Say Good-Bye to 2012 and Ready QuickBooks for 2013

By Vickie Robertson | Published: December 1, 2012

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December 2012

Say Good-Bye to 2012 and Ready QuickBooks for 2013

We hope you’ll be ringing out a successful financial year at month’s end. In any case, here’s what you should know about preparing for 2013.

End of the year. QuickBooks has been hard at work for the past 11+ months, recording and tracking and storing all of that financial data that you’ve entered so faithfully.

clip_image004But when you turn the calendar page and make a new start January 1, your accounting software could use some closure on the year that’s just passed. Here are some actions you can take to ring out the old and ring in the new. There’s more you can do (we can help you with the advanced activities) but we’ll just hit the highlights here.

Reconcile, reconcile, reconcile. Yes, we know it’s not one of your favorite chores, but we really like to see all bank and credit card accounts reconciled by the end of the year if at all possible. Void all checks necessary and enter missing transactions.

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Figure 1: You can make yourself crazy looking for a nickel when you’re reconciling, but it’s a critical function.

· Make accrual adjustments. This is complicated, and it only applies if you accrue payroll and liabilities or prepay expenses that are then carried as assets. We’ll need to create journal entries for you.

· Close your books. This is totally optional. It depends on whether you want to lock 2012 data to everyone except those who have the password and permissions. If you don’t close them, you’ll have easier access to last year’s transaction details. Regardless of what you choose, QuickBooks will automatically make some year-end adjustments.

· Do a physical inventory. Then compare this with what QuickBooks says. Reports | Inventory | Physical Inventory Worksheet.

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Figure 2: It’s good to match up your physical inventory count with QuickBooks occasionally, and the end of the year is as good a time as any.

· Run income tax reports. As you know, QuickBooks lets you assign tax lines to tax-related transactions. Use the Income Tax Preparation Report and the Income Tax Summary Report. Let us know about any errors or omissions.

· Check W-2 and 1099 data. You can’t create these forms, of course, until after your final 2012 payroll, but you can get a head start. Ask employees to verify their names, addresses and Social Security numbers for accuracy. Also, make sure that your EIN and SEIN are correct, as well as the company address.

· Clean up, back up. We can monitor the health of your QuickBooks data file anytime. But year-end is a good time to scrutinize your software’s performance. Has it slowed down, started crashing or returning error messages? We can troubleshoot to find the problem and clean it up. We’re sure you’ve been backing up your file faithfully, but archive all of 2012 and store it in a very safe offsite location – or use Intuit Data Protect for online storage.

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Figure 3: Frequent backups are critical, but you should be sure to have a copy of your entire 2012 data file stored somewhere safe.

· Double-check tax liabilities. If you’re handling your own payroll, look back to see whether all of your payments and filings have been completed.

Thanks for another year.

Again, these are suggestions. QuickBooks does not require you to do any of them. There’s more you can do, and you will need assistance with some of these. So let’s set up a December or early January meeting to get you started right in 2013.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for letting us serve your company in 2012. We certainly appreciate your business, and we’re happy to do what we can to help your business prosper.

P.S. It’s not too early to think about taxes, so let us know if you want to get a jump on planning and preparation in January.

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Employee Compensation Getting Complex? Add Payroll Items

By Vickie Robertson | Published: November 10, 2012

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November 2012

Employee Compensation Getting Complex? Add Payroll Items

Payroll processing can get complicated. Here’s how to handle the inevitable exceptions.

QuickBooks is accommodating enough when you first start using payroll. It includes a thorough setup wizard and creates the accounts and payroll items you’ll need to track your expenses.

But there are myriad situations where you’ll have to add or subtract dollar amounts from employees’ regular paychecks. There may be advances, reimbursements, wage garnishments and other deductions that you’ll need to process. When these occur, you can easily expand your library of payroll items so that your wage and tax information remains accurate.

Lots of Clicks Required

Let’s say that some of your employees have decided to make a $5 donation every pay period to a local food shelf ; the deductions will max out at $20. Click Lists | Payroll Item List to see what’s already been created for you automatically.

Right-click anywhere within the list and select New. The Add new payroll item window opens. Click EZ Setup (if you anticipate that your item will be especially complex, let us help you through Custom Setup).
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Figure 1: You can choose from a variety of payroll item types in QuickBooks.

