Tag Archives: accountant

My Six Favorite Things About QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) – And A Bonus

July 16, 2024 Nancy McClelland 2 Comments

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I’m still floating through the clouds (quite literally, as I’m writing this from a window seat on the plane) on my way home from Scaling New Heights, where I was awarded Insightful Accountant’s 2024 Top Client Services ProAdvisor. And I’ve been thinking about how lucky I was to stumble into bookkeeping and accounting as a profession, and how much the support and education that QuickBooks provides to its ProAdvisors has played a part – not only in our team’s success, but also our clients’.

There are so many conferences, webinars, colleagues, apps, and tools that have helped me find this path, but unquestionably one of the most valuable has been our free subscription to the ultimate QBO client services tool – QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA). My team and I rely on its capabilities daily, and I can’t imagine running our practice without it. We reduce time spent on manual tasks, as well as review our clients’ books for accuracy and insights… basically a level-up on the already-robust basic subscription, with a version that’s designed for professionals who serve multiple clients.

Why does Intuit give us an accountant-specific bells-and-whistles version of QBO for free? Couldn’t they make a bunch of money selling this to us as an add-on? For sure… I see that angle, and I often worry they’ll switch to that approach someday. That’s how it was set up for QB Desktop – you had to pay to be a QBDT ProAdvisor, which gave you a special multi-client version of the software that allowed you to make edits and adjustments to client books and sync them between your system and theirs. But as you know… QBO already lets you do that, by the nature of its being cloud software-as-a-service, and so the extra bells-and-whistles aren’t as expensive to maintain as their Desktop counterparts. And having small business owners’ books prepared or reviewed by professional bookkeepers makes those businesses more likely to thrive, succeed… and remain in the Intuit ecosystem. It’s a win-win.

If you’re a professional bookkeeper or accountant and are interested in becoming a ProAdvisor, I can’t recommend it highly enough. The education available through the Training portion of the ProAdvisor space is wonderful, especially combined with the monthly QBO In The Know sessions and Alicia Katz-Pollock’s Insightful Accountant QB Talks – a whole world of potential awaits. And a key to unlocking that potential is using QBOA, which you get for free as a part of the ProAdvisor program.

But I’m surprised at how many bookkeepers, even those who are already ProAdvisors, don’t realize how powerful a tool QBOA is. So I wanted to highlight my favorite things about it that I use all the freaking time.

Accessing all your clients’ books from one login

This may sound obvious if you’re a regular QBOA user, but honestly – how many other SAAS packages let you do this? We use countless apps and banks with our clients, and with the exception of a few (heaping blessings here onto Relay, Gusto, Guideline, Bookkeep, and Synder), we’re constantly having to log in and out of them when switching clients. QBOA lets you do this with one simple toggle. Side bonus: all our team members are associated with my account, so they can also have their own QBOA login (and therefore their own list of clients) if they’ve simultaneously got their own side-hustle or company, something common in our particular staffing set-up as well as with companies that co-firm.

ProAdvisor-specific training

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I’m a huge fan of lifetime learning, and QBOA makes this easy. When I was on QB Desktop, I struggled to find training that was specific to bookkeepers working with multiple clients (rather than material that focused on end-users). In the QBOA portal, they suggest a personalized training path, provide self-paced study materials, videos, and links to live trainings. It also keeps track of your certifications and suggests new ones.

Client Overview

When doing a diagnostic review of a potential client, you should have them invite you as an accountant-user. Once that’s accepted, you can go into their books – and because of QBOA, you’ll have access to a Client Overview page, which gives you a sense of how much work it would take to bring them up-to-date, summarizing the most important points about banking activity, common issues, and transaction volume. For us, it’s an absolutely essential step that helps us determine whether we’re interested in working with the client, and if so… how much to charge for a clean-up and ongoing services.

Books Review ➡️ Transaction Review

Just below the Client Overview on the left-nav bar is an unassuming little item called “Books review”. Click into that and you’ll find a series of headers – the first of which, “Transaction review” is my favorite. It’s like QBOA is your junior accountant, digging through the books to find unaccepted bank feed transactions, uncategorized transactions, transactions without payees, undeposited funds, and unapplied payments. And it transports you to where you can actually fix a lot of these problems on behalf of the client (or you can give them a heads-up and ask them to DIY before you dig into your review). Until this feature was developed, we literally had folks combing through transactions – and there was no transparency into how bad things were in each area, which meant we didn’t know how long it would take us to go back-and-forth with the client to get things fixed… and this is before we even are taking care of reconciliations and reviews – truly foundational stuff that needs to be addressed right off the bat so that the books are in good-enough shape to address the big issues. I don’t want to use the phrase “game-changer” because it didn’t change the game… it moved us into a higher league of play.

Books Review ➡️ Account Reconciliation

Account reconciliation is the header just to the right of Transaction review, and it performs the next round of what we would normally ask a junior accountant to do – it shows the current status of each of the bank accounts, in terms of when they were most recently reconciled, as well as the number of and a list of unreconciled transactions. You can access reconciliation reports from here, look at the most recent statement if it’s in the system… and it doesn’t limit you to bank and credit card accounts; if you reconcile any of your Balance Sheet accounts, you can see this info, as well as link to them from here.

