Quickbooks Online Certification

You are about to raise an invoice on behalf of Carol Walker, a small store owner. Walker's Wonders is a confectionery store with a fun and vibrant logo. The invoices for Walker's Wonders use a standard template. As well as adding the logo to the invoices, how else can you customize the invoice? Select 3 options.

- Add color to the highlighted areas - Set the size and poistion of the logo - Change the font style and size

How do you think Craig can benefit from connecting his bank and credit card accounts to QBO?

- All of his bank and credit card transactions will be synced into QBO w/out him having to enter them - He can check, categorize, and approve each bank transaction to make sure it's correct so he has full control - It will save him time because it will cut down on the amount of data he needs to enter

QBO Sub: Plus

- Budgets & advanced reports - Track multiple revenue streams and/or departments or locations (classes and locations) - Track inventory - Track project profitability - 5 users & 2 accountants

Wholesale billing has three key benefits. What are they?

- Bundling all client subscriptions into one invoice - Easy tracking - Switch anytime

MER: Account reconciliation

- Check all bank and credit card accounts are reconciled - Review outstanding transactions - Review client-specfic tasks

MER: Final review

- Check your client's books are complete and accurate - Review unusual or unexpected balances - Review profit and loss and balance sheet month-to-month and year-on-year changes match expectations

To set up a client with QuickBooks Payments via the setup wizard, you'll need to check or fill in information in three sections. What are the three sections?

- Company Owner info - Company info - Company bank details

Craig's got another new order from a customer. He needs to buy some paving from his vendor. He has 60 days to pay for it. Take a look at the vendor workflow: Buys paving on credit Vendor bills him ______________ ______________ What are the missing steps?

- Creates bill in QBO - Makes payment When you create the bill in QuickBooks Online, it will show up in Accounts Payable, so Craig knows money is due to come out of the business. But he can help his cash flow by keeping money in the bank for the next 60 days until it's time to pay his vendor.

Which two common client issues does the new Pay down credit card feature aim to resolve?

- Duplicate entries - Payments categorized to the wrong account Yes, with a specific function to pay down a credit card and clear client-friendly language that reflects which credit card to pay and from which account, you should see fewer duplicate entries and miscategorized payments to credit cards when you come to check your client's books!

Which of these statements is true of estimates in Quickbooks Online?

- Estimates are non-posting transactions - Estimate data can be used to create a purchase order in QBO - Estimate data can be used to create an invoice in QBO Estimates are non-posting transactions. They can be converted to invoices once they are accepted and the work is done or the service is provided and, of course invoices are posting transactions.Estimate data can be copied across to create a purchase order in QuickBooks Online. This saves time and is a great workflow to teach clients.

Who can add and manage apps subscriptions for clients? Select all that apply

- Firm Primary Admin - Full Access team user

Your client has taken a photo of a receipt for a new expense via the mobile app. They haven't yet entered the transaction into QBO. What is the next step in the receipt capture process?

- Got to the For Review tab in Receipts The app has loaded the transaction into QuickBooks Online for you. To make sure all of the information has been pulled through or to add further information, you would head to the For Review tab in Receipts by selecting Add.

Craig calls with a problem. He can see a duplicate transaction for some job materials he bought at Hicks Hardware. What might have caused this?

- Instead of matching the transaction from his bank feed, he added it By adding the transaction from his bank feed instead of matching it to an existing transaction, he created identical transactions for the same amount. ProAdvisor advice: Always Match first and check all bank and credit card transactions to make sure the transaction is not hidden someplace else Once this has been confirmed, Add is the second option

What are the four types of products and services?

- Inventory (Plus and Advanced only) These are products (such as a generator, electrical panel, or air filter) that are bought and sold, and where it's necessary to track quantities on hand. You must subscribe to QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced to use this feature. - Noninventory These are products bought and sold where it isn't necessary to track quantities on hand, such as the wire or nuts and bolts used in a generator installation. - Service This includes services that are provided to customers, such as an emergency service call visit or other labor. - Bundle This is a collection of products and services that are sold together, such as the installation of a generator that includes both labor and materials.

Whic option best describes why an Undeposited Funds account needs to be used for receving multiple payments?

- It's used so that the QuickBooks Online Bank Register matches a monthly bank statement The Undeposited Funds account is used so that the QuickBooks Online Bank Register matches a monthly bank statement.

What defines a transfer like the one we've just seen?

- Move money from one balance sheet account to another balance sheet account

Which 3 statements are true about QBO's Performance Center?

- Once you create a chart, it stays in Performance Center indefinitely, updated every 4 hours - You access Performance Center from the Reports menu in the left-hand navigation - When you first create a custome chart it uses real-time data, so is 100% accurate.

Take a look at the following customer workflow: Provide service Invoice customer ______________ Take money to the bank __________________ What 2 steps in QuickBooks Online complete the customer workflow?

- Receive payment - Create a bank deposit transaction By following the best practice customer workflow, Craig's accounts will be nice and tidy with no duplicate transactions. This means he has an accurate picture of how much money the business has.

What tasks would you need to complete before closing the books?

- Reconcile all bank and credit card accounts - Substantiate all Balance Sheet accounts - Review P&L accounts Tasks you'll need to perform include reconciling bank and credit cards, and any other Balance Sheet accounts.You should review other Balance Sheet accounts and tie out balances either to other reports like Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Inventory, or to other documents (i.e. loans). You should also review Profit and Loss accounts for reasonableness, and dig further if an account does not look correct.

What are three stages in the month-end review?

- Resolve transactions with issues - Account reconcilation - Review financial statements The month-end review is designed to support your month-end workflow by identifying problem transactions, highlighting any unreconciled accounts, and prompting you to review the financial statements for accuracy.

MER: Transaction review

- Review unaccepted bank transactions - Review unaccepted receipts - Resolve open issues - Review client-specific tasks

QBO Sub: Self-Employed

- Scheduled C; Cash basis - 1099 Income & W2 - Separate Business/Personal Accounts - 1 user & 1 accountant

You are working in the Billing details page, but you need to see an itemized version of the invoice you are working with. From the list below, what are your 2 options to view an itemized invoice?

- Select View PDF - Select Export CSV

QBO Sub: Advanced

- Small reporting (Fathom) - Unlimited accounts and classes - Advanced import and batch entry - Custom user roles - Dedicated manager and online training - 25 users & 3 accountants & premium care

QBO Sub: Simple Start

- Sole proprietor or single-owner corporations - Full general ledger & accounts receiveable - Multiple sources of income - 1 user & 2 accountants

You have set up a new user and removed payroll access. They will still be able to see some payroll entries, though these will be anonymized. What can't they see?

- The Employees tab in Workers Users without payroll access will be able to run reports and access the Bank Register in order to process all other information relating to the business. They won't be able to see employee information except where it has been masked.

If an opening balance of $100 is recorded for a vendor you just added, QuickBooks Online creates a journal entry. Which 2 options from the list are features of this journal entry?

- The journal entry will increase accounts payable - The journal entry will decrease the Opening Balance Equity account

If a transaction meets the criteria of multiple rules, which rule will be applied?

- The one listed first Where multiple rules apple to a new transaction, the first rule in the list will be applied.

Once sales tax has been set up, what criteria does QuickBooks Online use to calculate the sales tax owed on an invoice? (Select all that apply)

- The state where you are registered to collect sales tax - The physical address of the client's business - The customer's physical address - The customer's sales tax status - The tax category for the product or service

Reports Only users: Select each hotspot in turn to see what's different

- There's no navigation panel in the Reports Only view. Ryan doesn't require access to any other part of QuickBooks Online—everything he needs is on this view. - The Search icon has been removed. Everything Ryan needs is on this screen—he doesn't need to search for anything else. - Even if they are accessing the Reports Center from QuickBooks Online Accountant, a Reports Only user won't see the Accountant Toolbox. Ryan doesn't need access to this. - Ryan can still add reports he uses regularly to Favorites. - In order to focus on areas of the reports he needs for each task, Ryan can collapse report sections to hide data until he needs it.

When would you use an adjusting journal entry?

- To account for depreciation of an asset, like a company car or van over several years - To account for a loan payment due in the next financial year An adjusting journal entry is used to account for expenses or income not already recorded by other accrual or cash transactions. In addition, like the van depreciation, it can divide amounts between two or more accounting periods.

When can you use the Reclassify Transactions tool?

- To correct an insurance payment that has been miscategorized as an interest payment - To reclassify a non-item transaction incorrectly posting to uncategorized income The Reclassify Transactions tool allows you to find transactions that have been assigned to incorrect accounts or classes and reclassify them in batches. But not all transactions can be reclassified—in payroll transactions, for example, Payroll settings control this.

Which of the following year-end tools would you find in the Accountant Tools in QuickBooks Online Accountant?

- Tools to write off invoices - Tools to reclassify transactions - Tools to customize reports The Accountant Tools contains links to reports and tools, including Prep for taxes, tools to write off invoices, tools to reclassify transactions, and links to your custom reports.

Which of the following statement are true of Vendor Credits in QBO?

- Vendor credits post as a debit to decrese accounts payable - Vendor credit can be linked to a cash refund, when the cash is deposited

When might you need to write off an invoice?

- When a client has outstanding invoices that will not be paid When a client has invoices that need to be written off because the balance due is uncollectible.

What would be the reason for not seeing the Exceptions to Closing Date report in the Reports Center?

- You have not set a closing date You need a closing date set to see the Exceptions to Closing Date report in the Reports Center.

Which of the following would be a suitable situation for recording a new deposit transaction like we've just seen?

- You receive a tax refund from the IRS and need to record it - You receive a cash back payment from a vendor for ordering in bulk A tax refund or a cash back payment would be a perfect example of the need to record money coming in that isn't matched to an existing payment. Other examples of when you might enter a deposit transaction include employees paying back personal expenses or paying back funds loaned by the business.

Which is the best example of when you might need to exclude some transaction from a bank feed?

- Your bank mistakenly imports transactions more than once when first set up The best example is if your bank mistakenly imports transactions more than once. If this happens, your statement won't match the already reconciled transactions, so you'd need to identify and exclude any duplicates.

Which of these recurring transactions could be used if Craig needed to set up a monthly recurring customer charge including payment?

- a recurring sales receipt The great thing about QuickBooks Online's recurring transaction functionality is that it allows you to create them to match your circumstances and needs—and the same goes for Craig's. In this case, he can set up a regular, recurring sales receipt for landscaping services carried out each month. Remember, a sales receipt means you get paid at the time of sale, so provided Craig is signed up for QuickBooks Payments and has prior authorization to charge the customer, you can set up the payment as part of the recurring sales receipt transaction. The other two examples are great illustrations of other uses of recurring transactions, just not suitable for Craig's needs at this time.

Product and Service Settings: Track quantity and price/rate

- adds the quantity and rate columns to sales and purchase forms. Chris wants his customers to know how many hours he is spending on the work he does for them and how much material is used in each job, so he'll turn this feature on.

Product and Service Settings: Turn on price rules

- enables the Price Rule feature in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced subscription levels. This feature allows you to create special pricing for different types of customers and products/services.

Understanding Deposit Transactions

Along with grouping existing payments in Undeposited Funds into deposits, deposit transactions are also used for adding new deposits for activity not related to sales transactions, such as: When a company receives funds from loan proceeds or contributions of cash from owners When companies receive a refund from a vendor and want to record it directly against the expense account or to a Refunds Received income account When a company doesn't record income using sales transactions (invoices or sales receipts) and wants to record deposits directly to income accounts When an employee reimburses the company, and the reimbursement needs to be recorded against the Employee Loan receivable account When there is a tax refund. This screen is where you record it in the Tax Refunds account Chris's SBA loan check is a good example of the first category. Put simply, this is money into the business that is not subject to sales tax or income tax and that doesn't have to be matched to a sales receipt or invoice in QuickBooks Online. It does, however, need to be recorded and categorized to the appropriate account on the Chart of Accounts. You can add multiple funds to the same deposit.

The Balance Sheet

Another key report in the end-to-end accounting life cycle is the Balance Sheet. A Balance Sheet summarizes the financial position of a business at a single moment in time. That is why it's commonly referred to as a snapshot of the business. This report reflects whether the assets that the business owns are enough to offset its liabilities and leave a net equity balance after all liabilities have been paid off.

Adding new clients: Getting started

As a minimum, you will need to enter: The business name and contact details The type of subscription How your client will be billed Which team members in your firm need access to the client's QuickBooks Online

Accountant view

As an accountant or bookkeeper, this is the view for you. It uses standard accounting language and gives you control over features like your client's chart of accounts and other features that are aimed at the experts. You may choose to recommend your client also uses this view, so that when discussing their accounts you both see the same product navigation.

The Sales Tax Center

As clients collect sales tax from their customers, the Sales Tax Center will keep track of how much sales tax they owe to each tax agency.Let's take a quick tour around its key features in another client's QuickBooks Online.

Pay down a credit card

As finance professionals, you know that categorizing transactions in the correct accounts is vital to keep the books tidy and financial statements accurate. Sometimes, our clients aren't so careful. A common problem is when clients miscategorize credit card payments or add them via their bank feed.QuickBooks Online is always looking for ways to help clients follow the correct workflows. The new Pay down credit card option is another example of this. It makes it easy for non-accountants to categorize credit card payments in the correct account, keeping their balances and reports tidy and accurate.

Analyzing the P&L report

As part of your analysis of the Profit and Loss report, you will want to run through some top-level questions with your client. You're looking for discrepancies or things that look out of place, such as: Income: Does their total income look about right? Which income streams brought in more revenue? Is all their income categorized? Expenses: Are there any expense items in Ask My Accountant? Point out expenses that were different from prior periods and ask why Review key areas like revenue, gross profit, and net profit Let's take a look at how the conversation between you and Dan might go. The key metrics to consider when analyzing the Profit and Loss report are: This year to date 01/01/2020 To [date automatically sets as today] Compare another period: Previous Year Check % change Check % of income Accounting method: Accrual You'll see that some transactions will need reclassifying. We'll take a look at that in more detail in a future module.

Reclassify transactions

As usual, QuickBooks Online can come to the rescue, this time with the Reclassify Transactions tool. This tool is only available to Accountant users. The Reclassify Transactions tool is used to recategorize transactions in batch from one account to another or one class to another (if you have Class tracking, a QuickBooks Online Plus feature, turned on). In fact, Reclassify Transactions is one of the most used features in QuickBooks Online Accountant Tools.

Project templates

As you saw, it's straightforward to create projects and add tasks, but it can be time consuming, especially if it's a process with lots of tasks. That's why QuickBooks Online Accountant includes a series of QuickStart project templates that include some of the common tasks a firm might need. In addition, you can create custom templates to map out projects and tasks that are specific to your firm.

Tracking Progress

As you saw, you can update the status of each task as you work through the three tabs of the Month-end review. As you update each task in the Month-end review, it will also update the status in your QuickBooks Online Accountant Client List.

About bank rules

Bank rules automate the categorization of the transactions in the bank feed, including assignment of the transaction type, category, payee, class, and location. They can also be used to automatically split transactions. Rules can be prioritized, copied, edited, and exported. You can even create bank rules to add transactions to the register automatically.

How to switch views

Based on the information entered when QuickBooks Online is first set up, you'll start in either Business or Accountant view. Changing views doesn't affect your client's accounts or data. Select Settings, Gear icon Select Switch to Business view or Switch to Accountant view

Connect to an existing QB Payments account

Because Chris didn't already have an existing QuickBooks Payments merchant account, he needed to apply for one.If you have a client who already has a QuickBooks Payments account (also known as GoPayment, or QuickBooks Merchant Services, or Intuit Merchant Services, or Intuit Check Solution) and you need help syncing or migrating, select the Help menu then Contact Us from QuickBooks Online Accountant and follow the instructions to receive a callback from Support. Note that the QuickBooks Payments account can be used with either QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online at any given time. It won't work with both simultaneously.

Review past-due receivables

Check your client's significant past-due receivables and decide: Whether you think customers will eventually pay Whether to send past due bills to a collection agency

Creating a sales receipt

Chris begins the workflow by selecting the + New button and then Sales Receipt in the Customer column. After completing the customer and sales details, he'll select Credit Card as the payment method. Chris can then enter the customer's card details and can send the receipt via email or print it out. It's that simple! Remember from our earlier advice about setting up QuickBooks Payments. Your clients need to sign up for QuickBooks Payments themselves because as the process forms a contract. If you were to sign them up you'd be signing the contract— and not your client.

Converting an estimate to an invoice

Chris has completed the installation of the generator and it's time to bill All City Library. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select Sales then Customers from the Left Navigation Bar Select the Estimate tile in the Money Bar Select Start invoice in the Action column for All City Library Select the invoice date and set the due date for the payment as two weeks from then From the drawer on the right-hand side of the screen, select add under Estimate #1004 Select Total of all estimates lines = $34,075.00 then select Copy to invoice Select Save and Send Select Send and Close And that's it! Chris has completed the entire sales workflow for the All City Library job. Way to go!

Importing a vendor list

Chris has forwarded us the list of his vendors, so let's help him by adding it into QuickBooks Online: First, we select the Chris's vendors file and download it to the Desktop of your PC or Mac so you can find it quickly From the Dashboard, select Expenses from the Left Navigation Bar In the Expenses screen, select the Vendors tab Select the drop-down arrow next to the green New vendor button and select Import vendors Now browse for the Chris's vendors file you downloaded Select Next Because the fields have been set up to match QuickBooks Online format, they will have imported correctly. It's a good idea to have a look at the sample file for future reference, then you can advise your client on how to prepare the lists for import. Select Next Make any necessary edits Select Import All the vendors and their details should now be in the vendor list, in the Expenses screen under the Vendors tab, ready to use.

Estimates and how to use them: Create an estimate

Chris has priced the estimated labor and material costs for a new contract he is bidding for for All City Library, and he's ready to create the estimate in QuickBooks Online. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Open the Sales Center by selecting Sales then All Sales in the Left Navigation Bar Select the New Transaction button at the top right of the screen then select Estimate Select the customer, All City Library, from the Customer drop-down menu Enter tomorrow as the Estimate date and a date in two weeks' time as the Expiration date In the Product/services grid, enter the following:- 1 Commercial generator- 8 hours of installation labor- Miscellaneous item costs amounting to $295 Select Save and send Preview the Estimate in the send email screen Select Send and close

Workflows Go Bad: The case of the misposted check

Chris has received a check from his customer as a prepayment deposit on a wiring job that he will complete in the future. To record the deposits, he taps the + New button and selects Check in the Vendor column to record the payment. By doing this, Chris inadvertently creates a vendor instead of a customer and assigns Professional Fees as the category. The problem Sometimes clients get confused over terminology in QuickBooks Online. We'll pick this problem up later and see how it can be identified and resolved, plus look at how Chris can be helped to understand where he went wrong.

Capturing bills and receipts in the mobile app

Chris is delighted when you tell him that he can just snap a photo of his receipts on his phone when he's out on a job. You'll be delighted too when you no longer have to sift through the contents of his glove compartment. Right now, he has a coffee-shop receipt he'd like to add to his account. Let's take a look at how he can add this to his QuickBooks Online while he's on the move. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. First, open the mobile app on the device Select the + button and select Snap receipt The app will link to and open the camera on the phoneNote that QuickBooks Online frames the receipt so that you can make sure you capture all of the information needed, including the date, merchant name, and amount. Once satisfied, tap the capture button on the device. You will have the opportunity to review the image before saving it Drag the corner markers to fit the receipt and select crop If everything looks OK, select Use this photo QuickBooks Online uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to read and transform the data to QuickBooks Online The app also uploads the image of the receipt directly into QuickBooks Online.You can only process one receipt at a time in this way. The OCR function cannot identify more than one bill or receipt on an image at a time.While the details uploaded into QuickBooks Online are dependent on the scanned information on the mobile app, you can update any missing or incorrectly mapped fields directly in the For Review section in QuickBooks Online.

Creating a journal entry

Chris needs to log his contribution of the equipment to the business as a debit to fixed assets and a credit to equity. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select the + New button at the top of the QuickBooks Online window Under Other, select Journal Entry Enter today's date Enter or accept the journal entry reference number On the first row, add new account: Machinery & Equipment Select the Type, make it Fixed Asset, then add the Detail type: Machinery & Equipment. Chris will be tracking depreciation on the equipment, so check the box that says Track depreciation of this asset. Leave the original cost and depreciation fields blank Then select Save and Close Enter a debit amount of $5,000 and enter a description to record a contribution of equipment On the next row, select Owner's Equity from the drop-down list. The credit should automatically be populated with $5,000, matching the debit above Enter a description matching the debit above Select Save and new or Save and close

Recording a deposit transaction

Chris needs to record the deposit he made at the bank for the loan proceeds—but he needs to make sure it's in a separate category from his sales income. Let's see if we can help. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Go to the + New button, and in the menu, select Bank Deposit, just like we did for recording the sales deposits Add a date: 09/30/2020 Specify the account as Checking In the Add New Deposits section, enter deposit detail: Received From: Bank of Anytown For account, select SBA Loan Payable. Note that this is a liability account, so this deposit will not be classified as income Add the description. Make it Proceeds from loan Payment method is Check. Enter the insurance company's check number, 5487, as the reference number The amount should be $25,000.00 Now select Save and Close

Best Practice Workflows

Chris, like a lot of clients, is impressed by the potential of QuickBooks Online to make accounting tasks straightforward and efficient, saving him time so he can get on with making his business a success. He's very eager to investigate its potential and maybe he's getting a little overconfident. Time to check in and see how he's managing his day-to-day sales and expenses activities in QuickBooks Online. A quick call later and you've spotted what might be some clues that he could be improvising a little when recording his sales. Time for a catch-up meeting to get to the bottom of it all.

Adding and Managing User Types

Cindy doesn't want Tim to have full access to her books, so she can configure his access rights to give him specific permissions, restricting what access he has to more sensitive areas. QuickBooks Online is very flexible in this regard. Permissions can be changed at any point, providing the person wanting to change the permissions has Company Administrator rights. Cindy, for example, has Company Administrator rights, so in the future she can add and remove users and choose the user types herself. Because Cindy is really busy with work, she'd like us to make the changes for her. Let's have a look at what she wants you to do in the hands-on task. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Cindy has two changes to make to her QuickBooks Online account user settings. The first is to change the user access for Tim so that he can create and send invoices. Let's set Tim up right now. Sign in to QuickBooks Online Accountant and navigate to Cindy's Bee-uty Bar Select the Gear icon Select Manage Users From the Users tab, select Add User and a pop-up window will appear with radio buttons to select Select user type Custom user Select NextThere's lots of helpful information here about the different access levels and rights. This will be great for Cindy so that she can get permissions just right when she does this in the future. Select the Limited radio button and check the Customer box so we can give Tim access to invoicing Select Next The new screen asks questions about access rights, preferences, and subscriptions. We don't need to change these, so just select Next Fill in the Name fields with Tim Hobson and the email field with [email protected] Select Save and you'll see the entry in the Manage Users screen. Note that the access is pending. Tim will get a notification email with a link, and will need to sign in to get full access Cindy has just called with a new request she hopes we can help with. She needs a new subcontractor, Carol, to be able to make entries to track her time. Staying on the same Manage Users screen: Select Add user Select the Time tracking only radio button In the Employee or Vendor drop-down, select Add New and type Carol into the text box Select the Type drop-down and select Vendor Select Save and Next Enter Carol Walker in the Name fields. Her Email address is [email protected] Select Save and you're done! We can see these two newly added users in the Manage Users list, and it will show them as Invited.

Reconciling the bank

Cindy, owner of Cindy's Bee-uty Bar, has had a great month and she already has enough orders to give her a great quarter. But she knows that she needs to pause and think at the end of each month and make sure her accounts are reconciled. Reconciliation takes time and attention. Cindy remembers her former process, where she spent hours reconciling accounts and getting confused. What she needs is a run-through of how reconciling with QuickBooks Online works. It's best practice to reconcile Cindy's accounts monthly to the bank statement using the Reconcile feature. The reconciliation process is necessary to find errors and omissions between QuickBooks Online registers and the bank. With QuickBooks Online this is made easier, especially when using bank feeds. Let's show off a little and wow Cindy with how easy reconciling in QuickBooks Online can be.