Click Next | Other Deductions | Next, and QuickBooks will launch the Payroll Setup wizard. When the Add New window appears, click Donation to charity | Next. Enter the name of the charity and any account number they’re given you, and select the button next to Weekly, on Monday where it asks for payment frequency. Click Next | Finish. The wizard closes.

Detail Work

Open the Payroll Item list again and right-click on your new entry, then Edit Payroll Item. Type in a name and click Next. Keep clicking Next through the next three screens until you get to Calculate based on quantity. Click Neither since it’s a flat amount, and advance to the next screen, where you’ll decide whether to deduct from gross or net pay. Enter the Default rate and limit on the next screen and uncheck the annual limit box. Click Finish.

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Figure 2: Tell QuickBooks how much to deduct and for how long.
Not done yet. You still have to indicate which employees are taking the deduction. Go to the Employee Center and select a staff member. Click the Edit icon in the upper right, then Payroll Info. Select the first open space in the Additions, Deductions… column, access the drop-down menu and select the charity, then click OK.

The next time you process paychecks, the donation should appear in the Preview Paycheck window. All of this back and forth can be confusing, but your data entry here must be absolutely correct. Questions? We’re here.

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Are You Defining Items in QuickBooks Correctly?

By Vickie Robertson | Published: November 1, 2012

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November 2012

Are You Defining Items in QuickBooks Correctly?

Create item records in QuickBooks carefully, and QuickBooks will return the favor by running useful, accurate reports.

Figure 1: Clearly-defined items result in precise reports.

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Obviously, you’re using QuickBooks because you buy and/or sell products and/or services. You want to know at least weekly — if not daily — what’s selling and what’s not, so you can make informed plans about your company’s future.

QuickBooks’ Item LineupYou get that information from the reports thatt you so painstakingly customize and create. But their accuracy depends in large part on how carefully you define each item. This can be a laborious process, but it’s a critical part of QuickBooks’ foundation.

You may not be aware of all of your options here. So let’s take a look at what you see when you go to Lists | Item List | Item | New:

Service. Simple enough. Do you or your employees do something for clients? Training? Construction labor? Web design? This is usually tracked by the hour.

Inventory Part. If you want to maintain detailed records about inventory that contain up-to-date information about value, quantities on hand and cost of goods sold, you must define these items as inventory parts. Before you start creating individual records, make sure that QuickBooks is set up for this purpose. Go to Edit | Preferences | Items & Inventory | Company Preferences and select the desired options there, like this:

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Figure 2: QuickBooks needs to know that you’re planning to track at least some items as inventory parts.

Inventory Assembly. Just what it sounds like; it’s sometimes referred to as a Bill of Materials. Do you sell items that actually consist of multiple individual products, services and/or other charges (though you may also sell the parts separately)? If you’re planning to track the compilations as individual units, then you must define them as assemblies.

Non-Inventory Parts. If you don’t track inventory, you can set up items as non-inventory parts. Even if you do track inventory, there may be times when you’ll want to use this designation. For instance, you might sell something to a customer that they asked you to obtain, but you don’t plan to stock it. In that case, QuickBooks only records the incoming and outgoing funds.

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Figure 3: The New Item window looks a bit intimidating, but it’s critical that you complete it thoroughly and correctly. We can help you get started.

Other Charges. This is a catch-all category for items like delivery charges or setup fees. You can’t designate a unit or measure here; they’re just standard costs.

Groups. Unlike assemblies, these are not recorded as individual inventory units. Use this designation when you sell a combination of items together frequently but you don’t want them tracked as one entity.

Discount. This is a fixed amount or a percentage that you subtract from a subtotal or total.

Payment. Normally, you would use the Receive Payments window to record a payment made. But if your customer has made a partial or advance payment upfront, use this item to subtract it from the total when you create the invoice or statement.

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Figure 4: Use the Payment

Sales Tax Item. One sales tax, one rate, one agency.item to record an upfront remittance.

Sales Tax Group. If a sale requires two or more sales tax items, QuickBooks calculates the total and displays it for the customer, but the items are tracked individually.

Additional Actions

The Item menu provides other options for working with items. You can:

· Edit or delete

· Duplicate

· Make inactive

· Find in transactions and

· Customize the list’s columns.

Let us know if you’re not confident about items you’ve already created or if you’re just getting started with this important QuickBooks feature. Some extra work and attention upfront can save you from hours of back-tracking and frustration – and from reports that don’t tell the truth.

