Bookkeeping All-In-One For Dummies

Chapter 2

Counting Your Sales

In This Chapter

Taking in cash

Discovering the ins and outs of store credit

Managing discounts for best results

Staying on top of returns and allowances

Monitoring payments due and dealing with bad debt

Every business loves to take in money, and that means you, the bookkeeper or accountant, have a lot to do to make sure sales are properly tracked and recorded in the books. In addition to recording the sales themselves, you must track customer accounts, discounts offered to customers, and customer returns and allowances.

If the company sells products on store credit, you have to carefully monitor customer accounts in Accounts Receivable, including monitoring whether customers pay on time and alerting the sales team if customers are behind on their bills and future purchases on credit need to be denied. Some customers never pay, and in that case, you must adjust the books to reflect nonpayment as a bad debt.

This chapter reviews the basic responsibilities ...