One Way to Record Barter Transactions in Quickbooks
I found a link to a site that offers free Quickbooks advice. It had this to say about recording a barter transaction.
Recording of Barter ExchangesIf you have customers who are also vendors you may decide to trade some or all of your services / products in exchange for payment.
To record such a barter transaction, invoice the customer for the goods provided or services performed as you normally would. To record the “payment” use the “Receive Payment” function to apply the barter amount against the invoice the same as you would when receiving cash or a check as follows:
Go to Customers: Receive Payment. Payment Amount will be the barter amount (the amount of the invoice you received from your vendor). Pmt. Method will be Barter. Check the radio button for “Group with other undeposited funds”. Save this transaction.
Go to Banking: Make Deposits. The payment you just received will come up in the Payments to Deposit screen. If there are also other payments to deposit, make sure you select only the payment(s) being recorded for the barter exchange. When you hit OK the Make Deposits screen will come up with the barter deposit(s) showing. Before recording the deposit make a negative deposit entry on the next blank line below the barter deposit for the amount of the barter as follows:
Deposit To is your normal operating checking account. Date is the date you would have normally paid your vendors invoice. Memo should be changed from Deposit to Barter.
If you have entered the vendors invoice as a bill for payment, Received From is the vendor name and From Account is Accounts Payable.
If you have not entered the vendors invoice as a bill for payment, leave Received From blank. In the From Account column select the expense account you would charge the vendors invoice to, the same as if you were entering it for payment. In the Memo column note the vendors invoice number.
In the Amount column enter the vendors invoice amount with a negative sign first. This negative amount should exactly offset the deposit amount above, resulting in a “Zero” deposit transaction. Save the “deposit” and the transaction is complete.
The site has a lot of other great Quickbooks tips. Check it out at http://www.seoaccounting.com/quickbookstips1.php#7
That is insane. I have been using Quickbooks for over 10 years. Just go into Quickbooks, Account set up. Set up an account named Barter, or if you are a member of multiple Barter Exchanges, set up an account for each one, and name it for the exchange it is. Then when you invoice or receive the payment, or “make the deposit” you make it into this account. It never goes near your cash account ledger. Doing it the way the article says is not only a pain to do, but it is just asking for trouble.
Thanks, but when you say “set up an Account” what kind of account do you assign the Barter account to? It can’t be a Bank account. Thanks
Ignore every piece of the article above and visit this site for a simplified version of how to record a bartered transaction: http://topnotchbookkeeping.com/2012/03/bartering-and-how-to-enter-in-quickbooks/