how and where do I post credit card sales total for the day

From your user name, I guess you are in the food service industry, correct?

Your setup and procedures will depend on how much detail you want to track, and your reporting needs.

Here is my streamlined approach to using QuickBooks for restaurant/food establishments:

I start with a simple chart of accounts and edit/add detail when needed.

_Post your Daily Sales using the figures from your register reports and cc settlement reports. (see below)

_Post your purchases to Cost of Goods Sold.

_Periodically (annually, quarterly, or monthly), do an inventory adjustment to reflect current value on hand.

For a restaurant/food service business, I do not suggest that you track individual items or costs in QuickBooks. It would be extremely cumbersome.

This method is streamlined and will give you good tracking for your business - with numbers that your accountant will be able to use for taxes. . . and a good overview of your business activity for evaluating and setting future goals.

Periodically, you will need to do some calculations to help you with pricing, but, for the most part, your bookkeeping should be simple enough that you can move on to the business at hand, which is serving your customers!!

___________Daily Sales Procedure: _______________

If you can get good end-of-day reports from your register/POS system, I would suggest creating a Daily Sales Summary to post the totals from your z-out tape.

Use one item for total sales (or multiple, if you want the detail in QuickBooks) - use Sales Income as the account.

Create Other charge type items for the various sales tax collected (pointing all to a liability account called Sales tax payable). Make sure that your file preferences say that you 'don't collect sales tax' because you won't use the internal sales tax platform that QuickBooks provides.

Also, create payment type items for the totals on your settlement summary report from your credit card machine, pointing them to where they go in 'real life'.

This is just a general overview. You will need to develop a system that works best for you.

I hope this helps,

Laura D