Quickbooks Solutions

  Great bookkeeping is all about   working efficiently , accurately, and swiftly.  A majority of this depends on the ease of access to transactions and the software provided.  QuickBooks is the prefer software for a majority of small businesses, but not all of the QuickBooks' products are the same.  Take QuickBooks Online for instance.  Is provides great benefits such as online access and multiple device interfacing but it doesn't provide great bookkeeping functionality.  As bookkeepers, m ost of our group discussions about crappy software tend to gravitate towards QB Online. Here are a few of the topics that seem to pop up again and again.   Financial And General Reporting Nothing is better than showing a client a handful of  financials reports  and discussing the ebb and flow of the numbers between them.  Nothing is worse than having to hit the back or forward buttons in Chrome or FireFox over and over again to get to and from those reports during a monthly review.  As  virtu

  Once our online store became successful, we searched for a more sophisticated   shopping cart   that would work better with QuickBooks and provide customers more of a big-company feel than our simple   PayPal Standard   hosted cart. At first, finding a shopping cart with better QuickBooks integration seemed like a priority because importing and reconciling individual shopping cart transactions had become such a chore. Unfortunately, none of the QuickBooks integrated shopping carts or add-on software tools we tested seemed right for our business. We always found one or more serious weaknesses when it came to back-end features, customer experience or cost. I related my frustration to our CPA, who suggested a much simpler way to bring our online sales data into QuickBooks. His approach allowed us to choose a new shopping cart based on its features and support, without much regard to QuickBooks integration. We chose a shopping cart called  Ecommerce Templates  - which we still use and li

  I ran into an interesting problem the other day with one of my clients. I ended up getting asomewhat distressed phone call from her asking me why she couldn't print her checks anymore. I asked if she was able to print anything from her computer to which she immediately responded "I can print everything else but I just can't print checks from QuickBooks!"    The first thought that went through my head was that she might be doing something wrong in her process of printing checks, but I soon found out this was farther from the truth After some brief googling I found other users from all different versions (Starting in 2006 to my current problem with QuickBooks 2014) that have experienced this same problem. Either way it's an issue that doesn't rear it's ugly head often as I haven't seen it in over 100 clients in these past 4 years. But, without further ado, here's the easiest way to manually fix the problem. Step 1.  Close QuickBooks Step 2 . We nee

  Creating a digital bookkeeping system right from the beginning is a step that we highly recommend.  Paper is becoming irrelevant and reducing it in your work place can increase efficiency.  Below are a few reasons that you may want to create a digital bookkeeping system in QuickBooks.  Go Digital On Day 1  Invoicing -  It really doesn't make sense to do anything but digital invoicing.  If you send all invoices through email they have a higher chance of getting seen.  Additionally you will not be wasting time by mailing it and waiting for the snail mail to arrive at your customers' offices.   Your clients' will thank you for emailing invoices since you will be helping them create a digital bookkeeping environment on their end.  Many services exist like  Intuit Payment Network , which allows for invoices to be paid directly online.  Other popular options include  Stripe  for online payments as well as  FreshBooks .  Handling all of your invoicing digitally will decrease the

  Any small business owner knows the pains that come from having little to no money in the bank.  Cash flow issues can cripple a small business overnight and ultimately shut the doors if not monitored properly.  We have encountered many cash flow nightmares over the years and hopefully these 3 pointers can help other small businesses avoid some of the disasters we have worked through recently.   Only Cleared Checks Are Entered Not entering checks as they are written poses a big problem for cash flow.  Reconciling your books on a daily or weekly basis is a powerful thing to do.  You are able to see what you bank balance is as of the last closing day and then you know what the balance would be if all outstanding checks cleared that day.  For instance, your bank balance may be $8,500 but outstanding checks may total $9,000.   This would bring the bank account negative, checks would bounce, and bank fees would pile up.  Entering checks as they clear doesn't capture the expense when it

