Becoming a Firm Of The Future with Michelle Long: Part 1 of 4- Get On The Cloud, Where To Start
Michelle:
Welcome everybody to Becoming A Firm Of The Future with Michelle Long. That’s me. This is part 1 of our webinar series. Today in this part, we’re going to be talking about getting on the cloud, and where to start. I’m so glad to have all of you joining me for this today. My name is Michelle Long. For those of you that don’t know me, I am a CPA with an MBA in entrepreneurship, and the owner of Long for Success out of Kansas City, Missouri. I’m thrilled to be a speaker for Intuit and travel across the US as well as other countries, helping other accountants and bookkeepers learn more about QuickBooks Online. If you haven’t joined us already for the QB Power Hour, I’d love to have you join us for that free webinar series as well. Also, the LinkedIn Group is a great resource whenever you have questions. Lots of your peers out there are willing to help and answer your questions, so that’s a great resource as well.
I wanted to make sure you guys all know that this is a 4-part webinar series. I know a lot of you registered for today, but I can tell by the numbers that you may not have registered for the second, third, and fourth sessions yet. I wanted to make sure that you were aware of those. Today, we’re going to be talking about getting on the cloud and where to start. Really getting going and learning about QuickBooks Online and which clients it’s right for, and how to convert them from desktop to QuickBooks Online and all that. On Thursday, December 17th, just a few days from now, we’re going to take it to part 2 and talk about streamlining your workflows. How you can use QuickBooks Online to automate and streamline the workflow which is saving us tons of time, and making us and our clients way more efficient when it comes to doing the accounting and bookkeeping.
We’ll also discuss some third party apps and how to look at those and some of those that might be available for you or your clients. Then a couple of weeks from now, on December 30th, part 3 will be becoming a trusted advisor. We’re going to talk about some of the things that you can do to add value for your clients. Because now that QuickBooks Online, and third party apps, and the cloud allows us to work a lot more efficiently, there’s going to be more time and availability for us to add some additional services and value for our clients. We’re also going to talk about how you can now start moving away from hourly billings towards value pricing for your clients. More and more accounting professionals literally around the world are doing that. We’ll discuss that and how to get going on that.
Then part 4 on January 15th, we’re going to talk about getting connected with tips and tools for managing your social media. We’ll talk about the Find-a-ProAdvisor website, how to improve your profile and ranking. Plus, I’ll talk about other social media sites like LinkedIn and how to use it for business, who to connect with. More importantly, some tools to help you manage social media efficiently. You’re not logging in to all these accounts all the time, but there are some tools and tips to really help you to do it efficiently. Then also, we’ll talk about how you can share content from other people if you don’t have your own, or I’ll also share with you how you can create quick videos and create some of your own content to share as well.
I hope when we get done with this webinar today, you’ll go back to the link that you used to register for this webinar, click on the drop-down list and you’ll see all 4 of these webinars listed. Go ahead and register for the second, third, and fourth webinars and join me for those as well. All of the training webinars today and the other 3 is eligible for up to 1 hour of CPE for each live webinar. Join the webinar today. I will give you the CPE keyword. Then somewhere towards the end of the webinar, there will be a poll question. At that time, you answer the CPE keyword. When I give it to you today during the hour, write it down somewhere. Then towards the end of the hour, the end of the webinar, you’re going to answer the poll question with that CPE keyword. Then in about 3 weeks, your certificates will be emailed directly to you with the same email address that you used to register for this webinar. You want to keep a copy for your record.
I might also mention that we’ve scheduled all of these webinars for an hour and a half. That’s to allow time for your questions. I have built-in time for your questions. I’ll take some questions throughout the webinar. Plus, I want to thank Woody Adams for being on here, answering questions while I’m talking. Go ahead and type your questions in that question box just like you did a while ago. Woody will be answering some. Then I’ll answer some verbally as time allows or at the end of the webinar today. Just keep that in mind. Your questions can go into that questions box.
Now, we’re going to go over stuff this morning. There’s a lot of additional great resources that are available for you. I want to show you how to get into the new Accountant Learn and Support from quickbooks.com. This is where you can access the Accountant University, find resources and information on moving clients online. I’m going to go into that in just a second. I also want to direct you to The Firm of the Future website. This is an area that Intuit has created fairly recently, over the last year or so. The Firm of the Future website has lots of great resources and links to information on value pricing, on social media, various videos might be out there and articles that people have written. It’s a great resource as well.
I don't want to go in quickly and show you the quickbooks.com. If you just type in quickbooks.com, it will take you to this page. Under the accountant tab, you’ll see a couple of things. First of all, if you wanted to sign up for QuickBooks Online accountant, that’s free. The ProAdvisor program is also free for QuickBooks Online training, certification, and support. Then down here next to the last one, see where it says Accountant Learn and Support? Again, just go to quickbooks.com. Under the accountant drop-down menu, click on Accountant Learn and Support. I want to direct your attention to this so that while we’re going through this webinar today, you’re not writing furiously because some of this information is available out here for you. For example, under the accountant’s resources, see where it talks about moving your clients online? This is a great resource. There’s 3 separate PDFs out here that are going to help you to see and be able to move your clients online.
Part 1, why choose online? We’re going to be talking about some of that today. You could come out of here, download those PDFs. Part 2, how to convert from desktop to online? We’re going to talk about that the second half of this webinar, but this again gives you step-by-step instructions. It’s a great resource. You don’t have to write furiously today. You can come back out and download these PDFs and these resources. Then also, there’s part 3 here. This is a great resource under you’re moving clients online.
Then we also have Accountant University. It used to be called Intuit Academy, where there’s training for you. Also, here’s the link for The Firm of the Future information. There’s various webinars out there including the certification and preparation webinar, as well as lots of other free webinars that you could register for out there. I want to make sure I draw your attention to that information, because those are some fabulous additional resources that you can use to help you with this journey to the cloud.
What we’re going to be talking about specifically in this webinar is we’re going to first talk about some of the trends and statistics. What is expecting the cloud adoption and how many small businesses are really adopting, and things like that? Also what it means and how it’s changing our profession. What does it really mean to be a Firm of the Future? Then we’ll talk about some suggestions and how to help you talk with your clients about QuickBooks Online. I’ll help you learn more about which QuickBooks stuff is right for your client. We’ll just talk about some of the differences and the different versions of QuickBooks Online, and when QuickBooks Online may not be the right choice. We’ll also talk about how to set up and convert your clients to QuickBooks Online, helping you to decide the best method of converting those clients.
Let’s go ahead and get started and talk more about some of the trends and statistics that are expecting cloud adoption. First of all, many of you might remember. Remember way back when? Shoot, we used to use the ledger pads. Remember that? Then along came the PC. There were software programs like QuickBooks, one of the first ones out there, and Peachtree, and MYOB, Doc EZ, One-Write. Remember all those accounting software programs that came out? A lot of us were really concerned, oh my gosh. That’s going to take away my write-up business. There goes only monthly bookkeeping. Really, all it did was change the clients need for us and the types of services that we needed to provide for our clients. They still needed us in fact more than ever because they started doing it on their own and they messed it up.
One of the things we quickly realized was they usually pay us more to fix it than if they paid us to help them get it right the first time. It changed the need for us and the services that we’re providing. We’re seeing that now as technology has continued to change from the big main frames, to the PCs, to then laptop computers, and now mobile devices. This is changing how we’re working with our clients. We can’t continue to just keep doing things the old way because technology has changed and it’s dramatically impacting ours and [inaudible 00:09:46] for our clients. We need to keep up with these changes.
In fact, Intuit has identified 4 key trends. They do lots and lots of research, and they spend lots of money on research. Intuit has identified 4 key trends that are affecting the accounting industry and it’s changing how we work with our clients. First of all, is social media. Social has now gotten so huge and widespread that it’s really changed our client expectations. They now want an immediate response from us. They expect 24-hour service from us. If they need a W-2, they don’t want to have to wait for you to find it, pull it out of a file, make a copy, send it to them and get it in the email 2 or 3 days later. They want to be able to log in and get that W-2 when they need it. With social media, again, that’s changed the customer expectations. They want immediate service and replies from us. It’s really changing how we work with our clients and how we serve them as well.
Then another huge trend affecting us is the cloud. The cloud has really eliminated our borders and our geographic boundaries. Our clients want the information on any device. It’s funny, if you think back and remember about maybe, I don't know 3 to 5 years ago, do you remember when we first started talking about online banking? People were like, “Oh no, I’m not going to bank online? That’s not safe. That’s not secure. I would never do that.” Now, not only is everybody banking online, but people take a picture of their check to make a deposit and they don’t even have to go to the bank anymore. It’s changed dramatically.
Our clients are used to getting everything on their phone. They can order from Amazon on their phone. They can order from Best Buy or Walmart on the phone. Order pizza on their phone. Check the scores of ball games on their phone. They can do everything on their phone. It only makes sense that they want to be able to check their accounting data and see their business information on their phone as well. That’s one of the things that we really have to recognize that change in trends there.
Then also, the whole mobile change. Not only do we have the cloud that’s changing things but mobile devices. Now, more and more people are using a mobile device. Whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet, they’re using those devices during the day, and they’re using their laptops when they’re back in the office, and at nights, or on the weekends or things like that. Really, our computers now have moved to the palm of our hands. We have to have something that’s available on our mobile devices.
Then finally, the final in there is the data. Having access to all this information, it helps improve the success of a business because it gives us better insight into our numbers and the data much better than ever before. We’re not behind before. Before, when we used to do accounting, we were always a month or 2 behind on the bookkeeping because by the time we get it from the clients, get the monthly bank statement, we were always months behind sometimes. Now, we’ve got real-time, up to date information providing the insight that people need into running their small businesses. These 4 trends are really changing everything in our accounting industry. We have to change our firm and how we operate in order to survive in this new environment.
This is a great pyramid that the people Citrix have created. I ask permission to use this. I really love this because it gives us an accounting technology hierarchy of needs. Because people say, “What is The Firm of the Future? What do I have to do to be a Firm of the Future? How do I survive in the next 3 to 5 years?” This helps really picture it because you have to have some technologies that come before others and all firms are going to have the basic necessities. If you look at the bottom of the pyramid, this is the basic necessities. All firms have to have the bottom 3 levels. You have to have hardware. You have to have a computer. If you don’t have a computer, you really are going to have a hard time being in business these days, or a laptop, or a tablet. You’ve got to have the hardware.
You’ve got to have the accounting and tax software. Nobody is doing things manually anymore. We’re using software, whether it’s to prepare the tax returns or like QuickBooks Online to do the bookkeeping and the accounting stuff. We also have to have some safeguards. We need to be concerned with securing the data, with encryption, and backup and disaster preparation, and things like that. I’ll tell you what, I really learned the power of using the cloud this past week. Unfortunately, I spilled some liquid on the keyboard of my computer and I fried my computer up. The good news was I use OneDrive so things were backed up to the cloud. I’d use QuickBooks Online. All I had to do was log in to another device and I’ve got access to my data. That is really a big thing that we need to keep in mind.
Then as we move to the top 3 levels of this pyramid, this is where the firms that are going to survive and thrive are able to move up to the top of this pyramid, and not all the firms are going to make that. We need to start investing and implementing some strategies for communicating both efficiency and professionally with our clients. We need to be able to communicate with our clients how they want to communicate with us. That might be on your cell phone texting your clients. That might be with the emails or with integrative document requests like you have in QuickBooks Online. We’ve got to be able to communicate quickly and efficiently with our clients.
We also need to be able to provide support on a timely and proactive basis. People expect support ASAP now. One of the things we’ll talk about in the third webinar where we’re talking about value pricing, is incorporating some support packages into the packages services in the fees that you’re charging your client, because we’ve got to offer support and service to our clients and on a timely basis.
Then finally, at the top of that pyramid is the growth and sustainability. We’ve got to move up this technology pyramid here in order to [inaudible 00:16:06] and thrive amid all of these changes in our industry. It’s really important to look and see we’re not the only ones that are changing in all this. Our small business clients, your Main Street small business clients are already adopting the cloud, huge.
When you look at 65% of the small businesses are already using the cloud for bookkeeping, 65%, 2 years ago, that was only 38%. From 38% to 65% in a couple of years. Intuit is projecting by the year 2020, 80% of these small businesses are going to be switching to the cloud. Also, 43% of them are using a smartphone. A couple of years ago, that was only 34%. Then again 65% are using the cloud for invoicing and payments. Our small businesses are moving to the cloud, we need to be moving there as well to support them. There’s another statistic that shows small businesses use an average of 18 apps to run their business, 18 different apps. Now, either that might be Gmail or Office Outlook that they’re using. It might also include things like Dropbox, or OneDrive, or Google Drive, things like that, but 18 apps that they’re using to run their business.
Our clients are moving to the cloud, we need to be moving to the cloud as well. That’s never been more evident. When you look at the stats on the QBO adoptions, over the next 3 years, QBO has already hit a million subscribers. Over the next 3 years Intuit is projecting that they’re going to hit 2 million subscribers. Over the last quarter, Intuit has been adding over 100,000 new QBO subscribers per quarter. That’s every 3 months, 100,000 new subscribers. Last quarter QBO subscribers grew 55%. More and more people are choosing QuickBooks Online over QuickBooks desktop, 55% growth in QuickBooks Online.
What do you think happened to QuickBooks desktop? The number of users for desktop? What do you think has been happening to that? The number has been dropping significantly over the past few years. For the last couple of years, I’ve been reporting these statistics. We’ve continued to see increasing numbers on QBO adoptions like it was here, like 20%, then 30%, then in the 40s. Now, we’re up to 55% increase in QBO subscribers while we’ve been seeing double digit decreases in desktop subscribers. The number of desktop users, it’s been falling 11%, 12%, 14% per quarter combined with a huge increase in QBO subscribers, we as the accounting professionals really need to pay attention to that because that’s where our growth is. That’s where we need to be if we’re going to continue to survive and thrive in the future.
Again, now, for the 4 consecutive quarters, 4 quarters in a row, that means for the past year more customers have been choosing QuickBooks Online over QuickBooks desktop. I’m really, really glad that you guys are all joining me for this webinar today. I hope you’ll join me in the other webinar series, because if you’re not changing your practice and how you work with your clients, you’re going to be left behind. This is changing rapidly and it’s continuing to gain momentum faster and faster. It’s like that snowball rolling down the hill. It’s just happening faster and faster. You really need to get onboard. I’m really glad that you have that there.
I see some questions coming in about the conversion. I’m going to be getting into the conversion in just a little bit. That’s really good. Talking about QuickBooks, your clients with QuickBooks Online. Let’s say you’ve got some existing clients. How do you start talking to them about the possibility of switching to QuickBooks Online? First of all, it’s important to understand the technical benefits of QuickBooks Online. Why would we even want to switch? If you’ve got clients that have been using desktop maybe for 10-12 years, why would they want to switch? QuickBooks Online is cloud-based. That means that you can log in from any device. You can log in from your PC. Your client can log in from your Mac. They can access it from a tablet or a smartphone. You’re able to log in from anywhere, any device, anytime. You’ve got real-time multi-user access.
I know some people will say, “What if the internet goes down?” How often does the internet go down? Not very often. Now, I will say I’ve been working in hotels before when the internet did go out. They turned it down to update the system or something like that. I turn my phone on. It’s a Wi-Fi hotspot and I still have the internet. I’ve been on mountains in Vail, and Keystone, and Breckenridge at the mountain top, sometimes the internet is not the greatest there. I turn on the hotspot on my cell phone, I still have the internet. It’s real-time access. You can be logging in from your office and doing the bank recs. Your client can be out in the field entering an invoice on their cell phone and it’s automatically updating. Everybody has access to the data at the same time. It’s awesome.
Also, there’s no expensive equipment or networks to maintain especially for these small businesses. If they have 2 or 3 employees that they all want to have access to the system, they all would have to be in the same office, with the server, and networks and everything, and spending money on IT to get it updated, and maintained, and all that. With QuickBooks Online, they all can just log in from anywhere, and any device, and it’s like outsourcing your IT because it’s all taken care of. Intuit deals with all the updates and all the security and everything. Speaking of security, it is hosted, updated, and secured by Intuit servers. They use 128 bit encryption, which means the data is actually more secure on Intuit servers than on your own computer or in your client’s own office.
Intuit spends millions, and millions, and millions of dollars on data security and staying, trying to stay 2 or 3 steps ahead of the bad guys out there. That’s why you’re seeing this new multifactor authorization for logging into QuickBooks Online. It’s an additional security measure to stay very secure. They have the same level of security that the top banking institutions do like Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, much better security than any of us or our clients can afford. It’s actually more secure up there than it is on our own servers.
Then we also, in addition to the technology benefits, there’s workflow benefits. The data management, we’re not doing data entry anymore. I know a lot of us as accountants and bookkeepers, we can enter checks really fast. Tab, type, tab, type, enter, we can go through and enter checks in a register really fast. We’re good at data entry. That is outdated. Nobody is doing data entry anymore, very rarely. We’re managing the data. I taught QuickBooks desktop since 1999. I’m a long time QuickBooks desktop user. I used to tell people when it came to downloading transactions and using the online banking, I used to say don’t do it. It’s more trouble than it’s worth and it takes more time to fix things. That is totally not true anymore.
As a matter of fact, in QuickBooks Online, the downloaded transactions is so much even better than the desktop version. We’re able to set up these bank rules and really automate a lot of the transactions that we have every month. Think about it, a lot of your clients have the same things every month, the same rent, same utilities, the same website things, the same loan payments that they’re making and same vendors and suppliers that they buy from every month. Probably 80% of their transactions are the same every month. You can automate those by setting up rules.
We can also set up automated recurring transactions. I know some people say “Michelle, you could do memorize transactions in the desktop.” Yes you could. The difference was in QuickBooks desktop, when you memorize the transactions, you actually have to open the QuickBooks file for it to be created. With QuickBooks Online, if I create a recurring invoice, I can be on the beach in Hawaii sipping on Mai Tai, and when that time comes along, it will automatically send out those invoices like schedules. I don’t have to log in to QBO. I don’t have to do anything. It will automatically send those out for me. It’s a huge time saver.
There’s also automated reports that you can set up. Automatically send your clients the collections report every Tuesday. Automatically send them some of the sales reports every week, the financials every month. You don’t have to log in and do anything. You can tell it every Tuesday on the, or every fifth day of the month, whatever schedule you choose and it will automatically send those reports out for you. A big time saver.
Then there’s also the online invoicing portal. You can use this with or without QuickBooks Payments. QuickBooks Payments allow your clients to pay you online either through a credit card or their bank account with ACH. You can just use the online invoicing portal. It’s fabulous because if you send the invoice to your clients online and you email it through QuickBooks Online, don’t attach it as a PDF because then when they click view the invoice, they will be able to print it themselves once they view the invoice. Once they click view invoice, you not only will have an audit log of when you emailed the invoice but now you’ll have a log of when they viewed the invoice. You can see if they viewed it 2 or 3 times. It will record that, so you’ve got a record of when it was sent and when it was looked at. I think that’s awesome.
Then we also have integrated document management. You can attach documents to transactions and also in QuickBooks Online accounts, you can send requests to your clients for documents like, “Please send me the purchase agreement or send me the engagement letter.” Using QuickBooks Online, you could do things like that. Your clients can use the QBO app for their phone and take a picture of an expense and enter that on that app and have that receipt attached to that expense, sent to QuickBooks Online automatically. It’s just amazing some of the things that we can do. Not to mention, when you get into some of the third party apps. There’s an ecosystem of probably like 1,000 plus apps that are available now that integrate with QuickBooks Online for those special needs of your clients. We’ll talk more about some of the third party apps coming up on webinar number 2 on Thursday.
Now, let’s talk about some concerns that your clients might have because sometimes the clients do have concerns and things like that, that you’d want to address their concerns. The first concern clients say is, “It’s not secure. I don’t want to use the cloud because it’s not secure.” What I do is I start talking to them about, “What are your concerns? What do you do for security now? Do you have biometrics so people can’t get into your office without a fingerprint scan or an eye scan? Is your office secured biometrically? What are you doing for your hard drive? Do you encrypt your hard drive?” No.
I have actually seen and this has been amazing. At some of the conferences and the seminars that I do, I’ve seen accountants just respond vehemently that they need to do the security. That they need to keep their clients’ data secure. That it’s their responsibility and they want to do it and blah, blah, blah. Then on the lunch break, they walk out and they leave their laptops sitting right there open, not signed out or anything. A lot of times we fail to realize, we aren’t really keeping things secure on our own. We might think we are but we’re not. The reality is the data is more secure on Intuit servers. That’s one thing to keep in mind.
The other thing is the cost. Some of the clients might say oh my gosh, I don’t want to pay $15 a month which by the way with the wholesale billing that we can get as accounting professionals, we get a 50% discount for the life of the subscription. QBO Plus, and we’re going to talk about the different versions in just a second. QBO Plus is $15 per month for our wholesale billing pricing. That is such a minimal cost when you think about the time saving from not sending data files back and forth to your client, trying to log in after hours and work when the client is not working on their computer or telling the client, you sent me an accountant’s copy, don’t cancel the changes, or I got to back up, don’t work in the file. All of those issues, sending things back and forth, not to mention the time saving from the workflow benefits like automating the transactions, the reports, the downloaded transactions, 15 bucks a month is well-worth it.
What a lot of accounting professionals are doing now is they’re building that into their feeds. For $15 a month, they build it into the feed for the client because it’s going to save you a lot of time. Again, in this webinar number 3, where we’re talking about becoming a trusted advisor, we’re going to talk about moving to value pricing. You’ll see you’re going to save lots of time. You’ll incorporate the cost of QuickBooks Online and possibly some third party apps into your feeds. You’re still going to come out and be way more profitable in the long run. That’s something to think about.
Lawrence says, “Did I say 15 a month?” Yes Lawrence I did because if you sign up for wholesale billing, you can get a 50% off for the lifetime of that subscription. [Tammy 00:30:07] wants to know if she can move an existing client over. Yes you can move an existing client over to your wholesale billing. You need to check into wholesale billing. It will save you 50% a month. That’s in the US. Now, it’s 15 a month here in the USA, in Canada, UK, Australia, some other countries, the pricing is a little bit different, but there’s wholesale billing available for accountants and bookkeepers to get 50% discount.
Then also, another concern that your clients might have is, is there a learning curve? Is this going to be something new to learn? What I’ve discovered is for those clients that are new, they haven’t been using QuickBooks desktop or maybe anything in the past, learning QuickBooks Online, they love it. They take to it like a fish in water. It’s really easy for them. It’s easy to get on there and start learning how to navigate and all that. Where some of the challenges come in on clients that have been using QuickBooks desktop previously, then there’s, “Oh my gosh. This is all different. I don't know this. I don't know how to learn this.” They might have a little bit of just concern about learning something new, this is different. This is going to be hard.
The good news is for those clients, Intuit has created a QuickBooks Online app for the desktop. It works on either a PC and there’s a version for the Mac as well. This makes it an easier transition for those existing desktop users, particularly those that like to use the menus and things like that, it allows for more desktop as features. It looks more like desktop and it has drop-down menus for screens, and reports, and things like that. I’ll show you a screenshot in just a second. It also has a shortcut on their desktop to QuickBooks Online. They don’t have to go log in to Chrome and log in to QBO through a browser. They can click that desktop shortcut to QuickBooks Online which they may even have a shortcut for QuickBooks desktop previously. If they click that shortcut, it takes them to QBO. If they were logged in before, it’s keeping them logged in. They can open multiple windows. The windows will automatically refresh for them as well. Really, you’re running QuickBooks in a dedicated QuickBooks browser. You might want to check that out.
Here’s the picture. You can see the QuickBooks Online app. Notice, it does look and feel a little bit more like QuickBooks desktop but it’s an app that you run on your desktop for QuickBooks Online. You’ve got the drop-down menus just like you had before in QuickBooks desktop. You also have keyboard shortcuts whether you’re using this app or whether you’re using QuickBooks Online. There are some keyboard shortcuts, and tips and tricks that you might want to share with your clients to help with that transition. That’s something to keep in mind.
Somebody says, “How do you get this desktop app?” Here’s the link for it. If you go to apps.com, or you can go to quickbooks.intuit.com/apps, but apps.com is just easier. Click on apps.com. There is apps for both the PC and the Mac. Now, this is not quickbooks.com. This is not working in QuickBooks Online offline. You still need that internet access. This is giving you an app on your desktop computer that looks and feels similar to desktop. It’s an easier transition for those long-term desktop clients. Hopefully, you’ll look at that and give it a try.
Somebody says about duplicate browser windows. You can have multiple windows open in QuickBooks when you’re using Chrome or Firefox. It’s called cabbed browsing. You need to learn how to do tabbed browsing to have those multiple windows open. It’s actually easier in QuickBooks Online to have multiple windows open and drag into another screen than it is in QuickBooks desktop.
One of the things I’ll encourage you to do, and let me just drop this in here real quickly. This is a link to a video, bit.ly/QBOTips. Oops, hold on one second. I’m sorry I can’t type and talk at the same time. There’s a link that I just put in there bit.ly/QBOTips. That quick YouTube video that I created shows you how to do multiple windows or tabbed browsing, how to have multiple users in Chrome, and some other navigating tips and tricks that will help you and your clients when you’re using a browser for QuickBooks.
Somebody else asks, “Does it apply to Canadians?” The QBO desktop app technically is not supported in other countries yet. However, I have some Canadian friends and ProAdvisors that have been using it and they tell me it’s working just fine. I’d encourage you to download it and give it a try. “Will it work on Safari?” Yes. Very good. “Can you put that address on the screen?” I just copied it into the questions area for you to do that.
I’m going to go ahead. Somebody said, “The clients wanted to work in real-time. Do you have bank account access to their accounts? Aren’t there liability concerns?” That’s a great question but when you set up the downloaded bank transactions, when you set the bank feed up, it’s read-only. Every night while you’re sleeping, the bank transactions get imported into QuickBooks. This is bank or credit card transactions. They’re getting imported every night for you to work with them. If you don’t want your clients’ bank account information, what I do, I log in remotely and I help the clients set it up to make sure they do it right and properly. That way they type in their password and I don’t ever get it. Or have them change it, now, you wouldn’t want to do that. Log in remotely. Use something like LogMeIn PC anywhere, GoToMeetings, or use something like Join.Me to log in remotely to see that.
I’m going to move along. Thank you Woody for answering so many questions. I am going to move along here for a second. Let’s talk about the different versions in which QuickBooks might be right for your client. Because this is always a big question that people ask. First of all, when it comes to recommending QuickBooks Online, you really have to sit down and do a needs assessment with your client. Determine their wants and needs and try to determine which one’s going to be best to meet their needs. Try out the test drive. If you Google QuickBooks Online Test Drive, you’ll find the test drive are a sample company that allows you to get in there and play with it. You can put stuff in there and test it out, see what it can do, see how it’s going to work for your clients and compare the features of each different ones to see which is going to best meet the needs of your client.
With QuickBooks Online, there’s 3 different versions. The first one is Simple Start. This is the basic level. Each one of the versions will have 2 accountant users. You have 2 different kinds of users. You have company users, which will be for your clients. Then you have accountant users, which is for you and your accounting firm and the team members that you have. With Simple Start, you only get one company users. You only get a few reports because there’s not that many features in Simple Start. There’s only about 20 some reports. You can track income and expenses. Get the basic financial reports and A/R reports. You can get unlimited bank feeds. You can set up as many bank and credit card feeds as you want to, and you can allow and put third party apps on there as well as sign up for QuickBooks Payroll if you need that.
Then the next version is QuickBooks Online Essentials. This gives you 3 company users. Again, the 2 accountant users for your firm are 2 accounting firms, 40 plus reports because now we have more features, we have more reports. Now, we can enter bills and pay bills because we have accounts payable with Essentials. We can set up those recurring transactions that I talked about. You’ve got a report that will show you the company snapshot with some great information as well as a scorecard to compare to industry trends.
Then we have QBO Plus. This is the top version with 5 regular company users but you can actually go up to 25 if you need to. You still have the 2 accountant users like I mentioned. Again, you can go up to 25 users needed, plus you have unlimited free time tracking only and reports only users. Think about reports only. You can set up a board of directors to log in and run the reports they want anytime they need to. Again, unlimited free time tracking and reports only users, now you have over 65 different reports. I think it’s actually 70 plus now.
Then there’s also class and location tracking. Whereas in the desktop we just had class tracking, we now have class and location tracking. We can do budgets and we can do more than one budget, like a budget by class, a budget by location, a budget by customer. You could have multiple budgets in QuickBooks Online.
We also FIFO Inventory and Purchase Orders in the Plus version. It’s important to keep in mind that this inventory is a FIFO basis, is not average cost like in the desktop. That’s something to make sure you keep in mind. You would be converting and changing your accounting method. If you convert from average cost to QBO Plus and FIFO Inventory, you’re going to need to file a form with the IRS about an accounting change. That’s something to be aware of.
Now, there are some desktop features that are not as robust or as powerful in QuickBooks Online, which may want you to keep your client on a desktop until those features get there or you may want to look for a third party app to fill in the gaps here. For example, inventory. You can do basic inventory with QuickBooks Online Plus but you can’t do units of measure, groups, assemblies, reorder points, things like that. If you need robust inventory, you might want to look at a third party application at apps.com. Same thing with robust job costing. QuickBooks Online Plus can do some basic job costing where you can indicate that an expense for a particular customer. You can either mark that as billable. You can get a basic profit and loss but you can’t allocate the labor or the payroll to those jobs very easy. It would be a cumbersome manual method to do that. If you need to allocate labor, keep that in mind.
Also progress invoicing. There’s some cumbersome workarounds out there but no real easy good way to do progress invoicing. Again, these are things that you might want to look for a third party app or just keep in mind, these might be some of the clients you convert last. Maybe by next year, these features will be available in QuickBooks Online because they update it every month. There’s some other miscellaneous features I think like sales orders or price levels. Really, when you consider the 80/20 rule, probably 80% of your clients are a good fit for QuickBooks Online and maybe 20% aren’t a good fit at this time, or maybe that 20% need a third party app to enhance and add on those features. Again, we’ll talk more about third party apps in more detail on the next webinar that we have.
How can you get started converting? How can I start moving my practice to the cloud? First of all, start with your own books. Start your own firm or your own company up on QuickBooks Online. Set up the bank feeds, start working with it and getting a feel for it that way. You also want to use a phased approach. It’s not like on January 1, 100% of your clients need to be converted to QuickBooks Online. Let’s used a phased approach. Start with just 2 or 3 clients initially. Convert those clients, monitor how things are going, evaluate some things that you’ve learned along the way, rents and repeat, keep doing that over and over. We’re going to then choose another group of clients convert. Maybe you start with 2 or 3 initially. If that goes fabulous, the next time you want to do 5 to 10 clients. Convert them over in batches. You don’t have to do this all at one time. Use that phased approach.
Now, which clients are the ones that I would choose first? We’re going to look for easy ones. We want to start with easy ones, not the hard ones. First of all, let’s pretend there’s Shoebox or Excel clients. Clients that aren’t doing anything yet. Those are going to be great clients because you can set up the bank feeds. You’re getting all those transactions throughout the year so that year in you don’t have to worry about a whole year’s worth of transactions and how to deal with that. Your early tech adopters, they’re probably already champing at the bits or already converted to QuickBooks Online by now. Then also your tech challenged clients. Those clients that can’t handle updating QuickBooks, have a hard time sending files back and forth, they don’t have servers. With QuickBooks Online, that’s all taken care of for them. They just log in and it’s there. Those are some clients that might really benefit from it as well.
