For this: "I want to know if it is possible to have a memo"
Memos are Text entered into transactions. You seem to want to be informed, such as a Pop up.
"similar to the “This transaction is more than 90 days old. Are you sure you want to proceed?” that pops up on specific vendors, customers, employees on payroll, or specific payroll items that will remind us to follow up on additional steps that either need followed up on or that are out of the ordinary for them."
You can set preferences for this for New Entries, when you backdate or post-date that new transaction. it is a quality control check that I didn't make a Typo for Date. The setting is in Preference. You can set a Credit Limit for the customer to help Warn the user that this New invoice will put their open AR over your limit. You can change Deadbeats to 0 credit limit, to prevent further sales until they Pay Up. That is a Pop Up.
Example 1: As long as you are in the US, for QB desktop: For Vendors, you are entering the purchase info, so you don't have Sales Tax on a Purchase. You have the Total Cost you Paid. If you paid sales tax when you bought it, there is no use tax necessary; you paid it as part of the Total Cost to you; you don't break it out. If you bought, for instance, Wholesale inventory and use some internally, it is not at the point of the purchase entry, to handle Use Tax. It is an entry when you Remove it from inventory, to enter that you owe use tax for internal use of something bought "for retail." We don't have a taxable or not Status in Purchase transactions. In QB for Canada, you are supposed to select what applied for the various tax and reporting requirements, for purchase entries.
Example 2: Customer PO is already a provided field, it can be added to Forms, added to the Customer Center Transactions List (right click, choose Customize Columns). yes, other info can be included. No, this is not Word Processing. Look at the top of the Estimate, SO or Invoice or Sales Receipt to see the paperclip; attach Contracts, Specification sheets, MSDS, Drawing files, etc to this QB transaction. When you Email from QB, you optionally can have it include these attachments to this transaction you are emailing and add other attachments to that outgoing message.
Multiple "Jobs" you didn't state if that is tracked, sort of as Subcustomer = Job Names, in QB. Or, just Different Estimates, Sales Orders, and Invoicing various things and over time for various needs.
Smith and Main House
Smith and Guest House
Or, WalMart = Customer, the Job Name is the various Locations you deliver to and sell to and show on Invoices, to the Parent Company.
Example 3: You would use Payroll Items, and Service items for Job tracking. The Payroll item, for instance, might be "Hourly Pay." You might have a Standard base wage = put that into Employee Defaults, so that all new employees added to this file get that starting wage. That same One Item is used for all Hourly employees, because you put Their Rate in their Payroll Setup when you edit their name and put that item for them. It is unusual to have Payroll Item per Job Duty, but a restaurant might need to have multiple Hourly Pay Payroll items, named, for instance, Bartender vs BusBoy, for purposes of Worker Comp tracking and to show the employee is paid $15 as bartender and $12 as Busboy and sometimes does both Jobs. You might have a Davis/Bacon or DCAA "hourly wage" item, for instance.
"on Multiple Jobs" is why you would use the Additional Cross-reference of Service item. For instance, my laborer might be paid $15 an hour, but I want to use Estimates, Timesheets, and in Payroll, QB will Job Track and Allocate the costs to the jobs, and in the timesheet, I get to use the Service item: the Laborer did landscaping or roofing or framing or other specific task tracking. The Payroll item is the Additional cross-reference. You don't rely on Item description if you need Notes; use the Timesheet function. It has Notes. Such as :
Laborer timesheet or single activity view, for this past Monday, worked on Smith Main House, as Landscaping Labor, and that was 4 hours, and the note = "Rained during lunch, site too muddy to finish today." Or, Drafting staff notes: "Per client meeting, the Gazebo was increased" and later, the client refuses to pay for the larger gazebo, but that is Documented for the date they Signed off on it.
"on things we need to follow up on with that specific employee such as giving us a date when they start accruing PTO,"
Set it up in Employee Defaults per your Employee Handbook; assign that specifically in Edit Employee. Example:
All employees get 20 hours of sick pay, but not until their 90-day probation and for their Hire date, not Calendar year. So that is 20 hours, for Anniversary date, and "year Begins On" and "date to start accruing."
or if they have tool deductions & when the deduction will end."
As a Billable entry, the timesheet task Notes optionally can be passed to the Invoice or sales receipt, up to 4,095 characters of alpha-numeric text.
"and then run a bunch of reports before we did anything."
Always run your reports. Everything is in the relational database.
"Hopefully there is a simple solution"
You asked about Purchase, Sales, Tracking, Payroll and Settings. There also is Reminders and To Do Notes (similar to what you show), and even Customer Notes Tab. There is no Simple Solution when you want a dozen or more Functions. They are all there and set up and used and reported on.
For knowing about what exists and is Past Due, you use Reminder List (which is controlled by your Preference settings), and you run reports such as AR Aging Summary and Collections Reports, you can open and use the various parts of the Income Tracker and the Bill Tracker, including the Overdue tab, and you can view Company menu > Snapshots, Customers tab, or Pay Bills to see unpaid AP. You get to customize the left side shortcuts bar that is Account balances, add your own reporting to the Favorites tab, customize and memorize reports in Groups in the Memorized Reports list, etc. Make these things that are important to your users, convenient to them.
It's like when I teach QB and Payroll. I can pay 25 hourly people in about 20 minutes. But in the very beginning, I spent 2-3 hours setting up that file for the Employee info, taxes, W4, retirement offerings, Sick and Vacation counters, etc. Once that is Set up, payroll is a Snap.
