Artisan POS contains a number of accounting functions, but is not a complete accounting system by itself. Instead, Artisan works together with external accounting software like QuickBooks.
Before you can export accounting data, you must configure Artisan’s External Accounting Package Settings to map to your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts. If you’re already familiar with your Chart of Accounts, this process should take about an hour.
NOTE: This article assumes you already have a QuickBooks Company File and Chart of Accounts created. If not, please read this tutorial from QuickBooks first, then this one. We’ll go over some examples below of how to set up accounts in QuickBooks and Artisan, though we recommend reading the above articles first.
For most of the accounting package settings in Artisan, you’ll have to fill in the exact account name or number of a corresponding account in the Chart of Accounts for your external accounting program. If an appropriate account doesn’t already exist in your Chart of Accounts, you’ll have to create a new one, and then fill in that name or number in Artisan.
Be sure to pick (or create) accounts of the correct type (Income, Expense, Asset, etc.), as listed in the detailed description of each Artisan configuration field.
To help you understand how some of the accounts are used, let’s look at the progression of funds related to purchased inventory. In the typical sequence, you start by writing a check for received merchandise (or entering a bill to be paid later), based on a vendor invoice. The amount of this check (or bill) should be for the cost of the received inventory (plus any “freight in” shipping cost or other surcharges, which we’ll ignore for now).
It is very important that you expense these checks or bills to the appropriate Inventory Asset account (and Shipping Cost, if you separate it out), not Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), as you may have been accustomed. Artisan itself will create the transaction to transfer the Inventory Asset amount to COGS when the inventory is sold.
Note – An inventory purchase is not considered an expense at the point of entering a bill or writing a check; it only becomes an expense when you sell the merchandise. Then it becomes Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), a special expense account.