Accountant Tools ➡️ Reclassify Transactions

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And what do you do once you’ve used Books Review to identify the myriad issues? This is where it gets really good, in my opinion. There are quite a few tools for accountants that are included in QBOA, but one in particular was a total game-changer when it was first released however-many years ago. And it’s just gotten better through the years. We have access to a tool called “Reclassify transactions” that our clients don’t get to use (just think of the mess they could end up making if they did). It allows us to filter transactions by type of financial statement or down to the specific account, and then also by date, type, and customer/ vendor. Once you’ve pulled up a list of all the transactions that fit your filters… you can reclassify or recategorize the ones you select. All at once. In a batch. You can even select just the ones that have a particular word in the memo (and with RightTool, another favorite tool, you can even filter by that word, or by a dollar amount or range)! It’s truly the most incredible feature, especially for cleanups. You can get quite granular with your filters and fix massive issues in a matter of minutes. Talk about a value-add.

Bonus! Chart of Accounts templates

I’m adding it as a bonus instead of one of the main features because it’s newish, so we haven’t yet had an opportunity to use it a ton – but I know it’s going to be a favorite. To be honest, this is one of those things that for years felt like it was just a missing feature; we used countless workarounds to standardize our clients’ Chart of Accounts, or at least make sure they all fit the format we use when preparing Tax-Ready Books (my passion and focus when providing education to bookkeepers). Intuit finally announced this feature at QB Connect last year and you should have heard the room burst into applause! The one trick to keep in mind is that you access the area where you build (or import, your choice) your templates from “Your Practice” as a QBOA user, not from each client. If you go to “Accountant Tools” while you’re in your ProAdvisor space, just after you log in – like where you’d go to get your Training – that’s where you see this option pop up in your toolbox. From there, you can get a video overview or take a guided tour. Once you’ve got your templates in there, you can assign them to a client or update their existing COA. Finally, wee-hoo!

And More…

There are other great features of QBOA that I know some of my colleagues adore – both ones that have been around for a while like reporting tools and app integrations, and newer ones like role-based access and permissions to clients’ books. But I meant to only list my top five and couldn’t do it under six, and then I wanted to add a bonus, and eventually this article will have to end or none of us will ever be able to get back to work and dive into the benefits QBOA offers. Enjoy!

Note! As my readers know, I am downright fanatical about transparency and full disclosure (often to my detriment, as you may have noticed that I have a wildly popular award-winning blog that is non-monetized). Though this particular post is a paid partnership with Intuit, I want you to know that a) I wanted to write an article on QBOA anyway, but couldn’t find the time; getting paid allowed me the break from client work I needed to make it happen; and b) they didn’t delete a single thing when I presented it. In fact, they have been totally cool with all my Intuit-bashing since the first article I wrote for them… which impressed me quite a bit, to be honest. That’s three times now — I might just keep this win-win-win up.

Education, Site News, Tips

How Bookkeepers & Accountants Can Overcome Imposter Syndrome

May 14, 2024 Nancy McClelland 4 Comments

Recently, I had the pleasure of joining Adam Lean of The CFO Project on his podcast, “Escaping the Accountant’s Trap,” to discuss imposter syndrome — what it really means, how to know if you have it (or are simply learning something new), and practical tips for overcoming those feelings of being a fraud.

I also share my perspective on why imposter syndrome disproportionately affects women and minorities, the difference between self-doubt and truly being an imposter, and how education and experience are key to building real confidence.

The inspiration for the episode came when I heard Adam speak on Veronica Wasek’s 5-Minute Bookkeeper Facebook group (a must-follow if you’re a bookkeeper, in my opinion). He has so much valuable knowledge to share, but I felt like the delivery was oriented toward tax professionals and other accountants, rather than her main audience. In my experience, bookkeepers looking to offer CFO advisory services are in a very different position than accountants moving into a new realm, especially marginalized groups like women and minorities, and so I reached out to suggest we work together to talk about the topic of imposter syndrome — and what we can do to push past sentiments of self-doubt, when in fact what we’re doing is building on our existing foundations of knowledge and exploring new perspectives.

Studies show that 70% of people experience “imposter syndrome” at some point… defined as a fear that you’re inadequate or incompetent — despite evidence to the contrary. Dr. Valerie Young has a great book on why capable people experience it. From my research with psychologists and therapists, I’ve learned that medically, something only becomes a “syndrome” if it’s seriously impeding your life, paralyzing you so that you can’t do things you would otherwise excel at or enjoy — so my first goal in spreading the word on this topic is: please don’t feel like there’s something wrong with you if you’re feeling self-doubt. This isn’t a “syndrome”… in fact, this is natural, especially for women — this is an understandable, genuine reaction to being condescended to our whole lives.

As for being able to tell the difference, think of it this way: Any new task by definition puts you in a position where you don’t know how to do your job. Having more background makes it so the percentage of your job you don’t know how to do is smaller. But climbing that learning curve is always part of the experience — and that is what makes us feel exposed or fraudulent. Education, testing, and experience are the three best solutions to this – they help you learn what you need to know, and they also build confidence.

