Measure Initiative, Inc (formerly Peterson Business Services): Fool-proof(ish) Accounting with QuickBooks Online Apps

Are you tired of your clients screwing things up?

If the answer is no, then congratulations! You have achieved ultimate zen in your practice.

If the answer is yes, then ME TOO!

Many of my clients, contractors specifically, are always on the go. Many small service based companies have busy and slow seasons, which makes it hard to justify having a staff person to handle their accounting needs.

So what do they do? Well, DUH! They do it themselves like any good entrepreneur would! They are business owners ya know, which automatically qualifies them to run every part of their business. IGAAP you say? EFTPS you say? Insert-Acronym-Here, you say? Regardless of how fantastically skilled these business owners are at their chosen trade, they may not necessarily be qualified to man their own accounting department.

It's our own fault really. As accounting professionals, we have not made it easy for these business owners to utilize our expertise on a regular basis. It's expensive, time consuming, tedious, and leaves them feeling lost when we have a list of 99 questions after sorting through their shoe boxes. Sure, we can advise them on organization and try to make an 'action-plan' for the coming year, but as they (and we) go through our seasons, someone is bound to get lost along the way.

Luckily, technology is enabling us to keep a broader perspective on our clients books throughout the month/quarter/year, whereas before we would just have to sort it out at closing time. My personal favorite component to my monthly monitoring plans for service based businesses is the QuickBooks Online app for Iphone (of course there is a Droid app too...)

One of my favorite things about the QuickBooks Online app is the simplicity.

I actually love the fact that it has limited features and does not allow banking access. My clients don't need to be touching their registers from anywhere on their phone; if they want to check their account they can use their online banking app. My clients are told to do TWO simple things from their phone: Enter invoices, and receive payments.

That is literally all that I have many clients doing.

Why just these two things?

Well, because I can figure everything else out for myself! I can download and monitor the accounts from my laptop (though I will be SUPER thrilled when CloudSway has an app ready for account monitoring... that's another blog to come) and I can review all of their documentation at month end. If clients need additional assistance with A/P, I put them on Bill.com and have everything sent into the portal. Oh wait, did I mention that Bill.com syncs beautifully with QuickBooks Online? Yeah, I know, your welcome.