June 2020 News & Tips
| NEWS |
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SAGE 50 |
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EXCEL |
| 2nd Qtr 941 Reporting Changes |
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Use price levels to allow different prices for different types of customers. |
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Learn how to group rows or columns to easily switch between showing or hiding details. |
News
941 Changes:
Because of all of the new COVID-19 related legislation some 2nd quarter tax forms will have changes.The Form 941 will have many new fields in order to accommodate for the new legislation. A draft of the proposed form is available on the IRS website, as well as an updated set of instructions. Note: The final form is not yet available at the time I am writing this.
Sage and Aatrix are currently researching what information can be populated on the form and what information you may need to manually enter through reporting. Once the form and instructions have been finalized, Sage will post announcement to the related Sage City product forums. If your business has taken advantage of any of the credits or loans offered through the new legislation, it would be a good idea to have a conversation with your CPA about how they will affect your quarterly tax filing.
Sage continues to make related resourced available online at Coronavirus (COVID-19) Advice and Support.
Steve Collins
IQ Accounting Solutions LLC
918-851-9713
scollins@iqaccountingsolutions.com
www.iqaccountingsolutions.com
Sage 50/Peachtree Tip - Using Price Levels
If you charge different prices depending on the type of customer, you can make use of Sage 50’s price levels so that the right price will be automatically supplied when entering a quote, sales order, or invoice. It works by:
- Setting up price levels in Inventory Item Defaults
- Entering prices for each item in Maintain Inventory Items
- Assigning customers to price levels in Maintain Customers.
To set up your price levels, go to the Maintain menu; choose Default Information, then Inventory Items. Click on the Price Levels tab. Here you can name and activate up to 5 price levels for Sage 50 Pro or 10 price levels for Premium and Quantum. By default the price levels are simply numbered, but you can give them names such as Retail and Wholesale or Gold, Silver, and Bronze to make them more meaningful to you. If you don’t need all of the price levels, you can uncheck the Enabled box to prevent someone from adding prices to an unused level. If you want to set up a pricing formula that all items in this price level will use, you can do that by clicking the Edit button that is on the far right. I’ll cover the details for price formulas another time. But it is important to know that the formulas will only be used when you tell Sage 50/Peachtree to recalculate prices. They do not provide you with dynamic pricing that updates instantly when costs change.
Now that you have set up your price levels, you need to add pricing information to your inventory items or services. Go to the Maintain menu and choose Inventory Items. Select an item and click the button that is next to the Price Level field. Now enter the appropriate price for this item on each price level. You can also set up a pricing formula that is unique to this item by clicking the Edit button to the right. Again, price calculation formulas will be discussed another time.
If you prefer a spreadsheet style screen for entering prices instead of selecting each item individually, you can use Maintain – Item Prices instead of Maintain – Inventory Items.
The final step is to assign customers to price levels. Simply go to Maintain – Customers. Select a customer, and then click on the Sales Info tab. In the Pricing Level field select the appropriate choice from the list. All customers get assigned to Price Level 1 when they are first set up so you will only need to change customers that should use a different price level.
Now when you enter an invoice, sales order or quote the correct price level will automatically be applied. But you still have the option of selecting the price from a different price level or manually entering a new price for an item. Also note that when converting a quote or sales order, the pricing will be transferred to the invoice as it was entered on the quote or sales order, regardless of price levels.
Excel Tip - Hiding Columns or Rows vs Grouping
You probably know that you can hide columns or rows in an Excel spreadsheet simply by selecting one or more rows or columns (for simplicity, I'll only talk about rows, but everything here applies to columns also), then right-clicking and choosing Hide. You can unhide them by selecting a range of rows that includes the hidden rows, right click, and choose Unhide. This is very useful if you have information in your spreadsheet that you don't want to display but is needed for other calculations. I also see people hiding rows temporarily when they don't want to see all of the detail. That works fine if you only want to view the spreadsheet like that occasionally. But if you routinely want to choose between hiding or showing certain rows you can use the Group command.
Start by selecting the rows you want to be able to hide, then click on the Data tab. On the right end of the ribbon, in the Outline section, is the Group button. Click it and a line will appear next to the selected rows in the margin and a "-" button will appear in the next row down (presumable where those rows are totaled or summarized). Click the - button and rows will be rolled up, or hidden, and the - button changes to +. Click the + button to expand the section again or unhide the rows. If you have inserted several groups you can use the 1 and 2 buttons at the top to expand or collapse all of them at the same time. You can have groups within groups so you can show/hide multiple levels of detail. To undo your grouping, select the rows again and click the Ungroup button.
At the bottom of the Group button, is a down arrow that gives you the Auto Outline option. When you choose this option, Excel will examine your worksheet and automatically insert groups anywhere that it sees a total.
If you like that option, you should also read this previous tip on automatically inserting subtotals and grand totals.
If you know other Sage 50/Peachtree users, do them (and me) a favor and pass this along to them. If you are someone that this has been passed on to, and would like to be added to my email list, you can subscribe for free at
www.iqaccountingsolutions.com/signup.html or send me an email at
newsletter@iqaccountingsolutions.com. If you need to change your email address or would like to unsubscribe, you can use the links at the end of this email.
Steve Collins
IQ Accounting Solutions LLC
918-851-9713
10611 E 17th Place
Tulsa, OK 74128
