QuickBooks Financial

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! You may be wondering what that has to do with QuickBooks & your company. I’ve thought of a few really important reasons.

There are some great promotions expiring tomorrow! *see below.

This is an excellent time for you to think about what’s important to you & your company. Implement some new company procedures & fine tune existing ones.

Bookkeeping: Do you have a Bookkeeper on staff or work with an outside firm such as our company? Are your financial records accurately managed so that you don’t have to stress over it, so you can focus on running the business?

Is your Payroll provider meeting your needs, handling the tasks they promised, & charging a fair rate?

Merchant Services: this is always a hot topic. If you’re using the QuickBooks (QB) software, does your Merchant Service fully integrate with QB so that you can process transactions directly through your QuickBooks Financial software & QuickBooks Point of Sale? Have you done a rate review to make sure you're paying a competitive rate?

If you haven’t already, how about you put into place an accounting software & a Point of Sale (POS) system?! As a business owner, you must know how your money is spent & what revenue you take in. Implementing the QB computerized accounting system is inexpensive & will quickly pay for itself.
Retailers, are you still handwriting receipts & using a basic cash register? Is your “inventory management” not really managed at all because you simply don’t have the appropriate software?  Or have you implemented a system but the staff is not fully &/or properly trained to use it? Don’t let the frustration continue! Do something good for yourself & your company on Valentine’s Day.

Also, there are usually local events that you can get involved with on Valentine’s Day to show love & encouragement to others. You can check social media sites, web search engines such as Google, your local news, & newspapers for opportunities to help others.

PROMOTIONS EXPIRING 2/14/14
The QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Trade-In Promotion: Current users of QuickBooks Financial Pro & Premier V2011-2013 can trade in their software for QBES. Customers can receive up to 50% off when they upgrade to QBES V14.0. Offer may not be combined with other QBES promotions.

QuickBooks Point of Sale (QBPOS): Customers are eligible for a 20% off MSRP discount when upgrading their current POS Software to V2013.

Q & A with Will English: We have a client who owns a feed and supply retail store. He uses the QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) and the QuickBooks Pro Financial (QBF) accounting software. He was recently trying to merge some vendors in POS and QBF. Read his question and Will’s reply. The client followed his steps and was successful.

Can you give me some advice please? I merged a couple of vendors in QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) and in QuickBooks Financial (QBF). In POS they appear fine, but in QuickBooks the vendors do not appear, however, when I update from POS, duplicates (with a _1) come across. When I try to enter the vendor again, it says it already exists but can't be seen.
Is there a utility to fix a possibly corrupted vendor file?
Everything else looks ok with the transactions. It is the vendor file only that looks like it has issues.

Will’s reply:  I have seen cases where you need to both merge in POS and in QBF.  In POS, bring up the vendor and select merge.  Note that they list the QuickBooks name at the bottom of the merge screen.  Make sure that you then go and merge those same vendors in QBF and let me know if that helps. 
 

As we enter a new year, one topic that should be on the forefront of our minds is tax season. I know it’s not the most exciting thing to talk about right after ringing in the New Year, but it’s a necessity. We’ve seen too many people wait until the last minute to gather their paperwork and work with our Bookkeeper to prepare everything for their Accountant.

When you wait until the last minute, you add undue stress to you, your Bookkeeper and Accountant plus risk the chance of paying penalties. And remember, you are not the only customer that your Bookkeeper and Accountant are working with so they will need ample time to work with each client.

Intuit, the makers of Turbo Tax, has prepared a Tax Preparation Checklist. You may download and print it by clicking HERE. A checklist is an excellent way for you to mark what is applicable and stay on track. This way you don’t miss a step and you will have the necessary information available. Even if you are not the most organized person you should start a file for your taxes and use a checklist.

For a list of key dates, click HERE to read Intuit’s Turbo Tax online guide. Just as they say, “Knowing when and what you have to file can save you a lot of headaches at tax time. To avoid paying penalties, mark your calendar with the following key dates.” Intuit TuboTax

A good Bookkeeper understands how to make proper journal entries and record the day-to-day financial activities of your business. Without good books, your tax professional can’t properly do their job. This will result in more time and money spent.

At EM$, our Bookkeeping services are tailored to fit each client’s needs, whether it’s on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. If you handle your own bookkeeping, you may retain our services as part of your overall tax preparation and planning.

