Home   .   Products   .   News   .   Articles   .   Downloads   .   Forums   .   Info Directory   .
    Articles Home   .   Contact   .   E-mail Us!    

Entering Quantities in the Memo Field of Your Transactions, for ManagePLUS

Information Update: ManagePLUS, mentioned in this article, is still available only for QuickBooks but no longer available for Quicken. At the time the article was originally written, ManagePLUS was available for both.

Quicken gives you no easy way to record physical quantities. QuickBooks versions 3 and later let you enter quantities for your transactions, but sometimes that requires an "extra" step (entering a Cash Sales Receipt). ManagePLUS overcomes these limitations, and gives you lots of flexibility--plus some special features--for recording physical quantities in your Quicken or QuickBooks transactions.


How To Enter Quantities Using QuickBooks Items

Entering quantities for Income requires that you set up Items (in the QuickBooks Item list) for each commodity you sell, such as Corn, Soybeans, or Feeder Cattle.

Then to actually record income, you enter an Invoice or a Cash Sales Receipt and specify the Item you're selling and the quantity. And, if you don't want received checks to appear in the checkbook register until you actually deposit them, you'll need to hold them as Undeposited Funds until you prepare a deposit entry.

Recording quantities for Expense items is easier, because it can be done right in the Checks window, simply by clicking on the Items tab. (You have to turn on the Inventory and Purchase Orders feature in Preferences before the Items tab will appear.) Still, before entering quantities you must set up an Item in the Items list for any type of item you purchase.


How To Enter Quantities Using the Memo Field (and ManagePLUS)
(with Quicken or QuickBooks)

QuickBooks Users Note:

ManagePLUS supplements QuickBooks' quantity recording abilities, it does not replace them! You may record quantities using any mix of QuickBooks or ManagePLUS features. ManagePLUS will never override any quantity entry you've made in QuickBooks. But if no quantity is defined for a transaction, then ManagePLUS will attempt to "read" a quantity entry from the Memo field as described below.

ManagePLUS lets you enter a physical quantity for any transaction by way of the Memo field. In Quickbooks this is particularly useful for income transactions, because it lets you record quantities directly in the Deposits window without taking the step of preparing an Invoice or Cash Sales Receipt.

To record a quantity for a transaction, simply enter a number (or algebraic expression) in the Memo field followed by a blank space. Here are two examples of Memo field quantity entries (highlighted in green) in QuickBooks:

Note that you may type anything in the Memo field following the number or algebraic expression. A unit name such as "bu." or "cwt." makes the Memo more descriptive, as shown above, but is completely optional. The only requirement is that you follow any number or algebraic expression with a blank space before typing anything else in the Memo field.

"What if I want to start my Memo field with a number, but don't want ManagePLUS to use the number as a quantity?"

Here are two possibilities:

  1. If you put a blank space at the beginning of the Memo field ManagePLUS won't try to "read" a quantity from it.

  2. (QuickBooks users.) If you're entering a quantity for the transaction, such as in the Qty field of an Invoice or Cash Sales Receipt, it doesn't matter what you type in the Memo field. ManagePLUS will never extract a quantity from the Memo field for transactions that have a quantity entered by QuickBooks.


Can I Enter Two Quantities?

Livestock producers, especially, often need to associate two physical quantities with their transactions: the weight of animals sold and the number of head sold. ManagePLUS does allow you to enter two quantities for any transaction. And its reports provide additional statistics based on dual quantities (such as total weight, total number of head, weight per head, price per pound, total dollars per head, etc.).


What About Errors?

It's possible to type something in the Memo field that ManagePLUS cannot recognize as a number. For example, "83a4" begins like a number but contains a letter.

ManagePLUS automatically checks Memo field quantity entries for errors when it imports your transactions from Quicken or QuickBooks. If errors are found, ManagePLUS notifies you and highlights the transactions containing them so you can easily find and fix them.


Permitted uses of this copyrighted material:  This article may be copied and distributed for educational or commercial purposes so long as all of these requirements are met:  (1) This article may not be distributed in whole or in part in a machine- readable form (for example, as a computer file or over a network or Internet connection). (2) The article must be distributed in its entirety and not condensed or abridged. (3) The copyright notice which appears at the bottom of this page must be included on every distributed copy of the article and must be clearly readable. (4) No fee of any kind may ever be charged for this article or for any larger volume of which it is a part. However, this article may be distributed as handout material at a meeting or conference for which attendees have paid a fee, so long as no separate fee is charged for this article or any larger volume of which it is a part. (5) All other uses require express written permission from Flagship Technologies, Inc.

Essentially, these requirements mean you may distribute printed copies of  this article, so long as each copy clearly bears our copyright notice and no fee is ever charged for such copies.

 Top 
 Home 


Trademarks & Copyright © 1995-2013 Flagship Technologies, Inc.
Email: info@goflagship.com  ·  Privacy policy