This was not a paid partnership — I gave my time freely to record and promote this episode because it’s simply an important topic to me, and I want to give it more space in the airwaves so that bookkeepers know they’re not alone in their doubt, and yet they are uniquely positioned to branch into advisory services.

Even though it’s only 30 minutes long, I managed to drop some of my favorite resources, such as John Garrett‘s “What’s Your And?” podcast; my memberships in accounting communities such as Jason Staats‘ Realize and Cindy Schroeder‘s Bookkeeping Buds; free bookkeeping communities such as Kate Johnson‘s Bookkeeping Side Hustle and Veronica Wasek‘s 5-Minute Bookkeeper; and of course Paul Hamann‘s RC Reports, my essential tool for calculating reasonable compensation. I also shout-out colleagues Hope Brown, the Tax-Minded Bookkeeper, and Mariette Martinez of Master Your Books. And of course I had to highlight my upcoming talk at Joe Woodard and Heather Satterley‘s Scaling New Heights on “The Tax-Ready Bookkeeper”!

We covered a lot of ground in this episode — here’s a breakdown:
0:00–4:00 Introductions
5:37 What is imposter syndrome? How do I know if I have imposter syndrome?
11:52 Why bookkeepers are uniquely positioned to advise business owners doing CFO services!
16:42 CPA asks “I’m afraid that my lack of real-world business experience will hold me back. What are your thoughts?”

I hope you get something helpful from our conversation! It’s essential that we share our questions, doubts, struggles and challenges in order to discover that we’re not alone, and to provide support for our colleagues, ultimately affecting the mental health of the whole industry, and assisting small businesses in their important community-building work. (Another passion project of mine — come see me present the panel “Vulnerability as a Strength” at Bridging the Gap this July!)

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Education, POS - Point of Sale, QuickBooks Software, Software, Tips

Make Next Year Better: Tips for Managing the Change from QB Desktop to Online

May 6, 2024 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

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Tax season is over. Take a deep breath – whether you’re a bookkeeper or tax preparer, you’ve endured plenty of stress these past months, and now you’re in the perfect space between vacation and conference season to look back and figure out how to make it go better next year.

That’s what we do in our firm, anyway; I learned an amazing lesson from one of my favorite instructors, Tom Gorczynski, to plan for next tax season while the pain is still fresh in your mind! We schedule a company-wide zoom meeting, and everyone fills out a survey beforehand that asks about what worked, what didn’t, what they’d like to see go differently, who their favorite and least-favorite clients are, and why. This helps us incrementally improve year-over-year, and makes sure everyone has a voice. Then we send out cocktail kits and snacks to everyone, we celebrate, and we brainstorm. We even vote clients “off the island” together.

One of the themes that comes up every year is the need to move more clients off QuickBooks Desktop and onto QuickBooks Online. I know, groan… yet another talking head telling you to make the shift! At this point you’ve been bombarded with information on all the benefits of moving to QBO, so I won’t bore you with those. I’ll just share my own experience.

It was becoming more and more of a drag to coordinate with Desktop clients to review their books, and the new subscription structure made it confusing and frustrating to know who was on which version and how to make the most of what they were paying for. And of course, there were constant client fears around Intuit’s messaging, worrying they were going to stop supporting their product. But the biggest stressor for us was that it was actually getting hard to find junior bookkeepers who had ever worked with the Desktop program. (No joke. How about that for making a certain dancing accountant feel old?)

I assure you, I absolutely *hated* QBO for years; it was a clunky beast that didn’t have some of the most basic functionality that Desktop did – and I’m not just talking about the early days; this went on far too long and alienated many users. And while I held out for ages in moving to QBO, especially for certain types of clients that really benefited from what QBDT had to offer, I finally realized that it’s gotten to the point where the features I love about the Online version far outweigh its negatives. Between the concerted effort that Ted Callahan, Jessica McCracken and their team have made to actually listen to our community and implement some of the most-loved features; the fact that most third-party apps and tools no longer work with Desktop; and the advent of RightTool, an amazing browser extension by industry superstar Hector Garcia that supercharges what QBO has to offer… it’s time. It’s really time. QBO is now light-years ahead of almost anything that QBDT can do.

The point of outlining all this isn’t to convince you that you should migrate your remaining Desktop clients to QBO. It’s to suggest that when you do – follow my lead, and use exactly these reasons in your messaging. This became our mantra for communicating the value of converting, and it worked; at this point we only have one client left who needs to make the shift.

Think about it: your clients and your team members trust you, more than anyone else, to make smart and thoughtful decisions with everyone’s well-being in mind. If you convey the messaging that QBO is listening to us and responding to our requests, that RightTool will make you more efficient, and third-party apps will serve your clients’ needs better than the previous solutions, they will believe you, you’ll get buy-in, and in our experience, we found that clients were overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic (though understandably still nervous) about the change.

Once you’ve got buy-in, it’s a simple matter of following some practical tips and advice to make sure the execution is done well.

