How to Create & Send Sales Receipts in QuickBooks Online

In this tutorial, we’re going to cover how to setup and send Sales Receipts in QuickBooks Online. Let’s begin!

You can watch the video above and follow along with your own QuickBooks Online account. Don’t have one? Sign up for a free 30-day trial.

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What is a Sales Receipt?

A sales receipt is a document that provides customers with a detailed description of the products or services that they have purchased from you.  If you receive a payment from a customer at the time of sale, then you would create a sales receipt in QuickBooks to record both the sale and payment.

When a sales receipt is created in QuickBooks, the accounts and financial statements are affected as follows:

Below you will find a sample of a completed QuickBooks Online sales receipt for our fictitious company, Paul’s Plumbing.

Why Should I Create a Sales Receipt in QuickBooks Online?

When you create a sales receipt in QuickBooks, you get two benefits:

1. Your financial statements are updated in real-time to reflect the change in your income and bank account balances.   
2. You can email sales receipts to your customers directly from QuickBooks so that your customers have a detailed record of the products and services that they purchased from you.

How Do I Create a Sales Receipt in QuickBooks Online?

Step 1 – Navigate to Create Sales receipt

From the Home page, below the Customers column, select Sales Receipt as indicated below.

Step 2 – Create Sales Receipt

The Sales receipt form should display on your screen. The fields that should be completed are as follows:

1. Customer Name – Select the customer’s name from the drop down.
   TIP: If you have not set up the customer info yet, you can do so by clicking on the drop down arrow, scroll up to the top of the list and select Add New. A new window will open up that will allow you to enter your customer’s information.  Once you have done this, you can click save and finish your sales receipt.
   
   
2. Customer email address – This info will automatically populate from the customer profile. If you did not enter the email address in the customer profile, then this field will be blank.
   TIP: You can enter the email address directly in this field and it will automatically update the customer profile.
   
   
3. Billing address – This info will automatically populate from the customer profile.  If you did not enter the billing address in the customer profile, then this field will be blank.
   TIP: You can enter the billing address directly in this field but it will not automatically update the customer profile. You will have to go back to the customer profile and enter this information for it to auto-populate going forward.
   
   
4. Sales receipt date – This is the date of the sale.
   TIP: Typically QuickBooks will default to today’s date. If you are creating the sales receipt sometime after the date that you made the sale, then you will need to change this date.
5. Payment method – Select the payment method from the drop down list.  The options are check, cash or credit card.  If you have an Intuit payments account, select credit card for the payment method, and enter your customer’s credit card information. Once you save the sales receipt, QuickBooks will process the credit card payment. A message will display on the screen to inform you whether the credit card payment was accepted or declined.
6. Reference no. – Enter the check # here if the payment method was a check.  If not, you can enter any info here that will help you reference the payment later on.
7. Deposit to – Select the bank account that you will deposit this payment to from the drop down.
8. Product/Service – Select each product or service from the drop down list.
   TIP: If you have not set up the products and services info yet, you can do so by clicking on the drop down arrow, scroll up to the top of the list and select Add New. A new window will open up that will allow you to enter your product or service information. Once you have done this, you can click save and finish your sales receipt.
9. Description – This field will auto-populate based on the product or service you selected above. However, you can customize this description by typing directly in this field.
   TIP: Any custom description that you enter on this sales receipt will not update the description for the product and service.  If you want to this description to auto-populate when this product/service is selected then you need to update the products and services info.
10. Qty – If applicable, enter the quantity for each product or service.
11. Rate – This field will auto-populate based on the rate you set up for the product/service selected. If you did not set up a rate, then you can enter it directly on this form.
    TIP: Any rate that you enter on this sales receipt will not update the rate for the product or service. If you want to this rate to auto-populate when this product or service is selected, then you need to update the products and services info.
12. Amount – QuickBooks will automatically multiply the quantity and the rate columns to calculate the amount.
13. To delete an item, just click the trash can symbol in this column.

Step 3 – Preview Sales Receipt

Once you have completed all of the necessary fields, you can do a print preview to see what the sales receipt will look like. Just click the Print or Preview button at the bottom of the screen.  Below is a sample sales receipt for our fictitious company, Paul’s Plumbing.

Step 4 – Send Sales Receipt to Customer in QuickBooks Online

After you are satisfied with the sales receipt, you can either print it out and mail it to your customer, or you can email it directly from QuickBooks.

To email the sales receipt directly from QuickBooks, just click on the drop down arrow to the right of the Save and close button and select Save and send.

The following should display on your screen along with a preview of the sales receipt.

The receipt contains three items:

1. Email: This is the email address that is saved in the customer profile.
2. Subject: This is the sales receipt # that was assigned by QuickBooks and your company name.  You can edit this information directly on this screen.
3. Body: This is the information that will appear in the body of the email that your customer receives. You can edit this information directly on this screen.  

The sales receipt will be attached to the email as a PDF document.  Once you have made your changes, select the Save to send queue and close button as indicated below.

TIP: Be sure to check your email delivery settings before sending emails to your customers.  We covered this in the how to set up sales form content tutorial.

Wrap Up

That wraps up How to Create & Send Sales Receipts in QuickBooks Online. In our next tutorial, we will show you How to Write and Print Checks, when to write a check, and the impact this will have on your financial statements.

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