Cost of Good Sold applied to Specific Invoice

Welcome to QuickBooks Community, rbouchard.

Thanks for partnering with us in running your business and managing your finances. I’m here to lend a hand in recording this transaction.

Which specific version of QuickBooks are you using? If you’ve subscribed to QuickBooks Online, you need to find the deposit and link it to the invoice.

To look for the deposit:

1. Go to Accounting from the left menu, then choose Chart of Accounts.
2. Find the account you deposited the payment to, then select View Register (or Account History).
3. Locate and pick the correct deposit.
4. Click Edit.
5. From the Received From column, choose the customer's name.
6. In the Account column, pick Accounts Receivable.
7. Click Save and close.

To link the deposit:

1. Go to the Plus icon (+) at the top, then Receive Payment.
2. Choose the Customer's name.
3. The screen will now show both the invoice and the deposit (you may need to scroll down to see both).
4. Put a check in the boxes next to the correct invoice and deposit.
5. Mark the Amount Received as zero.
6. Update the Payment date.
7. Click Save and close.

Meanwhile, if you’re using QuickBooks Desktop, you need to manually delete the deposit. Then use the Receive Payment functionality to mark the invoice as paid and attach the check payment.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Lists at the top menu bar, then choose Chart of Accounts.
2. Find and click the account you deposited the payment to.
3. Locate and double-click the deposit.
4. Press Ctrl+D on your keyboard, and select Ok in the Delete Transaction prompt.

To receive the payment:

1. Choose Customers, then Customer Center.
2. Pick the Customer (the Recycling vendor) you need, then open the invoice you’ve created.
3. Click the Receive Payments button.
4. Enter the check information and choose Save and Close.

That’s it! Just refer to the steps above depending on the version of QuickBooks you’re using and you’ll be able to record the transaction in no time.

In case you’re using QuickBooks Online, you can check out this link for some helpful tutorials:

QuickBooks Online Tutorials

Meanwhile, you can check out this link for QuickBooks Desktop user guides:

Access QuickBooks user manuals and installation guides

Please update me as to how things go. I’m here to keep helping.

not really, and it is not very practical either

I doubt you do a job, and immediately sell the scrap

you most likely accumulate scrap until you have a load worth taking and scrap value hopefully goes up. how many jobs all that scrap comes from and what weight is from each job, would be a nightmare to keep track of.

you sell the scrap,. create an income account called scrap sales and post it to that account, then you can at least see the overall income from scrap

On the contrary, we load several tractor trailer loads of scrap metal per day, often for several weeks depending on the size and scope of the structure we're demolishing. 

The scrap companies pay weekly so we usually have multiple checks from them to deposit, usually totaling several thousand dollars to attribute to each demolition job.

So yeah, it's extremely practical to factor sale of recyclables back into individual job costing. 

In addition to that, when we estimate cost on structures/jobs containing a lot of metal, we factor the sale of scrap metal into our price. I'd like to track that per job and compare to our estimating and make sure we're not losing money.

Thank you for your reply! I will experiment with this and see if it resolves my issue.

It is not the first time we have seen Vendor and Customer mixed for a scrap operation.

You Buy from a Vendor, and on the details of this purchase, you would Job Track that this is specifically going to be sold to a customer, if you already know this. Or, Update it later to note that direct connection.

The Buyer is your Customer. If you marked the purchase as Directly Billable, use the Add Time & Costs button to select it.

Then you can run Job Profit reporting. Make your items two-sided, and you also have Item Profit.

One way to accomplish what you want is to use a journal entry for the scrap yard check.  

Go to + and then select journal entry under the Other section.

On the first line debit the checking account (or undeposited funds if you need to group the check with other checks) for the total check amount Under the Name column put the Scrap Yard Name and credit "Scrap Income"

Credit the amount that should be income attributed to the demo job - just make sure that you put the customer/job name under the name column.  If only part of the check is attributable to the job, then add a 2nd Scrap Income line and optionally attribute that to a 2nd demo customer or just leave the name blank if it is not linked to a job.

Using a JE just bypassed what is being asked for. You don't use a JE for anything when names will be listed, and you cannot list Products/Services there. You also just bypassed sales and purchases. You don't use JE for Banking; you already have Banking Transactions (check expense, deposit, transfer, bill payment, etc). So, making a JE defeats everything here, and a JE is hardly used in QB. Remember that you cannot list Quantity there, either.

The point of the Real Banking transaction is that it tracks as a Purchase with that Payee Name, and then all the split detail lines would provide for listing product, service, and even accounts, and the provision here is for Customer/project names, and also controlling billable or not.

The mistake for scrap yards is often a confusion over Customer and Vendor. This person Sold to a customer; we all Sell to Customers. Yes, that person might also be a Vendor Name. You need to have them set up as each type of name and activity; and you Honor that they are different and use the appropriate name on the specific transaction.

You Sell to a Customer Name.

You Buy goods and services from a Vendor Name.

And a JE bypasses everything you need for Sales Reports to work, and you just bypassed requirements for Sales Tax reporting and management.

So, No JE.

This might work for you.  

On the Make deposits screen

Received from  - put in the name of the customer job you want this $$ reflected against

From Account - Scrap sales (or whatever you are calling the scrap income account)

Memo - Here you can manually type in eg "check from XYZ Scrap for sale of scrap metal"

Check # - per item

Payment method - check

Amount - $$ received

I don't do job costing but did in the past, so this may work for you.

I see this was a year ago but is not marked solved, was on top of the list of open questions I see.  Are you still waiting for a better of different answer?  I agree you need to use a project  (QB job). The project is where you want the cost and revenue in order to be able to see profit per project.

I assume you want project to be total cost incurred on the project, offset/reduced by scrap sold. Then to have project revenue plus scrap income minus those cost to show you profit on project. Then for future be able to estimate the scrap income based on previous experience on projects.

I would have to ask how are you billing customer?  Do you want them to see the credit for the scrap or are those amounts only for internal management and accounting/budget information?