Arti Patel Martinez, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll be exploring the Book Close feature in Intuit Accountant Suite.
Hey ProAdvisors, it's Arti, and you're watching In the Know, where you get exclusive access to demos of Intuit product enhancements by the leaders who built them.
Let's jump right in with Hailey, who will show us the latest updates to Books Close.
Hailey, welcome!
Hailey Garcia: I’m going to give everybody an introduction about what service delivery is. I'm Hailey, a product manager working on service delivery in Intuit Accountant Suite. So service delivery is about how you can bring all of your client work into one place without switching into all of your client files. Let's go into talking a little bit more about what Books Close is.
What we've heard is that you are spending so much time switching between firm contacts, client contacts, third-party apps, and all of these different things to track a month-end close process. We created Books Close to help accountants manage and track their work for month-end close at scale, all within Intuit Accountant Suite.
What that means is we created a closed dashboard with all of the information and status you might need. With customizable templates and workflows, we let you do the work across all of your clients, all within Intuit Accountant Suite. I am going to do a live demo about what Books Close is, so let's get into that.
To get us kicked off, let's go into the service delivery tab. So how do you get there? While you're in Intuit Accountant Suite, you can go into your work tab and then click on Books Close here. This brings you to the Books Close dashboard. This is your bird's-eye view about all of your clients, and all of their month-end closes and statuses.
You can see the different clients that you have closed on, who's working on them, the status, how many tasks were done, and the period. Now, here's how you can actually get the value of Books Close. You can go into your file review page by clicking open on a specific close that you want to see. So let's say today I want to go work on Garcia, which is one of my clients.
So I'll click open to go into the file review page. Here, I can see the pre-closed section where I have a bunch of tasks. I can customize this exactly how my firm does monthly-end close processes. I can add links, and it's one easy way to track the work that has to get done. I also have the account reconciliation section that shows me the reconciled through date, ending balance, and the number of unreconciled transactions for each of the accounts, and I can also add or remove accounts that I want to do reconciliation on month by month.
I can assign and manage the assignee for this task, and I can also do the work and view and reconcile directly in Intuit Accountant Suite. I don't need to go into QuickBooks Online. Now here is a transaction review. This is where the biggest neat part of Books Close is. This is where you can look at all of your clients’ transactions, and it pulls through different transactions that need attention for month-end close.
So for our uncategorized transaction check, you can see all of the transactions that were in the uncategorized category. You can bulk update, bulk edit, bulk void, and bulk delete. You can also mark things directly, so you don't need to do the work in the shadow file. You can also use inclusions and exclusions to set up specific rules for how you want your transaction grid to show up.
You can also ask questions on every single transaction, so you can request more information to get your client to respond and get more answers. You can go into your request to get the rest of the information still on the file review page. You'll also have the Pay Entity Review section, which has a bunch of different tasks to help you manage your customers.
Now to new vendors, new accounts, duplicate customers, and duplicate vendors. To customize this section, you can use the Add or Remove checks. We also have a final review section where you can review the different reports that you want to see, all within Intuit Accountant Suite. You can also customize this section depending on what you want to see.
You still have additional items where you can go directly into shadow for the different actions you might need to take, such as locking books or managing your roles. That's kind of how we've been working on building out the Books Close file review page to help you do work on your client.
Let me tell you about how you can standardize file review across all of your clients. So this is one instance of my close for Garcia. Let's say I have a bunch of other clients that I want to close. I can go into my Books Close settings, and here is where the standardization really comes in. I can go into my preferences, can see my assignees, and choose which assignees I want for each close.
So maybe at my firm, I might have directors instead of approvers. I can also, if I'm a firm of one, turn off different roles and just have one person. I can have different custom statuses to track things that match my firm's language. I can also create templates for all of this. You can make a copy of our recommended books cost template with the month-end close task.
Here's a really cool improvement we've made in the last month. We heard that for people using Books Close templates, they want to be able to find those inclusions, exclusions, and thresholds on the template. So we made that all available in the template. You can have further customization.
So if you want your expenses and goals without attachments to always be flagging for more than $100, you can make that update and save it in your template. You can save and set your template as default and then when you are onboard. This is where the standardization comes in. When you go back to your Books Close dashboard, this is where you can onboard your close client.
You can select the client and you can select the template you need. You can also select the specific people who will be assigned to the different roles you've set up. So that's a little bit how Books Close helps you standardize and scale and do your work across all of your clients.
Arti Patel Martinez: Amazing, Hailey, thank you so much for that walkthrough!
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*This information is intended to outline our general product direction, but represents no obligation and should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. Additional terms, conditions and fees may apply with certain features and functionality. Eligibility criteria may apply. Product offers, features, functionality are subject to change without notice. Product screen images simulated. Video sequences shortened.
