Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Quickbooks and Merchant Fees?

[peachtreewebworks]

For those of you using Quickbooks, whats the best way you've found to enter sales receipts accounting for your discount rate on your merchant account?

The only way I've found in documentation is to enter the sales receipts, leave the money in the "Ungrouped Deposits" and then make a deposit and add a line for Discount Rate with a negative amount.

Any better way? Especially if your merchant bank deducts the fees on each deposit before it enters your account.

Thanks!

[Zach]

Curious about this myself.

Thanks
Zach

[EzHost]

Our account may be setup a bit different since our full gross amount of a sale is deposited into our account...and then at the end of the month our discount rate is taken out in one lump sum.

Our discount rate is entered at the end of the month as an expense, since it is an expense of doing business, just like a bank service charge, advertising, etc.

[Jay Suds]

Originally posted by EzHost
Our account may be setup a bit different since our full gross amount of a sale is deposited into our account...and then at the end of the month our discount rate is taken out in one lump sum.

Our discount rate is entered at the end of the month as an expense, since it is an expense of doing business, just like a bank service charge, advertising, etc.

Ditto. If your merchant account currently takes the discount out of each transaction, call them and see if they can do it just once a month - most have no problems doing this

[dandanfirema]

Regardless of how the money is deposited, the actual income should be reported and then the fees subtracted by expense.

[peachtreewebworks]

Originally posted by dandanfirema
Regardless of how the money is deposited, the actual income should be reported and then the fees subtracted by expense.

I definitely agree... just looking for way to this with Quickbooks in one transaction, instead of having to record a sales receipt for $10 lets say, then enter a seperate register entry in the deposit account for the $.40 fee lets say.

[EzHost]

It may be worth just keeping track of your discount rate fees, and just making one entry a month....even if your account is charged as the transaction occurs do you still get a monthly statement that gives an itemization of all the monthly fees?

[SonServer]

I use QB with the Chase merchant account and the online billing. I have credit card, PayPal, and check deposits that are all getting deposited to the same account.

I just go ahead and let QB enter the full deposit not worrying about the discount fees but being careful to not lump deposits of different kinds of payments together. When making the deposits in QB, it helps out later if you change the memo field to "Credit Card", "PayPal", "Check" etc. according to where the deposit came from. When I have my bank and Chase statements, I reconcile my bank account.

During the reconcile, I take the bank statement and look at the date of the last Chase deposit. I mark every "Credit Card" deposit before that date as cleared. I then do the same with PayPal deposits.

I then continue as normal clearing the debits and credits that were from checks that show on the bank statement.

Provided there are no errors, when done, my reconciliation is off by an amount that is the amount of the discount fees, PayPal fees, and merchant monthly fee. I let QB make an "adjustment" and it enters that in the register. I then open the register and change the account that the adjustment was enterd to as an expense: "Merchant Fees" (or whatever account you set up for that).

This is not too scientific but I've not yet had a problem with doing it that way. After a few months, I got a feel for about what the total amount of the fees should be. If the adjustment is out of the normal range, then I go look for an error somewhere.

You do have to make sure that you allow for your QB register and your actual bank balance being off by that adjustment amount at the end of the month. If your normal total merchant fees are around $40, just be sure to keep at least more than that showing in your QB register and you will be fine.

Hope that helps.

[peachtreewebworks]

Seems like a lot of "little work" to be done, but it makes sense. I may just end up doing it that way as well.

Thanks!