Apply Sales Tax

Clients like Cindy no longer have to select the tax rate because QuickBooks Online works it all out for them based on: The state where they're registered to collect sales tax The physical address of the client's business The customer's physical address The customer's sales tax status The tax category for the product/service Watch the video to see how the calculation on each sales transaction is worked out.Note that you check the sales tax calculation on invoices via a link. Selecting the See the Math link on the invoice will open a pop-up that shows you how sales tax was calculated.

Run the Taxable Sales report

Clients who collect sales tax should consult QuickBooks Online's Sales Tax Center to view the tax liability, run a Taxable Sales report to review and pay the balance due based on their schedule. Key actions Run the Taxable Sales report Key reports Taxable Sales

Managing Client Access

Clients with employees value the ability to control access to their QuickBooks Online, allowing them to choose who can see and edit their financial data. In this lesson, Cindy, who runs a retail business selling bee beauty products has a new employee. She needs some help setting up permissions for them.

How can Month-end review help?

Closing your clients' books on a monthly basis can be a challenge. Ensuring the books are accurate and complete is both time-consuming and stressful. Month-end review is designed to support your typical month-end workflow by pulling all your tasks together into a single place, so that nothing gets missed. For those of you managing a team of bookkeepers, you have the added challenge of creating an easy-to-replicate process that maintains a consistent quality of work without feeling like you are constantly chasing your bookkeepers! Let's take a closer look. Month-end review is an area of QuickBooks Online Accountant that we will be developing over the coming months. Keep a lookout for new and exciting features as they emerge.

What is a transfer?

Companies often transfer funds between company-owned bank accounts. Perhaps the company is moving funds from the general operating account to the checking account used for payroll, or from a savings account to the checking account. Perhaps the company transferred funds from the company checking account to pay down the company credit card. Here's a summary of the transfer functionality in QuickBooks Online: The transfer screen is used to move funds between two balance sheet accounts The transfer screen is not used to record income or expense A transfer is a 1:1 transfer of funds, there are no splits allowed There are no customers, vendors, employees, or Products and Services items involved. These fields are not available on the transfer screen You don't use the Transfer feature to make transfers between your bank account and your vendor's bank account

Evaluate accounts receivable and accounts payable

Confirm that all invoices for work performed or paid during the year have been recorded. Review the Customer Balance Detail report in QuickBooks Online to make sure that payments are applied to invoices, uncollectible balances are written off, and the report total matches the accounts receivable balance on the accrual-basis Balance Sheet. Likewise, confirm that all bills for purchases and services received or paid for during the year have been recorded. Review the Unpaid Bills report in QuickBooks Online to make sure that bill payments are applied to bills, paid bills have bill payments recorded instead of checks duplicating expense, and that the report total matches the accounts payable balance on the accrual-basis Balance Sheet. Key actions Check all purchases bills have been recorded Check all payments received bills have been recorded Key reports A/P, including A/P aging A/R, including A/R Aging Open invoices Unpaid bills

Usage Limits: How are limits calculated?: Chart of Accounts

Counts towards: Active accounts Added by someone with permissions in the QuickBooks Online account Generated by a third-party application someone with permissions has connected to the QuickBooks Online account* (these apps are allowed to add above the usage limits) Does not count towards: Generated by QuickBooks Online at sign-up or from usage of services such as:-Sales tax-Shipping-Multicurrency System-generated entries created by other QuickBooks-related offerings such as: -Payroll-TSheets Imported into QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks Desktop

Usage Limits: How are limits calculated?: Classes and Locations

Counts towards: Active classes and locations Added by someone with permissions in the QuickBooks Online account Generated by a third-party application someone with permissions has connected to the QuickBooks Online account* (these apps are allowed to add above the usage limits) Does not count towards: Generated by QuickBooks Online at sign-up or from usage of services such as:-Sales tax-Shipping-Multicurrency System-generated entries created by other QuickBooks-related offerings such as: -Payroll-TSheets Imported into QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks Desktop

Usage Limits: How are limits calculated?: Billable users

Counts towards: Billable users are admin, standard, and custom users Pending invites you've sent (until they're automatically removed in 90 days)

Creating a simple recurring transaction

Craig paid his first month of fuel costs by check, but he is on a monthly budget plan. Because this is a regular payment he needs to make, let's help him set up a recurring transaction. He's already set up for his bank to make the payment on his behalf each month. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select the Gear icon Select Recurring transactions Select New From the new Transaction Type drop-down list, choose Expense and select OK On the new screen, enter Chin's Gas and Oil: Budget Plan as the template name. It's best practice to list the Name (Vendor/Customer/Employee) in the Template name. This makes it easier to identify your recurring templates Choose Scheduled as the type. It's probably selected already We're going to create the recurring transaction 5 days in advance The payee is Craig's fuel supplier, Chin's Gas and Oil, so let's add that from the vendor list Choose Checking as the account from which the payment will be made Select Monthly as the interval Make the payment on the first of the month, starting at the beginning of next month Don't add an ending date There's no need to enter a payment method or reference number In the Category details section, select the Automobile: Fuel account Make the amount $300 Select Save template

How to use the PDCC?

Craig received his monthly Mastercard credit card statement. He has enough in his checking account to cover it, so he goes ahead and uses his online banking to make the payment. Next, he needs to update QuickBooks Online to record the payment. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select + New, then select Pay down credit card in the Other column Select the credit card account that is being paid. In this case, it's Mastercard In the Payee field, again, select Mastercard Enter how much was paid Enter the date of payment Select the account that the payment was made from. Notice the language is really client-friendly here: "What did you use to make this payment?" Notice that you also have the option to record making the payment by check. Plus, just like with other transactions, you can add memos and attachments. Select Save to record the transaction Now that's it done, QuickBooks Online will work its magic. But as a finance professional, you might want to peek under the hood and see what's happened in the background. Select the More button at the bottom of the transaction and choose the Transaction Journal Here, you can see the Checking account being credited and the credit card account being debited. Just as it should be, so that the financial statements will be spot-on!

Customer and Vendor Workflows

Craig runs a landscaping business and like any small business owner, keeping track of his sales and business expenses is vital to his cash flow. QuickBooks Online uses workflows to help manage transactions throughout the accounting life cycle. By coaching your clients in workflows from day one, you are setting them up for success. This saves you time and effort when it comes to reconciling the books, producing financial statements, and preparing for taxes.

Creating simple bank rules

Craig wants to make it easier to manage the transactions he imports from his bank into QuickBooks Online. He's heard that he can set up rules so bank transactions can be fast-tracked by being automatically categorized and assigned to payees. This automation will save him time he could use running his business. Let's hope you're up to speed with this because he'd like your help setting up some bank rules! Matching and adding transactions from a bank feed is pretty straightforward, and an important part of keeping Craig's QuickBooks Online registers in line with the activity recorded by his bank. In this lesson, we'll look at how setting up a simple bank rule can allow QuickBooks Online to take the strain and help manage transactions automatically.

Matching bank data

Craig's already set up bank feeds for his checking, savings, and Mastercard accounts. He just needs to review the transactions. When you match and accept a bank feed item to an existing transaction in QuickBooks Online, it marks the transaction as cleared. When you do a bank reconciliation, this means that most transactions are already marked as cleared. It's a big help when you come to run reconciliations. You may find it helpful to have your client's bank statement to hand so you can compare it to the data that you imported. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. On the Left Navigation Bar, select Banking to see Craig's banking data. You'll see three tabs: For Review, Categorized, and Excluded.You can see any transactions Craig has already categorized in the Categorized tab, but for now, let's start in the For Review tab. Select the For Review tabThis shows the bank feed items that have not yet been accepted into QuickBooks Online and that we need to review, edit if necessary, and match and categorize (or accept and categorize) when we're happy. Now let's match a transaction. As you can see, Craig already has transactions in his bank feed. There's a check deposit of $228.75 for Hicks Hardware.The date, description, and amount come in from the bank feed. That's a match, so go ahead and select Match You can do the same for the transaction with Travis Waldron for $103.55. This time, it's for an income received item Select the Categorized tab to see that it's been matched To see details of the Travis Waldron payment select the Matched to link in the Added Or Matched column Select the Online banking matches link to see details of the match and Unmatch it if you need to. Select the X to return to the bank feed Select the For Review tabSometimes, QuickBooks Online finds duplicate records for an entry. When you have a transaction with two potential matches, you need to confirm which transaction is correct.Let's take a look at this one for Squeaky Kleen Car, where two records have been found. Select View to see which records QuickBooks Online suggests as possible matches. The bank feed is for 09/19/2020. The check debit has the same date, so this is the correct match for the bank feed entry. Select Match.QuickBooks Online is all about making life easy. You can use the drop-down to select Recognized and see all the transactions QuickBooks Online thinks it has found a good match for, then match them all in one go. Select the All transactions drop-down list Choose Recognized from the list Use the Select all button. A prompt will appear, asking you whether you would like to Accept, Update, or Exclude these transactions Choose Accept to link all the downloaded transactions Select the Categorized tab to see these have been accepted.

Best practice bank feed workflows: Review

Craig's been doing a great job of following the best practice sales, expenses, and vendor workflows that you learned about in modules 3 and 4. This means that his bank feed is in great shape. When he reviews his bank feed, for the most part he wants to match transactions. This way, he is linking the bank feed item to a transaction that's already in his QuickBooks Online. Once he's done this, there might be a few left over that QuickBooks Online can't find a match for. These could be expenses and/or deposits he hasn't recorded and that aren't posted in QuickBooks Online already. But he can go ahead and add each directly from his bank feed. This will create new posting transactions in QuickBooks Online straightaway.

How to exclude a transaction

Craig's been working on his bank feeds and he's noticed two transactions from Squeaky Kleen Car Wash that cancel each other out. An accidental duplicate payment made in May was returned in August. Because no goods were exchanged, Craig has asked that these be removed from his bank feed. Because errors in the bank feed like these will affect future reconciliations, you can exclude these transactions for him. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select Banking from the Left Navigation Bar Select the check box next to the transaction for Tania's Nursery for $108.09 Select Exclude in the banner at the top The transaction has now been removed from the For Review tab in the bank feed Select the Excluded tab to see these transactions. From here, you can manage them further if you need to

Excluding bank transactions

Craig's got the hang of working with the bank feeds and can add transactions that aren't already in QuickBooks Online. He's amazed at how helpful the matching feature is. But guess what? He's found some transactions that aren't a match and he doesn't want to add them.

The work features in QBO Accountant let you:

Create projects and tasks right from your Work dashboard for all your clients, even if they don't use QuickBooks Online Add projects and tasks to track work for your firm Assign projects or specific tasks to you or your team members Set up repeating projects for the same client that will occur on a regular basis Duplicate existing projects across multiple clients to save time on manual entry

Custom templates

Custom templates allow you to build workflows specific to your firm's or clients' needs. They can be created from a QuickStart template or project, or from scratch. Once the custom template has been created, your team then has a consistent workflow to apply every time. For example, a common workflow for Lisa's firm is to manage their monthly client billing. She could save time by creating a custom project template with tasks to: Approve billable time Approve expenses Create the client invoice

Writing off invoices

Dan has called and he has a problem: A couple of invoices in his accounts aren't going to be paid, because the customers have gone out of business. Sometimes these things happen, and year end is a great time to make sure any invoices that aren't going to get paid are written off. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. From the Accountant Tools drop-down, select Write Off Invoices Use the Invoice Age drop-down at the top of the list to specify invoices for the appropriate period You can also enter a dollar amount in the Balance less than field to see only invoices with a balance due less than a certain amount. Select Find invoices Select the invoices that you want to write off by checking the box to the left of each invoice Select Write off Select the account where you want the write-off to be posted. In this case, it's the Bad debt expense account Select Apply And that's it! The invoices are written off and no longer appear in the list.

Signing Up for QB GoPayment

For clients who are out on the road, a mobile point-of-sale app like QuickBooks GoPayment is an ideal way to get paid fast. With a free mobile credit card reader, they can easily accept mobile payments on goods and services—anytime, anywhere. What's more, the transactions automatically reconcile with QuickBooks Online for hassle-free bookkeeping. With a free Bluetooth-enabled mobile card reader, clients can accept magstripe and EMV chip debit and credit cards, along with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. Even without the reader, they can use the mobile app to take all payment types—cash, check, or card—and track each sale transaction. There are no upfront costs or hidden fees: clients pay 2.4% + $0.25 per card transaction. Clients can access the app from: Google Play Store (for Android users) Apple App Store (for iOS users) Once clients have signed up to GoPayment they need to connect it to their QuickBooks Online Account. Choose the Gear icon, then choose Account and Settings or Company Settings Select Payments from the left-hand navigation In the Existing account section, select Connect QuickBooks Online will search for any merchant accounts associated with the user id Confirm that the correct merchant account is listed Select Link account to link the account

Create a project using a QuickStart template

For some of Lisa's clients, the monthly bookkeeping workflow is pretty much the same tasks done in the same order by the same team members. QuickBooks Online's QuickStart templates are perfect here and will save Lisa a lot of time because she doesn't have to build a project from scratch. The work is already done and ready to pick up from the template list. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. From the QuickBooks Online Accountant homepage select the Work tab Select Create project In the Project template field, select Monthly bookkeeping In the Create project window, you can see that by default, this template contains eight tasks. We need to add a project, name, let's call it Monthly bookkeeping Select the client the project is for. In this case, it's Cheng's Master VA & Designs Select the date the project is due. As this is a monthly project by default, it's automatically set to repeat, so we just need to select the day of the month it needs to be done by. In this case, select the Last Monday of the month Next, assign the project and its associated tasks to a colleague. Select Alex Reedsmith from the drop-down list Add any details you need to. These might be client-, firm-, or colleague-specific Review the tasks list and select Save Back on the Work screen, select Everyone from the drop-down listHere, you can see the new project tasks for Cheng's Master VA and Designs. Simply select a task to view the details. And that's the new project all scheduled and ready!

Before a client sets up a recurring monthly charge for a credit card or ACH, Visa and Mastercard, what does your client need to do to make the process compliant?

Get the customer to sign an authorization form - Before a client sets up a recurring monthly charge for a credit card or ACH, Visa and Mastercard, guidelines require them to have written authorization from their customer. The authorization form appears automatically when saving a new recurring sales receipt.

Connecting Bank Feeds

Go to the Banking Center in the Left Navigation Bar If it's the first time here, select Connect, otherwise select Add account Select the bank Use the regular username and password to sign in (as for banking online). (You might want to do this with your client so they sign in to their bank and you don't have their banking password) It might take a couple of minutes for the bank's database to talk to QuickBooks Online. Choose the bank account for the business and the account in QuickBooks Online If you don't see a QuickBooks Online account in a list that matches the bank account, don't panic. Just select Add New Choose the account type, either bank or credit card, and choose a detail type Give the account a name, then select SaveIt's that simple!QuickBooks Online connects to the account and by default downloads all the transactions for the last 90 days.

Adding Customers:: New Customer

Go to the Sales Center and select the Customer tabHint: If this is the first customer you have added to Chris's company, you are taken straight to an easy entry screen. If you've been here before, just select New customer in the top right. Enter the customer details from the business card Select the Save button You now want to edit this customer's details to add some additional information Select the Edit button in the right As a nonprofit, his customer is not taxable, but you need to enter their reseller number. Select the Tax info tab and enter their reseller number (92-12345) in Exemption details Select Payment and Billing and set the preferred payment method to Credit Card. Select Save

View Statements that you already created

Go to the Sales or Invoicing menu and select All Sales Select the customer or customers you want to see statements for Select the Filter drop-down menu. Then, in the Type drop-down, select Statements

RCW: Forwarding by email

If bills and receipts have been generated or sent to you or your client via email, you can set up QuickBooks Online so that you can forward them directly to your client's QuickBooks Online account. Each company can have one unique customizable email address, so you can make sure every receipt and bill gets forwarded to the right place. Once the email has been set up, you can forward bills and receipts as attachments (if you want to forward several at once) or within the body of an email (if you're only forwarding one receipt per email). If you accidentally send a receipt to an email address that isn't registered with QuickBooks Online, you'll get a notification email.

Submit W-2s and 1099s

If clients had employees or subcontractors in the last year, there are forms that business owners must report to reflect what they paid their workers. W-2s are submitted for employees, and 1099s for subcontractors. The business owner should send these forms to individuals by the end of January. Key actions Submit W-2s for employees Submit 1099s for contractors

Analyze fixed assets and depreciation expenses

If clients made any large fixed-asset purchases this past year, they should be recorded on the Balance Sheet. Fixed assets should be identified to calculate depreciation. If the business is submitting the year-end information to their tax accountant to perform the calculation and record it as an adjusting entry once the tax return is generated, then this may not be recorded yet. Key actions Review major expenses Record depreciation Review equity accounts Key reports Balance Sheet P&L

Undoing a reconciliation

If things get messy, it's useful to know how to undo a reconciliation. However, it's usually better to use the discrepancy report to fix reconciliation errors that we looked at a moment ago. You may undo a reconciliation if the reconciliation was forced, meaning it was saved even though the difference was not zero. That causes QuickBooks Online to make an adjustment. Undoing the reconciliation allows you to start over so that you can find the discrepancies. In this activity, you'll walk through the steps involved in undoing a reconciliation. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. From QuickBooks Online Accountant, open Cindy's client file Select Accountant Tools, then select Reconcile Select the History by account link On the Reconciliation history screen, select the down arrow next to the View report then select UndoQuickBooks Online doesn't ever want you to do this by accident so you'll get two warning pop-ups checking you're sure you want to undo the reconciliations.If you don't want to undo all your hard work, select Go back.

Client Details: Tax

If you are using ProConnect Tax Online, you can view the filing status and access previously created income tax returns.You can also start a new tax return from here for non-QuickBooks Online clients or clients who are using QuickBooks Online but whose financial information you don't want to import into the tax return.

Reinstating excluded transactions

If you exclude a transaction that you later require in the bank feed, you can easily reinstate it. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Return to the Banking Center Select the Excluded tab Select the transactions you wish to reinstate Using the Batch actions drop-down, select Undo Select the For Review tab to see your transactions back in the bank feed

RCW: Direct File upload

If you have receipts stored on your computer already (whether they have been downloaded from an email as an attachment or scanned directly into your files), you can drag and drop them directly into QuickBooks Online. To do this, simply use the drop box on the Receipts tab.

Edit info

If you need to edit the statement ending balance or date, select the Edit button to make the change.

Saving your reconciliation

If you want to save the reconciliation and finish it later, you can select the Save for later button. Once you reach the magical zero difference, this button will change to Finish now. This will complete the reconciliation. There are other options in the drop-down.

Client List: Filter

If you work in a large practice, the client list can be long. You can filter the list to only show clients assigned to a particular lead

Write off invoices

If you're called in to help, QuickBooks Online can make working with problem invoices a breeze. The Write-off tool allows you to write off invoice balances in a batch. The tool instantly zeroes out the balance of the invoice by adding it to the discount field on the original invoice. Past-due balances might originate with small dollar amounts not paid or old uncollectible invoices. Whatever the issue, the tool will get your clients' accounts back on track in no time! Be careful when writing off amounts on invoices dated in prior periods or those with sales tax. You'll learn more about some of the implications of this in QuickBooks Online Advanced certification.

Adding apps to QBO

If you're the Firm Primary Admin or Full Access Team user, then adding apps to your client's QuickBooks Online is straightforward: just a few simple steps and your client is up and running. Start by selecting Apps from the Left Navigation Bar of your QuickBooks Online Accountant homepage. You'll see a range of handpicked apps but you can search for a particular app or browse through different categories. Let's select one and see how we can check it out to see if it's right for our client. Select each hotspot in turn to see how it's done.

Client List: Add client

If your firm gets a new client, it's easy to add them to QuickBooks Online Accountant.

Deposit Transactions

In QuickBooks Online you can easily categorize deposits like refunds or proceeds from loans so that they're not confused with sales income, and so that taxable and nontaxable income are separate and in the right place. Let's look at how this is done.

Switching between Accountant and Business view

In QuickBooks Online, there are two user views: Business view and Accountant view. You can switch between them anytime. The main difference is the appearance. Feature, menu, and button names are different, but the actions in each view are identical in most cases. Some features are only available in one view or the other

Start with the end in mind

In order to make good decisions about their business, clients need data that is accurate, reliable, and complete.Let's take a look at how best practice workflows and accurate bookkeeping are crucial to the reporting process.

Validating the Balance Sheet

In order to validate and prove the balance on the Balance Sheet or Trial Balance reports, you can either drill down into the detailed transaction reports or run subsidiary reports. You can find a list of subsidiary reports to help you prove the Balance Sheet in Tools.

The Reports Center

In this section, we're going to look through the Reports center, tab by tab. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Navigating the Reports CenterThe reporting categories are listed by business purpose, and within each of these is the related report. Let's run through this together and you can have a look at all the different reporting options—because there are lots! Select the Reports link in the Left Navigation Bar The Reports Center is divided into three tabs, but most of what you need is in the Standard tab. This shows the most common reports business owners will want to run. FavoritesThis section remembers those reports run most often. So it'll show that you looked at Business Snapshot. It'll allow you to quickly access regular reports. Business overviewThis displays income and expenses in year-over-year comparisons, often using pie charts and bar graphs. It also shows a snapshot of who is owed money, and who owes money to the business. Then you'll see reports grouped by Sales categories and Expense categories and a section for Employee information. For My AccountantThere are lots of reports that you can run here, from Account Lists to Transaction List by Date. Many of them are available to your clients from other Report tabs, but those reports most common to accountants are grouped here for quick access. The Custom reports tabAny reports run with customizations will show here, providing that you have saved them! The Management reports tabHere, reports are grouped into professional-styled report packages. You can download them, and there are options to add professional elements such as a cover page, table of contents, and custom letters, as well as the reports. Have a look at the Sales Performance package. You can present these reports to clients and vendors or financial institutions as a professionally packaged summary of a client's business. You can customize the heading and content of the reports to suit you and your client's needs. Spend a little while going through some of the reports. Maybe you can set up a customized report to suit a specific need Craig has identified? That can be done right here. To customize and save a report, first run a report, then select the Customize button for options to choose from.

Why not just refund in cash and not record?

It's important to capture all transactions, paid in cash or not, to ensure that the client's records are complete. If you pay the customer back in cash and don't record the transaction, you will pay sales and income taxes on the sales transaction and receive no benefit from the return transaction deduction.

Why not just bill for less on the next invoice?

It's important to create a new transaction in QuickBooks Online for each exchange between the supplier and the customer. This provides clarity to the timing and sequence of events with a customer. It can also affect the timing and balances of sales tax liabilities and movement of inventory in and out of the company.

Managing users and addresses

It's important to know that you can only register one unique customized email address for each QuickBooks Online company. Once you've registered the email for the client company, you can always select Manage Senders to specify which users can email receipts. For users to send receipts, they need to be at least a standard user with vendors permissions. As a ProAdvisor, you can forward email receipts to all your clients that have receipt forwarding enabled. Just remember to use the unique forwarding address for each client that was created when this feature was enabled in their QuickBooks Online account.

Do I need to manually enter prior period transactions, expenses, and deposits if I haven't used QBO before?

It's time-consuming to enter a year's worth of historical checks and deposits using the transaction forms. ProAdvisor advice: The simple way to recreate prior period accounting data for your client's QuickBooks file is to: Link your client's QuickBooks Online to their bank account and select the appropriate period ranges, orPerform a manual bank import for the exact period you are recreating in QuickBooks Then select Add for each of the transactions from the bank feed to create the transactions in their QuickBooks Online Correctly categorizing income and expense transactions is key to making certain the prior period data is accurate and ready for the client's review.

Itemized online invoices

Itemized invoices allow you to easily understand your monthly subscription charges and how they flow into each client relationship. You can get a snapshot of your total subscriptions for each QuickBooks Online product, including those bought with a package Unit price, taxation, and total billed for your Plus and Essentials subscriptions are also visible, as are any Plus subscriptions purchased on a package discount To save you calculating bills by hand, charges are listed by client (including taxation) in the Billing by Client section The invoices also provide your total tax charges for the month to make tax preparation smoother

Journal Entries

Journal Entries in QuickBooks Online is a way to post debits and credits directly to accounts in the General Ledger. Using sales and purchase forms to record income and expenses is the preferred method, but sometimes forms just aren't appropriate. Using a journal entry is another way to adjust account balances.

