Measure Initiative, Inc (formerly Peterson Business Services): accounting

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Skyline by Uni-Data - Why We 'Cloud Hopped'

We use a variety of cloud hosting solutions for our clients, but I had a hard time selecting one that was a great fit for our office as an accounting firm. We loved our old hoster (at first), but it turned in to the one transaction that I would glare at on my bank statement each month.

The decision to make the change was a fluke - my business debit card was replaced and I was changing the card number with my vendors as the notices of cancellation were coming in. When I received the email from the old hoster, I took it as a forced opportunity to find someone else.

I had a variety of problems that needed a better solution...

User Experience
You may already know that I am absolutely in love with all things Citrix... Skyline by UniData uses the XenApp platform, which is user friendly and fast. The platform shows you all of your versions of QuickBooks and allows you to view your Q Drive with your files, all from one central location. LOVELY!

Multiple Versions of QuickBooks Software
Skyline allows me to have all six versions of QuickBooks that I need to host - 3 years each of Premier Accountant and Enterprise Accountant. All of the icons that I need are available at my fingertips as soon as I log in. YAY!

Accountants Copy
This is the biggest obstacle that I encountered with my previous hoster, which was a total deal killer and cut in to the value and purpose of hosting my QuickBooks files. If a client sent me an Accountants Copy Transfer file, I would have to convert the file locally then upload it to the platform. This defeated the value of the cloud, as I had to be on a computer with the software that I was trying to avoid hosting locally. Skyline by Uni-Data is program driven instead of file driven, so I can just save the transfer file to the Q Drive and convert it in the cloud. SWEET!

Customer Service
I will be the first to tell you that I am semi-demanding with my vendors... If you make a product and advertise its purpose, I get irritated when it doesn't live up to it's name. I have heard this time and again about my industry - that accounting folk don't like to be 'sold' - but when you do sell us you better follow through! I'm sure many of you calculate out the cost of an obstacle once its complete, figuring out how much time and money you just lost while solving a preventable issue. The nice thing about the support at Skyline was that when I did have a problem and was too busy to do a remote session, they figured it out on their end and just kept emailing me to have me do my side. A rep stayed until 8:30 pm to make sure that my problem was fixed! AWESOME SAUCE.

Price
Ho. Lee. Cow. I was sold with the user interface features of Skyline, but when the price came in so much lower than the 'other guys', I was absolutely amazed. You want to give me a better product, with better service, for a better price? SOLD!

And to top it all off, my dear friend and lovely peer Joanie Mann of Cooper Mann Consulting Group is now working with Uni-Data, which gets them another gold start sticker in my book. Go check them out, you'll be glad you did!

See you at QuickBooks Connect in San Jose!

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Preparing Taxes vs. Preparing Businesses for Success

Do you pride yourself in being old school? We all know that there are many clients who are still old school, so the aging firm shouldn't have a problem, right?

WRONG!

Sorry to say, but the progressive firms will soon be taking over the old school clients one by one. We work with many awesome CPA's and great tax firms. Despite their awesomeness, many resounding issues not only prevent the client from reaching their maximum potential, but even prevent us from providing outstanding service as a non-tax firm.

Are You the Expert?

Your client should not have more resources in your industry than you do. If your client comes to you looking for an answer, you better have it or know the person that does. We are lucky to have strong relationships with many other firms in our area so that we are able to call on each other when we get stuck. It is hard to keep up to date with all of the evolving technology in the world today - different versions, different years, different industries. All of us know the saying "be a specialist - not a generalist", but the truth about a tax firm is that you need to "be a generalist - know a specialist".

Is Your Clients Best Interest in Mind?

We are all in it to make money, and the easier we can do that the better. I have seen recommendations given to clients that are in the best interest of the CPA, but have a drastic negative affect on the businesses ability to reach their maximum potential. One example of this is advising clients to use whatever system works best with your tax software instead of helping them select the right system for their business. I had a call a few weeks ago from a potential client looking for QuickBooks setup at the recommendation of their CPA. After consulting with the client, they really needed an ERP system. A good accountant can construct a tax return from well kept records - but great accountants lead businesses to success by utilizing the tools that make the most sense for that particular industry.

Are you Progressive or Stagnant?

Maybe you are not so motivated to learn new things or build new relationships because you are nearing the end of your career. This is where you need to decide if you are going to leave a legacy or just 'fall off'. I have heard some people talk about succession planning and selling their contracts so that they can retire. The real question is, would someone want your practice? If they did, would your name be carried out gracefully or would your successor prove that you were behind in the times?

Can You Get on Board?

Of course you can! There are all kinds of things you can do to expand your list of referral partners and specialists. You can look online, locally and nationally for industry specific groups where a variety of folks may gather - like NAN (National Advisor Network), BKN (Bookkeepers Network), Sleeter Consultants Network, and Meetup groups. There's always the classic old school way of looking up your peers online and reaching out with a phone call or email (we recommend checking out the Intuit Find-a-ProAdvisor page). We also recommend that you look at attending at least one industry conference per year, whether it's a local training or a national conference like the upcoming QuickBooks Connect. This gives you an opportunity to mind-share with peers, connect with specialists, and meet product vendors.

