Lesson 40-- Sales

Goldenseal is accounting software for small businesses that have retail or wholesale sales.

This lesson shows you how to prepare for sales, and how to enter sales transactions.

When to Use Sales Transactions

Use sales transactions for any of the following:

When you sell retail goods.
When you sell wholesale goods.
When you provide services to customers.

Do not use sales transactions for the following:

If you will receive more than one payment for goods or services that cost a relatively large amount. In that case, create a Project account for the item and use a draw schedule or progress payment to handle the project billing.
When you will bill for time and materials. In that case, create a time and materials project for the item.
When you sell an expensive item and you'd like to track job costs for it separately, rather than lumping it in with other work done for the same customer. In that case, create a project for the item and use project billing.

Sales Setup

Before you start making sales, there's some setup you can do that will make them work better. The next six pages cover sales setup.

Cost Items and Assemblies

If you plan to track inventory or you want to have Goldenseal calculate prices automatically for you, create Cost Items for each item that you purchase and sell.

If you charge for services, create Assemblies to calculate the cost of each service item that you provide. Assemblies are also helpful if you do construction work, if you sell items that require some preparation work, if you manufacture or assemble items, if you sell individual items from case lots, or if you give package deals.

Customer Accounts

Create a customer account for each person or business who buys from you. For more about customer accounts, see Lesson 9.

If you don't know all of your customers by name, create one or more customer accounts to handle 'one time' sales, and turn on the Allow One-Time sales option in them.

Delivery Methods

Delivery Methods allow you to set up a delivery or shipping charges for orders of different weight or dollar cost.

To enter delivery methods, choose Income Setup from the Income menu, then choose Delivery Methods from the submenu.

Customer Discounts

If you give discounts to some customers, follow these steps:

Choose Income Setup from the Income menu, then choose Customer Discounts from the submenu.

You'll see a list of customer discounts. To create a new discount, click the New button.

Each customer discount shows a list of item discounts. Enter the discount that you give to this type of customer for each item, then click OK.

If you give different discounts for different items, choose Income Setup from the Income menu, then choose Item Discounts from the submenu. You can enter as many item and customer discounts as you need to handle all the different discounts you offer.

Assign customer discounts in each customer account. Assign item discounts in each cost item or assembly.

Customer Payment Terms

Use Customer Payment Terms to set up billing intervals, due dates, and other details for billed customers.

To enter a set of payment terms, follow these steps:

Choose Payment Terms from the Options menu, then choose Customers from the submenu.
Click the New button.
Enter information about the payment terms.

Payment Methods

The list of payment methods lets you identify forms of payment that you receive. You will use payment methods when entering sales, payment receipts and bank deposits.

To enter payment methods, follow these steps:

Choose Income Setup from the Income menu, then choose Payment Methods from the submenu.
Click the New button.
Enter a name for the payment method.
Enter the type of payment.
If you give a discount for this payment method, fill in the amount.
For foreign currency, fill in the currency values-- what you give to the customer, and what the bank gives to you.
For payment methods that have a transaction fee, fill in the amount and the account that receives payment.
For billed payment methods, fill in the usual payment terms.

When you make a sale that uses a Billed payment method, Goldenseal will add it to Accounts Receivable (see Lesson 42). Sales that use other payment methods are considered as cash sales, which you'll deposit with the Deposit Funds command (see Lesson 44).

Sales Branches

Sales branches allow you to track sales separately for different locations.

To set up a sales branch, follow these steps:

Choose Income Setup from the Income menu, then choose Sales Branches from the submenu.
Click the New button.
Enter information about the sales branch.

When you enter sales, you can assign each transaction to a specific sales branch.

Sales Tax

The Job Sales Tax command sets up the sales tax rates that you charge to customers.

To create a sales tax, follow these steps:

Choose Income Setup from the Income menu, then choose Sales Tax from the submenu.
Click the New button.
Enter the tax agency that collects the payment.
Enter the tax jurisdictions that receive a portion of this sales tax, and the percentage for each.
Enter the way the sales tax amount is rounded.

You will use job sales taxes in estimates, sales, and project billing.

Unknown and One-Time Customers

If you make cash sales to customers that you don't know, follow these steps:

Create a Customer account to handle anonymous customers.
Create a Sale transaction (see page 292), and enter the account from step 1 into the Sold To field.

If you make cash sales to customers that you do know but that aren't regular customers, follow these steps:

Create one or more Customer accounts to handle one-time customers. In the account, turn on the Allow One-Time Names checkbox.
Create a Sale transaction, and enter the account from step 1 into the Sold To field.
Turn on the One-Time checkbox.
Type in the name of the customer.

Sales Transactions

To enter sales transactions, follow these steps:

Choose Sales from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter the sales branch making the sale, and the customer to whom the sale is made.
If you already gave this customer an estimate, enter it.
If the sale is for just one item, enter a brief description. HINT: If the sale is for a specific Cost item, use an Item breakdown. If it includes multiple items, use a Category or Item breakdown.
Fill in the delivery, price and sales tax fields.
Enter the payment method.
If the item will be billed, enter payment terms.
Click the More Info button to enter shipping and billing details for the sale.
To print a sales receipt, choose Print Forms from the File menu.

Sale Breakdowns

You can itemize a sale with a list of multiple items. To do so, enter Category or Items into the Breakdown popup field.

A category breakdown lets you type in the name of each item sold, while an item breakdown shows specific Cost Items or Assemblies.

HINT-- Sales breakdowns are almost identical to the category and item breakdowns in expense transactions.

If you use an Item breakdown, you can use a bar code scanner to enter items by their UPC code. Goldenseal will automatically fill in the item price, warn you about low inventory, adjust inventory quantities, and automatically create a Purchase Order for items that are out of stock.

HINT-- See Lesson 47 for more about inventory tracking.

Viewing Transaction Links

Choose Main Account from the View menu to see more about the customer account.

Choose Payment Transaction from the View menu to see the record of payment for a sale (a payment receipt or a deposit). Choose Deposit Transaction to see the deposit transaction.

If a Sale transaction has an Item breakdown, you can double-click on any non-editable cell to see the Cost Item or Assembly for that row.

Finishing Up

In this lesson you have learned how to enter sales transactions with Goldenseal's point of sale features. You'll now be able to sell anything-- chic hats, pet flamingos, your soul, your DNA.

Speaking of genetic codes, did you know that Goldenseal contains over 6 million lines of code in the C++ programming language? No wonder it took us more than 5 years just to finish the first version.

About half of the code is for the basic human interface-- what you see on the screen, and the way things work in clairvoyant fields, tables and all the other Goldenseal components. The other half of the code handles the data objects and the many details of business accounting.

There's no simple conversion factor between programming code and genetic code, but even the fanciest computer program is still much less complex than something as simple as a fruit fly.

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." -- Groucho Marx