Upgrading and Downgrading

Keeping track of and managing usage is important to clients and, in fact, all QuickBooks Online users. The subscription level that was a perfect fit a few years ago may be a little too basic now. They may need more room to maneuver and improved features and space to continue to grow into. Let's look at how to upgrade and downgrade a client file.

Reports and tools

Let's look at some of the key areas in QuickBooks Online where you'll find the reports and tools for year-end activities. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. In Dan Cheng's QuickBooks Online file, select the Reports Center from the Left Navigation Bar In the Reports Center, navigate to the For My Accountant section, where you'll find the key reports like the Balance Sheet report and Profit and LossNote the other reports that will give you summaries and detail reports plus a range of other useful year-end data. Select the Balance Sheet report.

Setting up QB Payments

Let's now guide Chris through the process he needs to follow to set up his account with QuickBooks Payments. It's important to remember that your clients need to sign up for QuickBooks Payments themselves because the process forms a contract. If you were to sign them up, you'd be signing the contract—not your client. Note that there might be some variation in the steps if, for example, the bank account is already set up in QuickBooks Online. The first stage is to sign up for QuickBooks Payments, then we'll look at the settings that are available. Select the Gear icon Navigate to Account and Settings Select Payments from the left-hand navigationBecause Chris has not signed up for payments, his only option is to select Learn more. Select Learn more Select Finish setup or Get setup Now there are three sections to complete. Select the first section The first section is information about Chris's business. You'll see that some of the fields have already been populated with information from the Company section of Accounts and Settings. Make sure Chris checks the details and makes corrections where needed Chris doesn't have an online presence just yet, so he needs to select the No website or social media links checkbox Select Next to move on Here, Chris can add personal details as the owner Chris needs to add his name, Chris Grier, and his address Note that QuickBooks Online will help find the address and try to validate it. Because we're using a dummy address in this demonstration, Chris selects the checkbox next to Use the address I entered Chris now needs to enter his date of birth and contact number, and the last four digits of his SSN, 1235 Select NextThis last page is where Chris will add his business bank account number and bank routing number.

PCC: A demonstration

Let's see how easy it is to create custom charts using Custom Chart Builder in the Performance Center. We're going to create a custom chart that tracks revenue by consultant. You can add up to 25 custom charts to the Performance Center view. In this example, the company uses classes because they track their revenue for each of their consultants using the class list. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Go to Reports and select Performance Center Select the + Add new chart button Select Revenue, then Continue Name the new chart Revenue by Consultant For Time period, select This year to date For Group by, select Classes Select the consultants Deborah Wood, Natalie Chapman, and Jonathan Graham There are other filters that you can add, but they're optional. You can also select Compare to add comparative data by the previous period, or the previous year for the same period. Let's add the new Revenue by consultant chart to the dashboard. Select Add to DashboardYou can change the default date range and make edits, or delete the chart, known here as a Widget. You can also edit the chart to show the same data in a different light. Let's change the view so we can see each consultant's income for the entire date range. Choose Vertical bars

Viewing Emailed Invoices

Let's see how the invoice looks to Samantha Rembo. She uses her mobile phone to access the Gmail app. When she's busy, she finds it difficult to pay her invoices on time. Being able to pay directly from the email will help her manage her payments more efficiently. Samantha logs in to her Gmail account and finds the invoice from Chris She selects the email The key points of the invoice display within the email so that everything Samantha needs to understand and review is laid out clearlySamatha can see: who the invoice is from the amount owed the payment due date what the invoice is for and even the message reminding her to book a meeting to discuss her upgrade using the Pay button, Samantha will be taken directly to QuickBooks Online Invoicing where she'll be able to make her payment electronically, if she has signed up for this facility the full invoice is also attached as a PDF Clients can boost their payment speed to the next level by turning on QuickBooks Payments, giving their customers the freedom to pay their way by accepting all credit cards and free bank transfers. This allows customers to pay directly in the Online Invoicing portal at the tap of a button. This unique Pay Now link ensures that payments are encrypted. It's powered by technology from the makers of TurboTax and Mint, so it's secure and reliable.

Creating a Vendor Credit

Let's see how to record the Vendor Credit for Chris. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. There are two separate bills from the vendor, Lang and Sons, in the Expenses Center, one for each of the generators Chris ordered. Each was priced at $500. Sam at Lang and Sons agreed to the credit when Chris returned the generator today, so we can go ahead and create the Vendor Credit in QuickBooks Online. Select the + New button Select Vendor Credit, under the Vendors heading In the Vendor Credit screen, select Lang and Sons from the Vendor drop-down The date of the credit is today so we can leave it as it is Select Generator - 3500 Watt from the Products and Services list under Item details Add a note explaining the credit The quantity is 1. Add the rate, which is $500, the credit amount or the full price of the generator Add the customer that the generator was ordered for, Jaime Sullivan In the memo field, add Credit issued by Sam Select Save and closeBack in the Expenses Center we can see the original bills, plus the Vendor Credit. Now let's apply the Vendor Credit to a bill. On the row of the first bill for the generator, select Mark as paid from the drop-down next to the Schedule payment button. This is the one Chris returned If we scroll down, we can see that the Vendor Credit has already been applied to the total outstanding amount ($1,000 for two generators), reducing the amount payable to $500. Chris will be paying for the second generator by check which he will give to Sam later, so we'll record that payment later.

Team Access Rights

Let's see what happens when Alison signs in to QuickBooks Online Accountant to create an invoice for some accounting work the firm has done for Ravela NestEgg Properties. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Sign in to QuickBooks Online Accountant as Alison Select Sales from Your Books in the Left Navigation Bar Go to the Invoices tab and select Create invoiceBecause Alison has been given access to the firm's customers, and accounts receivable and vendors and creditors, she can see the full list of the firm's clients in the customer list. Select Ravela NestEgg Properties as the Customer In the Product and Service drop-down, select Hours The Description is Bank reconciliation The Quantity is 2 and the Rate is $100 Then Save and Close (if defaulted to Save and send, use the arrow next to the button to select Save and Close)But let's take a look at what she can see in the Client List.What you'll notice is that even though Alison can see all the open invoices for the firm, she can't access these clients' QuickBooks Online accounts. We only gave her client access to Cindy's Bee-uty Bar. So that's the only client she can see.

Create a credit memo and apply it to a custmoer invoice

Let's show Chris how to record a credit memo and then apply it to a new installation invoice. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. First, Chris will need to create a credit memo for the damaged light fixture. Select the + New button then Credit Memo Select Jeffrey S. Jacobs as the customer Select Other Miscellaneous Materials as the Product Service and QTY 1 and rate $49.95 for the malfunctioning light fixture Select Save and CloseNext, Chris will need to create a new invoice for the new light fixture. From the + New button, select Invoice Select Jeffrey S. Jacobs in the customer list Add a new product item: Avalon Light Fixture It's one item at $49.95Next, Chris will need to manually apply the credit to the new invoice unless he has Automatically apply credits selected, in which case QuickBooks Online would prompt him to apply the existing credit memo to the new invoice. See the ProAdvisor Tip at the end of the lesson for how to do this. To manually apply the credit: Select the + New button then Receive payment Select Jeffrey S. Jacobs from the Customer drop-down list Select Invoice #6 under the outstanding transactions and Credit Memo #4 from the credits by checking the box next to each Select Save or Save and Close Refund receipts In other cases, a customer may simply want their money back for a return. In this case, Chris would create a refund receipt. A refund receipt in QuickBooks Online reduces the client's cash balance rather than a customer's accounts receivable balance Select the + New button, then Refund receipt Enter Bill Gallinger as the customer Select the payment method (Check) and refund from (Checking) Enter Avalon Light Fixture as the Product/Service Select Save and Close

Manually adding transactions

Let's take a look at how you could help Craig to manually add some more items from the bank feed into QuickBooks Online. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. As before, from within Craig's QuickBooks Online account, select For review to go to the Banking screen Select the entry for $18.08, an expense Craig paid to Mahoney MugsThe entry will expand and you'll see the transaction details, but you need to categorize this expense. It's currently marked as For Review because the bank wouldn't know how to categorize it. Select the Category drop-down list and scroll down to select Advertising Now select Add to commit this to QuickBooks Online

Subscription and Billing Dashboard

Let's take a look at the Subscriptions and billing dashboard in QuickBooks Online Accountant. You can find it from the Gear menu and then Your Account.The tabs at the top of the page allow you to easily access and update your subscription and billing information.

Setting up receipt forwarding

Let's walk your client Chris Grier through the first way to get a bill or receipt into QuickBooks Online. He's collected some receipts and is ready for you to enter them. With email bills, Chris or you can just forward the email to a customized QuickBooks Online email address. The details are then picked up by the character recognition software and added to his QuickBooks Online Receipts tab. As a ProAdvisor, if you're working with multiple companies, you can create one unique customizable email

Adding a preferred vendor

Like most businesses, there are a number of things Chris needs to buy from vendors to help him run his business. Just like with the products and services he sells, he can add these items to his Products and Services list. To speed things up when he creates purchase orders and bills, he can assign these purchase items to a preferred vendor. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Chris has just agreed a preferred vendor rate with a company that sells specialty wire he uses in installations, so let's set that up for him. Select the Gear icon. Select Products and Services in the List column Select New Select Non-inventory In the Name box, type Specialty Wire - Bus Cable, 22 AWG, 2 Conductor, Bare CopperBecause this is something Chris buys, rather than sells, we need to: Uncheck I sell this product/service to my customers Check I purchase this product/service from a vendor Add a description of Bus Cable, 22 AWG, 2 Conductor, Bare Copper The price will vary, so we'll leave that empty From the Expense account drop-down, select Job Materials PurchasedWires Direct is Chris's new preferred vendor for this specialty wire, but he hasn't set this company up in his vendor list yet. That's no problem—we can add it here. In the Preferred vendors box, type the vendor's name, Wires Direct and select Add Wires Direct to add them as a vendor in the Vendors list Select Save. We can go back later and add their details Then select Save and Close Well done! This will now show in the Products and Services table and we can even check to see the Expense account we mapped it to.

Creating a Client Request

Lisa and her team love how this keeps them on track with managing client work. Right now, she wants to send Dan Cheng a client request for him to send her his bank statement. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. From the QuickBooks Online Accountant homepage, select Work in the Left Navigation Bar Select Create client request Enter the request name Need bank statements From the Client drop-down, select a client, in this case it's Cheng's Master VA & Designs Set a due date As it's a new request, the status is To do Next we add the details of what we need Dan to do You can decide whether to include an email notification for your client Select Publish to Client's QuickBooks Check the email and then Publish and send emailLet's see how this looks to Dan. All your requests are added to your client's My Accountant. Here Dan can easily upload his bank statement to send back to Lisa. Let's see how he does it. Select Add Document Select the file to be uploaded Add Comments and PostLisa can see the update on the client request and let Dan know she's received it. It's the perfect way to keep all those client back and forths in one place, rather than trying to keep track of multiple emails.

Creating work for your team

Lisa and her team love how this keeps them on track with managing their firm and client work. Right now, she wants to set up a project for a member of her team to manage Cindy's Bee-uty Bar's weekly payroll. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. From the QuickBooks Online Accountant homepage, select Work in the Left Navigation Bar Select Create project Enter the project name Weekly Payroll From the Firm or Client drop-down, we can either choose My Firm or select a client, in this case it's Cindy's Bee-uty Bar Select a team member to allocate the work to. If Lisa wanted to do the work herself, she'd select Me as the user signed in to the account. But, in this case, we allocate the project to Alex Reedsmith Then set a due date for the project We can add notes later but let's go ahead and add a task. Select Add a task Name the task Request timesheets from Client Allocate the task to Alex Reedsmith Select the date the task is due Select Save Presto! The basic project and task we just created is saved in the Work Center. Lisa can add as many tasks as needed to manage this process.

Classes ad Locations

Location tracking and Class tracking let you track your income and expenses in QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced. Class tracking specifies a different class for each detail line of a transaction. Location tracking allows you to assign a location to an entire transaction.You'll learn more about setting up clients with classes and locations in Advanced Certification.

To be listed in the QB App Center, apps must ______________

Meet strict requirements and undergo a testing process

Key tasks for year end

More often than not, clients are not prepared for year end and need some support, especially in their first year in business. Your support, plus the features of QuickBooks Online, make a winning team that will guide business owners through this annual process. In this lesson, we'll look at the key activities for clients and accountants at year end, and at how QuickBooks Online can keep everything neat and tidy throughout the year in preparation for this important time. Of course, the year-end process will differ depending on the client, their business type and how busy their year has been! Let's look at the most important activities as year end approaches.

Creating a No Payroll Access user

Most of our clients would prefer their employees' salaries to remain private data: information to be shared between the employee themselves, their immediate managers, and human resources. In order to help this information remain private, you can now set access controls to enable only the users who require this information to see it. Cindy has another new team member, Stephanie Zau. Stephanie will be responsible for creating invoices and won't need access to payroll. Let's set that up. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select the Gear icon. Select Manage users in the Your company column Select Add user Select Standard user, then Next Uncheck Payroll access, then select Next Set your preferred user settings, then select Next Enter Stephanie's first name, surname, and email address into the fields in contact info then select SaveAnd that's it! You have now added Stephanie to the team without payroll access.

Optical Character Recognition

No matter which method you use, QuickBooks Online uses OCR to scan receipt files once they have fully loaded. The OCR technology scans the information on the receipt and extracts the necessary data to build a transaction record. You'll be able to check this information and amend it where necessary before accepting and adding the transaction—just as you check and match a transaction within the bank feed. QuickBooks Online accepts a range of different image file formats including PDF, JPEG, GIF, and PNG.s

Adjusting journal entries: Non-cash transactions

Not all expenses are cash expenses. Some things represent expenses that don't have a cash effect on your business. Depreciation and allowance for doubtful accounts are two examples of common non-cash transactions. If regular adjustments aren't recorded to reflect these activities, it's easy to get a skewed picture of a company's financial position. Here's a quick example: Chris has an annual loan interest payment due in June and no liability has been accrued for it during the year. Chris could easily overestimate his available cash if he doesn't keep track of this growing current debt. His profit for each month will also be incorrect. Also, when he makes the annual business insurance payment and it's not accrued, the monthly insurance expense will be reflected in the wrong accounting period. As an accountant, you can set these adjusting journal entries to post automatically using the Recurring Transactions feature in QuickBooks Online. That way, you know that most (if not all) of the necessary adjusting entries are reflected when viewing monthly financial reports. To mark a journal entry as adjusting, just enter the journal entry as normal and check the Is Adjusting Journal Entry? checkbox.

Recording a deposit

Now Chris is ready to head to the bank and deposit the checks. At this point he's really excited, because the payments from Bill and Jennifer are about to hit his bank account. However, he needs to update his QuickBooks Online account too, because those Undeposited Funds are, well, no longer undeposited—they're deposited. Let's see how we can help him put that right.

Creating a rule

Now let's take on the challenge Craig has given us: to set up a simple bank rule just so he can learn how it's done. He'd like QuickBooks Online to automatically categorize his equipment rental expenses. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Open Banking from the Left Navigation Bar We're in the Banking Center now, so select the Rules tab at the top, just above the details about Craig's checking account Select New Rule Add a description. Make it A Rental and this rule is for Money Out in all bank accounts Add a condition: select Bank text from the first drop-down Select Contains from the second drop-down Type A Rental in the final box. This means that anything with A Rental in the text of the transactions will qualify for our rule Make transaction type equal Expense. This means that the rule will create an expense transaction Select the payee. Select Add New and type A Rental Select the category. Make it Equipment Rental Return to the Payee field and select the new vendor A Rental Select Save Now go back to the Banking tab Select Categorized You'll see the $800.00 and $1,200.00 transactions for A Rental have a Rule icon attached to them, to show that they have been categorized as per the rule we just set up. Notice that the transactions also have an Auto-add icon attached. This is the default setting when creating a new rule and will automatically add the transactions to your QuickBooks Online. Note: The Auto-add setting can be turned off while creating the rule, or at any time by editing the rule.

Chaning a reconciled transaction

Now, as with most things in QuickBooks Online, if Cindy or any client makes an error and needs to fix it, it's pretty easy to adjust or roll things back. Even transactions that you've reconciled can be changed. Generally, you wouldn't change a reconciled transaction, but sometimes errors are made inadvertently. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Having noticed that she wrote a check for the wrong amount to a vendor, Cindy has gone into the account herself and updated the amount on the check after you have reconciled. Let's pretend we're going to attempt the next month's reconciliation. Select Accountant Tools icon and then ReconcileYou should see an alert warning you that this account isn't ready to reconcile, highlighting that our beginning balance is off by $100 (the edit we made earlier) and giving a link to help us fix it. Select the linkThe link will launch a Reconciliation discrepancy report screen highlighting the problem we created. Let's fix that problem. Select the line in the report and edit the amount back to $422.36, then select Save You may get a warning pop-up asking if you're sure, but hold fast, we're doing good here, so select Yes The entry should disappear and the total discrepancy should be zero Select Done and you're all set for next month's reconciliation

Reviewing, matching, and adding bills and receipts

Once receipts are in QuickBooks Online, they show up under For Review in the Receipts tab. From here, Chris or you can select the row to have a side-by-side view of the receipt you or Chris have sent and the data that has been extracted. You can also: Select Review to edit the extracted information for the receipt. If there are multiple matches, selecting Review will allow you to choose the match you want Select Add if you want to create a new expense in QuickBooks Online with the receipt attached Select Match if you're ready to match the receipt with an existing record in QuickBooks Online Note: if an imported banking transaction and a receipt are both in For Review, QuickBooks Online won't suggest a match until you select Add for one of them. Let's see how this works for Chris's receipt. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. The bills and receipts entered are now visible in the For Review tab If QuickBooks Online finds an expense or bill already entered, it will suggest that you Match the bill or receipt to the existing transaction Where QuickBooks Online is unable to find a match, you can manually add a transaction Select Review from the action column The bill or receipt and existing details will load for you to amend as appropriate In this case, we need to set the Document Type to Bill You will be able to assign a payee, payment date, account/category, description, amount, and memo to the transaction. QuickBooks Online will fill in the fields it can using OCR technology Select Save and Next to confirm Because this is a bill or receipt for a new expense, select Create bill to add it to QuickBooks Online QuickBooks Online automatically includes the image of the receipt with the transaction. To check this, select the Reviewed tab

Account Reconciliation

Once you've dealt with all the transactions that have issues, the next step is to make sure all the accounts are reconciled. The Account reconciliation tab shows the current status of accounts and the number of unreconciled transactions. Accounts: Select the link to open and view the account. Unreconciled: Shows how many unreconciled transactions the account has. Select the link to jump to a list where you can review and resolve them. Reconciled through: Shows when the account was last reconciled. To do: Once you have cleared the open issues for each group of transactions, mark the status as Done. If you have a problem with resolving the issue you can mark it as Waiting. The Additional items list includes a link to the Reconciliation report for uncleared transactions. + Add: You can also add your own additional items to the list.

Closing Date Exception reports

Once you've set a closing date, if someone does change something before the closing date, you can easily identify those transactions. Once the closing date is set, there is a report in the Reports Center called the Closing Date Exception report. Let's see how a transaction can be changed after the books have been closed and how this can be identified by checking out the Closing Date Exception report. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select Expenses and then select the Cool Design Mastermind expense that Dan paid, amounting to $97.00 Now on the new screen with details for this expense, change the amount to $100.00 Select Save and close A warning will appear, telling you: "Double check the transaction date. This transaction's date is prior to your company's closing date. This will affect your accounting. Are you sure you want to save? Please enter the password to continue." Enter the password you set earlier then select Yes Now select the Accountant Tools Select Reports In the For my Accountant reports, select the Exceptions to Closing Date report You should see the Audit History window and the details of the edit you just made to the Cool Design Mastermind expense Impressed?

Employees and Payroll

One of the key areas you'll need to discuss is whether the company is run solely by the owner or whether your client has employees (and therefore payroll requirements).

Managing the Work center

QuickBooks Online Accountant lets you organize your team and your clients in one central location. If your client doesn't use QuickBooks Online, no problem. You can add them as a client at the same time you create a project. All you need is their name and email address. No more need for separate to-do lists for different clients. Features on the Work center dashboard can help you manage requests and messages for your clients, along with all the work you do for them. You'll be able to manage your practice and stay organized, never missing a deadline! When you look at the Work center dashboard, you'll see a bird's-eye view of what's coming up for your firm, all organized by due date. Visualizing your work in this way means you can see straight away what's due today, next week, or next month. This will help you focus your attention, manage your time, and better understand your firm's capacity, thereby becoming more efficient. This functionality will also flag what's overdue, so you can deal with it straight away! You can view your work at a glance, filter by client, or show work that is for the firm rather than a client. You will also see the team user assigned to the project. If you have standard processes for doing things, you can become even more efficient. You can repeat projects for the same client or even duplicate existing projects across multiple clients to save time on manual entry. Now that's working smarter!

QBO Payroll Options: Core

QuickBooks Online Core Payroll covers the basics for you and your clients. To help clients and accountants avoid payroll errors, all subscription levels offer full-service features. These ensure payroll tax deposits and forms are filed correctly and on time. Most clients will be happy to input employee working hours but want some help processing regular payroll runs, and may prefer an accountant/bookkeeper to take responsibility for employee setup, overseeing remitted taxes, and filed forms. QuickBooks Online Core Payroll features include next-day direct deposits, unlimited payroll runs and auto payroll to support your payroll needs. For clients considering QuickBooks Online Payroll, you can use the New User Checklist to gather the necessary information to complete the setup. Take a look in the further resources section at the end of this lesson to see and download the New User Checklist.

QBO Payroll: Elite

QuickBooks Online Elite Payroll is the most robust option. It has a complete payroll service with a team of U.S.-based payroll experts to take care of payroll for your client. QuickBooks Online Elite Payroll includes TSheets for employee time tracking, and guarantees accuracy, so the payroll setup, payday, and taxes are done right. If there is ever an issue, Intuit offers full tax representation to take care of it for you.

QBO Payroll options

QuickBooks Online Payroll has three subscription levels: Core, Premium, and Elite.

QBO Payroll: Premium

QuickBooks Online Premium Payroll is the perfect way to manage your payroll needs. The Premium payroll subscription includes all the features of Core, plus same-day direct deposits, expert setup review and TSheets time tracking.

Rogue transactions

QuickBooks Online also uses smart learning to help you identify if a rogue transaction is preventing you from reconciling. For example, it can help you identify if a transaction date is incorrect (say if the posting date was manually entered and has a clearing date that differs from the bank data). QuickBooks Online will identify these hidden transactions and give you a link to display them, making it easy for you to go through and include the ones you need to hit the magic zero difference! This smart learning is available to QuickBooks Online accounts that have been connected to online banking, because it relies on the cleared bank feeds' transactions.

Adding new clients: Fine-tuning

QuickBooks Online can be fully customized to meet your specific client's needs. For example, here are just some of the additional features you may need to set up: Online payments Multicurrency Sales tax

Recording mileage at tax time

QuickBooks Online doesn't record the mileage expense in the general ledger. It currently just keeps track of the mileage and deductible amount. So when tax time comes, you could create a journal entry to record it on the books and download a CSV file as a backup for your book entries and tax return.

Creating reports to answer common business questions

QuickBooks Online gives you and your clients the tools to keep track of their financial data so that it's accurate, reliable, complete, and available in real time. Using reports to their full potential will prepare you to help your clients make decisions and support their business goals.

Best Practice Workflows: QBO

QuickBooks Online has many features that can help you and your clients. Combining QuickBooks Online features with good workflow habits can save time and make things really efficient for small businesses and their accountants! You've already learned how to use many of the basic transactions during Introduction to QuickBooks Online for Accountants, but it's great to encourage clients to use these same workflows, or, to put it more simply, to do things in the right order and in the right place in QuickBooks Online. If you coach clients to get into good habits from the start, it'll save them and you time, avoid confusion, and help everyone get on with business! In this lesson, we'll look at some common client issues around workflows—and the QuickBooks Online tools you can use to detect them.

Beginning balance discrepancies

QuickBooks Online has smart learning that will help you and your client with some of the most common causes of accounts not reconciling. Beginning balance discrepancies (where the beginning balance you see on your client's bank statement doesn't match the beginning balance when starting a bank reconciliation) should be fixed before you reconcile. QuickBooks Online alerts you to these beginning balance discrepancies and gives you a link to run a discrepancy report straight from the reconcile screen. The discrepancy report finds any transactions that were: Changed after they were reconciled, if the change affected the beginning balance of the account Deleted after it was reconciled Manually reconciled in the register by changing the reconciliation status to reconciled (R) Unreconciled in the register by changing the reconciliation status from reconciled (R) to cleared (C) or no statusWhen you open the report, QuickBooks Online will also give you some guidance on how we think you can resolve the transactions. Once you've resolved the problem transactions and the Total Discrepancy Difference is zero, you're ready to reconcile.