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Understand the Conversion Process
Intuit came out with a free conversion tool a few years ago that they keep tweaking to make it better; the most recent improvements announced at last year’s QB Connect blew me away – you can now batch migrate clients, meaning “do a ton at once and be done with it”. To be honest, it kind of made me wish I had waited to convert some of ours! However, as straightforward as they make it to migrate data from QBD to QBO, you do have to ensure your QBDT file is ready for the transition. This means backing up, running a verification on the file, ensuring it’s under the maximum target limit, and cleaning up any weirdo issues that have been hiding or buried for years, especially if you don’t regularly do a verification and rebuild. And most importantly, reviewing your “all dates” financial statements beforehand, exporting them, and comparing the same reports afterwards is essential.
Technical Resources for Conversion

I mentioned Intuit’s Conversion Tool, which guides you through the process step-by-step; they also have a QuickBooks Conversion Toolkit with checklists, webinar links, guides, client materials, and even a link to book a call to have Intuit do the conversion for you – just head here and then click on the “How to migrate” button to download the toolkit or set up a call. If you prefer your info from a third-party source, Hector Garcia does a short walkthrough on his YouTube channel, and Alicia Katz-Pollock is offering an Earmark webinar on May 21st. And if you have any concerns whatsoever about the process, consider outsourcing the job. We worked with CMB Hero and had a good experience, and I know DL & Associates does migrations as well; there are probably hundreds of companies or even trusted colleagues who’ve gone through the process before and can help you make sure it goes smoothly.

Research Third-Party Apps Before Converting

There are some super-fabulous apps out there that we love to use for syncing daily Point of Sale data, such as Synder, Bookkeep, and Shogo. But you need to look at the client’s needs and determine how they’ll be met in the new QBO world before making the shift – not all sync programs work with all POS platforms. Do demos, consult with colleagues, and figure out the timeline for implementing – in other words, not only the migration of QBDT data to QBO, but setting up the new system to work with the POS and get it all running. Our experience has been that some up-front planning saves loads of effort on the far end (which is when you’re pressed for time so the client can get back up-and-running).

Prepare Desktop Clients For The Change

And sticking with the theme of up-front planning… a little client hand-holding goes a long way. What they’re looking for is to follow your lead as their trusted advisor. The more you can compare and contrast their existing workflows and procedures with the new system, the more comfortable they’ll be with your proposal to move to QBO. Ideally, you already have Standard Operating Procedures in place for each of your clients. I wince as I type this, because I get that this is the “ideal” and not necessarily your reality – in all honesty, we’re still in the process of making sure each client has clear and detailed SOPs for every scenario. But this is a golden opportunity. Your instructions – in Word, an Excel checklist, Loom videos, or a project management app like Keeper, Financial Cents, or Asana – will build trust, making it much easier for you to illustrate to the client that this is a manageable change and that you’ve anticipated their needs. Side bonus: way less stress when a client (or your firm) loses a trusted team member and a new one needs to be trained ASAP.

To illustrate: in going through all the steps that a client’s office manager would complete each month as part of her billing process, and reproducing/ rewriting them using QBO, I noticed that she would no longer be able to run a particular report – at this point I had to decide whether we would come up with a different way for her to perform the same task, or whether we would track the data with a different feature in QBO so that she could run the report she was used to. Both approaches were fair; but the point is that I wouldn’t have noticed this change without walking through the process of retooling the procedures. This built trust with the client and made them more open-minded about making the change, because they knew we were actively anticipating and removing any stumbling blocks.

Client & Staff Training and Familiarization

As you know, transitioning to QBO doesn’t just involve moving data; it’s also about adapting to a new user environment. You’ll want to invest time in training sessions provided by Intuit or certified trainers like Royalwise (my personal favorite – I’ve been studying from Alicia for as long as I can remember). Intuit also offers an ongoing monthly session called QBO In The Know, which I encourage all my team members to attend as part of their paid training hours – this ensures that you don’t just get up-to-date, but that you stay that way, as the QBO ecosystem is constantly improving and new features are released every month. Hector Garcia’s YouTube channel is an endless wealth of information (I once hired a senior accountant with no degree and no certification based on the fact that she learned QBO by watching every single one of his videos. She’s now our Senior Accountant). Lastly, remember that QBO has a demo company! It’s a sandbox – have at it, and let your team practice without the risk of affecting real data.

Start by getting your client and team members’ buy-in. Take advantage of the available resources, and invest in training. With communication and planning, both your firm’s and your clients’ bookkeeping experience will end up better than it was with Desktop – we don’t have a single client that regrets having migrated, despite the fact that we all miss this-or-that feature (everyone’s got their favorite). But I promise it will be replaced by a new favorite. Remember, the goal is not just to convert data, but to enhance the overall efficiency and effectiveness of your accounting practices and those of your clients.

So… take that deep breath, plan for the future, and enjoy the heck out of that moment next tax season when you hear someone go, “oh wow, this really is so much better than it used to be!”

