Make QuickBooks Work for You

According to Intuit, QuickBooks is the #1 accounting solution for small business.  As a small business owner, does QuickBooks meet your needs?

As a CPA, I have a love-hate relationship with QuickBooks.  I love how simple it can be and how I can easily make necessary adjustments and transfer data with my clients.  On the other hand, I hate how quickly it can become unraveled and work against the small business owner.

Do you find yourself “recreating the wheel” when it comes to your accounting records?  You shouldn’t!  As a small business owner, your focus should be on running your business and not fretting over accounting software that seems to be working against you.  QuickBooks should be an efficient tool that helps you run a more profitable business. Make QuickBooks work for you.

I have been supporting clients using QuickBooks for over a decade.  Following are a few easy-to-use tips that will help make QuickBooks work for you.

1. Create a Backup File. We live in an era where information is just a click or touch away, but what happens when technology fails?  Don’t get stuck having to recreate months or even years of financial data.  Make QuickBooks work for you by regularly backing up your company file.  The QuickBooks backup feature only takes a few minutes to complete, but can save you countless hours in the event of a system crash.  If you are prone to forget to backup manually, the automatic, online feature is perfect for you.  Over the years, there have been too many times when clients have called devastated because their hardware has failed and years of data is lost.  This is an easily preventable problem if you backup regularly.

2. Reconcile. Like it or not, we all have to report to Uncle Sam.  To have accurate financial data to use in meeting your income tax reporting obligations, make QuickBooks work for you.  You need accurate and complete financial data in order to minimize your tax and increase your profitability.  QuickBooks has an easy-to-use reconciliation feature that aids you in making sure your records are complete and accurate.  You don’t want to file your tax return and months later discover you forgot to record your automatic drafts or figure out the bank made an error in processing your deposits.  Reconcile your accounts on a monthly basis and avoid missing deductions that can reduce your tax burden.

3. Maintain Data Integrity. Once you close a year and your tax reporting is complete, your accounting records should not change.  In QuickBooks, it is too easy to make changes to a prior year by voiding a check, entering the wrong date for a transaction, deleting an invoice, etc.  Don’t let QuickBooks cost you more in accounting fees.  Each year should start off where the prior year ended.  If there are changes to your prior year information, your accountant will have to spend extra time figuring out what changed.  This can be avoided if you make QuickBooks work for you by using the closing date password to prevent changes to prior periods.

4. Be More Efficient. Often times in small business, the same or similar transactions recur frequently.  Do you find yourself entering the same transactions day after day?  Use the QuickBooks memorized transaction feature and make QuickBooks work for you by automatically entering these transactions.  Time is money, so you can work more efficiently by letting QuickBooks do this repetitive work, freeing up your time to focus on your business.

These are just a few simple tips to get you on the right track of making QuickBooks work for you.  QuickBooks is a great tool for small business owners and their accountants; make sure you are using QuickBooks to its full potential.  If you find QuickBooks working against you, give us a call and let us help make QuickBooks work for you.