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QuickBooks 2013 Streamlines, Simplifies, Optimizes Payment Experience

By Vickie Robertson | Published: October 10, 2012

 

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October 2012

QuickBooks 2013 Streamlines, Simplifies, Optimizes Payment Experience

Your payment tasks just got a whole lot easier.

Let’s be honest: the QuickBooks desktop experience had gotten old. Years of added features crammed into those claustrophobic screens had taken a toll. Your payment workflow – as well as every other program element – had been hampered by an inconsistent interface and clumsy, sometimes-unclear navigational tools.

Intuit has scrapped that aging look and feel: QuickBooks 2013 is light years ahead of its predecessors in terms of usability. Though you may have grown accustomed to the old approach to payment management, you’ll quickly realize just how much this significant change was needed. Your learning curve will be brief, and you may actually enjoy processing your company’s electronically-processed remittances.

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Figure 1: The new QuickBooks Ribbon displays tools related to each task. You can go into “What’s New?” mode to see upgraded features.

Consistency, Efficiency, Clarity

Part of QuickBooks’ appeal has always been its usability, but Intuit wanted to improve on the existing framework. So the company did a major, across-the-board revamp. Text and icons are larger and more readable, and every screen looks fresher, more open and more engaging.

Wherever you go within QuickBooks 2013, you’ll see the same look and navigational tools. This new uniformity starts on the home page, which has been cleaned up to accelerate workflow. You can choose between the traditional horizontal Icon Bar, the new vertical navigational tool or neither (you can customize this new tool to make your payment tasks always visible).

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Figure 2: You can display links to your payment tasks prominently in the new vertical navigational tool.

QuickBooks 2013 makes it easier to see your next logical move in specific processes by brightly coloring and enlarging icons and links. Its Centers and their corresponding records have also been redesigned to capture more in-depth, easily accessible information.

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Figure 3: Payment settings in customer records are easier to access and read.

A Smart Upgrade

The QuickBooks family of software is comprehensive and generic enough to meet the needs of millions of small businesses. But you may occasionally need more sophisticated tools than it offers. And some industries have more complex, specialized accounting requirements than others.

To accommodate that, Intuit has made the Intuit App Center Easily accessible from within QuickBooks 2013, through a link in the navigation bar. Here you can choose from hundreds of compatible, integrated applications in categories like billing and invoicing, banking and credit card processing, and financial management. And the stable of Contributed Reports, customized reports that meet the very specific needs of different  industries, has grown to include more than 6,500 in QuickBooks 2013.

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.Figure 4: Contributed Reports drill down deeper – and in more specialized ways – than QuickBooks standard reports.

This year – especially if you haven’t upgraded in a couple of years – you should consider letting us help you move up to QuickBooks 2013. We’re very optimistic about how this state-of-the-art interface and new navigational tools can make you more efficient and productive – and faster – as you move through your daily accounting tasks.

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QuickBooks 2013 Gives You A Reason To Upgrade

By Vickie Robertson | Published: October 1, 2012

 

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October 2012

QuickBooks 2013 Gives You A Reason To Upgrade

Tired of QuickBooks’ cramped, claustrophobic screens and uneven interface? You’ll be pleased to see the 2013 version.

You chose QuickBooks for a variety of reasons, a major one being its simplicity and usability.

But the software is more than 20 years old now, and hundreds of features have been added over the years. QuickBooks looks old, tired and in need of a makeover.

Not anymore. Intuit has totally redesigned the program’s interface and navigational tools, providing a more consistent, streamlined, state-of-the-art look and feel. For the first time in a few years, there’s a compelling reason to consider moving up.

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Figure 1: The QuickBooks 2013 home page.

Clean, Efficient, Customizable

What Intuit heard from customers was that they wanted a clean, simple experience. They wanted QuickBooks optimized for efficiency, and they wanted to be able to customize quickly.

So Intuit built a brand new interface, one that offers:

· An across-the-board, consistent look and feel

· A minimal learning curve, aided by familiar software conventions

· A clearer, more obvious workflow.

QuickBooks’ 2013′s dramatic changes are evident from its first screen. The home page has been cleaned up, and many icons removed (with their functions available elsewhere). But the interactive flowchart graphic is still there, along with icons for other commonly-used features.

You can still use the software’s standard drop-down menus. But you now have a choice between the old horizontal Icon Toolbar and a new vertical navigational panel (or neither of the latter two). You can customize the new panel to give you quick access to the functions and reports you use most often, saving time and unnecessary clicking.