  Having recently become a father for the third time I wondered what small business lessons can I learn from my 3 kids. Can the actions of my kids be a lesson to me, my clients and you as a small business owner? This will be the final installment to our family. I feel that trilogies are usually a pretty solid bet. Back to the Future, Matrix, Ocean’s 11, 12, 13, and the Bourne series were all great Trilogies. Indiana Jones I think is an honorable mention because to me it ended with the Last Crusade. The next one was 19 years later and doesn’t count. Star Wars is definitely at the top of the list of Trilogies. Currently set to complete the Trilogy of Trilogies - 9 great movies. That said I don’t want 9 kids, but I am happy with the three we have. Our little trilogy has taught me some valuable lessons in the world of small business. Ask My second child is a boy name Elijah, we call him Eli or sometimes Monster. He has recently caught on fire with a curiosity to learn about whatever comes

  When it comes to QuickBooks, you can eliminate the odds that you and/or your staff will make the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Booby Trap defined: noun - a thing designed to catch the unwary, in particular. Etymology: The Spanish word bobo translates to stupid, daft, naïve, simple, fool, idiot, one who is easily tricked. Your QuickBooks accounting system may be set up to make a fool or a booby out of you and/or your staff. Get it organized to get you the information (financial reports) that you can need and can depend on. Remember Kiss (Keep it simple stupid). The first place to look for booby-traps that will create input errors over and over is in the QuickBooks Chart of Accounts. Go to your Chart of Accounts and sort it first by type. The accounts will list out logically as if you were looking at a Balance Sheet followed by accounts found on the Profit & Loss Statement. These are the types, and the order in which they will sort: Current assets (Banks, Receivables, e

  'What are undeposited funds?' is a very common question for users of QuickBooks.   The short answer is, undeposited funds are funds that have been recieved by the company from the customer and not yet been deposited into your bank. To further clarify, QuickBooks follows a set of accounting activities called a flow.  The following examples will better illustrate.  Analogy #1 Your company, Acme Super-Hero Cape Cleaning provides a service to your customer. Upon completion of the service you hand the customer a bill or invoice and they give you with a check or cash. Suppose this happens at your office. You then stamp the back of the check, For deposit only to Acme Superhero Cape Cleaning Services checking account 9876543 Of course you enter the payment into QuickBooks right away. However you have more capes to clean and will not be going to the bank now. In fact you will likely be receiving many payments today and can’t possibly go to the bank after each payment. So, you put the

  Just because a business is small doesn’t mean it’s simple. All human endeavors get complicated over time. QuickBooks gives you a structure and a container to keep all the information organized and easy to find. But there is a caveat: garbage in=garbage out. So it is important to think about information regarding your business a little before you start loading it. QuickBooks thinks in terms of lists and interactions between those lists. The interactions are called transactions. QuickBooks makes lists of the interactions too. They are called registers. And to help us think about lists of interactions, QuickBooks classifies those transactions into different categories. Those categories can have sub categories, because things get complicated First let's look at the various lists available to you under the Lists Menu Customers – a built in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system Not all businesses keep track of every customer, but lots of them do. Every time you enter a new uniq

  How do you put together your QuickBooks estimates? Are you putting down your costs on a napkin or the back of an envelope? Maybe you have stuff in a word document, and you just go in and replace the old customer name with the new one. Then you change the date, adjust your numbers up or down a little depending on how the last job went, and print. Or maybe you use spreadsheets. You have lists of your typical services, the products you use often, you have your assistants and a list of the pieces of equipment you might need and you deftly assemble it all into one coherent list of anticipated expenses. You add your hoped for profit and a pinch for good luck. And you hope you haven’t left off anything. Then the job starts. Are you invoicing weekly, monthly, or only at the end of the job? After all that hard work, and you have invoiced your customer, how’d you do? Did you make as much as you had hoped? IF you ran over budget, do you know why? Did you bill for all the costs associated with t

  There are some really powerful ways to customize your QuickBooks profit and loss. I see a lot of business owners run a standard profit and loss and race to the bottom of the report to look at net income. When they see a positive number they are thrilled thinking to themselves (or sometimes out loud): "we made money!" While it may be true that you turned a profit you are really missing out on some in depth and powerful ways to analyze your profit and loss. Today I'm going to dish and give you the goods on your QuickBooks profit and loss. Understand Cash vs Accrual First, of all you need to understand the  difference between cash and accrual basis accounting . I know that accounting mumbo jumbo can be painful for a lot of people so I will keep this as simple as possible. I think the article I referenced does a great job explaining it. When using cash basis accounting income and expenses are recognized when you receive or pay out money. When using accrual basis accounting