Manging subscriptions

QuickBooks Online is constantly evolving and that means clients will always have access to new and improved features. But the subscription level that was a perfect fit for them a few years ago may be a little too basic as their company changes over time. They may need more room to maneuver, and improved features and space to continue to grow into. In order to make the process quick and easy to navigate, the Your Account page allows you to view a client's subscription fees and billing history at a glance. You can also make quick changes to subscriptions from a central dashboard. The client's Usage Dashboard also makes it easy to check they're using the version of QuickBooks that has all the tools they need to get deeper insights, save time, and be more productive.

Which bank are moving to this connection?

QuickBooks Online is working with individual banks to change the way it connects to them. This is why your client will only see some banks offering this new connection, at least for now.So far, Capital One, Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, PNC, USAA, US Bank and Citi have agreed to move toward a better connection for QuickBooks Online customers. You can find more exact dates and timelines for each bank here. Over time, more FIs will make the move, so stay tuned!

Manging receipts and bills

QuickBooks Online makes keeping track of receipts and bills much easier for you and your clients. Users can scan, upload, or even email receipts and bills to QuickBooks Online. Receipts can then be matched to existing expense transactions or used to create new ones. Clients can even do this on the move via the mobile app.

Introducing the Customer Workflow

QuickBooks Online offers all the features your clients need to support customer workflows, from simple service-based businesses to retail sales through to more complex setups. Let's take a look at what a best practice customer workflow looks like for a simple service-based client like Craig's Landscaping.

EFV: Data Accuracy

QuickBooks Online uses real-time data for custom charts, so report visualization is 100% accurate. Existing reports are updated every four hours, and Intuit is working to make updates even more frequent.

Instant Deposits

QuickBooks Payments Instant Deposits is one way for clients to get their hard-earned money faster. For a 1 percent fee, available funds can be instantly deposited into their bank account, allowing them to pay their bills, pay employees, and keep the business moving.

Helping your clients creat recurring transactions

Recurring transactions in QuickBooks Online can be set up to manage pretty much any of the first transactions in any workflow, like sales receipts, invoices, bills, journal entries, checks, deposits, or expenses. It's a great way to automate money-out transactions, like rental or insurance payments, that are paid at regular intervals and fixed amounts. On the sales side, when Craig provides a regular service at a fixed price for a customer (such as weekly lawn mowing or monthly tree trimming) he can invoice them automatically using recurring service charges. Craig can even set a recurring charge to a customer's credit card or bank account (ACH) using a sales receipt, with advance customer authorization. When setting up an invoice for a recurring transaction, you have the option to include unbilled charges and automatically send emails. If set up, Craig won't have to remember to generate invoices every month. This will eliminate all the reminder sticky notes he keeps attached to his computer screen. His attention can be focused on his business instead. More advanced recurring transactions can be set up for non-posting transactions, such as purchase orders or estimates. Notice that the transaction does not have to be scheduled. So, for example, if your purchase order typically contains the same items purchased but you don't order on a scheduled basis, select Reminder or Unscheduled from the Type drop-down list. As an accountant, you can even set up recurring journal entries to reclassify deferred revenue or prepaid expenses. Automating processes with recurring transactions can save time and headaches when you've got regular predictable activities, whether they're expenses or sales activities like invoices. However, the automation requires some involvement to make sure invoices for canceled or held work don't go out automatically!

Based on this Accounts Receivable Aging report, and the fact that Craig offers 30-day terms, whom would you advise Craig to contact for immediate payment if he is looking to collect any balances over 60 days past due?

Red Rock Diner - behind on payment - The Red Rock Diner is way behind on payment. The A/R Aging report can help Craig get on top of who has gone beyond his terms and still owes for the work he's done. If he runs the report regularly, he can see who is immediately beyond the 30-day terms he specifies on his invoice and send a reminder on day 31 to keep on top of his debtors.

Which vendors may also be classified as 1099 independent contractors?

Report to use:1099 Contractor Why:1099 Contractor reports are critical to verifying and validating 1099 contractor payments and compliance requirements.

How much have I paid (insert category)?

Report to use:Expenses by Vendor Summary (or Detail) Why:This can help a business to negotiate better pricing from their vendors if they are buying a lot from one particular vendor.

How much have I spent on (insert category)?

Report to use:Profit and Loss Why:This can help a business understand where they are spending their money.

If I show a profit, why isn't there any cash in the bank?

Report to use:Statement of Cash Flows Why:The Statement of Cash Flows shows the cash flowing in and out of a business for a specific period of time. It breaks down the source of cash received and spent into operating, investing, or financing activities. This can help a business identify whether it's generating more cash than it's using.

Who owes me money?

Report? A/R Aging Why? Lists all customers who currently owe balances and shows how old the balances are

How much is my inventory worth?

Report? Inventory Valuation Summary (or detail) Why? Shows the book (purchase or cost) value of inventory items with quantity on hand

How much money did I make?

Report? Profit and Loss Why:? Shows profitability and how much money was earned and spent on each category.

How much revenue (less cost of goods sold) is available to cover operating costs?

Report? Profit and Loss Why? This is an important profitability metric. You can tell a business owner whether they need to raise prices or reduce spending, or both.

Who are my top customers?

Report? Sales by Customer Summary Why? A business can look at the characterisitcs of their top customers to help identify potential new customers who have the same characteristics

What are my top-selling and/or worst-spelling products?

Report? Sales by Prodcut/Service Summary Why? A business can decide which products they should buy more of (high volume) or which products to put on sal (low volume or slow-moving products).

Reporting and analytics

Reports give your clients a full set of analytics on just how well they're doing and, of course, help to identify where they could make improvements to grow and be more profitable. This lesson is an opportunity to refresh the skills and knowledge you gained in the Introduction to QuickBooks Online for Accountants course. We'll also take a look at how you can build on your knowledge throughout the rest of the module.

How to upgrade clients who aren't part of wholesale billing? (i.e. direct billing?)

Select the Gear icon in the client's company and select Account and Settings Select the Billing & Subscription menu In the QuickBooks Online section, select Upgrade your plan In the Upgrade page, choose the plan you want and select Upgrade Confirm your payment information and select Save

VBS: Select the statement

Select the statement you want to use for the reconciliation from the listYou can also see a list of statements that have already been reconciled. When you're ready to start, select Start reconciliation or Resume reconciliation Follow the steps as before to complete the reconciliation. When you've reached a zero balance, select Finish now

How do I upgrade clients on wholesale billing agreements?

Select the️ Gear icon in your QuickBooks Online Accountant company file, then Subscriptions and billing In the Your subscriptions section, locate the client Select the Upgrade option in the Select Action column You can't upgrade pending wholesale clients. You must wait for that company to be fully moved over to your Wholesale billing account before you can make changes to a company's subscription.

Setting Up Product and Services: Step 3

Selecting a heading opens up more options so you can get to the detail you need.

Quickbooks Online Subscriptions

Self-Employed; Simple Start; Essentials; Plus; Advanced

Which subscription level in QBO could you recommend that would provide features such as tracking for sales and sales tax?

Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, or Advanced

Credit memos and custmoer statements

Sooner or later, all clients will come across an issue with a service or product that the customer isn't happy with. Credit memos in QuickBooks Online allow you or your clients to allocate credits to customers so that next time they are invoiced, the credit can be applied. There's even a way to set this up to happen automatically. You can also create a customer statement to show this has been done. Let's see how we can create a credit memo for Chris. Note that this method is just reducing accounts receivable. It's not refunding cash to the customer. For that, you'd issue a refund receipt.

Bookkeeping and Month-End Review

The Bookkeeping tab gives busy practice owners an easy way to see the month-end review status of each client on their client list. Month-end Review is designed to help firms create a consistent and best-in-class monthly process for closing clients' books. You can find out how to use the Month-end Review functionality in the Month-end Review lesson.For now, let's take a look at how you can see an overview of your firm's progress.

Vendor Information: Business ID no.

The Business ID is where you can store the tax ID number (Employer Identification Number or Social Security number) of a vendor. This number is used when creating Forms 1099-MISC in QuickBooks.

Chart Of Accounts

The Chart of Accounts is the backbone of accounting software. All assets, liabilities, income, and expenses are recorded here in an account or subaccount. This client has got plenty of scope to increase the entries in their Chart of Accounts if they need to.

Client List

The Client List gives you a one-stop shop for all your client information—even clients who don't use QuickBooks Online. Keep your client contact info, notes, and documents close at hand with a consolidated Client List. And access client QuickBooks Online accounts and ProConnect Tax Online from one location.

Finding apps

The Find Apps tab is where you can browse through different categories of apps available to clients and your firm.

Closing the Accounting cycle: Month End Review

The Month-end review feature mirrors the month-end workflows bookkeepers and accountants already follow. But it makes it faster and smarter (by automatically finding errors, incomplete expenses, and duplicate entries). You can track your progress for individual clients, or even see it across the whole practice via the Client List. This makes it easier than ever to keep your clients' records accurate and up-to-date.

Client Details: Notes

The Notes tab lets you easily capture notes created by your team. You can see who created a note and when. Here's how it works: When you add a note to the client file it's automatically stamped with the time and original author. Notes can be viewed and edited by all team members who have access to that client. Your client will never see notes added here, it's just for you and your team. You can include hyperlinks in notes to give your team fast access to relevant files and websites You can also add and view notes while you are in your client's books. Simply go to Accountant Tools and select Notes. Your notes will automatically sync to this client details section in QuickBooks Online Accountant and will only be visible to you.

Enhanced financial visualization: Performance Center charts

The Performance Center lets you visualize up to 10 groups of values on a single chart, allowing you to track things like revenue via a number of channels: Products and Services Classes Locations Projects Employees You can also micro-filter specific customers, classes, and locations (to name a few), with up to five filters to choose from.

Basic report: P&L and Balance Sheet

The Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet are two other essential reports that help Craig assess his financial performance. Profit and Loss is also referred to as the Income Statement. An Income Statement summarizes the amount of financial activity associated with each income or expense account for a specific period of time, so the business can assess whether it is operating at a profit or a loss. To run a Profit and Loss reportIf you were looking at Craig's Landscaping and Design business account, you would navigate to the Reports Center and find the report under Business overview. On the Profit and Loss Report screen, there are options to customize the report to suit your client. Within the report period, you can change the display of columns and compare with another period. You'll find an example under the Tools section, where you can download copies of these reports. To run the Balance Sheet report: From the Reports Center, under Business overview, you'll see Balance Sheet. The reporting period for an Income Statement differs from that of a Balance Sheet. A Balance Sheet summarizes the financial position of a business at a single moment in time; that is why it's commonly referred to as a snapshot of the business. This report reflects whether the assets that the business owns are enough to offset its liabilities and leave a net equity balance after all liabilities have been paid off. As above, you have options to sort and filter this report to suit your client's needs. You can download and view this report in the Tools section.

Using Reclassify Transactions

The Reclassify Transactions tool is a great way to review transaction activity for a given period and clean up any transactions that have been posted to the wrong account. Miscategorized transactions can be a disaster when you're trying to close the books at year end because they make the financial information in reports and statements inaccurate. So whether it's just tidying up a couple of transactions or cleaning up large uncategorized expense accounts, the Reclassify Transactions tool makes short work of it. You can reclassify accounts on non-item-based transactions, and you can reclassify the assigned class on both item-based and non-item-based transactions. During the end-of-year review of Dan's books, we spotted a couple of transactions that were categorized to the wrong accounts. Chatting with Dan confirmed the errors, so now we can fix one using the Reclassify Transactions tool. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. From Dan's dashboard, select the Accountant Tools Select Reclassify TransactionsIn the Reclassify Transaction screen, you can set your parameters. Enter your dates, then choose the account that you'd like to dive into. You can specify your transaction type, and even search for only a specific class or location if they are in use. You can select different views, like the Balance Sheet or, in this case, Profit and Loss Keep the Accrual button selected Select the dates. We want from 1st January 2020 to 31st August 2020. You can see the left Accounts pane shows all of the available accounts (for the account types chosen) for the defined period, along with any subaccounts You'll see a list of accounts to choose from on the left panel. Select Dan's Private consulting meetings income accountIn the main screen to the right, you'll see all the transactions for this account that Dan has recorded. Find Check 116, a deposit for $820. This is the one Dan has posted to the wrong account Check the box next to the deposit Now select the Reclassify button Select Social Media Services income from the drop-down list Select the Apply button You'll see the acknowledgment that the transaction has been reclassified If we check the Social Media Services income account, we can see the deposit has been moved successfullyThe power of this tool is the ability to batch-reclassify, so if there were a whole bunch of miscategorized transactions, using batch functionality to reclassify them would save a lot of work. Find out more in the link in further resourcesThe power of this tool is the ability to batch-reclassify, so if there were a whole bunch of miscategorized transactions, using batch functionality to reclassify them would save a lot of work.Find out more in the link in further resources.

To identify issues: The Transaction Journal Report

The Transaction Journal report shows debits and credits for each transaction and provides a more focused view of amounts and accounts not visible from the transaction itself. You can view everything the client has recorded, and even sort it by individual users to see if a bookkeeper is creating an error, as in our example with Chris from earlier in the lesson. The Transaction Journal report: Was created for accountants, but anyone familiar with double-entry accounting can use it for calculations, advanced insight, or auditing purposes Can be used as a tool to identify transactions that have gone out of balance Can assist in identifying suspicious or odd entries for accounts on other reports

To identify issues: The Audit Log/Voided/Transaction tool

The Voided/Deleted Transaction tool helps you to spot any transactions that a client may have deleted or voided, whether accidentally or on purpose. The tool is a filtered version of the Audit Log and it's available only to Accountant, users via the QuickBooks Online Accountant, Accountant Tools.

Difference

The all-important reconciliation number. You need to try and get the difference to zero. When you add or remove a checkmark to include or exclude a transaction, we update the difference. Your client's books and bank agree when the difference is $0.00.

Adding extra lists

There are several other lists that can be set up as required, depending on your client's needs. To take a look at the other lists that are available, go to the Gear icon and All Lists. Here are some you might find useful. Select the tabs in turn to find out more.

Are there any limitations?

There are some limitations on what can be changed using the Reclassify Transactions tool: You can change the class and/or location for invoices, sales receipts, checks, or bills with items (products or services) on them. However, you can't change the accounts You can't change the payment account (bank or credit card) for expenses You can't change the account or class for inventory adjustments because they're connected to your inventory shrinkage and asset accounts You can change the expense account for billable expenses, but not the income account for the related income transactions You can only manage your payroll transactions in the Payroll menu

Adjusting journal entries: Accrued expenses

These are expenses you've accrued but haven't paid yet, like a loan interest or accrued payroll. Accrued expenses appear on the Balance Sheet as liabilities.

Adjusting journal entries: Deferred revenues

These occur when you've been paid in advance by a customer but you haven't finished the work yet. This appears on the Balance Sheet as unearned income, a liability.

Accrual-basis

These reports display income at the first time it was invoiced and expenses at the time they were purchased, regardless of when payment occurred. This is appropriate when your clients want to view income earned and expenses incurred.

Cash-basis

These reports display income at the time it was received and expenses at the time they were paid. This is great when your clients need a quick overview of their cash flow.

Why do I still have transactions in the bank feed that are not matching with my transactions in QBO?

They most likely typed a date incorrectly in the original QuickBooks Online transaction so the transactions are not getting automatically found or recognized in the bank feed. ProAdvisor advice: Select find match to locate the transaction to use.

Using ID: Confirm Deposit

They review the total amount for the instant deposit and the associated fees. They then select Get it now if they want to proceed.

Full Access

This allows the user to edit QuickBooks Online Accountant firm information, modify team users, update the firm's wholesale subscription billing account, and access the firm's books.

Customer Statements: Balance Forward

This customer statement type shows a list of invoices and payments with the balance for the date range selected. It's perfect for situations where a client wants to provide customers with a summary of what is still due on their account.

Adding extras lits: Payment methods

This displays cash, check, and any other ways you categorize payments you receive from customers. That way, you can print deposit slips when you deposit the payments received. Some examples of other payment methods are ACH or EFT. Also, you may want to have payment methods for each type of credit card accepted.

Adding extras lists: Attachments

This displays the list of all attachments uploaded. From here, you can add, edit, download, and export your attachments. You can also see all transactions linked to a particular attachment.

Adding extras list: Terms

This displays the list of terms that determine the due dates for payments from customers, or payments to vendors. Terms can also specify discounts for early payment.

Time-tracking only

This enables users to sign in to a special version of QuickBooks Online that only has timesheets. This is where users fill out and change their own timesheets but don't have access to other users' timesheets.

Vendor Information: Print on check as

This field should be automatically populated, based on what you entered in the Company field. If for some reason the payee is different from the company name, you can remove the check mark and enter the company name that checks should be made payable to.

Company administrator

This gives access to all areas of QuickBooks Online, including settings and full access rights to all other services the QuickBooks Online company subscribes to (such as Payroll and Intuit Payments).

Basic Access

This gives the user view-only access to QuickBooks Online Accountant firm information, but no access to team and subscription billing, and no access to the firm's books.

Overview area

This gives you more visibility of how you are reaching the zero difference.

Sales Tax Center: Sales Tax Due

This is the total amount your client currently owes to one or more tax agencies.

Adjusting journal entries: Accrued revenues

This is where you've earned the revenue, but the customer has not yet been invoiced, a common practice in many industries that work on long-term contracts. These appear on the Balance Sheet as accounts receivable, which is an asset account.

Adjusting journal entries: Deferred expenses

This is where you've paid for something but not yet realized the benefit. An example of a deferred expense would be if you pay for your insurance a year in advance. Deferred expenses appear on the Balance Sheet as assets.

Custom Access

This lets you select a different mix of these permissions for the team user.

R&SL: QBO Simple Start

This option allows for basic data entry to track your money in and money out, as well as customer tracking and invoicing.

R&SL: QBO Plus

This option opens all the features of QuickBooks Online. It offers more comparison reports for company financials. Unlike Essentials, you can run reports relating to location and class, purchasing and inventory, time activities, and more. Now select the Report Differences by Subscription Level link for your copy of the reporting levels.

RMTT: Download trips

To download a CSV file of your client's trips: Go to Mileage Choose Download Trips QuickBooks Online will download a CSV file that you can filter and sort to suit your needs and save it as a backup document to substantiate the mileage deduction. To record mileage expenses, you can either record a bill to reimburse your client or create a journal entry. You would need to set up a mileage expense account to categorize these entries.

Adding Customers: Importing Customer List

To make it easy to import customer lists into QuickBooks Online, we recommend downloading the Customer List sample file as a template. Just like we saw with the Products and Services list, simply download this sample file then copy and paste the data you have received from your client (or from another system) into each of the columns. Once you've correctly formatted your Excel data, you're ready to go. First, we need to download Chris's customer list to our local computer (See Chris Grier's Customer List in Tools for the file we are using) Go to the Sales Center and select the Customer tab From the drop-down next to New Customer, select Import Customers Select Browse and find Chris's customer list downloaded in step 1 Select Next Check that each QuickBooks online field is mapped correctly to the field on Chris's spreadsheetHint: Chris may not have provided customer information for every field. Don't enter anything in the Opening Balance field because this will make adjustments to the General Ledger for each customer upon import. When the mapping is correct, select Next The Import screen displays the data before we actually import it into QuickBooks OnlineHint: You can make changes to the data here if you need to. We're happy with what Chris has sent us so that we can move on to the import. Select Import. QuickBooks Online will tell us if the data was imported successfully - In the Customers tab of the Sales screen we can see all of Chris's imported customers.

TP: Identifying blockers

To take a closer look at which specific tasks have been completed at each stage, select one of the Month-end review icons.

Vendor Information: Track payments for 1099

Track payments for 1099 selects the vendor to be used in the 1099 wizard when creating Forms 1099-MISC in QuickBooks.

Running a transaction report

Transaction reports may also include payroll entries. Because her day-to-day role and current level of access allows Stephanie to work unhindered across the rest of QuickBooks Online, she can still make full use of the facilities on offer, including reports. If an employee without payroll access needs to run a transaction report that includes payroll entries, these will still appear, but the names of the employees will be masked with the word Payroll.

Transfer

Transfers between different balance sheet accounts are easy to set up in QuickBooks Online, once the accounts themselves are set up. In this lesson, you'll see just how easy transfers are to set up and how they can be set up to recur. As you'd imagine, QuickBooks Online will keep track of every transfer automatically, whether it's manually configured or recurring.

QuickStart templates

Use QuickBooks Online Accountant's standard templates if you're mapping out a common series of tasks, or use it as a starting point. You can still adjust tasks, due dates, and assignees when you create a project from a QuickStart template. Alternatively if you prefer, duplicate it then edit it, add to it, or remove tasks to create a more customized project without having to start from scratch. Currently, QuickBooks Online Accountant features the following QuickStart templates: Bi-weekly payroll Client onboarding Monthly bookkeeping Yearly taxes

Which of these options is true of using credit memos in QBO?

Use a credit memo to credit a customer's accounts receiveable balance so that the credit can be applied to the next invoice - Where a credit needs to be issued, the only correct option is to use a credit memo to credit a customer's accounts receivable balance so that the credit can be applied to existing open or future invoices. It's not to be used when refunding cash to a customer, just for recording a credit to be actioned against the next invoice—and it should be used whether payments are by cash, cheque, or any other method!There is a way to set up QuickBooks Online to automatically apply credits—more of this in a moment.

What is a vendor?

Vendors are businesses Chris uses to buys things. Payments to vendors are money-out transactions. Setting up vendors means clients can do two things.

Analyizing the Balance Sheet

When analyzing the Balance Sheet, the key areas to focus on are: Reviewing each checking/credit card for an accurate balance Reviewing accounts receivable Reviewing any new asset purchases Reviewing any prepaids and confirming they were accurately categorized Reviewing loan accounts and making sure they have been reconciled against current ending balances Reviewing owner transactions in the equity section Checking that the net income in the Balance Sheet matches the net income on the Profit and Loss report for the same period (e.g. year or quarter end) and the same accounting method (e.g. accrual) Let's take a look at how the conversation between you and Dan might go.

Customer Statements

When it comes to credits and refunds, customers may want a clear statement of where their account with a business stands to make sure that a credit has been applied. One easy way to do this is by creating a customer statement. Go to the Sales menu and select Customers Select the customer or customers you want to make statements for In the Batch actions drop-down, select Create statements In the Statement Type drop-down, select the type of statement you'd like to make Different statement types are available to suit different situations. You can then select the date fields for the statement. For instance, you could show all historic transactions involving the customer, or just this month's.

Which payroll option would you recommend so that Intuit's penalty-free guarantee protects you and/or your client?

With QuickBooks Online Elite Payroll, if there is ever an issue, Intuit offers full tax representation to take care of it for you.* *Terms and conditions apply.

Customer Statements: Open Item

With this customer statement, you can show a list of all open and or unpaid invoices. Advise clients to use this when they want to provide detail of all unpaid invoices, unapplied payments, and credit memos to their customers.

Can QBO apply credits automatically?

Yes! In the Advanced tab of Account and Settings, you can select a checkbox that will tell QuickBooks Online to automatically apply credits to existing or new customer invoices. Auto-apply is great for clients who have simple accounts receivable (for instance, just a few invoices per customer). Use it with caution with clients who have higher-volume or more complex accounts receivable workflows.

Managing Client Request

You and your client will no longer need to share sensitive information over email. Client requests enable you to share messages and upload documents with ease—and it's all secure. All your requests are received and organized in your clients QuickBooks Online account. They can be found in the My Accountant tab. Clients can track your requests by due date, so they won't miss a thing and you'll get what you need on time. Your client can respond and share documents inside QuickBooks Online, so their sensitive information is safe. Documents you and your client share this way will also appear in the Shared Documents tab, in the Client details in your Client list; meaning you never miss a thing.

Client Details: Pinned notes

You can also pin a note that is important or permanent, so it is easy to get that information at a glance. The Pins will always be listed on the right side of the Notes page.