Note! As my readers know, I am downright fanatical about transparency and full disclosure (often to my detriment, as you may have noticed that I have a wildly popular award-winning blog that is non-monetized). Though this particular post is a paid partnership with Intuit, I want you to know that a) I wanted to write an article on QBDT–>QBO conversions anyway, but couldn’t find the time; getting paid allowed me the break from client work I needed to make it happen; and b) they didn’t delete a single thing when I presented it. In fact, they were totally cool with all my Intuit-bashing… which made me pretty impressed with them, to be honest. That’s twice now — let’s see if they go for a three-fer!

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Vote For The Dancing Accountant In the 2024 Top 100 ProAdvisor Awards!

March 28, 2024 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

So very pleased to announce that Nancy been nominated once again for Insightful Accountant’s prestigious “Top 100 ProAdvisors Award”! It’s her fifth time being nominated, and after last year’s win, we’re hoping to make it a two-fer.

One small challenge this year is that due to an administrative snafu, the name “Nancy McClelland” shows as the very last one on the list, rather than in alphabetical order. We have the utmost confidence that you can figure it out anyway — and just scroll to the end to check the box.

If you find this blog of value, please consider voting as a way to show your appreciation and support. It has been quite a labor of love these past 10 years!

QuickBooks ProAdvisors are first nominated, and then go through a lengthy vetting process, before eventually opening up to a public vote. Applicants for this prestigious award are ranked based on their performance across various categories, measuring everything from QuickBooks knowledge and continuing education, to utilizing the best tools and partner apps within the QuickBooks ecosystem. Real-world experience with clients is a requirement. For Nancy, winning last year opened up doors to additional speaking opportunities and interviews, as well as gave her the opportunity to collaborate with other awardees.

Recipients will be formally recognized at the Scaling New Heights Accounting Technology conference, to be held June 16-19, 2024 in Orlando — at which Nancy will be presenting a session called “The Tax-Ready Bookkeeper”! (Registering with this link will get you $50 off your registration, by the way.)

Voting for the Top 100 closes April 2 at midnight, so please do us the honor of popping in there as soon as possible. Awards like these drive traffic to the blog and lead to more speaking engagements; this educational component of our company’s mission is something about which Nancy is extremely passionate, and it feels meaningful and satisfying.

The voting form requests a bunch of info (it’s not a spammy organization), but you can enter N/A for some of the items (except state, zip & country) if you prefer. Although they ask about your title and number of employees in your firm, you do not need to be a business owner to participate in voting. Just complete those fields with “Owner” and “1”. Voting closes April 2, at 11:59 pm Pacific.

Thank you so very much for your support! Please vote!

Education, QuickBooks Software, Software, Tips

QuickBooks Ledger: Welcome to the Family! We’re Glad You’re Here.

March 8, 2024 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

QB Ledger was announced at QB Connect a few months ago.

If you’re like me, March is that special month from hell where clients that have ignored your pleas for four quarters in a row suddenly show up again… and lucky you. Because now they’ve got a new AirBnb rental property in tow! Or yet another side gig! Or even better: an estate that they have to manage until it settles, and it’s caught up in probate!

To be honest, I’ve been slowly weeding these folks out of our client list – and I feel like a jerk about it – but it just doesn’t make sense for us to spend time during our busiest season getting them caught up on a year’s worth of transactions. Especially because these are the same characters that tend to be super price-conscious, and are somehow convinced that because they have a low volume of transactions, they shouldn’t have to pay for the monthly QuickBooks Online subscription – “can’t you just use our bank statements or a spreadsheet?”

For anyone reading this who isn’t intimately familiar with these classic dance moves already – no, we can’t just use bank statements or a spreadsheet. There’s no double-entry bookkeeping, no debits and credits, no Balance Sheet, and far too many potential lurking mysteries to be uncovered only after all the manual data entry is already complete. At some point we put a stop to these shenanigans… only to find ourselves sitting in QB Desktop, doing all the write-up work on behalf of our clients – a total reconstruction job. More reliable, but not less effort. (And moot at this point, since QB Desktop has gone subscription and is slowly asphyxiating.) And yet – I was a tiny startup at one point, too! I get not wanting to spend big bucks on a full-featured bookkeeping package for an activity that’s not earning much money.

By this point we’ve filtered out most of these types of clients, raising our minimum to price out some of the potential clients we really did (in theory) want to help – itty bitty start-ups or serial entrepreneurs, those that can’t resist a good deal on real estate, or people who sadly lost a loved one and are adrift as to how to handle the demands of bookkeeping for the estate. (I did this for both of my grandmothers back in the day, using my accountant’s copy of QuickBooks Desktop. It was not fun, but boy was my family relieved that they had a knowledgeable QB ProAdvisor handy.) But some remained. Clients who we really like who have been with us for ages, or who have another full-on business that we support, or whose side-gig really serves our community and they deserve a break.

(You read the title, right? I mean… you can see where this is going?)

Enter QuickBooks Ledger.

Those who know me know that I don’t mince words about Intuit as a company. They’ve created a core product that I love, which I’ve been using in some form or another since 1993 (oof, that dates me) – but when they cross me (and they do, more than I’d like), I call ‘em out on it. I don’t like the constant price increases (though I do see the constant improvements), nor the aggressive marketing of corollary products to us and to our clients. I don’t understand why they haven’t fixed some basic functionalities we’ve been asking about for literally years. But the only reason I bother complaining is that I truly believe in QuickBooks products, and the ecosystem they’ve built, and that other software companies have built around them. Which is why it was delightful to be there when QB Ledger was announced at QB Connect in November (see photo above), and all the more delightful that since then, I’ve been able to honestly say I’m in love with this new product.

