Archive for the Category »Bookkeeping Tips & Tricks «

08
May
QuickBooks Tip – easily transmit your QB file to your accountant for free!

If you have Internet access, you can send an Accountant’s Copy directly to your accountant using an Intuit Web server. With this feature, you don’t have to save the Accountant’s Copy file to your local disk and deliver the Accountant’s Copy to your accountant.

Instead, your Accountant’s Copy file is automatically sent to an Intuit server. Your accountant receives an e-mail with a link that automatically downloads your Accountant’s Copy file. All you need is an Internet connection and your accountant’s e-mail address.

Here’s how to do it:

Go to the File menu and click Accountant’s Copy, click Client Activities, and then click Send to Accountant.

Confirm you want to send an Accountant’s Copy and click Next.

Choose a dividing date; you may want to coordinate with your accountant before choosing this date. The dividing date allows you to
keep working on transactions after the dividing date (so you can keep working) and the accountant can only work on transaction before the dividing date.

Enter your accountant’s e-mail address, your name, and your e-mail address.

Enter your accountant’s e-mail address and reenter it to confirm it is correct. QuickBooks uses this e-mail address to send your Accountant’s Copy to your accountant.

Enter your name so your accountant knows who sent the Accountant’s Copy.

Enter your e-mail address. You will receive a confirmation e-mail when the Accountant’s Copy is successfully uploaded to the Intuit server.

Choose a password to protect the Accountant’s Copy.

Your accountant will use this password to access the Accountant’s Copy. You can use the same password you use for your Admin password. Be sure to tell your accountant this password. Strong passwords include:
At least seven characters.
At least one number.
At least one uppercase letter.

(Optional) Write a note to your accountant with instructions for the Accountant’s Copy. For security reasons, do not include the Accountant’s Copy password.

Click Send.

Your accountant will receive an e-mail with a link that downloads your Accountant’s Copy. He or she will then use the password you created to open the file.

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24
Aug
Getting Started When You Don’t Know Where to Start

What do you do when you’ve never done bookkeeping before?

Or you started doing your books months ago but you got so busy with sales and service that now you’re months and months behind?

Where do you start cleaning things up?

How do you start out on the right path?

Use your tax situation to guide you on how far back to go. If your CPA is hounding you for information to do taxes for 2012, then you go back to December 2011 and make sure everything is entered from that point. If your concern is taxes for 2011, then go back to December 2010 and enter everything from that point.

Time is your best friend in this case. That’s right, time.

If you haven’t setup QuickBooks yet, open it up and go through the initial interview process QuickBooks provides for a new company setup. That should be good enough to get you started.

Once that setup is done, start organizing the various piles of paper on your desk, in your drawers, the stuff shoved into the corners of the office that you promised you’d get to later.

Organize the receipts, bills, notices, statements, etc. into date order.

Starting with the oldest paper you find, group each one into a “month-year” folder. When all the paper is sorted this way, you have your starting point.

Taking the oldest month-year folder of paper, open your QuickBooks company file and start data entry. As each item is entered, mark it as done with your name and date on the piece of paper.

Once entered, each piece of paper now deserves its own folder; for example, telephone bills go into a folder made for that vendor, office supply receipts go into files for each of those vendors. The organizing concept is that each company you purchase from gets its own folder.

This is important! In the future, when you may need to see that vendor bill or receipt, it’s easy to locate and your system now works for you rather than against you.

With data entry of old stuff finally done, you’ve reached the point where you can start taking control of your finances. Now you can match up your books against your bank statements (the process known as bank reconciliation) and that puts you on the path knowing the financial health of your company – with real, hard numbers. You’re able to stop the guesswork – hurrah!

Make no mistake – it could be painful doing all this data entry – but the freedom from worry and not knowing your real financial position will be well worth the effort!

Serving These Locations:

Aliso Viejo, Orange County (OC), Southern California ▪  Anaheim, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Costa Mesa, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Coto De Caza,  Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Dove Canyon, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Foothill Ranch, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Irvine, Orange County (OC) (OC), Southern California  ▪  Ladera Ranch, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Laguna Beach, Orange County (OC), Southern California ▪  Laguna Hills, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Laguna Niguel, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Lake Forest, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪   Mission Viejo, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Newport Beach, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Orange, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Rancho Santa Margarita, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  San Clemente, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  San Juan Capistrano, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Santa Ana, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Trabuco Canyon, Orange County (OC), Southern California  ▪  Tustin, Orange County (OC), Southern California

Serving These Zip Codes:

92656 92698 92801 92802 92803 92804 92805 92806 92807 92808 92809 92812 92814 92815 92816 92817 92825 92850 92899 92811 92821 92822 92823 90620 90621 90622 90624 92624 92625 92626 92627 92628 90630 92629 92650 92609 92610 92708 92728 92831 92832 92833 92834 92835 92836 92837 92838 92840 92841 92842 92843 92844 92845 92846 92605 92615 92646 92647 92648 92649 92602 92603 92604 92606 92612 92614 92616 92618 92619 92620 92623 92697 92709 92710 90631 90632 90633 90623 92694 92651 92652 92637 92653 92654 92607 92677 92630 90720 90721 92655 92690 92691 92692 92658 92659 92660 92661 92662 92663 92657 92856 92857 92859 92862 92863 92864 92865 92866 92867 92868 92869 92870 92871 92688 92672 92673 92674 92675 92693 92701 92702 92703 92704 92705 92706 92707 92711 92712 92725 92735 92799 90740 92676 90680 90742 90743 92678 92679 92780 92781 92782 92861 92683 92684 92685 92885 92886 92887

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07
Jan
Handling Confusion

Pondering the confusion question

When faced with a mound of paper, in banker boxes and in drawers it can all appear overwhelming and insurmountable. Months or even years of no data entry, it’s enough to make a grown bookkeeper weep.

Something can be done about it, as distasteful as it may seem. Start somewhere.

The basic idea of bookkeeping – CASH IN, CASH OUT. This command tells you where to start, no matter what the boss or the client says. After all, the boss or the client created the mess in the 1st place….right?

So….start with CASH IN, CASH OUT. What’s that in the real world? It’s the bank accounts where money comes in to the business and exits the business for day to day bills and expenses.

Your weapons of choice in this quest are the sequential bank statements covering the period of no data along with the super QuickBooks tool of “remembering transactions”.

You can have QuickBooks pre-fill new transactions based on previous transactions.

To do this task

1. Open the general preferences.

2. Click Automatically remember account or transaction information.

3. Click one of the following two preferences.

Automatically recall last transaction for this name:
Sets up QuickBooks to remember the previous transaction for a person. When you enter a new transaction, QuickBooks
automatically fills out the form with information you entered in the last transaction of that type for that person. For example, when
you enter a vendor’s name on a bill and press Tab, QuickBooks fills in the bill just like the most recent one you entered for that
vendor.

Restrictions

This preference works only with bills, checks, credit card charges, invoices, and sales receipts. For invoices and sales receipts, it
completes Ship Via, Ref Doc (PO Number), and Free On Board (FOB) values. This preference has no effect on purchase orders,
payroll liability checks, or credit memos.

Pre-fill accounts for vendor based on past entries: Sets up QuickBooks to pre-fill the account for a vendor transaction based on
previous transactions for that vendor. QuickBooks remembers all your recent transactions for a vendor, not just the most recent
one. If you consistently use the same account for a vendor, QuickBooks will automatically pre-fill that information any time you
select the vendor in a bill, check, or credit card transaction.

How does QuickBooks know which account to pre-fill?

This preference is “smart” about when to pre-fill account information when you select a vendor. For example, if you pay the rent
every month from the same account, QuickBooks will soon start to pre-fill the bills you enter to your landlord with the usual
account.

When you use different accounts for a vendor, the account will not be pre-filled. For example, you might write checks to a
warehouse supplier out of several different accounts, depending on the purchase. So the next time you write a check to that
warehouse, QuickBooks will not pre-fill the account.

4. Click the OK button.

You can always override any pre-filled information in a transaction.

Bad news? At first, the data entry task will be huge. Good news? As you proceed with your data entry, based on the sequential bank statements, you will build up the history of transactions in QuickBooks. Each entry gets you closer and closer to your goal of re-creating a true and accurate picture of how the business lives and breathes.

Category: Bookkeeping Basics, Bookkeeping Tips & Tricks, OC bookkeeping help, QuickBooks Tips & Tricks  Comments off
14
Sep
Back to Basics accounting

Category: Bookkeeping Basics, Bookkeeping Tips & Tricks, OC bookkeeping help, QuickBooks Tips & Tricks, Tustin Bookkeeping Help  Comments off
02
Aug
Bookkeeping Tip #1
Where did this bill com from??!!!!!

Where did this bill com from??!!!

One of the best kept secrets I utilize and which doesn’t necessarily apply only to QuickBooks®, is this:

DON’T DO THINGS TWICE!

DON’T DO THINGS TWICE!!!!!!

Ok, so I said that twice……

Just checking to see if you’d catch it. 🙂

But seriously one of the biggest productivity wasters in business, as in life, is doing the same action more than once when it’s not needed.

Here’s a good example – hand writing checks, then data entering them again in QuickBooks®. Solution: write all checks through QuickBooks® and stop hand writing checks!

Another example; the checking accounts haven’t been reconciled for a while, so you’re not sure what your true cash balances are and you end up going online to check your balance on an all too frequent basis. Solution: get your reconciliations up to date NOW and only write checks through QuickBooks®. (see above tip)

Truthfully, hand writing checks, when you are setup to print them through QuickBooks®, is a symptom of a larger underlying problem.

Like inadequate cash flow, poor financial planning or just plain administrative disorganization.

So, why advertise these symptoms with hand written checks? Be competent, be professional and generate your checks using QuickBooks®!

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