EFV: Custom chart builder

You can also use the Performance Center to create custom charts for your customers. This is great for those who want to make their financial data visually digestible. You can create visual representations 10 different datasets on the custom charts: Expenses Revenue Gross Profit Net Profit Accounts Receivable Accounts Payable COGS Cash Flow Current Ratio Quick Ratio

Adding apps to QBO: FAQs

You can check FAQs for answers to the most common queries

Standard user

You can control which areas of QuickBooks Online the user has access to.

Month-end Review drawer

You can drill down into the detail of a client's month-end review status by selecting the one of the Month-end Review status icons. A drawer slides out to reveal the detailed task list. In this example, perhaps the bookkeeper needs to schedule a call with the client to review their personal transactions to unblock the transaction review stage.

Setting Up Product and Services: Step 2

You can drill down into the different categories to select one that is most like what is sold. Once you find a category that describes what is sold, go ahead and select it.

VBS: Viewing bank statements

You can review reconciled bank statements any time: Select Accountant Tools, then Reconcile at the top Select History by account Look for the statement Select Attachments in the Statements column to open the statement

TP: Client List Bookkeeping view

You can see a bird's-eye view of the month-end review status for all your clients. In QuickBooks Online Accountant, open the Client List Select the Bookkeeping View You can see the overall status of the three steps of the month-end review To Do Waiting Done

Your Subscriptions

You can see all your firm's wholesale clients listed, along with their subscription and status. The Actions menu gives you the option to change their subscription level or transfer billing back to the client.

Reports Only user

You have been asked to add a new user to another company. Ryan Zurowski has just joined the team and the owner wants him to be able to run reports, but without being able to change anything in the QuickBooks Online company. You set him up as a Reports Only user. Ryan has access to the new Reports Center. He will see the account differently from those with full access.

Sales Tax Center: Reports

You have shortcuts to the Sales Tax Liability report and the Taxable Customer report. All other reports can still be found using the Reports tab on the Left Navigation Bar.

Uploading bills and receipts

You or Chris can also upload bills and receipts from your computer or by snapping a picture of them on a smartphone using the free QuickBooks Online mobile app. Chris needs to pay $480 for his website hosting. He has already downloaded the bill and needs to save it to his QuickBooks Online account. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Make sure you have the file location open on your Desktop so that you can easily access the file In QuickBooks Online, navigate to the Banking Center within Chris's account Select Receipts Drag and drop the file from the folder it's stored in to the drop box within the Receipts tab Be aware that it may take up to 15 minutes for QuickBooks Online to process the file and for it to show as ready in the account

Which statement is true when a QuickBooks Online company file is suspended for exceeding usage limits?

You or the client must contact QBO to have the file reactivated - The only option here is for you or your client to call QuickBooks Online and have the file reactivated, then either upgrade to the next subscription level or optimize the areas that are exceeding usage limits in the current subscription level.

Setting Up Product and Services: Step 4

You will see the category reflected on the item create screen, and the QuickBooks Online Tax Engine will automatically apply the correct sales tax rate based on where the item is being sold.

Review year-end financial reports with your client

You'll need to help clients carefully review their year-end financial reports. This is what will be used to file their taxes and make projections for the new year. QuickBooks Online management reports mean you and your clients can produce professional reports for a wide range of needs. Key actions Produce any management reports Key reports Balance Sheet P&L

Next steps

You've been on a journey where you've seen how QuickBooks Online and you, as a trusted advisor, can make all the difference to a business. You've learned how to: Analyze your clients' needs and advise them on the best QuickBooks Online subscription to meet their needs Effectively onboard each new client's setup in QuickBooks Online in a way that's right for them and their business Follow best practice with QuickBooks Online to manage small business clients, managing, balancing, and maintaining their books throughout the accountancy workflow Generate business reports that add value to your clients Use QuickBooks Online Accountant to manage clients and work so you never miss a deadline

Verify that balance-sheet accounts are reconciled

Your client's bank and credit card accounts should be reconciled to their statements. You may need to help clients with this to make sure it is done properly. Make sure the reconciliation wasn't automatically adjusted and that there are no changes to reconciliations that affect the ending balance. QuickBooks Online has a number of forensic tools (like the Reconciliation Discrepancy report function) that can help you troubleshoot accounts that don't add up. Reconciliation history reports in QuickBooks Online are great tools to help you determine that all Balance Sheet accounts are reconciled. Other Balance Sheet accounts (such as fixed assets) and other receivables like employee loans or liabilities (such as bank loans or unearned income) need to have supporting detail reports showing what makes up the ending account balance. Payroll liability accounts should match payroll taxes calculated for the period and paid in the next period. Key actions Check all accounts are reconciled Verify amounts from reconciliation match the balance sheet Key reports Balance Sheet Reconcilaition Summart Reconciliation history by account Reconciliation Discrepancy Payroll liability

IT: Retail and e-commerce

Retail and e-commerce businesses are optimized to sell products and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Sales, payment, and staff management systems must work closely together to better manage profit and loss. Understanding cash flow and balance sheets is necessary to run any business. It's especially important to retailers and resellers, who must manage sales and inventory on top of being ready to do taxes when the time comes. Managing inventory and avoiding out-of-stock situations are critical to the success of retail and e-commerce customers.

COS: Banking Activity

In the Banking Activity section, you can see the register balance of each bank and credit card account in QuickBooks. The register balance is the balance from the end date of the register, which could include future-dated transactions. In the Banking Activity tab, we see the checking account, merchant account, and payroll checking account displayed.

SU: How do I know if there's an outage?

In the U.S., we continuously monitor QuickBooks Online for outages and slowdowns. We provide status updates on any service outages or interruptions here. If you or your client have any problems accessing products in the QuickBooks ecosystem, visit this site to see if there's a service interruption.

Where would you find the option to Close Books?

- Accountant Tools Begin the process of closing the books by selecting Accountant Tools.

Product and Service Settings: Show Product/Service column on sales form

- must be selected to use Product/Service items on sales forms. Deselecting this setting will limit users to adding only descriptions to each line item of a sales form and will use the default Product/Service item created by QuickBooks behind the scenes. Chris needs to keep track of the different products and services he provides to his customers, so he'll keep this box selected.

Product and Service Settings: Track inventory quantity on hand

- turns on the inventory-tracking feature in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced subscription levels. Chris won't be tracking inventory in his business so he can leave this feature turned off.

Product and Service Settings: Show SKU column

- will add a column to track SKU numbers to sales and purchase forms. Chris doesn't track SKU numbers in his business (they're most commonly used in retail and other product-based businesses).

The dashboard makes it easy for Lisa and her team to see the status of all the projects. Once Alex has completed his first task of requesting timesheets from Cindy, how should he mark the task as done? Choose the numbered section from the options below.

2 - By selecting this drop-down, he will have the option to mark the task as To do, In progress, Blocked, or Done. If he selects Done, the task will be marked as completed and disappear from the Work dashboard. He can easily switch to List mode if he needs to see a full list of all projects and tasks, including the completed ones.

Now that you've seen it in action, let's take a look at a couple of specific tasks.The bookkeeper looking after Ravela NestEgg Properties has a project to review the bank accounts. He needs to ask his client Mylene to send him the most recent statements. Where does he need to do this, so the conversation is tracked in QuickBooks Online Accountant? Identify where he needs to select.

3 - By creating a client request, he can email the client and let QuickBooks Online Accountant keep track of the conversation for him. He can even add documents for the client to review. When you create a request to a client, it will automatically be published to your client's QuickBooks Online account under the My Accountant tab. You can also enable an email request to your client, so they also get notified by email.

Your practice manager has decided to split administrative functions for managing the firm's books between two bookkeepers. Jessica Chen will look after invoicing and Leslie Orlando will manage the firm's bills and expenses. Which team permissions should you set to Yes for Jessica Chen?

3 Customers and accounts receviable - By giving Jessica access to customers and accounts receivable, she'll be able to create invoices for any of the firm's clients, but without being able to access their QuickBooks Online data.

Which 2 accounts, shown on the report, need more investigation?

4 & 5 - Rent and Lease have seen a significant decrease in value. You'll want to ask Dan why this is. Ask My Accountant is automatically registered as an uncategorized expense by QuickBooks Online. You will want to take a deeper dive into the transaction report with Dan to agree how each of these should be correctly categorized in the future. You should be looking for high decreases and uncategorized items and focus on those first.

When to use Journal Entries?

A general journal entry is an accounting transaction that is posted directly to the general ledger. For example, if Chris's tax accountant sent the annual depreciation on the equipment, Chris would use a journal entry to debit the depreciation expense and credit the accumulated depreciation. Journal entry rules: Total debits must equal total credits in order to save the journal entry You cannot use Products and Services items in a journal entry When posting to accounts receivable, you must specify a customer When posting to accounts payable, you must specify a vendor You may use multiple accounts receivable and/or accounts payable accounts in the same journal entry You can't mark an amount as billable to a customer

Recording a transfer

A transfer of money between accounts is not an income or expense, so you and Chris will need to use the Transfer screen. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Chris needs to set up a transfer of $200 into his savings account. Navigate to the + New button Find the Transfer link, select it to go to that screen Select the account from which you are transferring funds for Chris. We need to transfer out of his Checking Account Select Savings account, which is where Chris wants the funds to be transferred Chris wants $200 to be transferred Fill in the date. Make it today's date Select Save and close

See it in Action

A user without access to payroll will see QuickBooks Online slightly differently from those with full access. There'll be restrictions on what they can see but they'll still have access to all the areas of QuickBooks Online that they'll need in order to fulfill their role. Let's take a look at what a non-payroll user sees when signed in.

Basic reports: AP

Accounts Payable (or A/P) reports in QuickBooks Online allow you and your clients to see what the business owes and when payments are due. Reports include A/P Aging Summary and Detail, Vendor Balance Summary and Detail, Bill Payment List, and Unpaid Bills. For your clients, managing cash going out of the business is crucial. They can gain insight into which vendors to pay and when by using these reports and, as a result, manage their cash flow.The A/P Aging Summary This report summarizes the status of unpaid bills and unapplied Vendor Credits. It serves as a quick glance at which vendors are most overdue. Why would you run one of these reports? You can use the A/P Aging Summary to help Craig understand how to pay vendors strategically, instead of just paying the first ones he thinks of or those he likes best! For example, if Craig has a vendor who is making finance charges, you can encourage him to pay that vendor first rather than a bill that is still within payment terms. That way, Craig can maintain his pool of available cash and not run short when he needs to buy supplies essential for completing current work.

Basic report: AR

Accounts Receivable (or A/R) reports in QuickBooks Online allow you or your clients to see who owes the business money and how much they owe. Reports include Customer Balance Summary and Detail, A/R Aging Summary and Detail, Collections report, Invoice List, and Statement List. Managing the amount of money owed to a business can be hard. Using A/R reports helps Craig manage his cash flow more efficiently by making the details of open customer balances visible.What is an A/R Aging Summary report?The A/R Aging Summary report lists each customer with an open balance. It lists the open invoices in different columns based on whether they are current or how long they are overdue: 30, 60, or 90+ days. By running this report, you and Craig can see who owes money and their payment terms.

Adding Customers: Details

Address, Notes, Tax Info, Payment and billing, Attachments

Closing the books

Along with the normal accounting process, QuickBooks Online has a great feature called Close the Books. It's best practice to close the books to protect transactions in previous periods from being changed. In QuickBooks Online, this is easy. You'll see how to set up a password to protect prior period balances, and how to edit transactions in a closed period if you need to, and how to tell if changes have been made to a closed period. Closing the books isn't just a year-end process, of course. Books can be closed at a frequency that works for you and your client, sometimes each month after reconciliations are complete. But the books should be closed at least each year end (after the tax return has been filed to finalize all of the accounts), so we'll use this as our example.

The Employees tab of the Payroll Center

An employee with no access to payroll information will receive a notice informing them of this if they select the Employees tab. The Employees tab is where all employees' personal and salary information lives. Stephanie does not need to see this information in order to successfully do her job. Limiting payroll access to those who require it helps to keep this information private and secure. In order to create bills or write checks, Stephanie still has access to contractor information.

Workflows Go Bad: The case of the uncompleted accounts payable workflow

Another client, Karl, is still getting used to his new workflows in QuickBooks Online and so far, he's loving it. He's been struggling, however, to understand the accounts payable workflow. He's in charge of entering and categorizing the bills he receives from his vendors, and his bookkeeper records and prints the checks that are sent to his vendors. On reviewing his last Profit and Loss statement, he noticed that his materials expenses seemed rather high. So what went wrong? The problem During a meeting with Karl you discover that while he has been entering the bills to record the expenses, the bookkeeper has been using the Check screen to create payments to vendors, essentially recording the expenses twice in QuickBooks Online. The proper workflow would be to create a bill and then use Pay Bills to record the payments against the bill and close out the accounts payable balance.

Workflows Go Bad: The case of the transaction entered via the bank register

Another client, Stacy, has been using Quicken to manage her personal finances for a while and she always enters her checks and deposits from the bank register. She is new to QuickBooks Online and notices that she can open the Bank Register and enter transactions the same way. Great! She navigates to the Bank Register by tapping on Accounting, then view register. She is feeling right at home because it looks almost exactly the same as Quicken. The first transaction she wants to record is a manual check she wrote to pay her sales tax from the prior month. She adds New Jersey Department of Revenue as a new payee, enters the amount, and selects New Jersey Department of Revenue Payable as the account category. So far so good! Or is it? The problem QuickBooks Online is a forms-based accounting program and transactions should be entered using the proper screens to make sure that balances stay nice and tidy. Let's head over to the Sales Tax Center and see the impact that this transaction will have on the books. Notice that even though Stacy recorded the payment of $62.94 for her July liability balance, QuickBooks Online doesn't recognize the liability as being paid. Clients who use the Sales Tax Center must record all payments from it for the payments to be properly applied to the sales tax liability balances.

Client Details: Shared Documents

Any documents you or your client upload to their QuickBooks Online My Accountant tab are stored here. With documents saved in a safe and secure location, there's no more worrying about sharing confidential information over email or wondering whether you're looking at the right version of a file.

Select transactions

Any transactions added or matched through bank feeds will automatically have a checkmark in this column. Compare the transactions to the bank statement and if they show up on the bank statement, check them off. Once everything that is on the bank statement is selected here, the difference should be zero.

Setting Up Payments: QB Payments have to offer?

As Chris's business expands, he'll have more and more customers paying invoices at different times. No matter how many payments per month Chris expects to receive, QuickBooks Payments will make this a seamless process.

Client List: Banking

Check the status of the client's online banking transactions.

Estimates and Purchase Orders

As Chris's trusted ProAdvisor, you're happy to help—and pleased he's happy to touch base before he dives in and you get that phone call when things aren't going well! Walk him through how he can use estimates as part of his business to order work materials for jobs and eventually to invoice when the work is done. With some coaching on basic workflows, Chris has thrived and business is great, but he's called you up to ask for some help with a new workflow that he wants to use. This week, Chris met with an important new commercial customer who is looking to have a new generator installed. This is a big job for Chris and the customer has asked him to provide an estimate of the job to submit to the company's board of directors for approval.

Manging the Client List

As a busy practice manager, Lisa Garcia's working life is ruled by deadlines. Switching between lots of different solutions and packages to manage the tax, accounting, and payroll needs of clients, not to mention keeping track of email, to-do lists and a whole host of Excel spreadsheets: it's exhausting. Plus, what happens if she accidentally works on an old version of a file? It's enough to keep her awake at night!

Billable Users

Billable users are admin, standard, and custom users. You can see that this Plus client has three out of a possible five users.

Customize view

By default, the table shows all transactions, but you can also choose to show just deposits or payments.

Where can you see a list of banking transactions that have been accepted into QBO?

Categorized - Once you matched or categorized bank feed transactions to transactions, they are accepted into QBO and appear in the Categorized tab

Coaching Best Practice Workflows: Keep checking back in

Checking back in with Chris identified that after he received a check from his customer as a prepayment deposit, he selected the + New button and then selected Check in the Vendor column to record the payment. By doing this, he created a vendor instead of a customer and assigned Professional Fees as the category. Identifying the problem Let's take a look at the Transaction Journal for this entry to see why this isn't the proper workflow for this transaction. We can see that this decreases the balance in the bank account (credit) and increases the amount of Professional Fees that is reflected on the Profit and Loss report. Coaching Chris in the best practice workflow So how should Chris have recorded the prepayment deposit from his customer using the best practice sales workflow? We can point out to Chris that all the transactions in the + New menu are sorted by entity type. All the customer transactions are listed together, as are the vendor and employee transactions. The easiest way for Chris to record the deposit would be to create an unapplied received payment: He selects the + New menu and selects Receive Payment under the Customers column He can add the new customer here, enter the amount and leave the payment as an open credit on the customer's account Once he creates the invoice for the completed job, he can apply the payment to the invoice to reduce the amount owed

Reconciling accounts

Cindy has done a great job reconciling her accounts. Let's see how she's done it. We have received her bank statement dated June 30, 2020 for her Payroll Checking Account. It displays her beginning and ending balances and the total amount of withdrawals and deposits. We'll need this information to complete the reconciliation. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Select Accountant Tools, then Reconcile at the top Select Payroll Checking from the Account drop-down Enter $4,819.29 from the statement ending balance into the Ending balance box, and enter 06/30/2020 as the Ending date Select Start reconciling Notice that QuickBooks Online has already marked all the transactions for June cleared in the register and that the difference is zeroBecause all transactions were previously matched and added in the Banking Center (marking transactions as tentatively cleared), this makes the reconciliation process at the end of the month a snap! Select Finish now, then Done

An intelligent reconciliation experience

Cindy's books balanced straight away and gave us that all-important zero difference. But sometimes finding the problems takes time and detective work. With QuickBooks Online, the features to help you find reconciliation problems are right there at your fingertips. Let's take a look at another client's bank reconciliation and take a tour around the screen to explore some of the features.

Managing banking through the mobile app

Clients can perform most of their banking via the QuickBooks mobile app. This is a great tool when they're on the move or short on time. They can record expenses and receipt images on the go.

Using Instant Deposits: Request an ID

Clients select Sales, then Deposits Check the available balance. This is the sum of payment transactions processed before 3:00 PM PT that qualify for instant deposit. The balance can be made up of one or more transactions up to the $2,000 daily maximum They select Get it now

Running a comparative P&L report

Dan is concerned that his year to date hasn't been as lucrative as the previous year. To check this for him, you can run the Profit and Loss report and take a look at his accounts. You can run a Comparative Profit and Loss report from within the same report—there is no need to run two separate reports. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Enter the Report Center from the Left Navigation Bar Select Profit and Loss from the Business Overview section Set the Report period to This Year-to-date Check to make sure the date ranges from 01/01/2020 to today's date Select Previous Year from the Compare another period drop-down list and set the checkboxes to % Change and % Income Set the Accounting method to Accrual Select the Run report button

Your Team

Depending on the way your practice works, you may need to give team members access to client accounts. Team users in QuickBooks Online Accountant are staff members of the accounting firm that oversees client files and the QuickBooks Online account. They could alternatively be bookkeepers or tax preparers not in the firm, but who still need access to the client. Team users will get access to client files, but clients won't see the names of the users and they won't see individual staff names. All the client is aware of is that they are working with an accountant specialist, or ProAdvisor. They could, in fact, be working with two or three.

Sales Tax Center: Tax Breakdown Area

Due this month: This shows taxes that are currently due, in other words, require more immediate action.Upcoming: Shows tax amounts being accrued for the following period.Overdue: Shows taxes in which the due date has passed and no tax payment has been recorded within the QuickBooks Online account.

Usage Limits

Each subscription has limits.

Client List: LEad

Easily see which lead is assigned to each client.

Your client has sent you their bank statement, as per your client request but, unfortunately, they've done it for the wrong start date. How can you ask them to redo it, as part of a tracked conversation?

Edit the client request and add a comment - Using the comments feature on the client request makes it easy to keep track of all the whole conversation with the client, so you never miss a thing.

Bank register in the COA

Employee payroll information appears on information produced in the bank register too.Some employees with non-payroll access need access to the Chart of Accounts, so here (as with the transactional reports, where payroll entries appear) the bank register will also mask the employee's name. Names will be replaced by the word Payroll.

How to run the Balance Sheet

Enter the Report Center from the Left Navigation Bar Select Balance Sheet from the Business Overview section Set the Report period to Last year or enter custom dates 01/01/2018 to 12/31/2018 Select the Run report button

Vendor Information: Account number

Enter the vendor's account number. This is helpful for a utility payment, for example. The account number will show up on the memo on the check.

When to exclude transactions

Excluding a transaction means removing it from the bank feed and not recording it in your QuickBooks Online register. A good example of when you might do this would be if the bank feed brought in a duplicate transaction that had already been added to QuickBooks Online. This may happen if you import transactions but are current on your reconciliations. The banking feature does not match imported transactions against reconciled transactions. To exclude a transaction for Craig from the For Review tab, select the checkboxes to the left of the date for the transactions you want to exclude. Once you're done, select the Batch Actions drop-down and select Exclude Selected. The transactions move to the Excluded tab. You can see what you've excluded in the Excluded tab. These transactions haven't been added to QuickBooks Online, so they won't appear in any account registers or report. Excluding and reconciliation Excluding is about avoiding errors. The goal of reconciliation is to prove that the transactions in the register match the transactions that have cleared on the bank statement. If a duplicate transaction is imported into the register, the register will not reconcile with the bank statement. This will result in incorrect financial reports. But what if you accidentally exclude a transaction and you'd like to include it again? Choose Banking from the Left Navigation Bar Select the Excluded tab Select the checkboxes for the transactions you'd like to include again Select the Batch Actions drop-down, select Undo, and it will bring the specified transactions back into the For Review tab for you to work with. You can then add, categorize, or match and accept the transactions.

Once Chris has connected his QuickBooks Online account to his bank, his bank activity is automatically added to his books.

False - When he connects his QuickBooks Online account to his bank, his bank activity is downloaded for review. He will then need to match and add the transactions to commit them to his books. This is unless he streamlines things further using auto-add rules. More on this in the QuickBooks Online Advanced course!

What should you consider when downgrading a client?

Features: Downgrading means losing some features in your client's current QuickBooks Online plan. Make sure the new QuickBooks Online plan will meet their needs. Check out this comparison chart to review what will be lost when they switch Third-party apps: Changing a plan might affect some third-party apps connected to QuickBooks Online. This happens when the new plan doesn't support the feature the client app works with. Review each affected client's apps by selecting Apps in the Left Navigation Bar in QuickBooks Online Accountant, then selecting Client apps Plan discounts: Downgrading will remove all discounts on the current plan

Manually Importing Transactions

First, we need to have Chris's banking CSV file ready to upload, so make sure you've saved it somewhere on your computer Next, on Chris's Dashboard, select Banking from the Left Navigation Bar Note this is the first time we've been here, so we get some help in choosing what to do Select Upload transactions Select Browse and upload Chris's bank info from your computer Under QuickBooks Account, from the drop-down window, select Checking Select Next We can now check the mapping of the different areas of the imported file, and make sure they're allocated to the right areas in the banking section of Chris's QuickBooks file. Select Next Here, we can select which transactions to import. We need all of them so there's no need to change anything. Select Next We're asked to confirm the import. Select Yes Our Banking Center is now populated with the transactions from Chris's bank file. If we select Let's go, we'll see the imported data on the Banking screen. If you need to import a bank file next month or into an established QuickBooks Online file, just select the File upload button in the top right of the screen.

Managing your work

For Lisa and her busy bookkeeping and accounting team, the number of deadlines they have to juggle can be crazy. Missing a deadline can have serious consequences, like a fine or even losing a client. What Lisa really needs is a way to keep track of it all, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Usage Limits: How do I see a client's usage?

Open your client's QuickBooks Online Select the Gear icon Select Account and Settings Select the Usage tab

Would a client benefit from downgrading their subscription?

For a variety of reasons, not every business keeps growing or grows as expected. Lifestyle changes or even a return to full-time employment may mean a client has smaller goals or expectations. To downgrade a client who isn't part of Wholesale billing, i.e. direct billing: Select the Gear icon menu in the client's company and select Account and Settings Select Billing & Subscription. Make sure your payment info is updated and valid Select Downgrade your plan. The Downgrade page shows your current plan, and other plans you can downgrade to. If you can't see the Downgrade option, go to qbo.intuit.com/app/changeplan to downgrade Find the new plan you want based on the feature list, then select Choose Plan Review what goes away with your new plan. If you're ready to downgrade, select Next Review your new billing details. Select Change plan to complete the process For wholesale clients, sign in to your QuickBooks Online Accountant company file, then: Select the️ Gear icon in your QuickBooks Online Accountant company file, then Subscriptions and billing In the Your subscriptions section, locate the client Select the Downgrade option in the Select Action column. (Note: if you don't see Downgrade as an option, that file cannot be downgraded) If your client upgrades to Advanced, and then downgrades back to QuickBooks Plus, Essentials, or Simple Start, they (or more likely you) will need to reduce everything to their usage limits when they downgrade.

RMTT: Adding a Journal Entry

From the + New button, select Journal entry Select the Mileage Expense Account Enter the mileage deduction amount in Debits Add a description: To record mileage for tax year 2020 Choose the client's name from the Name drop-down Select the appropriate liability or equity account. For example, Due to owner Enter the mileage deduction amount in Credit Save the entry

Using an estimate to creat a purchase order

Great news! All City Library has accepted Chris's estimate! Now he needs to change the status of the estimate to Accepted and order the generator from his supplier. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Open the Customer Center by selecting Sales then Customers from the Left Navigation Bar Select the Estimate box in the Money Bar. All City Library's Estimate will be displayed Select 1 Open Estimate in the Open Estimates column and then select Estimate #1004 to open the Estimate screen Select the down arrow next to Pending and change the status to Accepted Select the down arrow next to Create invoice and select Copy to purchase order Select OK when the pop-up appears The select Yes if another pop up appears On the Purchase Order screen, select Lang and Sons Electrical Supply from the Vendor drop-down list Select All City Library as the customer the Ship to field Type Standard shipping please in the Your message to vendor box Select Save and send to send the purchase order to the vendor Once the generator is received from the vendor, Chris can add the purchase order to a bill, check, or expense, depending on how he'd like to pay for it. Chris is going to pay for the generator using an expense transaction, so let's see how to do this Select Expenses then Vendors from the Left Navigation Bar Select the blue Purchase Order box in the Money Bar Find the purchase order for Lang and Sons and select the down arrow next to Create bill in the Action column, then select Create Expense The Expense screen will open and be pre-filled with the vendor's name Enter the payment date and select Add from the drawer on the right-hand side of the screen to add the details of the purchase order to the expense From the drop-down arrow next to Save and Send, select Save and Close

Customizing reports: Grouping items

Grouping items in a detailed transaction report can make it much easier for you to make sense of the data. You can also save your customization for your clients to return to in the future. Start in the Profit and Loss report Drill down into Overhead Expenses Select Name from the Group by drop-down list and select Run report The entries are now grouped together by iTunes and My Landlord Select the Save customization button Return to the Reports Center to see your customized report in the Custom reports tab

Sales Tax Center: History

Here, you can review any returns that were previously marked as paid/filed within QuickBooks Online.

Client List: Tax Returns

Here, you can see any tax return information relevant to the client, including the status of any return that has been started.

Coaching Best Practice Workflows: Keep It Simple

Help clients to understand just what they need to do for the complexity of their business as it's operating currently—no more and no less! It's easy to overcomplicate things and overload clients with information that they might never need. You can add value to your client relationships by touching base with them regularly and identifying new QuickBooks Online workflows that they might need to be taught. Understand their business and encourage them to use best practice workflows, but remember and remind them that, as their ProAdvisor, you're their go-to expert in QuickBooks Online and there to help their business thrive via the benefits QuickBooks Online can deliver.

Year-end accounting checklist

Here's an overview of some of the key tasks that you will need to consider at year end. If you are a tax preparer, try the built-in tool, Prep for taxes. To learn more about Prep for taxes and how to prepare a tax return with this tool, take the QuickBooks Online Advanced certification training.

Client List: Actions

Here, you can edit the client's details, start Prep for Taxes, create a tax return, or make clients inactive.

Adding apps to QBO: App Info

Here, you can find out who the developer is and how to contact them for help and support.Before buying an app, it's important to check the terms and conditions. You also need to check the privacy policy. This is important because it specifies how your information and data is handled or shared. Once you've checked out an app, you can select the Get app now button. You get options to install the app for your firm or for a specific client (which you can select from the drop-down list).

Adding apps to QBO: Similar

Here, you can find shortcuts to other similar apps, helping you choose the one that best meets your client's needs.

Client Details: Bookkeeping

Here, you can see the closing date and QuickBooks subscription level. You can also see the Account Watchlist, which shows the current balances in the asset and liability accounts of the company, including key accounts such as checking and credit cards, and when these accounts were last reconciled.

Sales Tax Center: Sales Tax Setting

Here, you can view and edit any tax agencies you have set up within your client's QuickBooks Online account, and add new agencies. A tax agency can be made inactive at any time by selecting the Edit button next to it.

Client Details: Edit

Here, you can view or edit your client's contact information, see details of their subscription, and check which members of your firm have access to the client.

Vendor Information: Address

Here, you enter the address where Chris will mail his payments. This is also known as the remit-to address.

Apps for your firm

Here, you'll find a list of all the apps your firm is connected to. Select Actions to launch the app, change settings, rate the app, or disconnect it.

Adding apps to QBO: Reviews

Here, you'll see a ratings snapshot (just like you'll see on many other retail sites) and reviews from people who've used the app. Checking out feedback from other QuickBooks Online users is a great way to see if an app really does live up to the hype. Reviews will often identify any current bugs or tell you how much time can be saved by using the app for real.

Adding apps to QBO: Pricing

Here, you'll see the pricing offers available for the app. Often there can be discounts for multiple users or for company-wide subscriptions. Some of our most trusted partners also offer accountant discounts when the firm is billed for client apps.

Your client wants to review how much sales tax they paid last quarter. Where will they find this information in the Tax Center?

History - The History link is where you review any returns that were previously marked as paid/filed within QuickBooks Online.

Record mileage for year end

IRS guidelines require specific information to substantiate deductible automobile expenses, such as vehicle type, the date placed in service, and the mileage (total, business, commuting, and other personal mileage). If your client has been using the QuickBooks Mileage tracker throughout the year, it's easy to prepare the log for auto expense deduction. Key actions Check calculated mileage Look for vehicle changes (bought or sold) Ensure no trips are left unreviewed Key reports View Vehicles report All trips report

Vendor Information: Cost rate, Billing rate, Terms

If Chris ever needs to change the default payment terms for any vendor, he can do so in this Vendor profile screen. The cost rate only appears if the client is using Projects and the vendor is not being paid via expenses or bills but as, say, a contractor on a daily rate billable to the client.

Recurring payments

If Chris has a customer's credit card or bank account information on file and has authorization from the customer to charge a recurring amount, he will be able to create sales receipts that automatically book the sale in QuickBooks Online and deposit funds into his bank account. For Chris, this is a great way of automatically billing and getting paid for services that are, say, monthly maintenance plans or service agreements. Watch the video to see how he gets it done. His individual steps are below for you to follow. Select the Gear icon Select Recurring transactions Select New From the Transaction Type drop down, select Sales Receipt Select OK Specify a name for the template that describes what the recurring charge is for, in this case MaintenanceThen complete the rest of details as you would normally, in this case The Type is Scheduled for 3 days in advance The Customer is Bill Gallinger The Interval is Monthly on the 1st day of every month Select a Start date: 1st of November 2020 For End, leave as None Select Credit Card as the Payment method Then add the Product/Service you're billing the customer for: Installation Labor Finally, select Save templateThat's it. Chris will now get paid on the first day of every month for the regular work he completes for the customer.

Assigning a Client Lead

If you're working in a large firm, then chances are you won't be involved with every single client. More likely you'll have a limited number of clients assigned to you. Clients appreciate the trust that comes with an ongoing relationship with an accountant or bookkeeper, and one way to provide this continuity of service is to assign a Lead accountant or bookkeeper. Let's look at how to assign Dianne Doolittle as the Lead accountant to Chris Grier Master Electrician. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Start in the Client list in QuickBooks Online Accountant Select the Filter button Select Edit Leads Go to the Chris Grier Master Electrician client row and select the Lead drop-down Choose Dianne Doolittle Save the change You can see that Dianne's initials now appear as the lead for Chris's client file This means Dianne can easily filter the list to show just the clients she's responsible for.

Searching the Team List

If you're working in a large practice, the list of team members can be long. You can search the Team list to find people. Simply start typing the team member's name in the Search box to filter the list.

Client Details: Payroll

If your client has QuickBooks Online Payroll, the Payroll tab shows the next pay date, the last pay date, and a summary of recent tax payments and form filings.It even links right into Payroll, so you can start the next payroll run directly from within QuickBooks Online Accountant.

Why use the Pay down credit card feature?

In the past, clients could record their credit card payments in a couple of ways: By creating a transfer transaction and matching it from the bank feed By writing a check But they aren't always sure how to categorize the payment correctly. A common mistake is to categorize payments to a credit card to an expense account rather than to the credit card liability account. This leads to incorrect balances in both the Banking Center and on the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet.The Pay down credit card feature makes it simple to follow the correct workflow. What's more, it uses client-friendly language to help them make the right choices.Clients still have the choice to pay by check if that's what they prefer.

How much historical data does the new connection bring in?

In the past, the default was always 90 days of historical transactions. With this new connection type, it will vary by financial institution. The range will be between 30 days and two years. If your client needs more than what's available for your financial institution, you can learn how to upload additional transactions.

To start a month-end review:

Open your client's books in QuickBooks Online Accountant Go to Accountant Tools and select Month-end review

How to set up ID?

Instant Deposits uses push-to-card technology to deposit your client's available balance to their debit card within 30 minutes. To get started, clients need to link a supported debit card to QuickBooks Online. Most standard U.S.-issued Visa or Mastercard debit cards are supported. These debit cards should be issued by a bank or credit union and linked to a transactional checking account. Instant Deposits does not support prepaid bank cards, ATM and credit cards, or wallet cards like PayPal. From the Left Navigation Bar, clients select Sales, then select Deposits Clients select Link debit card They enter the debit card information QuickBooks Online will text a confirmation code to them to verify

Why are my expenses getting duplicated?

Instead of matching checks through banking with expenses already entered as checks in QuickBooks Online, they just added new expenses through bank feeds. ProAdvisor advice: They should have followed the correct expense workflow. Create a check expense in QuickBooks Online Match the bank feed check transaction to the QuickBooks Online check expense

Why is there a cuplicate transaction?

Instead of matching to an existing transaction, they added one—and this created identical transactions for the same amount. ProAdvisor advice: Always match first and check all bank and credit card transactions to make sure the transaction is not hidden someplace else Once this has been confirmed, add is the second option

Why are my invoices still outstanding?

Instead of using the correct sales workflow, which would be to receive a payment against the appropriate customer open invoice, they just added a new deposit in the bank feed. This caused two issues: Open balance on invoice Duplicate income deposit ProAdvisor advice: They should have followed the correct sales workflow. Receive payment against the corresponding customer invoice and save the deposited amount to Undeposited Funds Record the deposit transaction based on what actually was deposited into the bank Match the bank feed deposit to the actual QuickBooks Online deposit transaction

Is there a deadline for my client to update their existing connection?

It depends on which bank they're updating. Each bank gives a window of time to migrate customers over to the new connection. Usually, this window lasts 31 days to give your clients enough time and warning to update their connections Make sure your clients update their connections before the deadlines, or their accounts won't be able to keep syncing in QuickBooks Online

The value of reports

It is important that you work with your client to create value from his reports and build reporting packages Dan will find invaluable. QuickBooks Online adds value for your clients with powerful reporting features—you'll both want to get the best from them.

Viewing bank statemnts

It's best practice to connect your client's bank account to QuickBooks Online Banking. If their bank supports this feature, you can get bank statements automatically on the reconcile page. No need to shuffle paper statements or sign in to multiple online bank websites. This is especially useful if you're a bookkeeper reconciling accounts for multiple clients, or you're reconciling several statements for the same account. Select the tabs below for more information.

Tracking client apps

It's easy to keep track of the apps your clients are using. Start by selecting Apps from the Left Navigation Bar of your QuickBooks Online Accountant homepage. You can select the tabs at the top to see any apps your firm or clients have. Select the tabs/steps in turn.

Why use a credit memo instead of just editing the transaction?

It's not best practice to change transactions once they've been sent to a customer—it can cause confusion and isn't great recordkeeping. This is especially true when the original invoice is in a prior period, because making a change would cause the books to become out of balance with the tax return and change previously reported amounts.

Using bank feeds

It's one of the greatest strengths of QuickBooks Online that bank data can be imported seamlessly, and easily matched to existing transactions or used to categorize new transactions. In fact, the system gives you indications and has tools so that accurate transaction entry is made easy. Let's go!

Coaching Best Practice Workflows: Sales and Expenses Centers

It's sometimes easier for clients to understand how things are recorded in QuickBooks Online by coaching them on how to view and work in the different centers in the Left Navigation Bar. The Sales Center is their hub for viewing and recording their invoices and income from their customers. The Expense Center is for recording incoming bills for products and services, and their payments to vendors. For many small businesses, this will be all they need to know when they start out. Encourage your clients to use the right terminology: bills come from vendors, and invoices go out to customers. There's even a glossary you can send out to them here.

About Undeposited Funds

Just to recap, tell your clients to think of the Undeposited Funds account as an envelope where they keep their checks until they take them to the bank. It's a necessary step so that the QuickBooks Online Bank Register matches the deposits on the monthly bank statement. The best way to see how it works is to help Chris to record the checks he's received as Undeposited Funds.Chris has the checks from Bill Gallinger and Jennifer Martin, so these are payments he has received but not yet deposited in the bank. The first step is to record them as received payments in QuickBooks Online. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Let's take the shortcut QuickBooks Online has provided so we can get this done quickly and efficiently. Go to the + New button and select Receive Payment Select the customer from the drop-down. In this case, it's for Chris's first check from Bill GallingerNotice how you see a list of any outstanding invoices for Bill Gallinger. Change the payment date to today Select a payment method, in this case it's a check Enter a reference number: 1234 Make sure the Deposit to account is Undeposited FundsTip: This payment is in response to an invoice, so we have another step to do, which is to match the payment to the invoice. Check the box next to invoice 1001 to apply the payment to the invoice. It's the one for $1224.69 Select Save and newThe next received payment is for Jennifer Martin, so select her from the customer drop-down menu.Once again, the active invoice appears, and we can select it. Change the payment date to today's date Select a payment method. In this case, it's a check Enter a reference number: 12345 Make sure the Deposit to account is Undeposited FundsCheck the box next to invoice 2 to apply the payment to the invoice. It's the one for $533.13. Select Save and close

Customizing Sales Forms: Invoices

Let's take a look at how you can customize invoices for your clients. Alison Ganz is a bookkeeper on your team. She needs to create an invoice for an onsite service on behalf of Chris Grier and send it to a customer, Elizabeth Mason. The invoices for Chris Grier use the standard black-and-white template. Alison would like to apply a new logo supplied by Chris to the template. Once signed in to QuickBooks Online Accountant, select Chris's account

Adding a Team User

Lisa Garcia wants a new team member, Alison, to take up the responsibilities for internal bookkeeping for the firm. Let's look at how we can set up access for her. Sign in to QuickBooks Online Accountant Select Team in the account Left Navigation Bar Select Add user Enter Alison Ganz under name and add the email address as [email protected] (this is just for this example) Select Next You can set custom access to your firm's admin and own accounts here. Note the guide to the different levels of access on the right. We want the new bookkeeper to have Custom access to your firm's information, so select that from the first Access drop-down listWe can choose whatever access level the team member needs to have by selecting access levels to your firm's administration information and books. We can see information on each category by hovering over it. Alison, as a bookkeeper, needs access to the firm's books. Select Yes for each of the headings Customers and accounts receivable and Vendors and creditors Then select NextHere, you can set access to specific clients, so let's give our bookkeeper access to Cindy's Bee-uty Bar from the Specify client access screen Select Save That's it! We've successfully added Alison to the firm's books, as well as giving her client access to Cindy's QuickBooks Online account.

The Receipt Capture Workflow

Logging bills and receipts and matching them to transactions is similar to the banking workflow and can be viewed within the Banking Center. There are three ways to capture bills and receipts so that they can be matched to transactions and added to the bank feed.

Additional setup tasks

Many clients considering QuickBooks Online (or new to it) will need options set up for them beyond what we've looked at already. Your client, Cindy, recently opened a retail store to sell her beauty products. Thanks to some great marketing work and the quality of her products, she's had to start thinking about taking on additional employees. She's considering her options with QuickBooks Online Payroll, an additional QuickBooks product that integrates with her QuickBooks Online file. She may also need some help with her lists, so we may need to take a look and make some adjustments.

How to add apps for youtr client

Many clients have industry specific needs or require functionality that captures data specific to the unique way their business works. Often the best option here is to find and add an app to the client account that will do the job and save you and them time and money. So, whether it's automating data entry so you can spend more time advising your clients, or adding industry specific interfaces to allow clients to work with the app and give you the data you need to manage their books, there's an app out there that can help. But for busy accountants and bookkeepers, keeping track of which client is using which app is important, so how do we do it?

MER: Three Stage Process

Month-end review works as a to-do list of tasks. These tasks are grouped into three main areas. Let's take a look at an overview of these three stages before we dive into the detail.

R&SL: QBO Essentials

More features, therefore more reports. You can run vendor and product reports to track your accounts payable balances and have more insight into the company's financial results.

Customer Statements: Transaction Statement

Need to help a client show a customer all of the transactions between them and their business between two set dates? Then use the Transaction statement. Clients might use this when there is a large volume of transactions for a customer so they can see how their payments have been applied.

Perfomance Center charts

New features in QuickBooks Online Plus make it easier for managers and decision-makers to visualize company financial data. This enables more effective business performance monitoring and informs commercial strategies. In this lesson, you'll discover some of the ways to leverage this enhanced financial visualization.

ID: Who's eligible?

Next-day deposits for credit card and ACH bank transfer payments are available to qualified new QuickBooks Online customers whose accounts are active and in good standing.

Can clients see the notes in the client details screen?

No - The notes sit inside QuickBooks Online Accountant, so only team members who have access to client files will be able to see them. This means it's a great way for team members to keep the client details up to date.

Who can add apps?

Not everyone with access to a client account can add apps via QuickBooks Online Accountant. Whether you can or not depends on the permissions granted to you as a team user. Let's take a look at who can add apps to both the firm's books and clients' QuickBooks Online.

What is OAuth?

OAuth stands for open authentication. It means that your client no longer has to provide their bank username and password after initial setup. Instead, your client gives permission at their financial institution (FI) for QuickBooks Online to access their account. Their bank sends QuickBooks Online a token that is used to access their account. After that, QuickBooks Online can still securely access the account even if your client changes their password, giving them a more reliable connection.

Setting Up a Basic Sales Tax in QBO

On the Left Navigation Bar, select Taxes Select the Get started button QuickBooks Online should already know Chris's address because it was entered when we set up his company, so we just need to select Next You'll be asked to review any tax rates shown, in this case there is none to review, so select Save QuickBooks Online tells us it's set up sales tax for us, but we're not quite done yet. Close the window and we can add some more details Chris's reporting interval is monthly, so select this option next Note that the reporting period adjusts for us, in this case beginning in March Select Save and we're on Chris's sales tax screen. There's even an introductory tour! Great work! That's the first part completed. As your client's company grows, the sales tax agencies can be added or edited as needed.

Rule Tip

On the rules screen, select Automatically add to my books if you want the rule to automatically record transactions that meet the defined criteria without having to select the button in the For Review tab. Transactions that have been automatically added by a rule will have a green Rule icon next to them in the In QuickBooks tab.

Managing your team

QuickBooks Online Accountant has functionality that allows you to invite, deactivate, and control permissions for team users. This gives you peace of mind that team members can only access the areas they need to do their jobs.

Review Profit and Loss account activity

Once the Balance Sheet accounts are reconciled, this is a good indication that most of the financial activity has been recorded. Next, you can review the Profit and Loss account activity using the Reclassify Transactions tool to make sure transactions have been categorized in the proper account and clean up any miscategorized transactions. Making sure there are no entries in Uncategorized Income and Uncategorized Expenses on the Profit and Loss in QuickBooks Online is a good tip, too. Payroll wage and tax expenses should match payroll reports. Confirm payroll forms (such as annual IRS form 940 and quarterly IRS forms 941) have been filed for the year. Key actions Check for uncategorized/miscategorized transactions Check tax filing for payroll Make sure all contractors have been tracked for Form 1099 payments Key reports Balance Sheet Payroll Summary by Employee P&L 1099 Contractor Balance Detail

Mylene is also considering new computers for her business. She would love to be able to see real-time accurate financials so that she can decide whether she has enough profit and cash flow to take out a small business loan to cover the cost of the equipment. Which 2 reports should she compare to help her make this decision?

P&L and Statement of Cash Flows - Before applying for a loan, Mylene should ensure she has clean books and has reviewed the Profit and Loss report against the Cash Flow Statement so that she can be sure she will be able to make the repayments.

Based on this Accounts Payable Aging report, and if all vendors offer 30-day terms, whom would you pay first?

PG&E - The payment to PG&E is late. Craig needs to get on top of this and make the payment. If Craig runs this report regularly, he can see potential issues before they happen and take steps. For instance, you may have noticed there are three significant bills that will need to be paid in the next few weeks. Has Craig anticipated this and what will be the effect on his liquidity of paying these bills over a short period of time?

ID: The benefits

Payments received from QuickBooks Payments can take up to five days to post to your client's bank account, depending on their plan. The Instant Deposits feature gives clients the option to get their money right away. They can deposit a minimum of $1 or a maximum of $2,000. Clients can use Instant Deposits up to three times daily as long as they do not exceed the $2,000 limit.

You are approached by another one of your clients, Mylene Ravela, and she wants to see how much she is spending on overhead office expenses and how much this has changed from last year. What report would you recommend?

Profit and Loss with comparative settings - Mylene should run a Profit and Loss report for this year to date and set it to compare the previous year.

Progress tracking

Progress tracking in the Client List makes it easier to identify roadblocks before the end of the month and provide additional support to bookkeepers who need it. There are three stages to the month-end review: Transaction review Account reconciliation Final review You can see the status of each stage as either: To-Do Waiting Done

Perform additional year-end activities

Provide correct tax basis for a tax professional Prepare asset list for depreciation calculation Provide required permanent docs for tax preparation Provide current ownership information Perform line-by-line matching of draft tax returns Make post-tax adjustments

Managing team users and their access

QuickBooks Online Accountant has three levels of access that can be granted to team users. Not everyone will need to have full access to everything, so a bookkeeper might need full access to your books, but other team members might not. Team user details: These are accessed from the Left Navigation Bar under the Team tab. You'll see a grid with the name of each of the firm's staff, their title, email address, type of access, and status. There are also two icons above the grid: a Print icon and a Gear icon. The Gear icon is to change the settings for the number of rows showing, and to specify compact rows.

When Workflows Go Bad

QuickBooks Online is a super-flexible product and there are several workflows that can get something done. Clients can also see the same information from different angles, (like seeing income from sales through the lens of the Sales Center) but also see that income and expense transactions flow through to financial reports. So, what's the problem? Sometimes clients do not follow the appropriate accounting workflows and then things get out of sync. This in turn reflects incorrect key financial data on the financial statements, and many times numbers do not add up when they are trying to reconcile. You may sometimes have to unravel a problem and show them the best way to get something done.

The benefits of manging receipts and bills in QBO

Receipt management has always been a challenge for clients who are busy, on the road, or just a little less organized than their ProAdvisor would like them to be. In many cases, receipts and bills are physical items: easy to lose or misplace or just push into the glove compartment to file later. They can also be damaged or torn, or fade over time, making them illegible. And then there's the actual chore of managing and storing them. This usually means attaching hard copies to credit card statements or putting them in envelopes, which get filed into boxes. For a busy business owner, this process often takes a back seat to other tasks like winning a new contract or making a sale. When period end rolls around, your client's receipts and bills have piled up and it takes a lot of work to make sense of things. Often that work falls on your shoulders rather than the client's. The new Receipt Capture feature in QuickBooks Online means receipts and bills can be scanned, snapped, and added and managed in QuickBooks Online. And what's more, it can be done in all subscription levels, from QuickBooks Online Simple Start through Advanced. The Receipts tab in the Banking Center is the home of adding and tracking receipts and bills. Once a receipt or bill is in the Receipts tab, you can review, edit, add, or match it. We'll look at this in detail in a moment.