Why? What’s the hype?

Nothing. There’s no hype. That’s what’s so great about it. It’s just plain old reliable QB Online that we know and love, but without all the bells and whistles, and therefore totally affordable for uncomplicated files. It basically strips down the system to the core functionalities but retains the tools that are the most timesaving. And therefore, they only charge you for the basics. It’s $10/month per client.

At this price, and with the connected bank feeds, rules and reconciliation features, we can blow through an entire year of transactions on a cash-basis filer in literally a couple hours, and still make it affordable for the client, while maintaining plump margin for our firm. Since the bank and credit cards are connected, we don’t have to rely on the client for statements before we get started, so we can take care of most of the work well before tax-season begins. In most cases, the client won’t ever need access to the system, because it’s not about managerial insights and analytics – it’s just a compliance engagement that gets us to the point where we can file an accurate return. But unlike QB Self-Employed, this is real accounting software that gives us double-entry accounting, adjusting journal entries, and spits out proper financial statements. And also unlike QBSE, it allows for a full-on easy upgrade should the side-hustle turn into a more full-fledged business, or the real estate toe-dipper turns full-on house-flipper. (And yes, two accountants can be connected, just like the other QBO products, so if you’re not doing CAS and tax in-house like us, you can have a bookkeeper firm and tax prep firm both connected.)

Things to know before you dive in:
– It seems like QB Support staff haven’t all been trained yet on what it can and can’t do, how many and which types of users can be attached, and which use-cases make the most sense, so be aware of that. It’s also sometimes tricky to get the client added (to set up the bank feeds) because the accountant user gets assigned both as accountant and admin; as with other versions, when this happens it can be a pain to switch that over to the client. So, make sure not to check the box to make yourself primary admin when setting it up.
– And… they’ve got a weirdo situation where you can’t use a Customer name anywhere in the file (presumably they deactivated this because there’s no invoicing, which is fine… but we still need that field). I’ve got it on good authority that this isn’t a bug. I suspect this was done with the expectation that those who have customer reporting needs will just upgrade, but I don’t personally think that it will serve the purpose of moving them to Simple Start. They’ll just use an external invoicing or scheduling program to track income by customer instead of upgrading – especially because those third-party apps do in fact create these customers in the app – and then they’ll be hooked on that invoicing feature… instead of tracking things by customer in QB Ledger and eventually upgrading to Simple Start. I have clients in all walks of QBO and there are startups that can’t initially afford Simple Start who will eventually get there… but they’re going to need customers to make that happen. Another workaround: some folks are using the Vendor field with a “-Cust” after the name to get around this.
– And lastly, bummer – you can’t downgrade, you can only start a new QB Ledger file or upgrade that file. (Yeah, they were thinking about all the reluctant clients who we had to talk into paying for Simple Start that don’t actually need A/R and A/P and would be fine on Ledger… really wishing they’d released this version years ago.)

Hector Garcia just released a half-hour complete tutorial on QB Ledger for accountants and bookkeepers, so if you want a deep dive on the specifics, then you’ve found your instructor.

Start-ups, trusts, estates, once-a-year write-up or tax prep clients, small side-hustles, AirBnB and other rentals, your glam diva marching band (ok, maybe my glam diva marching band)… the list goes on. Intuit has finally taken the core functionalities that are the reason we celebrate QuickBooks Online, and packaged them into an affordable option. It’s earning them goodwill, providing a pipeline for future upgrading customers, and will surely make the switch from Desktop to Online more attractive for the masses. For us, it fits seamlessly into our strategy to shift away from once-a-year rush work. For bookkeepers just getting their start, it allows them to take on small freelance and hustle clients. Welcome to the QB family, Ledger! We’re glad you’re here.

(What’s that, you want to learn more about QB Ledger? I knew you were gonna want to know how – so I’ve conveniently set it up for you to check out this page here.)

Note! As my readers know, I am downright fanatical about transparency and full disclosure (often to my detriment, as you may have noticed that I have a wildly popular award-winning blog that is non-monetized). Though this particular post is a paid partnership with Intuit, I want you to know that a) I wanted to write an article on QB Ledger anyway, but couldn’t find the time; getting paid allowed me the break from client work I needed to make it happen; and b) they didn’t edit a single thing when I presented it. In fact, they were totally cool with all my Intuit-bashing… which made me pretty impressed with them, to be honest. I might just do this again sometime. We’ll see.

Education, Site News, Tips

The Confluence of Bookkeeping, Tax & Advisory: How to Thrive in the New Accounting Landscape (12/6 @ 3:30 pm ET)

December 1, 2023 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

Insightful Accountant is hosting their last Future Forward virtual conference of the year on December 5-6, and I’m delighted to be presenting an exciting topic that resonates with the theme of Niches, Trends, and Predictions for 2024.

