What is a #RecipeforSuccess? Developed by QuickBooks ProAdvisors®, the #RecipeforSuccess campaign is designed to help you and your small business clients achieve success.
Below are Hector Garcia’s key ingredients for detecting the best opportunities to help your clients with QuickBooks® Enterprise (QBES) and simultaneously improve internal processes.
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Master Chef: Hector Garcia, CPA.CITP, CGMA
Do you work with clients that are using QuickBooks Desktop Pro/Premier who are in need of inventory management and advanced reporting?
In my experience, any small business moving to QuickBooks Enterprise from QuickBooks Pro or Premier is making a huge leap, mostly because the switch to QuickBooks Enterprise is typically triggered by events such as the need to have more than five users working in QuickBooks, wanting to limit access of certain users to specific transaction types and/or functions, and needing QuickBooks to handle more customers, items or a higher number of transactions.
All these events are synonymous with growth. And, “growth” sounds like a great thing, and often it is, but it is very chaotic because most radical changes and system upgrades happen in this stage. And, this is the BEST opportunity for an accounting professional and/or QuickBooks ProAdvisor to provide the most impactful advisory services that their client has ever received!
Ingredients:
- QuickBooks Enterprise Subscription
- Hosting service, such as Right Networks
- Detailed information of how your client’s business functions
- Time to observe the business function for a few days
- Time for training sessions meant to educate staff on the best ways to use QuickBooks Enterprise in the most efficient manner
Directions:
Step 1 – Identify if it makes sense to start having a discussion with your client about upgrading to QuickBooks Enterprise:
- Most small business owners are hearing about “the cloud” and moving more and more of their crucial business functions to web-based services (“apps”). Have a sincere conversation about what their expectations are.
- Have an in-depth conversation about the pros and cons of all the options: staying in QuickBooks Pro/Premier, moving to QuickBooks Online or upgrading to QuickBooks Enterprise. This 45-minute video explains the key differences between QBO and QBES:
- List out all the features that are available in QuickBooks Enterprise to your client, and discuss the potential benefits of building a new process, accounting control or operative improvement, that may transform the way they do business and facilitate growth. This spreadsheet compares features of QuickBooks Online vs. Enterprise.
- If it’s a fit, encourage your client to move to QuickBooks Enterprise by having a discussion about what they truly need from their accounting system. Some of the key business needs to listen for:
i. Wanting to delegate more tasks to team members, but they do not do it because they are afraid of losing “control” of the process? QBES has a comprehensive access permission schema for users.
ii. Wanting to capture important data points that are not currently in QuickBooks transactions that can then be used to generate reports that facilitate decision support? QuickBooks Enterprise has more custom fields available to capture data, and also has the ability to design these custom fields as dropdown menus and require fields for the staff to capture the desired data.
iii. Wanting to do “more” with inventory? QuickBooks Enterprise Platinum subscription has Advanced Inventory.
iv. Look into more custom reports, or see them export reports to Excel often.
e. Help your clients see the enormous value of QuickBooks Enterprise to avoid an unexpected “sticker shock.”
f. Help your client upgrade their QuickBooks File to Enterprise.
Step 2 – Learn in-depth about your client’s business:
a. Create a process map of all operative and financial events. Identify which events trigger an accounting event, such as this one: