QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Sales & Customers

With the Sales & Customers preferences category, shown in Figure 23-12, you can control how QuickBooks handles the sales you make to your customers, including the shipping method you use, tracking reimbursed expenses as income, and notifying you out that you’ve created a duplicate invoice number.

Figure 23-12. Preferences in the Sales & Customers category affect the information that appears on invoices, as well as the account to which QuickBooks assigns reimbursable expenses.

The My Preferences tab has one set of options that tell the program what to do about outstanding billable time and expenses. Here’s what each option does:

• Prompt for time/costs to add. If you typically bill for time and expenses, select this option. That way, the “Choose Billable Time and Costs” dialog box (Figure 10-14, page 275) opens automatically when you create an invoice for a customer who has outstanding billable time charges or expenses.

• Don’t add any. Select this option if you rarely have time or expenses to invoice and don’t want to see the “Choose Billable Time and Costs” dialog box or receive a reminder that outstanding time and expenses exist.

• Ask what to do. This option merely adds an additional step to what the “Prompt for time/costs to add” option does. You have to tell QuickBooks whether or not to open the “Choose Billable Time and Costs” dialog box. Selecting the “Prompt for time/costs ...