Then also, look for some of your service space businesses. Look for people who are out in the field maybe, those electricians and plumbers, or other freelance professionals that are a service based business especially when they’re out and about in the field, they can really benefit from being able to enter some things on the app on their mobile devices. Look for some clients with either basic inventory or no inventory. Remember, we want to keep it simple when we’re first getting started. Don’t pick or choose, don’t choose a very complex client to get started with. Along those lines, pick a client with some basic transactions. Ones that don’t have every invoice or every check, there’s multiple lines on there, maybe lots of items involved in every transaction. Choose some with some easier transactions. Choose a client that keeps business and personal separate because that’s going to make your life easier as well.
Then also, hopefully it will be a client you have a good relationship with. Maybe it’s a long-term client and you can call them up and talk to them and say, “I really think this is going to benefit you and this is what we’re going to do.” Talk to them about making that change and making that conversion. Again, we’re talking more about converting and implementing value pricing along with this in the third webinar. I hope you’ll join me for that.
All right. Write down this CPE keyword. Write down otter. There is a little otter. He’s a cute little fellow. Otter. Write down otter as the CPE keyword. Then towards the end of this webinar, I will give you a CPE poll question to answer that. Otter, write down otter, otter, otter. Somebody, we’ve got lots of questions. Somebody said it’s the fur coat for [excellence 00:44:53]. Otter. I don't think he would like to be your fur coat. Otter. One more time, otter. O-T-T-E-R, write down the CPE keyword because once I leave this screen, I can’t get back to it.
Somebody says, “If I’m working on my client’s file, can they watch what I’m doing?” No. they don’t see what you’re doing. If they went to the audit log, they could see that you’ve logged in and they could see what you’re doing in there but they don’t actually get to watch what you’re doing. “How much CPE do we get?” You get one hour Kathy. Thank you for joining us.
I’m going to go ahead and move along here. Now, let’s talk about setting up our clients on QuickBooks Online. Let’s say you’ve picked your 2 or 3 easy clients that we want to get started, how are we going to set them up in QuickBooks Online? What are our options and what are the things that we need to consider? There’s really 3 different options. You can start a brand new QuickBooks Online company, which you need to do that for every client. You’re going to need to set up a new subscription for every client. You may also just start a new subscription and do nothing else. Maybe it’s a new business and you’re just getting them started. You don’t have anything else that you need to pull in there. Whereas with option 2, if they’ve been using an existing system, we would want to import the list. From an existing system, import list, enter beginning balances and open transactions. We also can import transactions using a third party apps, or if they’re using QuickBooks desktop, we might want to convert from QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks Online.
Let’s go through and talk about these 3 different options in a little bit more detail. First of all, how do you decide which option to use? First of all, do they have a current accounting system? What are they using? Are they using QuickBooks desktop? Are they using something else? Are they using Excel or nothing? What is the condition of the data? Is it a mess? I think set up wrong? Do they need to modify and really change and streamline their chart of accounts? What’s the condition of the data? Number of years of data. How long have they been using QuickBooks desktop? If they’ve got 10 years of data in the file, you don’t need to upload and convert 10 years of data. You might want to keep that in mind.
Also, is it a healthy data file? We can’t have data integrity errors. We don’t want to try to convert a data file that’s got some problems there. We want to make sure we check the health of the data file as well as the size of the data file. It has to be under 350,000 targets. I’ll show you that in just a second. Then also, multiple currency. If they’re using QuickBooks desktop and they have multiple currency turned on, you will not be able to convert a desktop file that has multiple currency turned on with the conversion tool. Keep that in mind.
Now, this conversion tool is available in the US and in Canada, and in other countries. If you contact Intuit, they usually have someone who can help provide this conversion service for you. Check with them. They don’t have the tool that’s available in the US and Canada. When you’re ready to create a new company for your clients, what you do is first of all, you can log in to QuickBooks Online Accountant. You log in to QuickBooks Online Accountant, which remember that’s free for us to sign up. That’s our dashboard for working with all of our clients. From there, we can add a new client by clicking on the quick create menu in client or the blue add client in the upper right. Then we get these wizards you go through and set up the subscription for a new company. You’d go through and put in their address and their company name. You could import the logo and the phone number, all those details.
Also, you want to tell QuickBooks, what type of industry is it? Do you sell products or services? That allows it to start customizing some of the settings, the chart of accounts and things like that based on your type of business. Then also under company type, is it a sole proprietor, an S Corp or what type of tax entity? You can actually map things from QuickBooks Online too into a tax online using the trial balance utility. You’d fill out that information. Then answer, do you want to import some data from QuickBooks desktop either Windows or Mac? First of all, we’re going to say no. We’re going to come back and talk about converting from desktop in just a minute. For right now, we just want to set up this new subscription in QuickBooks Online.
Then QuickBooks will go through and the setup wizard will go through and do some customization for you. It will go through and turn on certain settings and preferences like you’ll see it’s enabling estimates over there and trying on some different things. Based on the type of industry that you are and what other users are using, it will go through and do some customizing for you. That’s your first step for all clients. It’s set up a new subscription for them.
Now, the second option is, and also let me go back up and mention this to you. Oops, there it is. Also, this is where under billing choices and QuickBooks product, you choose which product you’re going to set them up. In this example, we’re setting them up with Essentials with Payroll. Over to the right over here, notice how it’s 58.99 regularly. It’s 23.59 or a discount there if your client is paying for it. See under billing choices, this second box over here, billing choices, it says, “My client will pay.” They’re going to get a discount but only for the first year. If you change it to I will pay with wholesale billing, you’re going to get 50% off for the life of that subscription. Pay attention to those boxes there because that’s where you’re setting them up. If you’ve got an existing client that’s already on QuickBooks Online, go under QBOA, QuickBooks Online Accountant, click on the gear and in your accounts, you can add them to your wholesale billing. You’ll be able to add existing clients over to your wholesale billing.
Now, let’s say you want to import the list for a client. Let’s say they’ve been using QuickBooks desktop but it was a mess. You don’t want garbage in, and garbage out. You decide I’m not going to convert this at all, because just because you can convert doesn’t mean you should convert. Maybe you decided it’s a mess. I don’t want to convert. I want to export the list from QuickBooks desktop or their current system. I export the list from QuickBooks desktop. It goes out into what’s called an IIF file which you then open that file in Excel. Clean up the list. Get rid of their old and inactive names because you can sort by this inactive status in Excel and delete all those old names.
Then you’ve 2 choices here. You can import those lists into QuickBooks Online directly, or if you want to create a new desktop file and import the list into there and then convert it. You might consider, do you have sub-accounts or sub-customers? Those might be some things to think about. Another option or a workaround is to create a new desktop file with those new lists then convert that into QuickBooks Online. Then you can enter your beginning balances and open transactions that you have. That’s an option when your client is maybe a mess. Under the gear in QuickBooks Online, under the gear, you’ll see import data. When you click on that, you’ll get a list asking you or this screen asking you which list you want to import, your customers, your vendors, your chart of accounts, or your products and services, or the items list if you will. You can import those things if you want to.
Now, this is what a lot of us will do is we will convert from the desktop to QuickBooks Online. This allows you to use this conversion tool that’s really quick and easy. It’s like 3 clicks, 3 minutes you’re done. Not quite 3 minutes but depending on the size of the file and things like that. Before you convert, you need to prepare that file for conversion. The first thing you want to do is confirm, and I’ve got screenshots on each one of these in just a second. We want to confirm that there’s less than 350,000 targets. The file can’t be too large. We got to look at the member targets.
We may need to verify, you definitely want to verify. You may need to rebuild the file. We want to make sure there’s no data integrity problems out there. You might consider condensing the data. If they’ve used QuickBooks for like 10 years, you might want to condense the data so that there’s only like the last year of data remaining in the file. Again, you cannot have multiple currency turned on in the desktop and convert that company this way. You wouldn’t be able to use this conversion tool.
Woody:
Hey Michelle.
Michelle:
Yeah Woody.
Woody:
Michelle, that’s actually supported now. Just in the last few weeks.
Michelle:
Multiple currency is?
Woody:
Yeah. You can convert a file that has MC turned on right now on the desktop. That went off the next fleet last release. It should be available right now.
Michelle:
Awesome. Thank you Woody.
Woody:
You bet.
Michelle:
Jeez, that’s [crosstalk 00:54:02] you got to keep up to date because these things change all the time. Awesome. You now can convert. Is that true in other countries like Canada?
Woody:
No. I’m only speaking for the US desktop file over to QBO.
Michelle:
Okay. Sherry said, “Effective today it’s supposed to be available in Canada.” Very, very good. You might want to take a look at that. Somebody says, “Are you saying the conversion from desktop will not bring over sub-items or cost jobs?” The conversion from the desktop does bring those over. If you’ve got a list like let’s say your chart of accounts has a list with sub-accounts, it doesn’t write the column when you try to import sub-accounts as a list. However, converting them, it will convert them over. That’s something too, you might just want to test that out and see how that works if you need to. Thank you Woody for that clarification.
Here’s where you got to find the details on how big that file is. In QuickBooks desktop, hit the F2 key. That will give you this product information window and you can see the maximum or the total number of targets. It’s in yellow there. The maximum could be 350,000. If the file is too large, you might need to condense that data to get that file size down. That’s something to keep in mind.
Also, you’ll want to go under file and utility. Verify your data. Make sure there’s no data integrity problems. You might need to rebuild the data. You might need to rebuild it more than one time. You might need to condense the data. All three of those are shown under file utilities and you can do that on as needed basis. Each file is going to be differently. For some clients, it may be, you’ve got to condense the data and for other clients, that’s not an issue or a concern for you.
Then, when you’re ready. When you’ve got the desktop file ready, and keep in mind, after you convert to QuickBooks Online, you will still have that desktop file available. You’ll still have that desktop file available. You can go back to it if need to. When you’re ready to convert on that little wizard, you could say yes that you want to import the data from either Windows or Mac. Says, “Are you ready to import your data?” You click continue. Then you’ll get the instructions giving you all the details on whether your PC or Mac is telling you, you want updates to the latest version of QuickBooks Online. You could do it for 2012 or newer and on Mac, QuickBooks for Mac it’s 2012 or newer. PC users it’s 2008. QuickBooks 2008 and newer. You can import your data. Here’s the details and the information. This wizard makes it really easy for you.
In QuickBooks desktop, you’ll click on company, export the company file to QuickBooks Online. Then here’s this first one here. Company, export the company file to QuickBooks Online. Then it asks you to sign in. You’re signing in to this account that you previous created. Remember the very first step I showed you, which set that account up and set it up at QuickBooks Online? Then it’s asking, “Do you want to convert your inventory?” This is where it’s reminding you that it’s FIFO Inventory. Just don’t forget you have to file I think it’s the Form 3115 with the IRS if you’re changing your accounting method from average cost to FIFO. Be aware of that.
Again, it’s asking, if you want to turn on inventory, where should you put your company file? Notice how it says replace my existing QuickBooks Online Company. You can choose that company that you want it to go into. You can redo this for the first 60 days. Let’s say you upload it and then realize, “Whoops, I should have condensed the data. I didn’t really want to upload all 10 years-worth.” It will replace whatever you had previously. It does not merge. You can convert. You get a do over as many times as you need, the first 60 days of a subscription, but it will replace what’s currently in there. It does not merge things. Just keep that in mind. Then also, it’s a reminder here that it’s making a copy of your company file. Your desktop file will still be there intact. It doesn’t damage or destroy that file in any way.
Then you’ll get a little thing that says, “We’re transferring your file and we’re going to send you a confirmation email.” Then you get that email. Then normally, this conversion only takes a few minutes. It usually doesn’t take that long. Sometimes, if there’s lots of people converting like around year end and the beginning of the year, it might take a little bit longer. Usually, it doesn’t take that long to actually do that conversion. I think that’s great.
Then after you convert, there are some things that you’re going to want to do. You want to double check things. You want to look at lots of reports and double check the A/R and aging details, and things like that. Also, definitely run the balance sheet and the profit and loss. You want to run these reports for all days on an accrual basis. We wanted to pull all transactions, whether it’s an invoice or whether it’s the wrong date like 2025 instead of 2015, accrual basis and all dates. You run those reports in the desktop, those reports in online, and compare and make sure everything looks okay. You’re going to want to go through and double check, see how those things are looking.
I’m going to pause here for questions in just a moment. Then your next steps in QuickBooks Online, yeah you’ve converted the desktop data into QuickBooks Online. Go through and set up the users for the company. Go through and set up the company setting. In QuickBooks desktop, we went to edit and preferences. Go into the company setting and customize it for your clients based on their needs and what they need to do. Then you’ll also want to go through the template and customize the forms. Customize their invoice to put their logo out there and to customize it the way that they want it. You want to reconcile the accounts.
Now, what happens when you convert from desktop to online is all of those transactions that were cleared and reconciled in the desktop are going to come over to QuickBooks Online and they’re still marked as reconciled but none of those reports will come over. You actually will want to do the first reconciliation to set that beginning balance in there. You’ll reconcile let’s say as of 12/31, look in the desktop and see which ones were unreconciled in the desktop and make sure that you mark those as not being cleared or reconciled in the reconciliation and QuickBooks Online. It only takes a couple of minutes. You go in and you say, “Reconcile now.” You put in the 12/31 statement date and [inaudible 01:01:03]. You uncheck the 2 or 3 checks or deposits that were still outstanding even being reconciled and set up at getting balance there. It’s real quick and easy.
You want to set up the bank feeds and the downloaded transactions. Now, initially, you can get the choice of how many days you want to download here. Do you want to download 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days? Most banks only allow you to download 90 days. If you need more, log in to the bank’s website, download the transactions. You could import those. As a separate file, you can import those into QuickBooks Online. Also, then you go through and set up your recurring transactions. Those did not convert when you did the conversion. Any of those recurring or memorized transactions you would want to just set those up. Then memorize reports. You might need to go through and set some of those up depending on what you had.
Now, I’m going to look at some questions. I also wanted to remind you that we have lots of additional resources available here. Somebody says, “How do I get rid of an old messy QBO file and start over?” If you’re within the first 60 days on a QuickBooks Online file, you can pass the data or convert the data again. You can wipe it out and start over. If it’s after 60 days, you need to cancel that subscription and start a new subscription.
“Can you customize the dates for bank feeds download on the initial download?” Sharon, there’s 3 or 4 choices. I think it’s 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, maybe 40 days in there. I’m not sure. You’ve got to pick one of those when you initially set up the bank feeds. What I’d do is you download more than you need. Let’s say you only need the last 2 days. Go ahead and download 7 days because it’s easy to select by date and exclude those transactions that you don’t need. Download more than you need. Exclude the ones that you don’t need and you can delete those out of there. Again, go to the website, the bank’s website to get those.
Somebody wants the keyword poll. We are near the top of the hour. I’m going to do that keyword poll in just a moment. Actually, let me go ahead and do it now. Then we’ll continue with questions. Just a second. Let’s go ahead and launch, because I know some people do not leave towards the top of the hour. Let’s launch that keyword poll, the CPE keyword poll now. All right. Go ahead and answer that CPE keyword poll. Those of you that have allowed the full hour and a half please stay with us because I know there’s lots of questions in here. Somebody just typed in the CPE keyword. Bailey, you need to answer the poll question.
Somebody says, “What if you want to convert your company file and it’s over 60 days old. Start a new QBO subscription. You’ll have to cancel the old subscription and start a new one so that you can convert that. Somebody says, “When did you provide the keyword?” I provided it earlier Chris. I’m sorry you missed it. I said it several times. We even had a joke about it. I did say it several times and had it on the screen for a minute or 2.
“Is there an estimated date on when labor cost [posting 01:04:25] will be available?” No. unfortunately, we don’t have that date but I know it’s been highly requested by lots of people. Hopefully, that’s coming sooner rather than later.
Now, here’s a good question. Somebody says, “If you convert the QBO and you really don’t like it, can you go back to the desktop or is it a done deal?” That’s a great question Theresa. You can in the US convert from QuickBooks Online back to QuickBooks desktop. However, it may not be seamless and it may not be perfect depending on what you’re using in QuickBooks Online. In QuickBooks online, remember we have FIFO Inventory versus desktop, we have average cost. In QuickBooks Online, we have class and location tracking. In QuickBooks desktop, we only have class tracking. Theoretically, yes, you can export back to the desktop. I wouldn’t plan on going back and forth at all, but you can. It may be different though depending on some of the features that you have been using. Just keep that in mind.
“Can you add the wholesale price for QBO when you value price with an account?’” We’re talking about value pricing more in module 3. Keep that in mind. We’ll be going in-depth more on value pricing. “Why do you run the check in an accrual basis even if the client is in cash basis?” That’s a good question. The reason you want to run those reports on an accrual basis is because you enter invoices. You want to make sure you’ve got all the invoices in there, whether it’s cash or accrual basis, you want to make sure that 100% of the data was converted. Run the reports on an accrual basis for all dates. Somebody has some specific questions about their accounts. In some cases, you need to call the ProAdvisor support number for specific account-related questions.
All right. I’m going to go ahead and close this poll question. Actually, let me give you a last call. If anybody still needs to answer the CPE poll question. Please answer that CPE poll question now. I’m going to give you about 10 more seconds. Ready? Set, all right. You guys are done. No, no, no, I did not just do that. Hide. There we go. Sorry about that. Clicked the wrong button. I hate it when that happens.
All right. Let me go ahead and answer some more questions. Actually, let me remind you of a couple of things first in case some of you want to jump off. I don’t want to lose some of this information for you. I wanted to remind you where you can get additional information. If you go to quickbooks.com, under the accountants menu, click on Accountant Learn and Support. Check out that moving clients online under the Accounting Resources. Great information there and PDFs available for you.
Also go to Accountant University and check out the information there as well as The Firm of the Future website. All of those are great resources for you. Plus, I might add, the advanced certification material. First of all, I would like to encourage you to get certified in QuickBooks Online. It is free to join the ProAdvisor program for QuickBooks Online. It is free to join that. Then you also can take this online certification prep training, preparing you for the exam. That is free. That’s eligible for CPE. Then you can take the exam again for free. You can get certified in QuickBooks Online and it’s all free.
Once you’re certified, then you’re eligible for the advanced training material. Any advanced training material is a whole section on complex conversions, where it’s more in-depth on every detail on what does and does not convert. I encourage you to go ahead and get certified in QuickBooks Online. Then you have access to the advanced training materials before you actually, you may not get advanced certified right away and they take their little time but you at least have access to those training materials. Again, I think it’s module one on complex conversion. I encourage you to go out there and get certified if you’re not already. Hopefully you are certified already.
If you’re in the LA Area, I hope you’ll join me and MB Raimondi this week. We’re going to teaching the live certification prep courses here in the LA Area this week. The first week of January, we’ll be, Hector Garcia and I will be in Florida. I’d love to have you join us there. Somebody says, “I’m confused on where to find the training materials.” Log in to QBO so you’ll log in to QBOA. On the left navigation bar, you’ll fine ProAdvisor. You can click on that. You get into your certification training. “Where’s the advanced training material? I haven’t found it.” Robert, if you’re already certified in QuickBooks Online, then it’s right below the QuickBooks Online regular certification, you’ll see advanced. Click on the name advanced, the name of that one, it will drop-down and show you the screening materials that are available with you.
Let’s see other questions that we have out here. Let me sort by the flag. See if Woody has flagged any of these for me to address. I think I’ve got those. Very good. Woody, are there some things that I need to discuss, or you’d like to allow time to talk about [inaudible 01:10:12]?
Woody:
Yeah. I answered a lot of them. I don’t think I flagged them as much. There’s a lot of questions around online banking, and duplicates, and how to match those kind of things and questions about pricing and converting.
Michelle:
I can definitely cover some of the bank feeds and stuff. Pricing and converting, what type of questions did we have on that? Anything that I could answer?
Woody:
Just like the 60-day limit in client file versus the free file from QBOA. If you wanted to address that. How to purge the company data.
Michelle:
Okay, very good. Let me look through some of these questions then and we’ll answer some of them. One of the questions I just saw was how do we save these questions in this chat log? If before you log out, go to webinar, if you’ll click on the top of that little go to webinar toolbar, click on file, save questions log. You can save that so you can refer back to it because I see Woody has answered a ton of questions. You can do that there.
Somebody said, “Is there a minimum internet speed for an efficient operation of QBO?” Rick, that’s a good question. I can tell sometimes when I’m in various hotels, especially if we get a lot of people logging on the internet at the same time, I can tell that it does slow things down. One of the things that I have discovered though, like if your QBO seems to be falling down or if you’re seeing the little blue spinning sign for too long, clear the cache and cookies. That helps keep it working smoother and faster. Another thing is I have a separate user in Chrome. When I clear the cache and cookies, it doesn’t affect my normal web browsing. That helps keep QuickBooks Online running faster and a lot more efficiently.
Somebody wants to know about getting screenshots of this webinar. Cindy, if you use the link, you can download a PDF of all of these slides. You can do that right there. Let’s see a couple of other questions that some people had throughout this webinar. Again, I’m happy to say we allowed time for questions because I know sometimes this gets pretty complex.
Woody:
I did red flags Michelle, if that helps, if you sort again. Thanks.
Michelle:
Let’s see if I can find some flagged ones. For some reason, it’s not sorting by flagged for me today. There is a bunch. I found them now and I promptly went right by them. Okay, great. “What do we do for the client if there’s no data entry anymore?” That’s a great one because we’re not entering data anymore. We still need to help manage the data though for our clients. We need to set up the bank feeds and set up the bank rules. We need to manage things to make sure that things are going to the proper accounts. There will always be something that we need to do manually. Like maybe they purchased a vehicle and they’ve got to deal with that or things like that, but we’re reviewing and managing the data.
Now, we can provide our clients with more insight and consulting services. Help them monitor their cash flow. Help them with dealing with their cost of goods sold, and maybe their margins are declining. What to do to improve that? We can provide more consulting and advisory services as opposed to just doing data entry. We’ll talk about some ways that you can add value for your clients in that webinar. I think it’s 3 on becoming a trusted advisor.
Then somebody says, “Now, how to receive payments from the clients? How can I set them up for an automated subscriptions without keeping the credit card information?” In QuickBooks Online, you sign up for QuickBooks Payments, so if you go into the company settings and they’re on the left, you click on Payments to learn more about QuickBooks Payments, you can accept credit cards and ACH payments from your customers. That way the credit card information is all maintained by Intuit in their servers. You don’t have to worry about PCI Compliance or anything like that. It’s taken care of for you. Click the gear and QuickBooks Online and go to company settings and check that out under the QuickBooks Payments if you will. Hopefully that will help. Sorry about that.
Let’s see a couple of other questions. Here’s another one about, “Does QuickBooks allow you to accept Amex or just Visa and MasterCard?” You can accept Amex too. I’m pretty sure that you can do Amex as well. “Desktop version you could save a backup copy, QBO, there isn’t any kind of backup option. Why?” That’s a question we get quite frequently. The thing is, it’s different because with QuickBooks Online, if your computer crashes like mine did this week unfortunately, all I had to do is go get another computer to log in. I don’t have to restore from a backup. That’s something to keep in mind is you don’t have to do that.
There is a third party app that’s available out there that allows you to create a backup and take a snapshot of your QuickBooks Online. I think it was called SafetyNet. If you go to apps.com, there is an app out there available now that will allow you to do that. That’s something to keep in mind.
“How do we clean up the client list?” I’m not sure if you’re talking about how do you clean up in QuickBooks Online or clean it up before you import it? If you exported it from an existing system like QuickBooks desktop, open that file in Excel, sort by the inactive status. Then you’re going to be able to delete all of those old and inactive clients. If you were talking about QuickBooks Online, ask that question again.
This is good. “How do we [create 01:16:22] bank feeds that don’t bring in the description you need? i.e. it brings in priority post debit instead of Ace hardware”? [Shammi 01:16:30], that’s something you need to talk to your bank about because they’re the ones that are controlling what is coming over. One of the things that I have discovered too is having these clients use a charge card instead of a debit card, sometimes that might make a difference because you get the information you need from the credit card company possibly and you’re not getting it from the bank account. Look at some of that as well.
“Can you determine a custom chart of accounts and account layout? Okay, somebody wants to do direct cost and indirect cost and GA. Edward, you can set up different types of accounts but you have to use the types that are provided. What you can do is you can within an expense account category, you can set up an account called direct cost and then have sub-accounts under that. An account called indirect cost and then have sub-accounts under that. All of them would need to be the type of an expense account. You can’t change the account types but you can customize your chart of accounts.
Somebody says, “Is tomorrow’s Glendale training and exam the same time as the 4-part webinars?” Tomorrow’s session at Glendale, I’m glad you’ll be here. I’m actually at the Glendale Hotel right now, North of LA people in case you don’t know where Glendale is. Tomorrow’s training is from 9:00 to 5:00. We’d love to have you join us. We’ll have some breakfast and lunch. Again, we’re in LA this week, 3 different cities in the LA Area this week and Florida the first week of January. Love to have you join us for some of those.
Going through some more of these questions. Glad to see you guys have lots of them. That’s why I allowed plenty of time for these questions. Thank you Woody for answering so many of them. You’re doing a fabulous job. You type in fast. There’s lots of you on here. All right. Let me sort them by this again. Let’s see. “Backups, what about a QBO is unavailable?” Richard, that doesn’t happen very often but it has happened occasionally. What happens now, let’s say something happens to QBO and it goes down, usually it affects only a small cluster. What they’re able to do is within a few minutes. They roll it over to another, I don't know, another server if you will so that if there is an available time, it’s very minimal now. It’s usually only a few minutes before it rolls over to another cluster and starts working over there again. Having that problem isn’t like it used to be where several years ago we had some outage.
I’m going to continue with questions here in just a minute. I wanted to remind you guys, please, please, please register and join me. On Thursday, I’m going to talk about get on the cloud and streamlining your workflows. I’ll be going more into QuickBooks Online. I’ll show you how you can automate streamline the workflows with automating your recurring transactions, your reports. I’ll go into the bank feeds and show you how to work with those downloaded transactions and set up the bank rules, and how that’s saving you tons of time. Plus, we’ll talk about some of the third party apps of where you can find those.
When we get done here, please go register for these other webinars. We also have webinar 3, becoming a trusted advisor. I’m going to talk to you about adding value for your clients as well as how to start moving to value pricing. Then again on part 4, we’re going to talk about getting connected with social media and how you can do some things there to help you to get more clients. Each one of these webinars is scheduled for an hour and a half. That’s to allow plenty of time for questions and answers. I’m trying to get my content done in like first hour. Then allow you guys to ask plenty of questions and answers, specifically helping you to get the next steps for what you need to do and how you can keep moving forward. Please sign up for those.
“Don’t understand where to type “Purge Company.” [Gloria N 01:20:41], that’s a specific URL that you have to do and we can try to send you the link to that. “Maybe Woody has that somewhere. I’m not really sure.
Can you briefly share about what was going on with the location of apps recently?” Yeah. They made some changes there. If you go to apps.com, you’ll be able to access all of those apps there. You can get to that as well.
“Is there a link to the criteria to have an Intuit payment account and merchant account?” Sharon, if you click on the payments, there’s a button where you could click learn more. In there, it should take you where you could learn more and get more details. Usually most people are approved for QuickBooks Payments account but there are certain industries that may not be approved. For example, Canada, if you’re in a state that has legal pot or medical marijuana, a lot of times the pot shops cannot get a merchant service account. Perhaps a gun shop may not be able to get a merchant service account. Or if you’ve got a business owner with really, really bad personal credit, they may not get an account. I have not personally come across anybody that was denied an account but there are some people who will be denied. Usually, you know pretty quickly within even 24 hours. I would encourage you to sign up or go ahead and try to sign up and find out about that.
The 4-part webinar series is not the same content. It’s not the same as tomorrow’s seminar. Tomorrow, there’s QBO certification, preparation, training seminars. That’s to just prepare you for getting certified. Some of what we talked about today is going to be in that certification prep training but they’ve also got a lot more topics. That’s a 5-hour training series or 4 hours. You might want to check into that separately. Janet says she thinks she signed up for all 4. How do we know for sure? Check that you got a confirmation.
Kathy says, “How do we sign up for Thursday?” Go back to FirmoftheFuture.com. Let me just show you because I want you guys to join me. I got lots of great information to share with you. If you go back to FirmoftheFuture.com, let me just click right here, oops, under accountant, I can get to it this way to Accountant Learn and Support Firm of the Future or just type in FirmoftheFuture.com. Scroll the on here for me and see where it says, “View the series and register.” Click on this drop-down list to view the series and right here choose the date of the other 3 webinars. Register for all of them. I want you to join me for all of them.
I will tell you, these are getting full. Go ahead and register and don’t miss them because I hopefully will have great information for you. I’d love to have you join me for that as well. Go out there, choose these other ones. They’re all at the same time. Again, we allow an hour and a half so that you guys have time for questions. Thank you Woody, you did a fabulous job Woody, keeping up with all those questions today. I’m pretty impressed. I didn’t know you could type that fast. Very good.
Woody:
Thanks Michelle. Thank you.
Michelle:
Is there anything else you want to add Woody?
Woody:
No. I put in a link to sign up for the San Diego events. The Colorado ones were done in November. Sorry about that. I’m sure we’ll do another run of them after tax season but I don't know for sure. That’s all I see.
Michelle:
Thank you Woody. Somebody said they couldn’t see my screen. Do you see my screen now? I might have had the question box in the way? Hopefully you can see the Firm of the Future one. Go on there under Firm of the Future where you see the date, Monday, December 14th, click on that. That’s actually a drop-down list. Then you can choose the dates for the other upcoming webinars because each one of these are different with different content. I would love to have you guys join me. Somebody says, “They still see only the white screen.” That is the [Zorro 01:24:51] Audience View. I am not sure what happened. Let me go back. Somehow my screen sharing stopped, but I’m bringing it back now. Let’s hope it’s coming back.
Woody:
I see it.
Michelle:
It says it’s waiting.
Woody:
I see it right now.
Michelle:
Okay good. Go to Firm of the Future where it says, “The webinar series and register.” Right here is where I was trying to show you, you can sign up for the other 3 webinars right here from this drop-down list. FirmoftheFuture.com. Scroll down to where it talks about Becoming The firm of the Future webinar series and sign up for these other 3 webinars as well. The next one we’re going to talk about streamlining and automating your workflow which will include bank feeds, the downloaded transactions, and bank rules. Then on the 30th we’re going to talk about becoming a trusted advisor, adding value for your clients and converting the value pricing. Friday, we’ll be talking about social media and getting connected with your clients and peers and other referral sources and things like that. I hope you guys can register for those other ones as well. Very good.
Somebody said, “Any other dates for the webinars?” Not at this time Maurice. We’re getting into busy season. Somebody says, “Are the online meetings any different from doing the ProAdvisor courses online?” If there’s not a city near you, go ahead and do the online training. You could listen to those recordings and do it online. Of course if you’re in a city near us, we’d love to have you come and visit us for those. That would be great. No, no, I don't know the schedule for other stuff in 2016 past January. I don't know about New Orleans in 2016.
“Can you email us the links for the future 3 webinars so we can register via email?” Ken, I’ll check to see if they can. “Where in Florida?” I’m going to Jacksonville, Tampa. No, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Miami, the week of the 7th, 8th and 9th or something like that. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I’d love to have you join us for that. “I’m in Miami.” Good Ken. I hope you’ll join us. Thursday I believe is the Miami one. Go to quickbooks.com under Accountant Learn and Support and go to Accountant University and register for that.
“Yes, see you in Miami. I will be there. I’ve booked my flights already.” I’d love to have you join us there. “Have Debbie take you to one of her special beaches.” Hey John, I don't know if I’m going to have time for that this go-round, but I have met Debbie in Florida and done that before. You guys have been fabulous. I really want to thank you for joining me for this webinar today. Thank you Woody for answering and helping out with the questions and everything. Thank you Wendy and Intuit for bringing this to you guys. I hope I’ll see you guys all on here on Thursday. Bye everybody. Have a great day.