the entry you created, then follow the rest of the process.
3. Add in the accounts you'll be updating. Typical items would include:
-
- Sales - food
- Sales - non-food
- Sales Tax withholdings
If the categories that are available in the accounts don't necessarily match up with the types of numbers that can help you make better decisions looking at your financials, or it's not making sense to your CPA, you may want to customize your chart of accounts.
4) In the bottom of the entry, click "Make Recurring"
5) Add a name for the template
6) Selected the "Type," either scheduled or unscheduled. If the numbers (not the template) changes daily, then it would make sense to keep the transaction unscheduled.
7) Adjust the frequency of how often it needs to be created whether it's daily, weekly, or monthly.
8) Save the template
Access the sales template:
- Go to the Gear icon in the top right.
- Select "Recurring Transactions" from "Lists
- Find the correct template from the list.
- Select "Use" in the far right.
- The sales entry will populate and you can conveniently enter the numbers
Although it may not seem like something this simple can save a lot of time, imagine if it saved you 5 minutes. That's a half an hour a week. Or 26 hours a year. That's like getting half of a work week back!