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Figure 2: The new vertical navigational panel can be customized to display the icons you want.

Familiarity, and Clear Signals

Whether you just handle a subset of your company’s financial data or you’re the only one working with QuickBooks, your workflow will be faster and more intuitive.

QuickBooks 2013 uses colors and other visual cues to provide helpful hints and speed up your work. If the same option occurs within more than one screen, it’s always the identical color. When you’re completing an invoice, for example, the Save & New button is a bright blue color, as it is on many other screens. The Save & Close and OK icons are the same shade within the forms and records where they occur.

Color is also used to signify related actions in the new navigational Ribbon, a familiar interface convention that replaces the mismatched icons that used to be displayed at the top of transaction forms. In QuickBooks 2013, the icons for related tasks are the same color, and the graphics themselves are much cleaner and well-positioned.

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Figure 3: QuickBooks 2013′s new navigational Ribbon is designed to accelerate workflow.

A Pleasure to Use

No area of QuickBooks remained untouched in this massive overhaul. Every screen has been modified to enhance readability and speed. Fonts look larger and clearer, and the overall design is more aesthetically pleasing.

So besides making your accounting chores zip along faster, the new look and navigation have a positive psychological effect: It’s simply more enjoyable and less frustrating to interact with QuickBooks 2013. Its more modern, attractive look has a lot of appeal.

There are a few new things under the hood in this new version – it’s not just an interface update. For example, customer and vendor records are more flexible and thorough. You can attach to-do’s to them, assign multiple contacts and store more contact options, like Facebook addresses and Twitter handles.

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Figure 4: Contact records in QuickBooks 2013 are more readable and thorough.

Starting Fresh

There are other changes that will make your work life easier, like one-click access to both the Intuit App Center (where you’ll find hundreds of integrated QuickBooks add-ons) and your most often-accessed reports.

The last few versions of QuickBooks have been rather ho-hum in terms of new usability and functionality. But we encourage you to seriously consider upgrading to QuickBooks 2013. We’d be happy to help you get up and running with it. Together, we can take a fresh look at your workflow to see if you and QuickBooks can build a better accounting experience.

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QuickBooks Point of Sale: 6 Smart Practices You Should Learn

By Vickie Robertson | Published: September 10, 2012

September 2012

QuickBooks Point of Sale: 6 Smart Practices You Should Learn

These tips for QuickBooks Point of Sale 10.0 and higher will make your employees and customers happier.

You know that accuracy is the most important element of any retail transaction, but speed is right up there, too. The faster you can enter process the items, the more time you have to exchange pleasantries with your current customer and serve the rest faster. Here are some suggestions for accelerating the sales process and using QuickBooks POS optimally.

· Customize navigational buttons. Right-click on the vertical navigation pane on the left and click Customize buttons. Use the < > arrows to move options between Available Fields and Selected Fields, then click Finish. Displaying buttons for the most often-used functions will save time.

· Use Quick Picks. Do you sell the same items frequently? Stock oddly-shaped merchandise that is hard to tag? Go to File | Preferences | Company and highlight Inventory. Click Add next to Inventory Quick Pick Groups. Name your group and click Save. Open the editing screen for each item that should be included and select your new group name from the drop-down menu next to Quick Pick Group in the left vertical pane. When you process a sale, click the Quick Pick Items button and choose the one you want.

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Figure 1: Set up Quick Picks for frequently-sold or hard-to-tag items.

· Shut down the computer running POS every night. This will let the system refresh itself and help avoid error messages.

· Invest in a bar code scanner. The accuracy you’ll ensure and the time you’ll save make it worth the hardware cost. QuickBooks POS can scan numbers from three fields: UPCs, Item Numbers and Alternate Lookups (it’s critical that you scan the right numbers for labels; let us help you set this up). The program prints barcoded labels that can be attached to items and scanned at the register. You can also create customer ID cards to use in Rewards Programs, for example.

· Reward your best customers. It’s easier and cheaper to retain existing customers than to find new ones. Run the Customer Sales report to identify your best customers and offer them an additional discount or hold a private sale for them.

· Use filters to isolate related groups. QuickBooks POS offers powerful filtering options. You can select from pre-defined parameters in some data areas or build your own using an exceptionally flexible custom tool. Look in the upper right corner of Customer, Item, Sales History or Receiving History screens to locate the Search and <Create Filter> buttons. When you select other views like the Vendor List, your filter commands will appear in the window’s upper left.

