A businesswoman talking to her colleague.
accounting

#RecipeForSuccess: When and How to Leverage QuickBooks Enterprise for Your Clients

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.

Search “Recipe” to find related articles on this site, and join the conversation on Twitter: #RecipeForSuccess.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

Source: Numbercruncher.com

b. Compare the process map with the “optimal” or desired process map with your client’s management team.

c. Engage all staff members in a conversation about which are the big time drainers in the organization, and whether it is a task, process and/or procedure.

d. Create a roadmap to a more effective workflow, including potentially eliminating some manual processes by presenting an alternative within QuickBooks.

e. Discuss the advantages about having QuickBooks Enterprise on the cloud (via a hosting service) to facilitate access to the information from anywhere, and reduce the IT burden of locally installed desktop software.

Step 3 – Have regular training sessions with your client and team to continually improve processes:

a. Hold preplanned meetings to discuss implementation and provide step-by-step instructions on entering the data in QuickBooks, using the improved process map.

b. Learn from their experiences on what is working and what is not, and turn it into an opportunity to further retrain the staff, with the necessary tweaks.

c. Sit down with the management team to help them create custom reports that can help them monitor the activities, and analyze the results to make better decisions for the business.

d. Encourage more of the accounting tasks to be entered remotely, if it enables them to enter the information quicker than waiting to get to the office. The speed and timeliness in which the data is captured into QuickBooks is key to process improvement and growth, allowing potential errors or drainers to be caught early in the process.

e. Every year, revisit the opportunity to improve more processes, upgrade to newer versions of QuickBooks (i.e. QuickBooks Enterprise 18) and implement new apps that can integrate with QuickBooks Desktop. The list of apps that integrate with QuickBooks desktop keeps on growing, and can be found here.

Serving Instructions

Implementing QuickBooks Enterprise with newly transformed business processes, with a dash of cloud, is going to look very appetizing to your clients and quench their thirst for growth.

What’s your #RecipeForSuccess? The recipe may be different, but the goal remains the same: a truly satisfying business that you can get excited about, and look forward to, every day. Good luck!

Editor’s note: Check out Hector’s recent article on upgrading your client to QuickBooks Enterprise from QuickBooks Pro/Premier.


Get the latest to your inbox

Get the latest product updates and certification news to help you grow your practice.

By clicking “Submit,” you agree to permit Intuit to contact you regarding QuickBooks and have read and acknowledge our Privacy Statement.

Thanks for subscribing.

Relevant resources to help start, run, and grow your business.

Looking for something else?

Get QuickBooks

Smart features made for your business. We've got you covered.

Tax Pro Center

Expert advice and resources for today’s accounting professionals.

QuickBooks Support

Get help with QuickBooks. Find articles, video tutorials, and more.

How can we help?
Talk to sales 1-800-497-1712

Monday - Friday, 5 AM to 6 PM PT

Get product support