As an accountant or bookkeeper, you know how challenging it can be to assess a prospective client’s books with limited knowledge about their history or business. You’re trying to determine the time required to clean up the books and what to charge, but understanding the state of the books is a time consuming process in-and-of-itself, and mistakes or surprises can lead you to underprice your services … which means time wasted and money lost in the short and long run.

What if there were a powerful solution to speed up this entire process and give you confidence to price your services more accurately? With the release of the new Client Overview feature inside QuickBooks® Online (QBO), there is!

Benefits for you and your clients

Client Overview enables you to look at a prospect’s QBO file and quickly estimate how much work will go into cleaning up and maintaining the books. Of course, reviewing any business’ books has always been possible, but Client Overview speeds up the process and offers big benefits:

• A better understanding. Get a high level understanding of the state of the books with a unified view of relevant setup, banking and account data.
• Take control of your pricing. Better estimate the pricing for initial cleanup, with upfront visibility into how updated the books really are, while improving your pricing strategy with data insights that indicate the complexity and required effort to clean up and maintain the books.
• Save time. Get a better sense of where to start your file analysis with a view of items that typically require attention and cleanup.
• More transparency. Better evaluate the required ongoing workload with information on the client’s company setup and business activity insights that reflect the prospect’s proficiency with QBO.
• Simple and efficient. Get to where you want to go in fewer clicks with deep links that take you directly to relevant transaction reports, specific bank accounts and the reconciliation tab.

How Client Overview works

It’s very simple. When you access a prospect client’s QBO account through QuickBooks Online Accountant, you have a new Overview tab inside QBO (visible to accountants only), which provides relevant and actionable data to kick-start your initial file review.

Client Overview will help you identify signals that indicate how much effort would be required to clean up the books and then maintain them on an ongoing basis. Only with a decisive understanding of the “state of the books” can you satisfactorily determine the projected outcome.

What your peers are saying about Client Overview

Recently, several accounting and bookkeeping experts tested Client Overview for themselves. Here’s what they had to say:

Lisa Channell, Bonfire Bookkeeping: The Data Review feature is wonderful because it takes something I was painstakingly doing outside of QBO and puts it in an easy-to-access place, with everything at your fingertips.

The goal of becoming a “trusted advisor” is even easier with this feature because it’s so clear and concise. You can see at a glance where the trouble spots are and make recommendations much quicker than doing a full file review using all the different reports.

One of the biggest benefits is seeing everything all in one place, which is a big timesaver. Another benefit is having items “flagged” and brought to our attention. This feature is beneficial for the prospect/client and advisor relationship, but is also extremely valuable as an internal tool to train junior bookkeepers about what to look out for. It speeds up how long I usually take to quote a job, and gives me even more information to assess my price.

I do two different types of file review. One is usually a prospect coming to me for the first time, knowing there is something “off” about their books, but needs help determining how bad the problem is and how to go about fixing it. The other type is a monthly review that I conduct with my staff. I believe this feature will help in both cases and would like to use this to capture the problems and/or progress each month. I’m very excited to see how this feature grows and evolves!

Erin Vukelich, JCCS: I am excited to use this feature to get a true understanding of what work needs to be completed. The Client Overview feature can give the accountant, at a quick glance, the information needed to start pricing the engagement. It also gives us some talking points to start discussing with the potential client.

The biggest benefit I see is pricing out the initial onboarding or cleanup. We are able to see how much work is outstanding to get the books current. Another benefit is the ability to tell if the prospect may need training in specific areas, such as accounts receivable or classifying transactions. This can be a huge way we can help prospects and future clients take more control over their books and do things right.

One benefit that I hadn’t considered is the ability to do a quick check on current status of my staff’s client maintenance. Now, I can hop into the Overview screen and see how the assigned staff member is doing and help answer important questions. Are they staying current on the client work? Do they need assistance in any area? Do I need to allocate more time to this client?

Stacy Kildal, Kildal Services LLC: I love it! I worked with the development team and feel Client Overview will really streamline the initial review process.

The section for negative asset and liability accounts will help us find and fix balance sheet issues very quickly. Wait until you see how the balance of Opening Balance Equity jumps out – so great!

Try Client Overview for yourself

Access Client Overview through QBOA to save time and price your services more accurately. Chances are you’ll have an opportunity to try our Client Overview right away; the very next time you find a prospect, you can use this new feature to quote the work more accurately, while getting a better idea how organized the books are. And, you will gain the prospect’s trust because you’re already demonstrating your knowledge of accounting and QBO. That’s a win-win for everyone!