QuickBooks 2009: The Missing Manual

Chapter 4. Setting Up Customers and Jobs

You may be fond of strutting around your sales department proclaiming, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something!” As it turns out, you can quote that tired adage in your accounting department, too. Whether you sell products or services, the first sale to a new customer can initiate a flurry of activity, including creating a new customer in QuickBooks, assigning a job for the work, and the ultimate goal of all this effort—invoicing your customer (sending her a bill for your services and products and how much she owes) to collect some income.

The people who buy what you sell have plenty of nicknames: customers, clients, consumers, patrons, patients, purchasers, donors, members, shoppers, and so on. QuickBooks throws out the thesaurus and applies one term—customer—to every person or organization that buys from you. In QuickBooks, a customer is a record of information about your real-life customer. The program takes the data you enter for customers and fills in invoices and other sales forms with your customers’ names, addresses, payment terms, and other information. If you play it safe and define a credit limit, QuickBooks even reminds you when orders put customers over their limits.

To QuickBooks, a job is a record of a real-life project that you agreed (or perhaps begged) to perform for a customer—remodeling a kitchen, designing an advertising campaign, or tracking down the safety deposit box that matches your customer’s key. Regardless ...