QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Applying Finance Charges

If you’ve tried everything but some customers still won’t pay, you can resort to finance charges. Finance charges usually don’t cover the cost of keeping after the slackers, but QuickBooks at least minimizes the time you spend on this vexing task.

Customers tend to get cranky if you spring finance charges on them without warning. So spend some time up front determining your payment policies: what interest rate you’ll charge, what constitutes “late,” and so on. Include these terms in the contracts your customers sign and on the sales forms you send. Then, after you configure QuickBooks with your finance-charge settings, a few clicks is all you’ll need to add those penalties to customer accounts.

Finance Charge Preferences

Before you apply finance charges, you need to tell QuickBooks how steep your finance charges are, when they kick in, and a few other details. The Preferences dialog box’s Finance Charge section (Edit→Preferences→Finance Charge) is where all these settings reside. Because your finance-charge policies should apply to all your customers, these preferences appear on the Company Preferences tab, which means only a QuickBooks administrator can change them. To learn how to set finance charge preferences, see Finance Charge.

Assessing Finance Charges on Overdue Balances

QuickBooks creates finance-charge invoices for customers tardy enough to warrant late fees, but you don’t have to print or send these invoices. Instead, assess finance charges just before ...