How do I account for discounts, shipping, and taxes when I split a transaction?

I know a way how to split transactions in QuickBooks Online (QBO), tgordon21.

When it comes to splitting taxes for shipping charges and discounts, I'd suggest consulting your accountant about this one. They'll provide you details on how to best handle this one in QBO and what specific account you need to apply when splitting the transactions.

Once you have the details, you can follow the steps below to split the transactions on your register: 

1. Go to Transactions, then select Chart of accounts.
2. Find the account for the transaction.
3. Under the Action column, click View register.
4. Choose the transaction, then tap Edit. The entry screen for that particular transaction opens.
5. Enter the other accounts to add to the amount. The amounts for each account should add up to the total amount of the transaction.
6. Press Save. The transaction now displays Split in the account column.

Another way to split a transaction between accounts is to go to the For review tab. Let me guide you on how:

1. Go to the Transactions tab and select Bank Transactions.
2. In the For review tab, tap on the downloaded transaction to expand the view.
3. Hit on the Split (Accountant view) or Split transaction (Business view) option, which will open the Split transaction window.
4. Once you've selected the split option, you'll see fields where you can enter the amount for each account.
5. Enter the appropriate amounts for each account you want to split the transaction between.
6. Double-check to ensure that the total split amounts match the original transaction amount.
7. Provide all the information before you press  Apply and confirm. 

You can check out this article for the detailed steps for downloading transactions, categorizing them, dealing with common issues like duplicates, and handling personal transactions made through business accounts: Categorize online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online. Additionally, ensure your transactions align accurately with your bank statements by reviewing this article: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online. 

If you need further assistance with splitting your transactions or any QuickBooks-related, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here to help every step of the way. You have a good one.

Thank you for the reply. I do know how to split a transaction, I guess my question is more about accounting rather than the software. When there’s a transaction that needs to be split, but there are parts of the transaction that apply to all purchased items (IE discounts, shipping, etc) how do I account for those when splitting the transaction? My guess is to either split them evenly among the different items, or do my best to figure out how much would apply to each item and split accordingly. But I’m not sure if that’s correct.

@tgordon21 

Pretty sure @RCV is an AI-generated response given how it had essentially nothing to do with your question. 

Forgive me if you know some/most of this already but, when you put an item on an invoice, the income accounts that are hit are based on the income account you selected when you set up the inventory/non-inventory/service items.  So, when you put the two peripherals and the two other items on an invoice, QB will record those amounts to the income accounts selected on the item set-up screen for each.  

You mentioned 'Operational Supplies'.  Are you referring to income or expense?  Operational Supplies is generally an expense account and that is recorded when you purchase those items on a bill or expense transaction, not an invoice.  

Sales tax should correctly calculate based on the items on the invoice and will be recorded to your sales tax payable liability account on your balance sheet.  There's nothing you should need to do manually with that.

As far as discounts, you can just use the discount field on an invoice (discount percent or value).  

For shipping, create a service item called "Shipping" or whatever you want to call it, select the income account you want that to book to and add the shipping as a separate line item on your invoice.    

Thanks, that actually makes sense. I was wondering why the response was only semi-related.

I apologize, I wasn't very clear in my original post. It actually wasn't an invoice, the transactions were part of a purchase I made, so it was all expenses. I'm trying to remember back to the one accounting class I took in college for a lot of these accounting rules, and it's all a little hazy at this point.