Pick one (or more)

Invoices were once about the only way to record sales, but the choice has expanded. An invoice is used here as the baseline form to describe the recording of sales, and filling in many forms in QuickBooks. About a dozen different means can be used, and one or more is quite likely to be useful for any business. Intuit sells pre-printed forms for Product, Service, and Professional invoices.

Product Invoice This is the baseline XE "product invoice" invoice. The next two types simply display less and print less. All cats are gray in the dark, and the internal record of every invoice is (at least) a product invoice

Service Invoice Service businesses will (hopefully) find the XE "service invoice" Service Invoice fits their needs.

Professional Invoice XE "professional invoice" Professionals, such as attorneys, will find a wide description field, with the omission of quantity and unit price.

Customized Invoice QuickBooks 5 provides XE "customized invoice" fully-customizable forms, with a chapter of their own. Baseline content of invoices is tabulated below. QuickBooks 4 allows custom columns, and selection of fields printed. Earlier versions have less custom capability. Customized invoices will not print onto Intuit’s pre-printed forms, but another small business near you might be eager to supply forms.

Estimates Estimates (QuickBooks Pro) may sell your customers on doing the job, but do not record sales of anything. However, they are the basis of progress invoicing.

Progress Invoicing You can bill for one part of the work quoted in an estimate, and then another, beginning with QuickBooks 5 Pro. This is described in the Chapter 20.

Cash Sale Form If you know it is a cash sale XE "cash sale" , a payment in full is built in. This is a logical choice for this case. However, in QuickBooks 4 and earlier, the customer QuickReport? looks only in Accounts Receivable, and will not find cash sales, unless the report is customized

Cash Sale Invoice Businesses using the original QuickBooks for DOS devised a cash sale invoice, and set it up as a memorized transaction. It is not as convenient to use as the Cash Sale Form, but customer records are in Receivables, an advantage in earlier versions.

Daily Sales Invoice Restaurants (also going back to the DOS days) XE "daily sales invoice" have used this memorized invoice, as a sale to a customer named “Daily Sales.” They often have to break out sales tax and liquor sales, and memorize the format they need.

Statement billing Progressive billing through the month, on one form, is possible with statement billing, beginning with versions 4.0. Invoices are not used. Significant limitations, particularly the exclusion of sales tax, preclude statement billing for some businesses.

Customer register Direct statement billing is done by entry in the customer register (a subset of the Receivables register.)

Make Deposits The Make Deposits window (bank account chapter) works for recording cash income. The income account is required, and entered directly. Customer name is optional. No record is produced for the customer.

Check Register A Bank Account Register can be used to record a cash sale, on the same terms as Make Deposits. A more likely use is for the recording of bank interest.