How can I track credit card fees in quickbooks easily?

[drnick5]

Hey folks,

I've made a few posts a while back about credit cards and fees.. I've been searching around to try and find some sort of magic bullet to do what I need it to do... and its boggling my mind that there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution. I'm hoping someone might have an answer for me, although im quickly losing hope.

As all of you know, credit cards are a necessity. You have to accept them these days. the biggest pain in the ass here.. are the fees. not just paying them, but tracking them. if someone pays you $100. You don't get the entire $100 since a percentage is taken out in credit card fees.

someone posted this in a reply to a thread I had:
http://www.technibble.com/forums/showpost.php?p=340062&postcount=7

it shows how to track the fees in quickbooks, and from what I can see, is the correct way to do it... what bothers me is having to do this manually for EACH and EVERY credit card transaction. We just launched our MSP offering a few months ago and are signing up customers for re occurring payments on their credit card. my problem is as we continue to add clients... it adds a considerable amount of work to go in to each transaction and add in a line item for a credit card fee. What happens when I have 100 MSP clients? how about 1000? this will waste hours and hours of my time each and every month when I should be focusing on doing actual work.

We recently started migrating to Mhelpdesk, which looks like a great solution for tracking tickets and clients. It has a few options for integrated payments (paypal, authorize.net) and also has quickbooks integration. The problem is I don't see anywhere that it will record the fee for you. I'll still have to go into QB and enter in a line item for the CC fee.

Does anyone have any way of automating this?

Right now we are using a demo of intuit payment solutions inside quickbooks pro for our credit card processing... the one thing I REALLY like about this... is it takes the payment and tracks the fees automatically! Finally! The answer I've been looking for! however... there is no way to get those payments to automatically go into mhelpdesk (from what I understand, Mhelpdesk can "push" to Quickbooks, but it can't "pull" from it). So now I have to decide whats more important... having mhelpdesk track all my payments and wasting hours putting in the fees manually... or have quickbooks handle everything on the payment side, then go into mhelpdesk and manually track the payments (but NOT push them to quickbooks, as they are already in there).

There has to be a better way, right?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Why would you want to track the fees in mHelpDesk? I don't follow the need. Credit card fees are a cost of doing business just like the lights, cell phone bills and other expenses.

 

[drnick5]

Yes, credit card fees are a cost of doing business.... however, unlike a cell phone plan or or rent, the fees are variable depending on a TON of factors. (Credit card type, weather it was swiped or keyed in or paid online, etc.)

I don't need mhelpdesk to track the fees itself...but I do need the fees recorded in quickbooks somehow. From what I understand, when a payment is taken in Mhelpdesk, it will record the payment in full (if someone pays you $100, it will create the invoice for $100 and mark it paid in quickbooks) the issue comes with the credit card fees, since I actually didn't receive $100. (I might have received $97.60 or some odd amount) I need a way to track that to keep my books straight... just wondering how everyone else handles this.

In the link I provided in my original post, the poster suggests putting a line item for the credit card fee in each transaction. this just seems to be a very tedious process. On some days I could have 20-30 transactions. And on the day a reoccurring payment is run for my service plans, I could have 100 or more!

One way I thought of, would be to take the fees in one lump some every week, or every month or some other regular basis.....but the problem with this method is that if I sell something, and then its returned a week later. I have absolutely no idea what the credit card fee was for that 1 transaction. So my books will now be forever off. (unless i'm missing something)

Just looking for ideas on how others handle this.. since I'm pretty sure a lot of people operate with Mhelpdesk and Quickbooks and also take credit cards. A lot of people have suggested square, but since it has no integration with Mhelpdesk, and also doesn't do automatic Re-occurring payments, its not an option for me.

 

[Mindfulness]

I kind of skimmed quickly, so i may not be addressing your question. Once a month we get a statement from intuit. We then just enter the total fees paid that month(shown on the statement) as a business expense. The books are even and we just track the cc charges like any other expense (like the lights)

 

[MotzTech]

One way I thought of, would be to take the fees in one lump some every week, or every month or some other regular basis.....but the problem with this method is that if I sell something, and then its returned a week later. I have absolutely no idea what the credit card fee was for that 1 transaction. So my books will now be forever off. (unless i'm missing something)

Perhaps I'm just tired, but I don't understand what the problem is here. You still pay the transaction fee even if they return something don't you? I don't sell a lot of hardware so I have rarely have returns. The way I process it is if it's a $100 charge, I enter the payment as the full amount, and then enter a debit for the fee. The credit card fee is not attached to the customer account or invoice in any way.

 

[TenYardFight]

It really helps if your processing company gives you 100% of your funds daily, then takes all your fees at the end of the month. Mine does.

 

[Frick]

The way most CPAs would do this is to setup the credit card merchant as a bank account in Quickbooks. It makes sense as the money is first deposited at the merchant. The funds are then transferred to your bank.

You then track the merchant fees either in the merchant bank account or in your business bank account, depending on how/where/when your merchant processor collects them.

 

[Rocco]

Even if you get a return, you still had a transaction, and a transaction fee. You don't get that back.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Perhaps I'm just tired, but I don't understand what the problem is here. You still pay the transaction fee even if they return something don't you? I don't sell a lot of hardware so I have rarely have returns. The way I process it is if it's a $100 charge, I enter the payment as the full amount, and then enter a debit for the fee. The credit card fee is not attached to the customer account or invoice in any way.

Ditto. Guys' making it more of a problem then it is.

 

[drpcfix]

Agreed - the fees at the end of the month go in expenses, book keeper handles that for you.

It's part of reconciling and only takes an hour a month.

 

[AlaDes]

This is the way mine does it as well. The way I keep track of the actual cc transaction is ny entering in the confirmation number off of the receipt into pcrt's generic cc payment option.

 

[pceinc]

Our merchant processor also pays the full amount and debits for the fees at the end of the month. It would be a nightmare to track it any other way.

If you are using QB for invoicing the process should go something like this.
Invoice created AR on customer account.
Received payment clears AR on customer account.
Payment is recorded in Undeposited Funds.
You use Make Deposits feature in QB to get payments from Undeposited Funds to your Bank Account.
You basically make the Deposit match the EFT's from your merchant processor.

When you receive your monthly statement use the check feature to record the expense of the merchant fees.

 

[twincountycomputers]

It really helps if your processing company gives you 100% of your funds daily, then takes all your fees at the end of the month. Mine does.

exactely, any processor worth doing business will give you 100% every day and take their share out at the end of the month. If they don't I wouldn't touch them.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

My merchant would keep fees out of every transaction and that was a nightmare to handle so we switched merchant accounts to someone who deposited 100% of each transaction and then debited our account at the end of each month for the total monthly fees. This second way was simple to handle at bank rec time as we just entered it as another bank service charge -Visa.