QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Sales & Customers

With the Sales & Customers preferences section, shown in Figure 6-10, you can control how QuickBooks handles the sales you make to your customers, whether it be the shipping method you choose, tracking reimbursed expenses as income, or simply finding out that you've created a duplicate invoice number. Here's a guide to the Sales & Customers preferences, all of which only QuickBooks administrators can change.

Figure 6-10. Preferences in the Sales & Customers section affect the information that appears on invoices, as well as the accounts to which QuickBooks assigns income. If you want to return the preferences in a section to the default settings that QuickBooks applies when you install the software, click Default.

• Usual Shipping Method. If you negotiate a sweet deal with a shipping company and use it whenever possible, choose that company in the Usual Shipping Method drop-down list. When you do so, QuickBooks fills in sales form Ship Via fields with this shipping method. If the method you want to use isn't on the list, choose to open the New Shipping Method dialog box.

• Usual FOB. FOB stands for Free on Board and represents the location at which the customer becomes responsible for the products you ship. For example, suppose you ship products from your warehouse in Severance, CO and you use Severance as your FOB location. As soon as your shipments leave Severance, ...