• Appears to be living way above their salary
• Showing signs of personal financial distress
• Payroll taxes are being paid late for no apparent reason
• Your QuickBooks reports do not make sense
• Your bookkeeper gets defensive whenever you ask him/her any questions
• Your bookkeeper has the authority to sign checks or has a signature stamp
• He/she is the primary person that receives the mail
• Is the only person that takes deposits to the bank
• Doesn’t want anyone to touch QuickBooks and refuses to crosstrain another staff member
• Refuses to take a vacation

I have seen a lot of embezzlement in my years as a CPA.  In many cases, the business owner leaves all of the finances to a $15/hour bookkeeper that has had very little training. 

The bookkeeper has the pressure of being the ‘QuickBooks’ expert, while wearing 8 other hats.  They are not knowledgeable about good accounting practices, such as ‘never pay vendors from a statement.’  They do not understand ‘Account types’ in QuickBooks.  They are not familiar with and do not use the ‘Close the accounting period’ feature in QuickBooks. Nor do they know the difference between ‘Pay Bills’ and ‘Write Checks.’   When you ask questions that they cannot explain, they get defensive and scared. 

This is how the bookkeeping mess and frustration starts.   From here, the resentment builds and an ‘embezzler is born.’

Many business owners believe that hiring an outside bookkeeping firm is too expensive, but is it really?

Here are 5 Time Saving Tips for QuickBooks Online:

• Email Your Invoices – If you’re still stuffing envelopes and making trips to the post office, you are wasting valuable time that could be used on generating more sales for your business or spending quality time with family.  To set this up, edit your customer information by going to the Payments and Billing tab and changing the Preferred Delivery Method to ‘Email’

• Add Intuit Payment Network to your invoices - Tired of manually entering customer payments? Intuit Payment Network will add a Pay Online link to the invoice that you email to your customers.  Your customer pays the invoice.  The payment will be automatically applied in QuickBooks Online and the money will show up in your bank within 2-3 business days.  If the customer pays using their checking account, the fee is $0.50. If a credit card is used, the fee is comparable to receiving a Paypal payment.

• Banking Downloads – Link your business bank accounts to QuickBooks Online.  Once it is set up, your bank transactions will be downloaded into QuickBooks.  This will allow you to match, categorize, and record transactions using the Downloaded Transactions screen.  This will allow you to keep your bank balance and books up to date.  

• Memorized Transactions -  This feature will allow you to automatically record recurring or repetitive transactions in QuickBooks Online.  Examples are:  

                –payments that are automatically drafted from your account

      –Monthly sales amounts that you charge to customer credit cards

• Review the Income List weekly – The Income List is a fairly new feature in QuickBooks Online.  It’s a toolbar that easily identifies overdue invoices, open estimates, and unbilled time and costs.    By reviewing this once a week, you can stay on top of  customer invoicing and cash collections.  

These tips will help you to stay on top of  your books.  Your CPA will love you at tax time. 

Mavenlink is a web-based software that we use to track client projects.

Here are some of its great features:

• Project budgeting
• Expense tracking by project
• Time and hours tracking
• Schedule and manage project tasks and milestones
• Works with Google Apps
• Document sharing capabilities
• Invoice and Payment management
• QuickBooks  and Paypal Integrations
• Web-based application with anywhere, anytime access
• Easy to use

If you need help tracking your projects, Mavenlink is definitely worth taking a look at.

One new software that I have been helping clients with is WaveAccounting.com

Here are some of its features:

• It’s FREE
• It’s easy to use
• It’s cloud-based, so you can access it anywhere and anytime
• It’s great for a business owner that is just starting out or for anyone that runs a side business
• It integrates with Etsy.com
• It’s FREE.  Definitely worth mentioning again

I would like to mention that WaveAccounting is primarily for service-based businesses. If you’re wanting to track inventory, you may want to look at QuickBooks.

Whichever software that you choose, will benefit you and your business.   Most business owners that keep their books up to date:

• Tend to file their taxes on time
• Have a better handle on how their business is doing
• Have accurate financial data to make better business decisions

Here are the steps:

• From the Reports menu, select  ‘Combine Reports from Multiple Companies’.