Reconciling in QBO

Reconciling Cindy's accounts means making sure that what she has in QuickBooks Online reflects what's really happened in terms of income, expenses, and other movements and adjustments of cash. With a bank statement, the power of QuickBooks Online, and its smart learning, reconciliation can be done quickly and efficiently.

Recurring transactions

Recurring transactions can be set up for a variety of different reasons in QuickBooks Online. The beauty of this feature is that it's flexible enough to meet lots of business needs for different types of businesses.

Introducing the Vendor Workflow

Remember that by coaching clients in best practice workflows from day one, you are setting them up for success. You are also saving yourself time and effort when it comes to reconciling the books, producing financial statements, and preparing for taxes. You've already seen what a good customer workflow looks like, but what about the other side of the coin? What's the best way to work with vendors in QuickBooks Online? For Craig's landscaping business, there are a number of different people and companies he needs to pay: his contractors, utility bills, vendors who supply materials, and (of course) his trusted bookkeeper. These tend to be things he is billed for that he can pay for later. There are also a number of day-to-day cash expenses, like making sure he has gas in the truck, which he pays for on his credit card.

Payments via invoices and sales receipts

Remember when Chris was set up to accept digital payments through QuickBooks Payments, we asked him to select the bank account where customer payments would be deposited. When Chris creates an invoice, he can select the way he'd like to get paid (credit card or ACH or both) and then send the invoice via email to his customer. When the customer selects the View and Pay button to view the online invoice, they will then see the option to select the Pay button. The great news is that any payment made here will be recorded automatically in QuickBooks! Sometimes Chris will be paid by his customers at the time of sale and won't want to create and send an invoice. In these cases, he just needs to create a sales receipt that will allow him to record both the sale and payment on the same screen in QuickBooks. He can then email the sales receipt to his customer, so they have a record of the sale.

How much do I owe my vendors?

Report? A/P Aging Why? Lists all vendors with open balances and shows how old the balances are.

One of your e-commerce clients, Cindy Lee, ordered far too many products in the build-up to the holiday season last winter. This left her with too much stock in January and she had to offer discounts in order to shift the stock. Which report could help prevent her making the same mistake next year?

Sales by Product/Service Summary - The Sales by Product/Service Summary report will help her to track the sales of each product over time to best evaluate past growth and figure out the sweet spot. If a client is not set up properly (using Product/Service items) and following proper workflow (using sales receipts or invoices), they could end up ordering the wrong amount. This would result in either too much of the product (tying cash up in the product as an asset) or too little (resulting in lost sales opportunities).

Closing the books in QBO

Select Accountant Tools and select Close Books from the Quick Links Select the Pencil icon in the Accounting section Slide on Close the books Enter a closing date. It can be today's date Select Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering password from the drop-down menu Enter a password Select Save. The books are now closed

VBS: Start the reconcilation

Select Accountant Tools, then Reconcile at the top From the Account drop-down, select the account you want to reconcile If you see the View statement option, you can get bank statements directly from your client's bank for this account Select View statement to see available statements.

Adding a vendor

Select Expenses from the Left Navigation Bar Select Vendors Hint: If this is the first vendor you have added to Chris's file, you are taken straight to an easy entry screen. If you've been here before, just select New vendor Enter Lang and Sons Electrical Supply to the Company field In the Address field, add 8839 East Smoky Hollow Court, Rochester, NY, 14606 In the Email field, add [email protected] Phone: 555-5570 Mobile: 555-556-9019 Leave the Opening balance as zero In the Terms drop-down, select Net 30 Enter the date Select Save This entry will now show in the Vendor list in the Expenses Center.

Client List:Prep for Taxes

Select Review Data to open the Prep for Taxes tool. You'll be able to quickly review balances and make year-end adjustments to your clients' books. You can also map the accounts in QuickBooks to the tax form lines and export balances to ProConnect Tax Online.

Setting Up Product and Services: Step 1

Select an option from the Taxability drop-down. If you know the item is either nontaxable or always taxed at the standard rate, you can select one of those options. If you know your item can sometimes be taxed differently, or you are unsure, select Choose a special category.

Client apps

Select the Client Apps tab to see a list of all the apps that are connected to your clients. You can easily search and filter the list.

Sales Tax Center: Shortcuts

Shortcuts here mean you can be just one tap away from everything that feeds into sales tax calculations, like customer addresses, product and services lists, and more.

Business view

Small business owners who use QuickBooks Online without the support of an accountant or bookkeeper might prefer Business view. This view simplifies the workspace so that day-to-day tasks like sales and billing are easier. It uses non-accountant terms. This lets them do their accounting without learning complicated steps or processes.

Can anybody who has access to the bank website set up the new OAuth connection?

Some banks or financial institutions have restrictions on who can establish this new OAuth connection. The primary user for the bank's website can always set up the connection, but sometimes delegate or secondary users can't establish the connection. For more information, take a look here. However, this is not something you can do on your client's behalf because it requires the sign-in credentials for their bank or financial institution.

Client Acces: User Permission Settings

Some of your clients will require employees in their company to manage or oversee parts of their business. Perhaps you want them to just enter time or review reports. Therefore, the clients will want permissions set up so they can fulfill their role. When you set up Cindy's Bee-uty Bar, you gave her full Company Administrator permissions to perform all tasks within her company's QuickBooks Online account. If Cindy wanted to give one or more of her employees access to the account, there are four types of user permissions that you can set up for her.

Customizing reports: Grouping by customer

Start in the Profit and Loss report Run the report for 2019 Drill down into Total Services Select Customers from the Group by drop-down list and select Run report The entries are now grouped together by customer Select the Save customization button Return to the Reports Center to see your customized report in the Custom reports tab

Customizing reports: Grouping by % of income

Start in the Profit and Loss report Run the report for year to date and include Check % of income Drill down into Total Expenses Select Account from the Group by drop-down list and select Run report The entries are now grouped together by account From this report, Dan can see that 1099 Subcontractors is his highest % of income

How QB Payments work

Step 1: Invoicing Step 2: The customer receives the invoice - Tap Review and Pay Step 3: The payment process Step 4: Payment confirmation Step 5: Payment notification and updates -The payment status will automatically be updated in QuickBooks Online. There's no need for Chris to record the payment or the deposit—QuickBooks Online does it all for him!

The Audit Log

The Audit Log allows you to filter to necessary details regarding changes to the QuickBooks Online file. By searching the Audit Log, you can see when changes happened—and who made them. The Audit Log can be a useful training tool or reference source. There are a few limitations to be aware of when printing the Audit Log. On screen, it highlights in yellow the changes made to a specific transaction. When printing the log, the highlighting does not print. Also, only 300 lines will print from the Audit Log for a particular search criterion. To print additional lines, you could screenshot the other lines and print your screenshots. Access the link for further tips on how to use the Audit Log

Billing Details

The Billing details page provides a high-level snapshot of your QuickBooks Online and Payroll subscription charges, and a monthly breakdown of your QuickBooks Online charges. At a glance, you will see your total number of subscriptions and amount due for the month for both QuickBooks Online and Payroll You can review your previous monthly charges in the history section, including payment method and amount Use View PDF or Export CSV to see an itemized invoice. This allows you to review your monthly charges in detail To update your payment information at any time, simply select Edit Billing Information

RCW: Via the mobile app

The QuickBooks Online mobile app is especially handy for small receipts like café receipts or card transactions in stores. Simply open the app, take a snapshot of the receipt, and the file will be uploaded to your account.

Sales Tax In QBO: Sales Tax Center

The Sales Tax Center is a one-stop-shop where you manage all your sales tax tasks. You can: See when tax payments are coming up View sales tax liability reports that you can customize by date, tax agency, and more Change sales tax settings, such as adding new tax-collection agencies if you start expanding into new states

How QBO works with Bank Data

The bank feed functionality in QuickBooks Online is one of its most dynamic features. It links to online banking and credit card accounts and feeds transaction details directly into the Banking Center, saving your clients time. But they are still in control over what goes into their QuickBooks Online. Transactions are held in a For Review area, where your clients can: Match and accept transaction details with what is already recorded in QuickBooks Online Categorize and accept transaction details to enter a transaction into QuickBooks Online that has not previously been recorded QuickBooks Online has a smart learning system that learns from bank feed activity over time as you categorize and match transactions. It will then automate the process by recognising and suggesting matches, that you can quickly accept or amend. The more you work with it, the more independent the functionality will become. These are the items that appear in the Recognized section of the All transactions drop-down list in the Banking Center. You are still in control and will get to approve recognized transactions. You can see that a lot of the hard work gets done for you.

Filter

The filter gives you a number of ways to search for transactions. Examples include search by memo, reference number, and amount, or cleared status, transaction type, payee, or date range. By default, QuickBooks Online sets a filter to show transactions on or before the statement date.

Final Review

The final step in the month-end review is to review the financial statements for accuracy and investigate unusual and unexpected balances. Follow the links to open each of the reports and investigate unusual and unexpected balances.The reports use the date ranges that have been entered in Report Tools. You can change these by going to Accountant Tools, Report Options. To do: Once you have cleared the open issues for each group of transactions, mark the status as Done. If you have a problem with resolving the issue, you can mark it as Waiting. + Add: You can also add your own Additional items to the list.

Transaction Review

The first stage in the month-end process is taking care of any transactions with issues. Transaction review, powered by SmartScan, automatically finds errors such as incomplete expenses. Over the next few months you will see more types of transaction issues being recognized by SmartScan.Select each hotspot in turn to see further information. Select each hotspot in turn to see further information. Before you start: Transaction review is all about setting your clients' books up for success. To get started, QuickBooks Online automatically identifies unaccepted bank transactions for you to review. By selecting the link, you'll be taken directly to those transactions, where you can accept or remove them. Once complete, you can then begin resolving open issues. Open Issues: QuickBooks Online automatically reveals common bookkeeping issues such as uncategorized transactions, transactions without payees, and unapplied payments, with more transaction types coming soon. Drill down: Select the link to jump straight into the transaction so you can fix the issue. To do: Once you've cleared the open issues for each group of transactions, mark the status as Done. If you have a problem with resolving the issue, you can mark it as Waiting. Additional items: Here, you'll find a list of recommended tasks to help you look for other potential issues. + Add: You can also add your own Additional items to the list.

Using ID: What happens next?

The funds will be deposited to the bank account for the debit card linked to Instant Deposits. Client will usually see funds deposited in minutes, but it can take up to 30 minutes depending on the bank. The 1% fee for using Instant Deposits is removed from the bank account on file for QuickBooks Payments the next business day. (This might not be the same as the debit card your client linked for Instant Deposits.) All transactions are subject to risk review and third-party delays. For more information, review the merchant agreement.

Recording a bank deposit in QBO

The key thing to remember here is that Chris received two checks that will make up one deposit. Watch the video to see how it's done. The individual steps are below for you to follow. Go to the + New button and look to the right Select Bank Deposit. It's under the Other category heading Select Account as Checking account Change the date to today The two payments Chris has received will show up under Select Existing Payments. Check the boxes for Bill Gallinger and Jennifer MartinNotice how the total amount of the deposit is the sum of those two checks, and this will be the deposit shown in the check register. Select Save and close

Best practice bank feed workflows

The more you use QuickBooks Online banking, the better it gets at identifying matches for bank transactions to QuickBooks Online transactions. But for the ones that don't have a match, you can easily add them straight from the Banking Center.

Reports and subscription levels

The reports available to your clients or their team members depend on the subscription levels, user roles, and features they or you have enabled. There are many to view so we've put together a downloadable guide that you can refer to. To get you started, here's an overview of what reports are available in each subscription type.

P&L Report

There are a few key reports in the end-to-end accounting lifecycle that will help you analyze the state of your client's business. Helping your client interpret the figures in their Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet will help them gain business insights and make sound business decisions. The Profit and Loss report is the best place to start because it's the report the client will be most familiar with. Profit and Loss summarizes the amount of financial activity associated with each income or expense account for a specific period of time. This will tell you whether your client is operating at a profit or a loss. By running a prior period Profit and Loss comparison report, you can reveal cash flow trends in spending and earnings from the business.

Migration

There are three ways to get information into QuickBooks Online: - Convert data in existing QuickBooks Desktop software - Import customers, vendors, charts of accounts, and products and services lists from Excel - Enter all data manually

Registers

There's a handy shortcut to jump straight to the bank registers with a single tap. Select Reconcile to return to the reconciliation screen

Importing products and services

There is a quicker way to input products and services into QuickBooks Online. If, like Chris, you have a bunch of products and services in a spreadsheet, you can do a quick import to bring them all in at once. Open your client's QuickBooks Online company. When importing the Products and Services list, it's important that the list is created in the correct format in Excel. To ensure this, use the template supplied by QuickBooks Online. Go to the Gear icon and select Import data Then select Products and Services Select Download a sample file to get a pre-formatted Excel template to create Chris's Products and Services list It's a good idea to download the sample file to see the naming conventions, how the columns are ordered, and the fields that can be imported. You can give this list to your client and ask them to populate the columns with their data. Check that your list matches the sample file. Alternatively, you could change your spreadsheet to correspond with the sample spreadsheet, making sure the columns are in the correct order. If using the template, delete the sample data first and then add the data we have from Chris about his products and services Note that we don't have to have all of the data in the spreadsheet because we can add it later (including income accounts). Go to the Sales Center and select the Products and Services tab Select the drop-down arrow next to New Select Import Select Browse and find the file we populated with Chris's data, then select Open Select Next We can now check the data-mapping fields and confirm you mapped correctly. Notice the areas in the Income account column—this means we need to map these items to the correct income accounts in the COA we created for Chris in the previous lesson Select the drop-down for each listing and select the correct income account Once this is done, select Import Note that we can remap any product or service to another income account at any time by selecting Edit and choosing another account. We can also make any other edits, such as changes to the product or service name here too.

Usage limits: Penalties

To be fairer to all users, QuickBooks Online accounts that stay beyond usage limits will not be supported and can lose functionality and be suspended. In October 2019, users started being notified if they were over their subscription limits. They either were or will be given options to upgrade. Accounts that stay over a limit once they have received this notification will be suspended on the next renewal date. If a client's account is suspended: You will have read-only access to the QuickBooks data for one year, meaning that you or your client won't be able to add new transactions or change anything You/they won't be able to reduce usage You can't upgrade in QuickBooks Online You will lose any special wholesale billing discount of QuickBooks Online for this client You/they can export data to Excel or a desktop version of QuickBooks If your client is signed up for QuickBooks Online Payroll via their QuickBooks Online subscription, the Payroll subscription will also be suspended After your client's account is suspended, you'll need to contact QuickBooks Online to reactivate the account.

Undeposited Funds

Two envelopes just arrived in Chris's mailbox and inside each envelope was a crisp, signed check. Great news! Chris is really excited because he has received payments from Bill and Jennifer. He's finally getting paid for his hard work and it's going to be a great feeling to see that money in his QuickBooks Online accounts. He doesn't have QuickBooks Payments set up, so he must manually record the received payments. We've seen how important using Undeposited Funds in the right way is for clients, so don't be afraid to make extra sure they understand how to record payments using an Undeposited Funds account. The key message is that by holding payments received in Undeposited Funds, clients are creating a single bank deposit for multiple payments, making it easy for them (and you) to match the bank register with their bank statement.

Take a look at Dan Cheng's Balance Sheet for 2019 to date. What would you investigate on this Balance Sheet?

Uncategorized Asset - You would want to investigate the uncategorized asset and ensure that it gets correctly categorized.

Craig has received a bunch of checks from his customers, totaling $2500. He's marking the payments as Received in QuickBooks Online. Which account should he record the payments to?

Undeposited Funds - By recording them to Undeposited Funds, he can add them all to a single bank deposit transaction, to match to the actual bank deposit amount. This means that when his bookkeeper reconciles the accounts, it's easy to match the total bank deposit value of $2500 to the same amount on the bank statement.

Overview

Understand the key benefits offered by an app as well as how the app works with QuickBooks Online.

Vendor Information: Opening balance

Use this field when setting up a new vendor to record the beginning balance for a new vendor. In almost all cases, it should be empty. When an amount is entered here, QuickBooks will automatically create a journal entry to increase accounts payable and decrease the Opening Balance Equity account.

Reports only

Users sign in to a special version of QuickBooks Online that gives them access to almost all reports, except Payroll and list reports that include contact information (QuickBooks Online Plus only).

Vendor Credits

Vendor Credits are a way of recording a credit to vendors' accounts payable so that the credit can be applied to an existing open bill or the next bill received from a particular vendor. It's very similar to the credit memo Chris recorded in the last lesson to credit a customer's accounts receivable account, but for vendor transactions. Let's cover the key principles before seeing how it works in action in Chris's file.

Vendor Credit Workflows

Vendor Credits are designed to account for returns of products or services or discounts received on account after a bill has been issued by a vendor and recorded in QuickBooks Online. For example, if Chris purchases some wire which is found to be faulty, the vendor will normally issue a credit to remove the expense of the faulty electrical wire. The Vendor Credit can then be: Applied to an existing bill Held as open and applied to a future bill Vendor Credits post as a debit to decrease accounts payable. Note that, like credit memos, Vendor Credits can be automatically applied to existing open or future bills by selecting Automatically apply credits in the Advanced tab in Account and Settings in the Gear menu.

QB Payments: Key Features

What fees are involved? Chris will pay a small fee per transaction processed. The merchant service plans include Amex, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover. Once Chris has applied for QuickBooks Payments, Intuit will verify his details. If he's approved, his merchant account will be created. Once approved, Chris will then be able to start enjoying all the great features QuickBooks Payments has to offer. With prior authorization, customers can pay via an online invoice, just by selecting a Pay Now button, or in person via a card reader. Alternatively, they can pay through pre-authorization or via phone when Chris has set this up. Chris can also type in credit card or bank account information directly in QuickBooks Online on the Receive Payment screen. He can email invoices that contain a link, allowing his customers to view and use Pay Now securely His customers can easily pay via credit card or ACH debit (electronic bank transfer) with the tap of a button He'll still be able to accept payments in person or over the phone. QuickBooks Payments processes credit card payments directly from the QuickBooks Online Sales Receipt and Receive Payments He can also use a card reader to receive payments in person via the mobile app The Receive Payment transaction, subsequent batched bank-deposit transaction, and even the merchant service-fee transaction are all automatically recorded in QuickBooks Online by the QuickBooks Payments service How long do payments take to reach Chris's accounts? Chris can sign up for next-day deposits to speed up payments so that all payments hit his account the next day.

Why use credit memos?

When a client is working on creating credit memos, they may have questions. Here are some common ones you might need to answer!

Sales Tax Center: View Return

When it's time to file the return and for your clients to pay sales tax, you can View return to give you the information you need to file the tax return outside of QuickBooks Online. Typically, you need to go out to the state's website to pay the tax and file the forms. You then record the payment in QuickBooks Online, so that it can be marked as filed and moved to your client's history area.Record the payment in QuickBooks Online by selecting View return and then the Record Payment button.

New Client Checklist

a handy resource for getting to know your new clients, gathering the required info to get their account set up, and discovering what their business needs are in order to best match them to a subscription level.

Client Needs Assessment Process

Who, What, When, and How

Client Requests

With Client requests, you can access shared documents and message clients securely, straight from your Work center dashboard.

ID: How much does it cost?

With low, flat rates and no monthly or setup fees, clients can access their money anytime, anywhere for an additional 1% per transaction.

Vendor Information: Company

You'll start by entering the company name. This is the information that will appear on all bills and purchase orders that Chris creates. The Display Name field will automatically be populated based on the information that you entered in the Company field. Note that if the vendor is an individual, or you want the contact person to be listed, you should fill in the first and last name at the top of the screen.

Adding apps to QBO: Overview

You'll start here on the Overview tab of any app you select. The Overview gives you key information about the app and its benefits. There are usually screenshots and videos to show how it works so you can get a feel for it.

Quickbook Payments

You've already helped Chris enable QuickBooks Payments and now it's time to show him how easy it is for him to record electronic payments made by a customer!

The benefits of reporting

Your clients need to have a clear snapshot of how they are doing. QuickBooks Online reports provide valuable insights into: The financial position of a business The results of operations for a specific time period Statistical information such as the best-selling item or gross profit margin Information about customers, vendors, and employees But first we need a quick recap of a key concept that clients need to know: the difference between cash- and accrual-basis reporting.

Quickbooks Online Ecosystem

a platform with an ecosystem of apps that you and your clients can assemble to build the perfect solution and the functionality that's needed.

NCC: Features and Solutions

dives deeper into the subscription solutions that will best suit your client. The workflows you highlight as needs or requirements in the Needs Assessment tab will be pulled through automatically and displayed in column A. This enables you to see at a glance which subscription level is likely to be best for your client's business.

Sales and Accounts Receivable

relates to the transactions relevant to their customers. In this section, you'll get a better idea of their requirements for estimating, invoicing, price levels, and sales-tax circumstances.

NCC: Client Profile

the basic contact information fro your client and their business.

QBO Plan Limits: Essentials

- 0 classes and locations - 250 charts of accounts - 3 billable users - 2 accountants - 0 reports-only - No limit time tracking

QBO Plan Limits: Advanced

- No limit classes and locations - No limit chart of accounts - 25 billable users - 3 accountants - No limit reports-only - No limit time-tracking

When?

How often do they run reports? What are their internal and external deadlines? All of your clients will have compliance requirements for their business even if they don't run payroll or collect sales tax.

COS: Undeposited Funds/Uncategorized Assets

If a balance is displayed in Undeposited Funds, you can view the activity associated with that balance by selecting the balance amount. This opens the register. Select the Uncategorized asset account to view transactions that have been categorized to this account. It looks as if there are two sales receipts that deposited to the Uncategorized asset account instead of Undeposited Funds!

SU: How can I get notified when it's fixed?

If any of the products experience an outage or interruption, the banner will let you know what's happening. By selecting the Subscribe button, you'll be automatically notified when the service issue is addressed and resolved.

Adding new clients: By Invitation

If your client has already signed up to QuickBooks Online, they simply need to send you an invite. When you accept their invite, they'll be added to your QuickBooks Online Accountant, and appear in your client list.

Adding new clients: QBO Accountant

If your client is new to QuickBooks Online and hasn't signed up yet, you will want to add them via QuickBooks Online Accountant. If you, as their accountant and ProAdvisor, set this up for them, you'll be able to: - Ensure they're signed up to the subscription level that best fits their needs - Take advantage of discounts, like wholesale billing - Access their books right away, using your own sign-in credentials, without waiting on an invitation - Assign access to team members in your firm to work on their books. Multiple users can be signed in at the same time

NCC: Mileage

If your client needs to track mileage, then collect their vehicle profile information during the requirements gathering stage. You can do this for each vehicle they need to track mileage for.

NCC: Self-Employed Profile

If, after your consultation, it is clear the client requires QuickBooks Self-Employed, the QBSE Profile tab has been designed to ensure you acquire all the additional information you need from your client in order to set up their subscription, including whether they have a healthcare plan or a vehicle to take into consideration.

Wholesale Billing

Under this option, you (as the client's accountant) are billed monthly for the subscription and will have an itemized view of all your wholesale subscriptions for easy tracking. As our most trusted partners, we want to ensure that you receive the best pricing on QuickBooks Online, with up to 50% wholesale discount. With wholesale billing, you control how the cost is passed along to your clients. The benefits include: - Bundling expenses: Add the cost into the services you provide to your clients - Easy tracking: Receive a monthly itemized bill for your subscription for easy tracking - Switch anytime: Remove clients from Wholesale billing seamlessly or cancel anytime

Browsing

All apps are pre-categorized into the tasks they help resolve. By selecting Browse Category, you can filter apps by the problem you are trying to solve.

QBO Plan Limits: Simple Start

- 0 classes and locations - 250 chart of accounts - 1 billable user - 2 accountants - 0 reports-only - 0 time tracking

QBO Plan Limits: Plus

- 40 classes and locations - 250 chart of accounts - 5 billable users - 2 accountants - No limit reports-only - No limit time tracking

The Client Overview is a great way to see your client's account at a glance. What are the key benefits of this?