I love this particular webinar series, as it’s a fabulous opportunity to connect with peers, get the latest industry updates, and explore best practices, new tech, and other developments in accounting. They do a nice job of speaking both to bookkeepers and tax professionals, as well as tech-related and accounting-adjacent firms. This round will comprise 2 days, 9 speakers, and 11 topics as we share our knowledge, strategies and tactics. If you’re focused on launching, transforming, or growing your business — this is for you. Plus, it’s free if you attend live ($25 fee for the recording, which is totally worth it, as they’re able to subsidize the education without your having to sit through vendor commercial plugs).

My session will be held on Day 2 December 6th at 3:30 pm Eastern, and is called “The Confluence of Bookkeeping, Tax, and Advisory: How to Thrive in the New Accounting Landscape“. It was written with two groups in mind — bookkeepers and tax preparers, both running their own practices — who are getting all sorts of pressure to expand into advisory services. It’s about the trend toward co-firming and other ways to work together in order to serve the clients better, add value/charge more, and develop professional relationships that will bring you more business.

I recently attended QuickBooks Connect, and it got me all riled up (again) about the confluence we’re seeing between CPA firms moving into Client Accounting & Advisory Services (CAAS) and bookkeeping firms moving into advisory services… two previously distinct worlds starting to converge. I feel like the bookkeeping and accounting practices are often dancing technology circles around tax firms — and yet CPAs still look down on them as if they were data entry robots.

It’s time to start communicating with each other!

Bookkeepers –> learn how to “speak tax” with CPAs. Own your spot at the table.

CPAs/EAs –> bookkeepers are your friends! They have the personal relationships and tech know-how that you lack!

Let’s talk about co-firming as one of the accounting trends of 2024.

1. Discover how the scope at CPA and bookkeeping firms is starting to overlap and converge, and why that’s a good thing for you and your clients.

2. Identify the potential challenges and opportunities that this new accounting landscape brings, and how to turn them to your advantage.

3. Apply strategies and techniques to partner across or within firms, to update your accounting practice and stay ahead of the curve.

Join Insightful Accountant and me at Future Forward on December 6th as we talk about what this landscape can look like.

The Confluence of Bookkeeping, Tax, and Advisory: How to Thrive in the New Accounting Landscape – Future Forward December 5-6 2023 by Insightful Accountant (heysummit.com)

But it’s not just me! There’s an amazing lineup of speakers and sessions:

Day 1 – Dec 5

Checking in with QuickBooks Checking + Envelopes with Alicia Katz Pollock with Royalwise Solutions, Inc.
Strategies For Niching Success with Kellie Parks from Calmwaters Cloud Accounting
Niche to an Ideal Client Roster with Debra Kilsheimer from Profit Creator
Firm of the Future: Unlocking the Power of the Vertical Niche with Gregg Bossen – Creator/President of QuickBooks® Made Easy™

Day 2 – Dec 6

5 Strategies to Maximize Firm Success Through Onboarding Mastery and Strategic Outsourcing with Vanessa Vasquez from QuickBooks en Espanol
Automate Tax Season with AI with Christine Gervais from Epiphany Group
Grow Your Practice with Highly Profitable Reporting for Multi-Entity Clients with Charles Nagel from Qvinci and William Murphy from Insightful Accountant
The Confluence of Bookkeeping, Tax, and Advisory: How to Thrive in the New Accounting Landscape with Nancy McClelland from the Dancing Accountant

The live event is free, the recordings will be made available for a nominal fee. Just click on this link to sign up.

See you there!

Education

Conference Alert: The Unique CPA “Bridging The Gap”, Aug 29-30, 2023

August 12, 2023 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

I’ve been a fan of Randy Crabtree’s Unique CPA podcast for a while, and though we’ve run across each other at accounting technology conferences here and there, I had no idea that he was so committed to our industry as to hold an entire in-person event for us! The upcoming “Bridging The Gap” conference will be held right near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and promises two full days of education and networking (plus an optional pre-conference).

Especially exciting is the lineup of sessions by some of my favorite speakers, including Dawn Brolin, Nayo Carter-Gray, David Leary, Kellie Parks, Blake Oliver, John Garrett, Paul Hamann, and Gaynor Hardy-Meilke. (I’m sure the other presenters are delightful as well, but this tried-and-true list is GOLD, in my opinion.) Check out the agenda here.

Randy’s conference has been virtual the past two years, and this is the first time it’s being held in-person. The focus is on bringing a fresh focus to work-life balance and how it relates to making us better professionals and people. The emphasis on physical and mental health truly makes this a unique conference in the accounting world. I think this was the claim that got me to click the sign-up button:

And even better… you can use code BTG23RTDISC for $150 off the In-Person Conference ticket!

Just to be clear — I’m not being paid to promote this conference… any of our regular readers already knows that I’m passionate about education and community. Realizing that there’s yet one more opportunity to find both at this under-promoted conference motivated me to share — to make sure that my colleagues know not to miss it. Register here and join me August 29-30. Leave a note in the comments if you’ll be there and we’ll try to connect!