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Figure 2: You can choose from pre-defined filters or build your own to find data that share common characteristics.

You might, for example, find:

· All customers who haven’t made a purchase in the last three months

· Every sweatshirt in the store available in size 2XL OR 3XL

· Orders that were received within a date range AND which came from two different vendors.

Receiving Vouchers, which you would be searching for in this last example, are complex. Instructions for creating them can vary depending on multiple factors. Contact us when you get started with these – or if you’re looking for other tips on learning the best ways to use QuickBooks Point of Sale.

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QuickBooks Payroll Runs: Easy, Fast, Accurate

By Vickie Robertson | Published: September 1, 2012

 

September 2012

QuickBooks Payroll Runs: Easy, Fast, Accurate

If you’ve already set up your QuickBooks employee and company payroll files, the hard part’s over.

It’s not just a catchy ad slogan: It’s true. Unless you have dozens of employees or numerous exceptions each payday, you can literally process a payroll run in just a few minutes using the employee compensation tools in QuickBooks.

No matter which version of desktop QuickBooks you’re using, payday chores are similar. Even if you’ve subscribed to Full Service Payroll and are having most of the work done by Intuit, you still have to enter the number and type of hours worked for each pay period.

If you’re doing payroll manually or through a payroll service, you might be surprised at how quickly and easily your payroll tasks can be completed once you’ve finished entering information about your company and its employees, taxes and deductions.

A Simple Process

When you get a reminder that it’s time to run payroll, go to Employees | Pay Employees and choose Scheduled Payroll to get to this window:

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Figure 1: No matter how many payrolls you’ve run, it’s important to verify that these dates are correct.

When you click Start Scheduled Payroll, a new screen displays your employee list in a spreadsheet grid. By default, QuickBooks displays several columns, including Employee, Regular Pay and Sick Hourly; you can opt to include others, like Employee Number. If you hide columns that contain information, that data will still be used in paycheck calculation. Then:

· Verify that the information at the top of the screen is correct (Payroll Schedule, Bank Account, etc.).

· Make sure that all employees to be paid have check marks next to their names.

· Enter the number of hours worked for each hourly employee, placing them in the correct pay type column.

Select one and click Open Paycheck Detail to see a complete breakdown of compensation and withholding — all calculated automatically by QuickBooks based on your setup data — within the Preview Paycheck screen. Close the window when finished.

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Figure 2: The Preview Paycheck screen shows the numbers behind the check amount.

Checking Your Work

If you’re satisfied that everything is correct, click Continue. In the next screen, you’ll verify Payroll Information again and check a box to indicate whether checks will be printed or handwritten (you can assign a starting check number to the latter). QuickBooks displays a grid containing each employee’s total gross pay, total taxes and deductions, net pay, employer taxes, contributions and total hours. The Direct Deposit field will be checked if the individual is signed up.

If you’re at all unsure that your payroll information is correct, you can click Finish Later. Otherwise, select Create Paychecks.

The Final Step

QuickBooks will then display your results:

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Figure 3: Once you’ve previewed and approved a payroll, you can simply click to print any paper checks and pay stubs.

Check the box at the bottom of this window next to Do not advance the dates of this payroll schedule in the Payroll Center if you still have employees to process for this run. If the box isn’t checked, QuickBooks will change the dates in the Pay Employees window to reflect your next pay period.

When you select Print Paychecks or Print Pay Stubs, the selection window opens. You can toggle among views of Paychecks, Direct Deposit or Both. Select the ones you want to dispatch and click Print or E-Mail. You’ll have the option to reprint any checks if you need to; otherwise, click OK.

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Figure 4: Click Preferences in the print selection window to customize paycheck vouchers and pay stubs.

No Room for Errors

Sounds simple, and it is – as long as your setup was error-free. As you well know, you can’t make mistakes running payroll or you’ll initiate a whole series of incorrect numbers, making employees, benefits providers and government agencies unhappy.

So do not proceed if something doesn’t look right; QuickBooks always gives you an out. And let us know how we can help with setup, taxes or payroll runs – or anything in between.

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Accepting Credit Cards on Your Web Store: 10 Terms You Should Know

By Vickie Robertson | Published: August 10, 2012

 

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August 2012

Accepting Credit Cards on Your Web Store: 10 Terms You Should Knowclip_image004

Intuit Merchant Services for Web Stores can boost your accounts receivable by enabling more purchases. Here are some card-processing basics.