Also, it’s extremely helpful to use a software application such as QuickBooks Financial to manage your daily transactions and manage your books. With features such as expense tracking, income tracking, and tax preparation, along with customer, vendor and employee management, you will manage and organize data easily and save time every day. Plus there are industry-specific editions.

Links to follow for additional helpful information:
https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/all-articles-and-videos/

IRS website: http://www.irs.gov/

We wish you all a joyful and prosperous New Year! As we enter 2014, we are excited to continue serving clients across the nation including Hawaii. With 2013 being our best year ever, we could not have done it without our valued clients and colleagues! We appreciate each of you and hope that you will continue to place your confidence in us.

Remember our Referral Program: For those clients who refer us business that results in billing hours, we will you a $25 Amazon gift card.

All the best,
Will, Sofia and Anita
 

Q&A with Will English.

Question from his colleague: Does anyone have a best practice for handling Vendor Factoring, or when one Vendor in QuickBooks Pro is the Payee, receiving payments from more than one POS Vendor that you want to leave separate?

Will: In QuickBooks Point of Sale (QBPOS) you can have a payee that is different from the vendor. Just enter the payee name under the billing information. The voucher will have the vendor on it, but the bill will be in the payee name.

Q: Which field syncs up with the QuickBooks Pro Vendor Name field?  Can 2 different POS Vendors then sync to one QB Pro Vendor? Thank you!

Will: So, the name in the top is the Voucher Vendor and in the billing is the Payee.  For example, let's say you receive items from Cindy's tops and Bob's Pants. If you put Cindy in the payee field under the bill info, it will send 2 bills with payable to Cindy and will list the voucher numbers, but will not list Cindy or Bob in QuickBooks Financial (QBF).
 

When you purchase the Intuit QuickBooks Online edition, you can purchase the Simple Start, Essential or Plus edition. The Essential comes with 4 users; 3 for you to use and 1 so your accountant can have access to your account.  The Plus comes with up to 5 users with 2 for the accountant's use. If you want to invite your Accountant to have access to your account, follow these simple steps.
All you have to do is login to your QB Online account. 
Go to the Company Tab, then Manage Users. On the bottom half of that page will be a blue button for Invite Accountant. You’ll put in their company information including the accountant’s email address. It’ll prompt you as to what information to enter and where. After you’ve done this, your accountant will get an email confirmation with link so s/he can create a user name & password for their company. If you have additional questions, contact Intuit at 877-683-3280.

Are you looking to implement a software system for your business or update and expand your current one? As a Solution Provider and certified Intuit ProAdvisor Consultant, clients and other Consultants seek the advice of Will English. But what is a Solution Provider and a ProAdvisor Consultant? You may have heard these terms but aren’t sure what they mean or better yet, why this should this be important to you, the consumer. Let’s take a look.

Solution Providers comprehensively handle the project needs of their clients from concept to installation through ongoing support. This normally begins with a discovery call and/or onsite visit to evaluate the client's current infrastructure, business needs and goals, and to determine the hardware and software required to meet project goals. From there, orders are placed, the hardware and software are installed at the client's site(s), and software training is provided to the staff. We provide ongoing customer support. Whether it’s a question here and there or more training is required, we’re here to guide the client.

Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors have expertise in accounting and bookkeeping services for small-to-medium sized businesses. Will is a certified consultant who has been tested and certified by Intuit to help businesses learn and use QuickBooks and other Intuit products. As Will says, “The only reason to have a system in place is to efficiently manage your finances, sales, and inventory and to do that, you need to use your QuickBooks system effectively.” It’s crucial to have your system and financial records set up properly from the beginning. Unfortunately, many people doing it themselves, without the help of a Certified ProAdvisor Consultant, either don’t set it up correctly or don’t use it accurately. This leads to bad data which causes poor decision making. We help our clients feel that the whole process is easy and manageable, not overwhelming as it may seem.

One additional Intuit title to note is that we are also an Intuit Premier Reseller. The Premier Level is the top tier within the Intuit Reseller Program and is designed for members with consistent and robust sales who provide the highest level of customer service.  Premier Resellers have expertise in technology and solutions integration for small-to-medium sized businesses. They are certified to resell, implement, and support QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, QuickBooks Point of Sale, and other Intuit and third-party products. With high-performing, high-commitment resellers in the Intuit Premier Reseller program, organizations have to perform at exceptionally high levels to be recognized among outstanding performers.

