Bad debt: How to write one off in QuickBooks

This is one of the questions I see often on the QuickBooks Live Community forum:
(Please note, you can only write off a bad debt if you do your books on an accrual basis, if you use cash basis, you cannot use this method)

How do I write off an invoice that I will never collect? 

1. Go to customer>receive payment.
2. Click on the invoice you want to write off. Do not enter an amount at the top.
3. Select the discount button on the bottom right and use the bad debt expense as the discount acct.
4. Enter the amt you are writing off, save and close. 

(You can click on any of the photos above to see a larger view)

Lynda
Check out my website www.artesanibookkeeping.com

What is a QBWIN.log file?

So, what is a QBWIN.log file?  What is this file used for?

Have you ever received the dreaded message from QuickBooks that something is wrong with your data file and you need to rebuild it?  Now, I am curious and want to see what is wrong.  Here is how you do it:

• Open QuickBooks
• Click F2.
• While in the Product information window, Click Control button and 2 and open the Tech help window (this is what they would tell you to do if you call Tech Support). 
• On the Tech support help window, select the tab that says Open File.
• Scroll down to the QBWIN.log file, hightlight it and click open file.
• Now scroll down to the very bottom of this report and look at the last entry.  You should see the "error" listed there.  This will give you information on which transaction has the problem with it.
• Delete and re-enter this transaction and this should correct your error.  If it is not a transactional entry but a duplicate list entry, you may need to rename the duplicate entry to correct the error by merging the two list entries together.

Here are a couple of screen shots to show the above screens:

And if all else fails, you can send the file to Intuit's tech support for them to analyze and correct (fees will apply).

Lynda

Check out my website www.artesanibookkeeping.com