• Click ‘Add Files’ to add at least one additional company file to the list.

• Click  the report or reports you want to consolidate.

• Change the date range of the report, if needed.

• Choose either Cash or Accrual as the report basis.

• Enter a new company name for the Combined Report or accept the default name.

• Click ‘Combine Reports in Excel’ to export the data to Excel.

This is a great timesaver for producing consolidated financials.  Unfortunately, this feature is only available in the QuickBooks Enterprise version.

The biggest takeaway that I got from this is the fact that the accounting profession (as we know it) is changing rapidly.  New technology is here to stay.

It really reinforced our company’s goal of helping our clients simplify their accounting.  To achieve this goal, it is very important to educate clients about the new apps that will help streamline their bookkeeping.

Whenever we  talk with existing clients or new prospects, here are some of the questions that we ask:

• What bookkeeping task frustrates you most?
• How much of your bookkeeping is manual or requires a lot of data entry?
• How much are you spending on a bookkeeper (including benefits)?
• Has a bookkeeper ever stolen from you?  How long did it take to uncover it?
• Are you or your employees stuffing a lot of envelopes?
• Do you regularly file extensions for your tax return?
• In the last year, how much have you paid in fees and penalties to the IRS or your state?
• Are you using QuickBooks data to manually create reports in Excel?
• Etc, etc, etc…

This all sounds painful, but I’m always excited to say “We can help you save time and save on your bookkeeping and payroll costs. When would you like to start?”

Recently, I evaluated another online accounting system.  It’s called Xero.com. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I like QuickBooks Online and I use it daily, but I predict Xero will become a big competitor and a great alternative.

Here are some extras that Xero has to offer:

• It’s user-friendly
• You can import invoices, journal entries, and budgets without using a 3rd party application.
• The pricing model is great.  One price for an unlimited number of users.  (QuickBooks Online Plus allows you  3 users before there is an upcharge.)
• Unlike QuickBooks Online, Xero supports multi-currency transactions.
• It integrates with ADP Payroll

Both Xero and QuickBooks Online are great for service-based businesses.   If you resell inventory, you may want to hold off temporarily or research other web-based accounting software.

I always ask “What shopping cart are you using or plan on using?”   If the answer is a FREE or ‘open source’ shopping cart, I tell them that I cannot help them.  

The concept of a FREE shopping cart sounds great.   Who doesn’t like free stuff? 

What many people don’t know is that there are a lot of risks and  hidden costs associated with these type of shopping carts.

Here are the cons:

• They are not PCI compliant (which leaves your customer credit card data open to a security breach)
• Your company is financially responsible for losses incurred from credit card fraud.  (Remember my rule:  “The bank never pays”)
• A security breach can hurt your company’s reputation
• Credit card processing companies and banks charge you extra (hidden) merchant fees for not being PCI compliant. (Which goes back to my rule:  “The bank never pays”)

Here are a few of the FREE shopping carts that you’ll want to stay away from:

• osCommerce
• Zen Cart
• TomatoCart
• SmartCart

Here are the recommended shopping carts for QuickBooks that we work with:

• Pinnacle cart
• Magento
• Big Commerce
• 3D Cart

Consider them as ‘insurance’ against any type of website security breach.  If you’re using an open source shopping cart, you should ask yourself “Is my wallet big enough to cover my customers’ losses from credit card fraud?”

If the answer is ‘no’, then you really should change your shopping cart.  

Be responsible and take extra precautions to protect your customers’ data.

The error message was “This email application is not supported with this version with QuickBooks“

Here are the steps to fix this issue:

• Check for QuickBooks updates.   If you have QuickBooks open, select ‘QuickBooks‘ (on the menu) and click ‘Check for Updates’.
• Open the Apple Mail application (even if it is not your default email program). 
• Follow these menu options. Mail > Preferences > General icon > Default email reader:

QuickBooks 2012 supports Apple Mail, Entourage, and Outlook 2011.