The Release 8 (R8) patch for QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions v13 is now available online in the support forum. The release notes knowledge base can be found online at http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Articles/INF21754. You can download the patch via the help menu or from this site.

What is important about this release?
* Billable time in the Choose Billable/Time Costs window is now sorted by date instead of Employee name.
* Third party software will no longer experience the following errors when connecting to QuickBooks:

• Unrecoverable Error 00000 03667
• Sync Error 17_7005 - "Could not detect a valid installation of QuickBooks SDK:7005 qbXML components have not been installed"

Keep in mind if you run into any problems doing the webpatch or auto patch, your best bet is to do a clean install with the full program download (which is at R8).

This notice is provided as a convenience for our customers and is not intended to supplement, modify, or extend the Intuit software license agreement between Intuit and the customer for any Intuit product or service.

Q & A with Will English: Client questions are in black font & Will’s replies are in blue.

I have just a few quick questions as we continue to use the QBPOS V2013 system:
1) In using this in and out receiving Items instead of Assembly, it would sure be nice to use the Comment field that exists in the customizable columns (on the main list view sheet, it does not exist in show details). I can get the Comment column in there but can't see to edit it. Am I missing something? Because the transactions amount to zero, it also won't let me add Enter Billing Info which I could use as a comment label. It would be nice to be able to know what each is for reordering purposes, without having to reopen each one to find it. You should be able to enter billing info whether it zero’s or not. See note.

2) I need to put cash into the remote store drawer (ones, nickels, etc.). I see on sync the cash that is already there. Normally I would just transfer the cash via a journal entry but how do I move this cash out of QB Financial and into the Remote Store correctly so the remote store sees it too? Is there a cash-in-drawer account for each store? Not normally. I will often set up a cash drop bank account and then use this account to transfer money, but you can only select one cash drawer account, therefore, you can use a paid out receipt to move money into the cash drop account. Then from there, you can move it to the Cash in drawer or the bank.

3) I got a check at the remote store and I see in QB Financial that the check is in Undeposited Funds. Normally, I would just go to banking, make deposits and any amount in Undeposited funds would show up. I would click what I want to deposit and it would record in the bank account and be removed from Undeposited funds. Well, I can see it is in Undeposited funds when I open the account but not when I open the banking, make deposits window. So I need help with how to actually get these funds in the bank. It means that the deposit window was previously open.  Click on payments and it should bring up the payments window.

4) I seem to have a bunch of duplicate accounts coming in despite copying and mapping them to my numbered ones. I guess I can merge them but I can't figure out why they won't come in when synced with QB Financial correctly. QBPOS doesn’t know about account #’s.  If you merge, they should stay pointed to the correct account.  My guess is that your names were different.
I would like fully to address all of these questions with you during a remote/virtual meeting.

Q & A with Will English
Today’s Topic:  A colleague needs advice to solve an A/P problem

Colleague: I have a client who has a large A/P balance but not a lot of bills to pay in Pay Bills in QuickBooks Financial (QBF) Pro. After investigating, it appears that there are a large number of Item Receipts that transferred from QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) that were not converted to Bills. I believe the merchant entered the purchases of the Items in QBF Pro as checks coded to COGS. How would you resolve this discrepancy, it's looks like there may be several hundred. :(

Will: Push the bills over into QuickBooks. I would still change the checks to A/P to match them up. Then create a GJE to put COGS back where it was and then reverse out this year.

Colleague: Thank you for the info, I was afraid of that - however, some of this extends across tax years with the COGS being overstated. Their CPA wants me to adjust in the current year and document in case of an audit. I believe this rule’s out being able to go back and change the bank credits to A/P on some of these... any more ideas?

Will: While that is often the case, I have also found that unless the customer is strongly trained to match the receiving voucher to the vendors invoice, you will get a mismatch. This will create all sorts of problems in the costing of items, inventory values, etc. A good check is to see if the inventory balance in POS matches the inventory balance in QBF. If it doesn't, you most likely have receiving problems.
Change the checks from COGS to Accounts Payable since POS would have already posted COGS entries when the item was sold. Then convert the item receipts to bills and match up the payments to the bills. Most likely you will not be able to match them all, in which case, you need to adjust the balances.