Have you ever walked away from a purchase because the merchant didn’t accept credit cards?

So, probably, have your potential customers. And you may be losing sales because of it.

Intuit offers numerous ways to accept credit cards. One of them is Intuit Merchant Services for Web Stores, which provides an easy transaction gateway to QuickBooks (or it can be used alone). We can help you build an online storefront or connect to an existing one, as well as getting you set up with the required financial services.

Learning the Lingo

Regardless of how you accept credit cards, you’ll need to understand a few basic concepts about card processing. Here’s a brief rundown of the most common ones:

Merchant Service Provider: Sets up your online connections and serves as the intermediary between you as the merchant and all of the financial institutions involved

Merchant Bank: Supplies the actual merchant account and manages acceptance and payment of transactions

Issuing Bank: The financial institution that issues a line of credit to your customers

Interchange Fees: Charges assessed by major card associations like Visa and MasterCard that cover the transmission of money; usually a percentage of the total transaction plus a flat fee (American Express and Discover have their own fees)

Rates: Fees assessed to the merchant for the moving of funds

Qualificlip_image006ed rate is the percentage charged when the physical credit card is present (generally the lowest)

Mid-qualified rate is the percentage charged when a card is not eligible for the lowest rate (for example, when the merchant types the number into a terminal instead of swiping a card)

Non-qualified rate is the percentage charged when a customer’s card doesn’t qualify for the two lower rates (can occur when customer address isn’t verified or there’s missing information)

Authorization Fee: Charged to the merchant for address verification when the customer and card are not physically present

Downgrade: Occurs when, for example, there is corrupted swiped data or a transaction isn’t settled within two days of authorization

Chargeback: The process set in motion when a customer disputes a transaction; merchant gets a retrieval request and possibly additional charges from the issuing bank.

There are many best practices for processing credit card transactions, but the most important one is that you carefully read your merchant agreement. We can answer any questions you might have about merchant accounts and website-based payments. It’s time to start recovering those sales you’re losing.

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QuickBooks Can Do Much More Than You Think

By Vickie Robertson | Published: August 1, 2012

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August 2012

QuickBooks Can Do Much More Than You Think

No, you’ll never max out all of its features, but here are some tips on tools that extend QuickBooks’ usefulness – and save you time.

Zero In On Key Report Figures

You’ve undoubtedly created reports that were so lengthy that you got tired of scrolling up and down to find totals for each individual section. QuickBooks lets you collapse and expand reports to see primary totals only, but this command affects the entire report.

clip_image004If you want to just collapse a section or two, here’s how you do it. As an example, go to Reports | Company & Financial | Balance Sheet Standard. In QuickBooks 2012, you’d click the Excel button (your version may say Export). Indicate that you want to create a new worksheet and click Advanced. This window opens:

 

Figure 1: The Advanced Excel Options window displays the formatting tools you can carry over from QuickBooks and the features in Excel that you want to be active.

Make sure that Auto Outline (allows collapsing/expanding) is checked, then click OK and start the export. When your report opens as an Excel spreadsheet, you’ll notice that there is a series of vertical lines to the left of your data, and a group of numbers that corresponds to them running above horizontally.

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Figure 2: Excel’s Auto Outline feature adds tools to the left of your data that let you collapse and expand subsections.

To collapse a section so that only the totals show, click on the minus (-) sign next to the line that should remain (in this example, it’s Total Checking/Savings). Do the same for Total Accounts Receivable and Total Other Current Assets. Then scroll down and do the same thing for the other asset subtotals. Here’s what you’ll see:

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Figure 3: As you can see, the minus (-) signs have turned into plus (+) signs, which allows you to expand the rows back to their original states.

Auto Outline is a very useful feature, but there’s more than one way to implement it. And its availability and operation can vary in different versions of both Excel and QuickBooks. We can help you master this, as well as other QuickBooks-to-Excel tools.

