Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll showcase the new Books Close in Intuit Accountant Suite.
Hey, ProAdvisors, it's Jaclyn, 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 Anusha, who will show us how to use Books Close in Intuit Accountant Suite.
Anusha, welcome.
Anusha Natarajan: Thank you so much for having me, Jaclyn. I'm super excited to be here to talk about the new Books Close feature.
We know accountants have to use a lot of third-party apps, and jump in and out of clients’ QuickBooks files to complete month-end close. This is why we launched Books Close.
It's a new feature within the brand new Intuit Accountant Suite. It is an advanced version of our Books Review feature that works at the firm level so you can track and work on month-end close for all of your clients in one place.
It comes with a closed dashboard that shows you close status across all your clients, actionable workflows with embedded data so you can track and work on the task in one place, AI recommendations to bring you efficiency, and customizable templates so you can tailor the tool to your firm's workflow.
Now let's jump in and do a demo of Books Close.
In order to access Books Close, you have to be in the Intuit Accountant Suite. You can opt into the Accountant Suite as a primary admin by logging into QuickBooks Online Accountant. Once you've opted in to either the core SKU or the accelerate SKU of Intuit Accountant Suite, you can go into All Apps, choose Books Close from the menu, and then opt into Books Close as well.
Once you have Books Close, you can go into this Overview page. The first time you come into the Books Close Overview page, we recommend you choose Settings so you can clone the standard template we offer for Books Close and make a copy for your own firm.
You can change due dates and add tasks in the pre-close, as well as additional items section where you can add post closing tasks. You can also choose the transaction checks that you would like to do for all of your clients.
So for example, if you don't want to do certain checks, you move those and then save your template to the library. Once you save it, you can also set it as your default template.
Now that we've set up our default template, let's onboard a client.
So I'm going to choose Hair by Helena. So the default template that I just set up showed up here. I am going to assign it to myself, and then pick the period which is the current close of November, then I'm going to hit save and start close. Now I'll be taken to the File Review page, where I can see all the different tasks that I need to complete in order to complete this month-end close. I can always add additional pre-close, and I'll share items tasks that are specific to this client, and when I add those, they will carry over month over month for this specific client. So I only have to do this work once.
After you complete the pre-close section, you can go into the account reconciliation section, where we automatically pull all bank and credit card accounts, and show them here as tasks. You can go into each of these accounts and reconcile them, and come back to the workflow without leaving the Accountant Suite. You can also add or remove other balance sheet accounts that you would like to reconcile by clicking here.
Once you're done with the account reconciliation, you can go into Transaction Review. Here we provide a lot of different transaction checks to complete your review. We can go into Uncategorized. You will see all of the transactions that are uncategorized expense, asset, or income in this section. We default the date range to the close period, but you can always customize that.
You can also choose other accounts, like ask my accountant that you want to include in your uncategorized transactions. If you want to update a category, you don't have to leave the Accountant Suite. You can just update it from here, and it will instantly update QuickBooks.
Next, let's take a look at the Transactions without Payee section. Here, you can assign payees to your transactions. You can also do so in bulk. If you would like to remove certain transaction types, like journal entries from this section, you can do so from here. And once you complete the exclusion, we will remember that choice and roll it over month over month. So you only have to do that work again once.
Let's take a look at one more check, transactions greater than $2,500. Here, we automatically default the threshold to $2,500, but you can always update it to a custom amount that you prefer for this client, and we will only pull in those transactions. You can also mark transactions resolved if you think they are not an anomaly. If you do that, you can still find that transaction in the Mark Resolved section of this section.
Next section is the Final Review section. Here you can review your financial statements like P&L and Balance Sheet. Let's click Review. Here we show you a year to date view of the profit and loss statement so you can complete your account level reviews. In the future, we'll be adding a variance column as well as AI powered anomaly detection to make your review even faster.
Once you're done with the review, you can go back to your workflow.
Once you've completed the Final Review section, you can prepare and send the financial report package to the client by clicking on View Here in the Send Financial section. This is the only task that switches you into the client's QuickBooks, but we will be moving that task also to the Accountant Suite soon. After completing the final review, you can go into send financials, to send a financial report package to your client.
That's all I have. Thank you so much Jaclyn for having me.
Jaclyn Anku: Anusha, thank you so much for that walkthrough. And thank you for watching.
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For more product updates and demos, check out our In the Know Hub. We'll catch you next time.
