Preferred Retail Systems

One of the most significant time saving features of  RMS is QuickBooks integration. It is really quite simple, but very powerful. The hard part is getting it set up correctly, then it is a three step process to keep your books ups to the minute accurate:

1. Post your batches from Manager

2. Review the resulting Journal Entry in QuickBooks

3. Deposit the funds into your Bank Account

Here is a little more background information about how this all works:

Don’t get overly anxious about moving data between QuickBooks and RMS. It is actually quite straightforward and generally does two things. First, RMS will post your daily sales activities, including Cost of Goods Sold and Inventory adjustments, into QuickBooks. This will appear as a journal entry that corresponds with a specific batch number. A batch is created each time your run a “Z” report in RMS. And second, it will post your closed Purchase Orders into QuickBooks as a Bill from which you can pay your vendors.

To get started on the right foot, it is important to be disciplined and consistent in your daily closings. Unless you enjoy spending endless hours reconciling your bank statement, always do the following closing steps at the end of each day.

1. Enter Closing Amounts from your Register

2. Do a “Z” Report

3. Post your days EDC Batch

The rest of your daily routine can be accomplished at any time, such as once per week, but do not fail to do these three daily tasks or you will pull your hair out reconciling your bank statement. 

The setup itself starts with importing your QB information into RMS. In order to do so you must select QuickBooks 2003 on the Accounting tab of your configuration file while in manager, then go to Utilities > QuickBooks Import. Open QuickBooks with Administrator rights and then select the categories you desire to import. While doing so, chant this Mantra “Suppliers Always, Customers Sometimes, but Inventory Never!”

Do not now, or ever after import your Inventory items from QuickBooks into RMS. I mention in the future, because form time to time you may need to update supplier information in RMS by importing again. The reason is that RMS and QuickBooks must agree upon which supplier to post closed Purchase Orders. If you fail to do this, you will get an error while posting your daily batches. If you insist on entering suppliers directly into RMS, ensure that the Supplier is spelled exactly the same as the supplier in QuickBooks, “Always”.

Your customers are usually going to originate in RMS, unless you have been tracking them in QuickBooks (not likely as it is quite cumbersome). So if you wish to import your customers during your initial setup, this might be a good idea “Sometimes”.

But inventory is “Never” going to be imported into RMS from QuickBooks.

Think of your inventory items as the Holy Grail of RMS. You cannot sale an item unless it first exists in RMS and nearly all of the advanced inventory management features such as Matrix’s rely on an inventory list that is pure and undefiled!

Now that the two programs are married, you must decide who gets to keep what in combining households. Or in accounting terms, you must map the QB Accounts to the RMS functions so they can happily co-exist.

It is at this point that you may wish to consider marriage counseling, because you will need to sort our how you wish to report various daily activities. Without getting too complicated, your choices surround how you choose to report daily sales. You can choose to post them with or without taxes, combined or in separate tender types, and several other variables.

Furthermore, you must choose an account or accounts for discrepancies that occur due to rounding, cashier errors, refunds, and other activities associated with POS functions. And finally, you will need to create two new QB accounts that RMS requires, even though similar account exists in QuickBooks.

I hope to soon get a few screen shoots that will show you a common method of mapping your QuickBooks accounts. Realize that during your initial QuickBooks setup, you may have named these accounts different than shown.

Upon completing this task you can now proceed to the testing phase of your setup. DO NOT fail to test these settings before you get batch happy and post a bunch of errors into your QuickBooks journal. Although, if you are concerned about breaking your RMS or QuickBooks installation by doing this, relax. The only thing you are doing is creating journal entries which can easily be deleted or better yet adjusted to match what actually happened.

Now to the good stuff… with the setup complete, we are ready to actually do your end of day closing including all of your daily accounting, as advertised in about 5 minutes (per store lane or register). Follow along and feel free to time the items (once you know what you are doing):

1. Enter your closing amounts at the POS> (F5 Key)> Closing Amounts and be sure to enter all of the tender types you have in your drawer. Time – 2:00 minute

2. Run a “Z” Report at the POS>(F5 Key)>Z Report and grab the tape to attach to the Daily Register Analysis. Time – 15 Seconds

3. Open Manager and go to Utilities>EDC Batch and settle your Credit Cards. Time – 15 Seconds

4. In Manager on the Utilities Menu, Run the Daily Register Analysis Report. Time – 15 Seconds

5. In Manager > Journal> Post Closed Batches, post closed batch. Time – 15 Seconds

6. Open QuickBooks>Find>Journal Entries. Located the batch number and ensure it is correct then close. Time 30 – Seconds

7. In QuickBooks>Banking>Deposits, select the correct undeposited funds and deposit into your bank account. Time – 30 Seconds.