Hidden Gems

Here are some other less-commonly-used QuickBooks features that you may want to try:

  • Getting ready to send an invoice but want to check a related transaction from the same job a few months ago? You could use the Find tool, which is a seriously underused feature that can often answer a question quickly. But that takes a few clicks. Instead, just hit Ctrl + L, and that Customer/Job screen pops open in the Customer Center. Click Ctrl + E from that screen to see the Edit Job dialog box.
  • CTRL+Y on transaction screens opens the Transaction Journal, which shows you the behind-the-scenes debits and credits. If the Account column is truncated, click and drag the little diamond symbol to the right.
  • QuickBooks offers numerous helpful payroll reports, but it also transfers your data into Excel for more comprehensive views of your employee compensation information over customizable date ranges. Go to Reports | Employees & Payroll | Summarize Payroll Data in Excel and More Payroll Reports in Excel.

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Figure 4: Summarize Payroll Data in Excel is actually a series of reports, available by clicking this navigational bar at the bottom of the screen.

  • Allowing multiple windows in QuickBooks and tired of clicking the little x repeatedly to start with a clean slate? Click Window | Close All. This drop-down menu also displays the list of open windows; click on one to go there.
  • There may be no more frustrating task than reconciling your bank accounts. If you’re using online banking, consider doing this more than once monthly. Also, don’t let QuickBooks do an automatic adjustment for a considerable discrepancy unless it was a mistake made by a financial institution: Click the Undo Last Reconciliation button and try to find the error. And don’t forget about the Leave button. You may do better attacking it later.
  • If you occasionally need to enter a transaction for an entity that isn’t a customer, vendor or employee, go to Banking | Other Names List. You can add, edit and delete these, as well as converting them to customers, vendors or employees.

There’s more than one way to do a lot of things in QuickBooks. We can tell you about more, and evaluate your workflow to see how else we can improve your accounting experience.

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QuickBooks Payroll: Many Options, Complex Setup

By Vickie Robertson | Published: July 10, 2012

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July 2012

QuickBooks Payroll: Many Options, Complex Setup

clip_image004Dissatisfied with your payroll service? QuickBooks processes employee data and paychecks –and can do so affordably — but can you manage the detail work required?

Those neatly-printed paychecks and paystubs and direct deposit slips that you distribute only hint at the Herculean effort it takes to calculate them. If you manage your own payroll inhouse, you know this well.

If you don’t, but you’d like more control over this complex element of accounting (and wouldn’t mind maybe saving some money), you have several options. We talked about Intuit Online Payroll last March as one.

Hesitant about moving sensitive financial data into the cloud? Intuit offers a handful of desktop-based options that integrate with QuickBooks:

  • QuickBooks Basic Payroll. You handle all employee/employer setup and payroll taxes.
  • QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll. This service also generates W-2 forms and automatically completes federal/state payroll tax forms.
  • QuickBooks Assisted Payroll. Intuit takes responsibility for filing payroll taxes; guarantees accuracy or Intuit pays penalties.
  • Full Service Payroll. Intuit manages the entire payroll process, including setup (QuickBooks integration not required).

Subscription costs start at a base price of $25/month for Basic and progress to a minimum of $99/month for Full Service.

Time-Consuming Data Entry

Once you’ve set up your employee and company files, processing an actual payroll run isn’t difficult (unless you regularly encounter unusual situations). In the simplest possible cases, you just make sure that the correct pay period is selected, enter the number of hours worked and pay types for each applicable employee, and let QuickBooks do all of the calculations and create paychecks or direct deposit slips.

But the setup process itself can take a great deal of time, and it must be done absolutely accurately, since you’re dealing with employees’ livelihoods and external organizations like health insurance companies and tax agencies. You must manually enter details about:

clip_image006Your company. Bank account, compensation types, employee benefits (health insurance, 401k, vacation/sick leave, etc.) and other additions and deductions (like mileage reimbursement and wage garnishment)

Figure 2: QuickBooks Payroll displays the numbers that affect each employee’s net pay.

Your employees. Hire date, compensation type and amount, paycheck deductions, sick/vacation days and other data taken from the employee’s W-4 form

Your tax obligations. Types and rates, agency ID numbers, deposit/filing schedules, etc.

Your year-to-date payroll information. Paychecks issued, payroll taxes and other deductions and contributions

Serious Consequences Possible

Setup can be a lengthy, complicated procedure, and – understandably — prone to errors.

clip_image008Our firm can help you make a sensible choice from these alternatives, or we can manage your payroll internally. Either way, we recommend that you consult with us before changing your method of compensating employees and submitting taxes. Serious payroll errors can result in hefty penalties and unhappy employees – or worse.

Figure 3: The QuickBooks Payroll Setup Wizard walks you through every detail required to build your payroll files.

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