Hi there heatherbookkeep,
It's important that all your transactions are entered correctly for your books to be well-balanced. QuickBooks online is a great tool able to help you create and send invoices to your customers so they can pay you for your services. I can provide some information about invoices.
One way that you could do this, and personalize the tax being calculated on the negative amount would be to create a service similar to a service fee by using these steps, and then add it as a line item to the transaction with a negative amount. You will need to add a tax code to the line, either one that will remove tax, such as GST, PST or HST, or you can add one that doesn't remove tax such as Out of Scope, Zero-Rated, or Exempt.
If you're adding a tax code such as GST, HST or PST, Depending on if your Amounts (located just above the line items of the invoice) are Inclusive or Exclusive of tax, there will be a difference.
- If your items are inclusive of tax, then you'll need to manually calculate the percentage wanted on the total of the rest of the invoice after tax, then enter that amount in the line, but as a negative number.
- If your items are exclusive of tax, then you'll need to manually calculate based off the total of the invoice before tax.
If you're not wanting to take off tax, then you'll either choose to have it be Exempt, Zero-Rated, or Out of Scope. To know which of these three tax codes to use, I recommend speaking to your accountant. They'll be able to guide in which of these three codes is more appropriate to use to make sure your books are well-balanced. You can invite your accountant to your QuickBooks Online account by clicking on the My Accountant tab. There's also an option to find an accountant near you in that section by clicking on the Find a Pro to help button.
If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.
