Manually entering GST items

For most operations of quickbooks, it attempts to calculate the GST amounts automatically.  This works for most cases, however, when we receive products overseas, it does not work out well.

The reason, is because we will usually receive the GST amounts in a separate bill from the shipping company.  With this, there is no real way to manually enter the GST amounts.

The reason why we need this is because the GST amount could vary depending on the value that Canada Border Services Agency decides that our shipment is worth.  If we receive a $100 bill from UPS after receiving our goods, it could very well composed in the following fashion:

GST : $50

Duties: $30

Brokerage fees (and GST on brokerage fees): $20

This is just a fake example, but it demonstrates that if you try to manually add a standalone GST item, QB gives you a warning that you may be filing GST incorrectly, and should use the File GST feature.  I end up using a general journal entry.

I figure you can probably just ignore this warning and it would probably still work, but it doesn't give me a lot of confidence.

Automatic Depreciation

I was kind of surprised that QB did not seem to handle automatic depreciation of assets, or allow you to enter some sort of schedule of depreciation.

The suggested solution, seems to be to use the Fixed Asset List to manually record your depreciated amount each year.  While this works, it seems a bit primitive, and it seems like it would be the perfect place to add some sort of method for entering, for example, a yearly percentage of depreciation, and have quickbooks automatically calculate the amounts, and make the entries for you.