Using QuickBooks Letters

From time to time, you may need to send a letter to a customer or vendor (or someone on your employee list or other names list), or to another list of people. With QuickBooks Pro and Premier, you can easily add the pertinent QuickBooks data (such as name, address, and balance information) to a letter without having to re-type it.QuickBooks provides a number of business letters focusing on collections, news, and announcements. You can edit these letters as needed to suit your business and style of communication.You must be using QuickBooks Pro or Premier and Microsoft Word 97, 2000, or 2002. The QuickBooks Letters feature is not available in QuickBooks Basic.Preparing Collection LettersIn this example, you'll learn how to prepare a collection letter to send to customers with overdue payments.To prepare a collection letter:

1. From the Company menu, choose Write Letters.
2. If QuickBooks prompts you to find letters, click Copy. QuickBooks will copy the QuickBooks letters from your installation directory to your folder.
   QuickBooks opens the Write Letters wizard.
3. Make sure that "Prepare a Collection Letter" is selected and click Next.
4. When QuickBooks prompts you to choose who you want to write to, make the following selections:
   For number 1, choose Active.
   For number 2, choose Customer.
   For number 3, choose 31 days or more.
5. Click Next.
   QuickBooks displays a list of all active customers with payments 31 days or more past due.
6. Leave the names selected and click Next.
7. When QuickBooks prompts you to choose the letter you want to use, click "Friendly collection" and click Next.
8. In the Name field of the next screen, type your name. In the Title field, type your title.
9. Click Create Letters.
10. If QuickBooks displays a message about missing information, click OK. QuickBooks starts Microsoft Word (if it's not running already) and displays collection letters for the two customers that you selected.
    You can scroll through the Microsoft Word document to see both letters. Notice that QuickBooks entered the customer’s name and title at the end of each letter.
11. Close the Microsoft Word file without saving the letters.
    When you do save letters you've created using QuickBooks Letters, don't save them to the QuickBooks Letters folder. The QuickBooks Letters folder should only be used to store the original QuickBooks Letters installed with the QuickBooks software program.
    To print the letters, you would choose Print from the Microsoft Word File menu.
12. Return to QuickBooks.