Account&See Invoicing and Accounting
Non Printing Products
So, firstly, why would you ever need to use a non-printing product? The next few examples will show you the incredible accounting power of these special types of products.Mail Order Companies
By their very nature, mail order companies have one cost that is associated with every single order - the carriage. Whether the carriage is a few stamps purchased from the local post office, an overnight courier service or delivery in your own van. Using just the cost price of a product it is very difficult and time-consuming to calculate the profitability of each individual customer or indeed each individual invoice. Using non-printing products you can track, virtually to the penny, the exact profitability of each invoice and each customer.
Take the following example of two customers.
One customer orders from your mail order stationery business on average three times per week and spend an average $1000 with you each month. The average profit on their invoices runs at $500 per month.
Another customer orders from you twice a month, spending an average $800 a month with an average gross profit of $400.
After twelve months, the first customer's statistics show a total net sales of $12,000 and total profit of $6,000, whilst the second customer shows total net sales of $9,600 and gross profit of $4,800.
With just the products' cost price, you can calculate the gross profit for each customer as in the example above, which indicates that the first customer is a 'better' customer - earning $1,200 a year more from that customer than the second customer in the example.
However, we're now going to show the first use of non-printing products. For every order you supplied to both these customers, an overnight courier was used. You pay $9.95 per delivery - therefore, create a new product called FREEDEL for the free delivery, set the product's cost price to $9.95 and a selling price of $0.00 (as you do not charge for your carriage). Then, uncheck the 'Printable' check box and for every Mail Order Invoice, you can select this product which will add the cost price of $9.95 to each invoice.
Had this product code been entered into all the invoices above, the customer statistics would have been completely different.
The first customer's gross profit for the year came in at $6,000, but an average of three orders a week with a carriage cost of $9.95 per order reduces their gross profit by $1,552.20 which equates to $4447.70
However, the second customer, whose original gross profit was $4,800, only orders twice a month, so only incurring 24 courier deliveries at $9.95 each over the year, which reduces their gross profit to $4,561.20.
With this one simple addition to each invoice, you can instantly see that you actually make more profit from the second company than the, apparently, better customer number one.
For companies that supply mail order goods our dual pricing products may also prove invaluable.
Time Billing
Another use for non-printing products is to account for the cost of labour involved in each job you invoice. For example, if you design web sites for a fixed fee of $500, you can track the time spent on each project using the software's Timer.
When creating the invoice you would have two products - one printable called WEB500 that has a selling price of $500 and a cost of $0, and a second non printable product called LABOUR that has a zero price, but has a cost price of your hourly labour and cost charge - say $50. If you have recorded 5 hours and 12 minutes of time for the creation of the website you would see an invoice with a invoice value of $500, a cost of $260 and a profit of $240.
A further example of using non printing products can be found here. In this example the individual employees' chargeable and salaried hourly rates have been created as non printing products to create both the cost and the net value of the invoice, whilst the printable product has been used to create only the description that appears on a professional fee notice.
These examples should have given you an insight into how, using non-printable products, you can account for all your costs and check the real profitability of each and every invoice you create.