- Concise subscription information - Recent banking activity stats - Early indications of banking errors

QBO Sub: Essentials

- Growing business - Manage accounts payable & accounts receivables - Recurring transactions - Time-tracking - Multicurrency - 3 users & 2 accountants

How might you get lists and transactions into a new Quickbooks Online company?

- Import Excel files - Convert QBD files

Where can you find the QuickStart of client onboarding tasks?

- In the Work tab of your QBO Accountant firm

Which two categories would you find (POS)-based apps under?

- Manage customers - Sync data

COS: Uncategorized Income/Uncategorized Expenses

Adding deposits without assigning an income account is a common issue among new users of QuickBooks Online. Such transactions will appear in the Uncategorized asset account. Just like the Uncategorized income account, most often transactions coded to the Uncategorized expense account are added from the Banking Center without being assigned an expense account.

How do I know which apps to recommend?

- App listing - Browsing - Overview - Reviews

Adding new clients to QBO Accountant

1. Go to your Client Dashboard in QuickBooks Online Accountant 2. Select Add Client 3. Decide if the account is for a business or an individual. In this example let's assume it's a business 4. Enter the Business name 5. Add the client's email address 6. You can also add a Display name. This is how it will show in your QuickBooks Online Accountant Client Dashboard 7. Add their mobile number 8. You could also Add more info at this stage to capture their contact details, but we're going to come to this a little later 9. At this point in the setup process, you need to select whether the client is being set up with a QuickBooks Online subscription or not. If you choose Subscription, then the process will continue with the steps below. If you choose No Subscription, there is just one item left to do. Select which team member will have access to this client and then select Save to complete the process 10. Choose whether this client will be charged via Wholesale discount (bill your firm) or Direct discount (bill your client) 11. Select the subscription level suitable for their needs and select Save 12. If this is the first client you have added, you'll need to enter your firm's billing information to charge your account for clients on wholesale billing. You also have the option to include payroll at this stage and you can assign further team access to the new client subscription 13. Then select Save 14. When the subscription is created, the new client will get an email inviting them to set up a user account. But we don't need to wait for them to do this to get going on the rest of the setup 15. If you return to your Client Dashboard in QuickBooks Online Accountant, you'll see the new client is ready and waiting. Simply select the green QB icon to complete the rest of the new client setup wizard. 16. We're going to walk you through the feature options later, so for now you can select All Set and the job is done!

OW: Recommending the best QBO solution

A completed New Client Checklist will provide you with the information you need to recommend the best QuickBooks Online solution for your client. The completed Client Profile section will provide the information you need to complete the client's account settings for them. You can even request a copy of your client's logo to surprise your client with a customized homepage and sales template!

OW: Meeting the client and gathering information

As we've seen, by using the New Client Checklist and asking the right questions, you can more accurately scope the client engagement, set expectations, and build a stronger collaborative relationship for the upcoming onboarding process. Once the contract is signed, providing a detailed onboarding plan and introduction to the onboarding team, and agreeing on payment arrangements are key ingredients for success. Getting this right gives the client the reassurance they may need that they're getting expert advice.

He adds a new account called Power Tools, setting the Account Type to Fixed Assets: Other Tools Equipment to keep track of how much he's spending. Now that Craig's Power Tools account is set up, which financial statement will it appear on?

Balance Sheet

COS: Company Setup

Company Setup shows you the subscription level that the client is subscribed to, whether they are subscribed to a Payroll product, and whether Sales tax has been enabled.These indicate the complexity of the client's QuickBooks Online Company.

Understand the vendor's billing policy

Check if your client will be charged monthly or annually. Make sure you can answer any questions the client may have regarding billing policies.

Recommending apps for clients

Cindy has been manually entering her sales from her website into QuickBooks Online, and this has been taking up lots of time that should be spent on other areas of her business. She has heard about the benefits of apps and wonders if there could be apps that can help save her time and streamline her processes. You know all about apps.com and offer to jump in and help her find a solution. The first step is to understand the existing process she uses and what technology is involved in the process. She tells you that her website platform keeps track of her customer, sales, and inventory data. She has been entering each sales receipt captured by the website into QuickBooks Online. Let's see if we can find an app on apps.com that can sync her data and enter her website sales into QuickBooks Online automatically! We'd certainly be heroes if we could save her time and make her job easier! If we know what type of website platform Cindy uses, we can enter the name into the search box because it will only show apps that include the keywords that we enter. Notice that there are apps to sync data between lots of different types of website platforms like Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

Dan Cheng is another new client. Dan offers a virtual assistant/professional service, Cheng's Master VA. He started his business a year ago and grossed $60,000 in that year. Dan doesn't yet use an accounting solution and has a shoebox full of handwritten notes and receipts. However, he's excited to set up a solution that will provide detailed customer breakdown of his sales and customer history. Based on what you already know of Dan, which of the following Sales and Accounts Receivable items would you mark with Yes in the Needs Assessment tab of the checklist?

Dan would benefit from custom invoices, sales receipts, and statements. Custom invoices might help when he needs to track customers and run more detailed reports to make sure he's working in the most efficient way with the customers who generate the most income. Statements are a great tool for service-based businesses that can generate information on what services they're providing to customers. Clients can even use them to tailor their offering so the client gets great value based on what they can afford.Dan doesn't need Multicurrency, nor sales tax, which would be an essential requirement for a retailer selling physical products.

Direct Discount

Direct discount is when you add a subscription through QuickBooks Online Accountant, but you want your client to pay. The client will be required to enter their credit card information when they sign in to the newly created subscription, but they typically get a discount on the pricing for a finite period of time. If clients sign up for Direct Discount, they get a limited-time discount on their subscription which then reverts to the listed monthly charge. Your client is billed directly for the subscription.

Other daily operations needs

Does your client hold stock as part of the day-to-day running of their business? How do they keep track of their inventory? If your client has inventory, they may want to include inventory tracking. If this is a requirement, you will be able to discuss with them how QuickBooks Online and/or third-party apps can help with this.

Any other requirements

Don't forget to ask your client whether there is anything else they may need that you haven't yet covered or asked. They may already have an accounting solution and wish to convert their existing account to QuickBooks Online.

App Listing

Easily start your app research by browsing our tailored app carousels on the QuickBooks Online Accountant Apps tab and apps.com. See which apps are trending, new, top-rated, featured, and specific to business types on apps.com, or search by apps we recommend for clients or for accountants when researching on the QuickBooks Online Accountant Apps tab.

What?

Every business, large or small, has a variety of parts. You need to find our what they are in order to best discuss QBO functionality and benefits with them,

Industry-specific needs

Every client and every business is different, depending on their industry. For example, your client may need QuickBooks Online with third-party apps enabled to track their e-commerce or web-based sales, manage their logistics, manufacturing, shipping, point of sale, or many other variables such as their personal billable time.

Adding Account Numbers

Garcia Consulting follows accounting best practices in using standardized systems of account numbering for their clients. Let's enable numbering for Chris's file and then add some numbers. To enable account numbers 1. Select the Gear icon on the Toolbar 2. Under Your Company, select Account and Settings 3. Select Advanced from the menu 4. In the Chart of Accounts section, select the edit (Pencil) icon 5. Check Enable account numbers and Show account numbers Note: Enabling account numbers affects all users in your company. Showing account numbers only affects the user who is signed in. 6. Select Save and then Done. Now we can check and assign the account numbers in the Chart of Accounts. QuickBooks Online may automatically assign account numbers when you first turn on the account number option. These default numbers can be changed as needed to align with each firm's numbering convention. 1. Select the Gear icon on the Toolbar 2. Under Your Company, select Chart of Accounts 3. Select the Pencil icon above the Action column 4. In the Number column, enter the account numbers, these can be up to seven digits long. We can then go on and add appropriate numbering for all of Chris's accounts. 1. Select Save and we're done

Who?

Get to know who your client is, what they stand for, what they're aiming for and where they're coming from

How?

How can you help? You can dive deeper using the client checklist, follow the onboarding process, and begin to plan deliverables and tasks with your client.

OW: Training and mentoring

It's a great idea to help clients help you as their accountant/bookkeeper by training them in best practice methods. Training and mentoring also allows you as a ProAdvisor to highlight your value as a subject-matter expert, not just in accounting best practice and requirements, but also in how they should work in QuickBooks Online to get the best results. It's a great time to remind them to download the QuickBooks Online app so that they can keep track of their finances on the go. The sooner they're confident in recording their day-to-day transactions, the sooner they'll see the value and time-saving benefits of QuickBooks Online and their trusted advisor—you!

Understand the vendor's onboarding and support services

Make sure you know what your role will be up front and that you'll be able to get help directly from the vendor regarding setting up the app and troubleshooting client questions.

IT: Professional services

Managing cash flow is essential for these types of businesses, because they often incur expenses up front, before they receive payment. Time tracking and job costing are essential to ensure the profitability of any business. This holds especially true for these clients, who must spread limited resources—including their time—across various jobs.

Reviews

Many of the apps have been reviewed by customers and other ProAdvisors, and anyone can check these reviews out. You can also visit the app's website to read the privacy statement to find out what kind of information they share with other parties.

Merging Accounts and Making Accounts Inactive

Merging and deactivating accounts may be more appropriate or more necessary when onboarding clients who have already started using QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online users that haven't had ProAdvisor guidance, tend to add lots of additional accounts when recording transactions.

Product and Services

Once Craig's Chart of Accounts is correctly set up, you can also set up the list of Products and Services he provides. This list contains the products and services that appear on his purchase and sales transactions and they map to an account in the Chart of Accounts. Each time a product or service is used in a transaction, QuickBooks Online makes the appropriate entry behind the scenes.

How to add a service

One of the services Craig's Landscaping offers is annual irrigation. This needs to be added to his list of services so that he can invoice his customers for this with ease in the future and see it appear in his accounting. He does purchase additional products that he uses as part of his business, such as fertilizer. You can add these as products. 1. Select Sales from the Left Navigation Bar and enter the Products and Services tab 2. Select the green New button 3. Choose Service from the list 4. Name the service Annual Irrigation System Maintenance 5. Select Landscaping from the Category drop-down 6. Enter Annual Irrigation System Maintenance under Description 7. The Sales price/rate is $500 8. Select Services from the Income account drop-down 9. Select Save and close 10. To add the product Craig purchases for company use, select New 11. From the list, choose Non-inventory 12. In the Name box, type FertilizerBecause this is something Craig buys, rather than sells, we need to: - Uncheck I sell this product/service to my customers - Check I purchase this product/service from a vendor - Add a description of Fertilizer - The price will vary, so we'll leave that empty 13. From the Expense account drop-down, select Job Materials 14. Select Save and close

Editing Account Names

Sometimes it's a good idea to make things a little easier for clients by making account names more appropriate and easily identifiable. This helps them avoid errors and posting to the wrong accounts when recording transactions. In Chris's COA, we're going to make his petty cash account more identifiable by changing its name from the default Cash on Hand account to Petty Cash. To edit the name of the account: 1. From the Left Navigation Bar, select Accounting and choose Chart of Accounts 2. Then find the Cash on Hand account in the list 3. From the Action column drop-down menu, select Edit 4. In the Account dialog, update the Name to Petty Cash 5. Select Save and Close

COS: Common Issues

The Common Issues tab is where you'll see some diagnostic information about the condition of the data in QuickBooks Online.Here, you can quickly check: - The number of uncleared transactions in the Undeposited Funds account register - The balance in the Opening Balance Equity account, which should always be at zero - Any transactions that QuickBooks Online has automatically categorized to the Uncategorized asset accounts

COS: Opening Balance Equity

The Opening balance equity account should always be zero in QuickBooks. If you see a balance here, it's most likely because an amount was entered in the opening balance field during the creation of a new customer, vendor, Balance Sheet account, or inventory product. The last part of the Common Issues tab is negative asset and liability accounts. This section will display the number of accounts that have a balance contrary to their normal account balance (for example, a negative bank balance).

Client Overview Screen

The Overview screen offers collapsible sections for Company Setup, Banking Activity, and Common Issues. When you initially view the screen, these will be in their collapsed state.

Adding new clients: Basic setup

The first time you open your client's QuickBooks Online, you will be asked to provide more information about them in the new client setup wizard. When you answer these questions, QuickBooks Online will begin to customize the setup to meet your client's needs. You can still fine-tune these settings at a later date. For basic setup, you need to know: - Your client's industry How they make money: e.g. retail, by project, or as a service provider - Their business type: e.g. sole proprietor, corporation, partnership, or nonprofit What they need to do in QuickBooks Online: - Send and track invoices- Organize expenses - Manage inventory - Track retail sales - Track bills - Track sales tax - Pay employees

What is the Chart of Accounts?

The purpose of bookkeeping is to create a record of financial transactions that are organized in a way that allows you and your client to analyze the business financial data, run financial reports, and prepare for taxes. These transactions are organized in the Chart of Accounts, which forms the backbone of the accounting system.

Onboarding Workflow: Tasks

The steps in the QuickBooks Online Accountant QuickStart template for onboarding aren't just a set of tasks to check off, but a list of opportunities to add value and develop a great working relationship.

QBO Status Updates

There are lots of benefits of having your client's financial information in the cloud. But what happens if there's a problem? As part of your client onboarding process, it's a good idea to make them aware of how to deal with outages.

Specialized application needs

There is a range of apps compatible with QuickBooks Online. Your client may benefit from a specialized app to handle an area of their business. They may even already use one. You will be able to use your knowledge of QuickBooks Online features to spot when a client has a requirement QuickBooks Online can't cater for on its own. That's where integrated apps come into the picture. From cloud storage to time-tracking, there's an app for just about everything.

IT: Contractor/Field Services

These clients are always out and about in the field, which means they don't have a lot of time for bookkeeping. They need solutions that let them stay on top of their books, wherever their projects take them.

Why clients might need a customized Chart of Accounts?

This needs to be reflected in the way their COA is set up. The aim is to make sure that transactions and other data are posted to the appropriate accounts so that: Essential data is accurate and complete, providing insight into balances such as taxes and cash flow Useful and informative reports can be run for important decision-making (such as which jobs are most profitable and which employees are most productive) As well as adding accounts, edits to a default COA can include: Editing the names of default accounts Adding account numbers Merging duplicate accounts Making unused or redundant accounts inactive (you can't actually delete an account)

Expenses and Accounts Payable

This part of the checklist covers their payment preferences, outstanding loans, petty cash limits, and reimbursable expenses, among others.

Transaction volume

This section is important because it will reveal to ProAdvisors the transactional volume and scope of the client's business. It may, for example, indicate that the client might benefit from a QuickBooks Online Advanced subscription, if transactions exceed a threshold of 43,000. This is because QuickBooks Online Advanced offers accelerated data-entry features.

Reporting needs

This section of the New Client Checklist helps you get a clearer picture of how your client prefers to run their reports. Which reports work best for them? How often do they run and analyze their reports? As an additional feature, if the client has employees, they may wish to add users to their accounts who have reports-only access. We'll look into that in more detail later in the course.

NCC: Onboarding Checklist

Use the Onboarding Checklist to gather any final additional requirements from your client. This will enable you to set up the appropriate QuickBooks Online subscription quickly and accurately.

Making Accounts Inactive

When setting up a client file, it's a good idea to make any default accounts inactive if they aren't going to be used. This keeps the COA tidy and efficient and prevents the client from posting transactions to the wrong or a redundant account in error. One of Chris's accounts isn't appropriate for his needs. Let's make it inactive, so it no longer appears in his Chart of Accounts and in other places where accounts can be selected (such as account lists on invoice screens). 1. Select Accounting in the Left Navigation Bar, then choose Chart of Accounts 2. Find Corporate Taxes in the Chart of Accounts list 3. Select the drop-down in the Action column, then choose Make Inactive 4. Select Yes to confirm If we need to make an account active again, the steps are: 5. Above the Action column, select the small Gear icon, then check Include inactive 6. Find the account you want to make active again 7. Select Make active By default, inactive accounts are not visible from the Chart of Accounts. If the account contains transactions, they remain as part of the company data. Inactive accounts are still visible on reports if transactions were posted to the account when it was active. The accounts are listed as deleted on reports.

OW: Customization

Whether you're advising on a custom payroll setup, adding logos, or improving sales form templates, you can demonstrate your value to clients by helping them to build the best workflows for their unique business. When setting up lists for businesses new to QuickBooks Online, review their current customer/vendor lists to determine if you can utilize the current data to import into QuickBooks Online or if you can tailor it to their needs with some adjustments to their lists and categorization options.

Industry trends

While you need to take the time to understand each client's specific requirements, there are some common themes and pain points based on which industry they're in. These are five common business industry types, and each comes with its own pain points: - Professional services - Contractor/field services - Retail and e-commerce - B2B wholesale business - Nonprofits

IT: B2B Wholesale business

Wholesale businesses rely on knowing their inventory at all times. They also need to be able to keep track of all the logistics that go with shipping orders of all sizes, from sales forms and invoices to store locations and agreements with shipping companies.

COS: Reconcile

You can see the number of unreconciled transactions and the date the books have been reconciled through using the Reconcile tool in QuickBooks Online.

Other expense tracking needs

Your new client may also have to track other expenses, such as mileage on a vehicle. They may also want to keep an eye on their income in order to estimate their future income tax bill. Ask your client what their current method for keeping track of their taxes is. If they are self-employed, they may not know that estimating their taxes is a handy feature of QuickBooks Online Self-Employed.

NCC: Needs Assessment

lists all the functionality your client may need from QuickBooks Online, and encourages a better understanding of their business so that you can best advise on the subscription level they will need.

Account Editing Limitations: You cannot delete or merge the following accounts:

- Undeposited Funds: You cannot delete this account because it is required to properly record payments before they are deposited. - Opening Balance Equity: This account is the default account for adjustments. You can only edit the name of this account, if necessary. - Retained Earnings: This account is the default account for reporting retained earnings on the Balance Sheet report. You can change the name of the Retained Earnings account if, for example, you are a nonprofit that prefers to use another name for retained earnings, but in all other cases, the name should not be changed. - Inventory/Stock Assets and Cost of Goods Sold/Cost of Sales: If you try to edit or delete these accounts, any edits to Products/Services will recreate them - Reconcile/Reconciliation Discrepancies: This account is used to report when transactions in QuickBooks Online don't match the transactions reported on your bank statement, and this account cannot be deleted. - Unapplied Cash Payment Income: This account is used to report cash-basis income from customer payments that were received but not applied to a sales form. - (Sales tax agency name, such as GST/VAT) Payable: This account is created when you set up sales tax and reports the sales tax for every transaction. You cannot delete this account.

QBO Eco: App Benefits

1. Reduce data entry: Some apps automatically collect and input data, reducing manual entry errors and eliminating inefficiencies caused when entering data into multiple programs. 2. Solve industry-specific tasks: Specialized apps solve industry- and client-specific pain points such as sales force management, estimation, and job-costing. 3. Streamline workflow processes: Apps can offer robust features that optimize common business processes such as inventory management, shipping, and e-commerce or field-service management. 4. Expand business insight: Customizable reporting apps offer user-friendly dashboards and graphics that improve visibility into performance metrics and provide deeper business insights. 5. Security and/or the separation of duties: Some apps will allow the ability to add information to QuickBooks Online without giving access to sensitive company information. Quality assured appsIn order for an app to be listed in the QuickBooks Online Accountant Apps tab and/or the QuickBooks App Center at apps.com, the app must be approved by Intuit. Once an app has been approved by Intuit, you can add it to your client's account, or they can sign up for it themselves.

COS: Apps

You can also see the number of apps that have been connected to QuickBooks Online. There's a list of the first two rows and you can select the link to view all of the apps.It's really important to know which apps a new client might be using to fully understand their workflow. You'll want to review this on a regular basis because new apps are being connected all the time.

Testing

You may also want to test the app yourself before you recommend it to a client. You can create a trial company to test the app (because it's not recommended to test an app by connecting it to a live QuickBooks Online company). Most apps in the App Center offer a free trial period without the need to give credit card information. You can also request a demo of the app from the developer or sign up for a webinar to learn about it. Many developers offer partner programs, incentives, or special discounts for referring your clients. These can be an additional revenue stream for your firm.

Accounts that can be edited, but not deleted or merged:

- Services: The Services income account is the default income account in QuickBooks Online. It operates the same as any other income account, but neither it nor the corresponding Product/Service item can be deleted. However, you can edit the names of both to reflect a main income type. - Uncategorized Expense and Uncategorized Income: These accounts are created automatically when entering an opening balance for a vendor or customer, and recording any expense or income transactions that can't be matched to an account. You cannot delete these accounts. - Uncategorized Asset: This account records any asset that cannot be matched to an account and cannot be deleted. - Owner's Equity: This account represents the cash or assets invested in the company, and cannot be deleted.

Inviting an accountant and accepting an invitation

1. Ask your client to invite you to their QuickBooks Online as an accountant user. They'll find this option by selecting the My Accountant tab in the Left Navigation Bar. They will need the email address you use for QuickBooks Online Accountant. Note: Whichever team member accepts the client's invitation will become the lead for that client. If the team member's access is revoked in the future, the lead can be assigned to someone else 2. Once your client has invited you, go to your firm's QuickBooks Online Accountant email inbox. In there you'll see a mail. The subject line will read: [Company Name] has invited you to use QuickBooks Accountant]Select the Accept Invite buttonNote: if you have more than one Intuit ID under your email address, choose the ID you wish to associate with that client. If you already have QuickBooks Online Accountant, make sure to choose the user ID that you use to sign in to your firm. 3. Enter the user ID and password you use for QuickBooks Online Accountant and select Accept Invitation. If you have more than one QuickBooks Online Accountant firm under your user ID, you will be asked to choose the firm you wish to connect this client to 4. Select Continue and your Client List will appear 5. You're ready to get to work for this client!

Merging Accounts

Merging accounts is a good idea if two accounts are being used for the same thing. This is a more common practice when a client has started using a file and has added accounts that they did not need for their recording and reporting purposes. However, a default COA setup can still be optimized by merging accounts. In Chris's case, the accounts haven't been used yet, so they have no transactions linked to them. If they did, the transactions for the merged accounts would also be merged to appear under one entry in any reports we run. Note that the merging process is permanent and cannot be reversed. 1. Select Accounting in the Left Navigation Bar, then choose Chart of Accounts 2. Locate the account to be merged in the list. In this case, we're looking for his Bank Fees account which we're going to merge with his Bank Service Charges account (because he doesn't need both) 3. In the Bank Service Charges row, select the downward arrow under the action column and select Edit 4. Highlight, right-click and copy the name of the account Bank Service Charges 5. Select X to close the Account editing window 6. In the Bank Fees row, select the downward arrow under the action column and select Edit 7. In the editable Account name text box, change the name of the Bank Fees account to Bank Service Charges 8. Select Save and Close 9. When prompted whether you want to merge the accounts, select Yes

IT: Nonprofit

Nonprofit and charitable organizations often track the expenses of various programs and funds. Donations often have to be tracked in as well as out when allocated to various branches of the charity. QuickBooks Online seeks to help make keeping track of donations, pledges, and other funds quick and simple.

How to add a Chart of Accounts

Now that you understand the importance of the Chart of Accounts, let's see what it looks like in QuickBooks Online. Craig needs to create a subaccount to capture the professional fees his business incurs. Once set up, this will help him track money he pays to professionals to help you run his business. When you create a new account, you can assign it a name which will appear in the Type column. The type is broken down into Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, and Expenses. 1. To begin, select Accounting to see a list of Craig's existing accounts 2. Select the green New button 3. Using the drop-down list, set Account Type as Expenses. When you select the account type, you are given a description of what this type is used for. It's important to choose the right one so that it flows through to the correct financial statement 4. Set the Detail Type as Bank Charges 5. Name the account Merchant processing fees. Custom names will help you and your client to quickly identify the account 6. When you are happy with your account details, select Save and Close You can now see your new account in the Chart of Accounts. It's worth noting that we could also add subaccounts of Merchant processing fees, for example PayPal processing fees, the expense will be associated with that account.

COS: Transaction Volume

The Transaction Volume tab is where, at a glance, you'll find the number of transactions for the client for the last 30 days. Transactions are grouped into Bank transactions, Invoices, Bills and Bill payments. This tab offers you a clear view of the client's workload.

COS: Bank Balance

The bank balance is coming in from the Banking Center and shows the balance reported the last time the bank connected to QuickBooks. If you select the name of the checking account, you can view the transactions in the bank register.