Cooperatives, Education, IRS, Tips

National Society Of Accountants For Co-ops Upcoming Webinars

March 6, 2022 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

I often write and speak about my experiences as a co-op accountant, and how challenging it was to become an expert in the field with so few resources. Things have changed a lot since back then, with the National Society of Accountants for Co-ops (NSAC), National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), and the Co-op Professionals Guild (CPG) all offering online education.

The NSAC line-up for the next few months is seriously powerhouse. For anyone in the field or looking to get into it, I strongly recommend a membership, which gets you into all of these webinars below at no extra charge. That said, if you only want to know the specifics of one topic or another, they are affordably priced at $56 each for non-members.

Note: I am not paid or given a discount to promote NSAC — I just think they’re great!

Education, Site News, Tips

What’s The Difference Between A CPA, Bookkeeper, And A CFO?

July 10, 2021 Nancy McClelland 2 Comments

I have often imagined what my firm might look like in five years and how what I do then might be different than now. And when I watch videos by Hannah Smolinski of Clara CFO, I think: “that’s it! I want to do what she does.”

No, I don’t necessarily want to specialize as a fractional/outsourced CFO (although we already do a lot of this type of work for our clients). What I mean is that I love teaching small business owners how to better manage their companies, and training other bookkeepers and accountants how to better help their clients.

This video was a great example of that — a topic that small business owners need to understand but that few folks take the time to explain. (Although I have one complaint: she should have made it clear that “CFO” is just a title — it’s not a credentialed designation like EA or CPA. As with “tax preparer,” “bookkeeper,” or “accountant,” anyone can call themselves a CFO. So be careful.)

I agree with Hannah that our profession has done a poor job at explaining exactly what it is that we do. My clients mistakenly referred to me as their CPA for years before I actually sat for (and totally killed, mind you) the exams — and I’d have to correct them to make sure they knew I wasn’t qualified to do public accounting (for which the exams certify you). And they were like, “well, once you’re a CPA, how will what you do for us change?” The answer… um… it won’t, not at all. My firm will still do your bookkeeping, accounting, tax preparation, tax planning, financial analysis; and some things Hannah forgot to mention in her video: accounting technology consulting, internal controls/systems design, HR/payroll/benefits, and local/state tax compliance (sales/use, restaurant, soda, liquor taxes). We pride ourselves in straddling the worlds of bookkeeping, accounting, analysis, and tax — providing holistic small business financial consulting.

I think that’s the reason we don’t do a great job of explaining what we do — there’s no requirement to get a certification or degree to perform any of these duties. I did them before I became a CPA, I did them afterwards, I still do them. And a lot of my non-CPA colleagues in Bookkeeping Buds, for example, absolutely dance circles around certified accountants when it comes to accounting technology, clean-up and problem-solving, local/state law compliance, and designing efficient and accurate systems and processes.

And if you’re wondering why I bothered sitting for one of the hardest exams in the world (four parts, over a period of more than a year), it was because my colleagues took me more seriously as a CPA — not my clients. (At conferences, many CPAs and EAs were entirely dismissive of those of us who hadn’t tested their mettle against the exam process.) It was my Master’s Degree in Accounting & Financial Management — not preparing for the CPA exams — that taught me the additional skills I wanted to use with clients: financial analysis, strategy, managerial accounting, cost accounting, etc.

Long story longer: check out the video above. It does a nice job of explaining the breakdown among job titles — and I think the most important takeaway is to make a list of the duties you’d like fulfilled, and then ask around your network of other small business owners until you find a professional who knows which of these they can perform, and has a solid network to find others who can fill in the missing pieces. A good bookkeeper, accountant or CPA doesn’t work in a vacuum — we refer the work that isn’t in our wheelhouse to other talented professionals. For example, it’s prohibited by law for us to perform legal or investment services, but we’ve worked with many lawyers and investment advisors and know where you point you. Hiring any of these roles should be an addition to your team that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Education, Tips

How To Add A Read-Only User To Your Chase Business Account

May 26, 2021 Nancy McClelland Leave a comment

This is something we request so often from our clients that I finally asked a client to write up what it looks like on her end so I can post it as a blog entry. This access option is very important to third-parties like bookkeepers and CPAs, because neither we nor our clients want the option for us to authorize transactions, but we need to be able to view banking and credit card activity.

Chase has excellent info here, which you should review first: Access & Security Manager: Add users and assign rights | Helpful Tips | Chase.com

Then — from the eyes of a small business owner who’s done it herself:

1. From the Chase homepage click on Account Management at the top of the page, center.

2. From the drop-down menu that appears click Access & Security Manager.

3. Click Add Authorized User (should be on the right of the screen, under the primary/admin account).

4. You’ll be prompted to receive an activation code on your phone to create the new account.

5. Follow prompts from there to create the new account (It will ask for the new user’s name, email address, phone, username, and temporary password, as well as whether or not to allow mobile access).

6. Once the account is created, there will be an option to the right of that username to manage the account. This is where you can select permissions (they call them “user rights”). Check the desired boxes to grant/limit access for each user.

Chase is constantly changing its user interface, so if these steps have changed since they were written, please let us know so we can update them! Your feedback is sincerely appreciated.

Accounting Services for Small Businesses