Then What?

Keep in touch with your core group. Ask questions and find out what kind of businesses they can best serve and enjoy serving. Tell people what you enjoy and what you are best at. Don't be afraid to send an existing, new, or potential client to one of your specialist resources to get the assistance they require. Once you start building these reciprocal relationships you will find new enjoyment in your client base. You are more likely to be the hero by referring to the right person who can be quick and effective rather than trying to tackle something out of your realm of expertise and potentially being unsuccessful. If you are a tax firm, do taxes. If you are a tech firm, do tech. Your success is measured only by the success of your clients.

Good luck!

Do you have more ideas on this subject?

Feel free to share in the comments below or reach out on Twitter.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Your Platform Should Be More than just a POS Point of Sale System

And you know what we mean by POS.

Multi-channel sales is the way of the world today.

Traditional brick and mortar stores are looking at shopping cart add-ins. Paypal is raking in the dollars with processing fees for businesses who know no other way. Most retail companies sell online or wish that they could, but the industry is not making it easy for them to start, grow and remain compliant.

As a firm that specializes in accounting technology and business processes, we absolutely dread the process of revising systems for clients with multi-channel sales.

We love to help our clients, which is why it so frustrating when you cannot find the right tool to lead your client to growth and success. Many of these businesses need multiple features like an in house POS, a mobile POS, a webstore, and inventory management. Some limitations that we see in many of the current options are:

Scalability - platforms with all of the features are out of the price range for growing businesses or they are 'overkill'
Customer Tax Rates - taxibility is a simple yes/no or a stagnant, pre-assigned rate that does not auto-adjust by shipping address
Sales Tax Reports - reports are too narrow, have to dissect income numbers to categorize the taxable income amounts
Offline Availability - we are huge advocates of the cloud, but business cannot stop if the internet is down

Your 'industry specificity' could be holding you back. It is awesome to have solutions that are the perfect solution for an industry. But what about everybody else? What about that group of features that don't cater to a specific industry, but cater to almost everyone else? For example, Lettuce is a beautiful system that is great for wholesale and inventory - but they are missing retail customer management. Vend is a lovely solution that we use for brick and mortar stores with multiple locations, but they are limited in shipping and tax management. Lightspeed is a great solution for most everything multi-channel, but their limitations in sales tax are the one thing that prevents me from being able to implement them as the perfect solution.

The biggest problem with today's multi-channel sales systems is that they do not support complex sales tax situations.

Even if you are in one of the 4 states with no local or state sales taxes, it is still very likely that you should be remitting sales tax to somebody, somewhere. Some may say that complex sales tax situations are rare and that those companies should just shell out for an overkill solution to handle their own problem. Anyone who lives in a state with multiple sales tax rates by jurisdiction knows that it is very easy to find yourself in a 'complex' sales tax situation...

There is a very simple answer to improving your multi-channel POS system, and it's called Avalara. Aside from providing an awesome platform that links up with shopping carts, inventory and a local register (preferably iPad with offline availability), you must offer a solution to handle the sales tax complexities that come with multi-channel sales. The financial repercussions of a sales tax audit with a poor tracking system far outweigh any benefits that your solution can offer operationally. I don't care how many bells and whistles your system has, if it cannot survive the most rigid sales tax audit then it has no value to my multi-channel sales clients.

Do you have the perfect solution?

Tell us about it below to tweet to the world @PetersonBizSvcs

Friday, June 20, 2014

Does this App Belong in my Ecosystem?

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

All of the above.

But how do we know? We encounter too many scenarios with our clients where they are looking for a cut and dry response that we cannot provide for them. Just like nearly every other question when it comes to apps, accounting and taxation - it depends.

What does the app do?

We all know the phrase - there's an app for that! But what, exactly, is that? Is your app a time tracker, a payroll add-on with time tracking, a POS, a POS with time tracking, an inventory manager, an inventory manger with POS, an inventory manager with POS and time tracking, blah blah blah? There are a million different things that your app could be capable of, and the first thing that you need to know is exactly what the capabilities and limitations are. Once you know what your app can and cannot do, you can decide on the next question.

What is the app's role in the Ecosystem?

Many of us have taken the term 'Appify' and ran with it. Some of us ran the course, and some have gone off-roading... The biggest problem I see are app stacks instead of app systems (no relation to AppStack mobile site builder). Piling one app on top of another on top of another and so one just creates a huge mess. Many times an app will be integrated and later you find out that it is missing a feature, so you get another add on to fill that need and you end up with a million apps that no one can keep track of. There are plenty of awesome ecosystems that involve a strand of apps working together, and knowing each role and result in depth will help you decide which ones qualify as a system and which ones just make a crap pile.

Stack vs. System
When we are designing an ecosystem for a client, we look at multiple options for each process that requires a solution. A good saying here would be 'if you fail to plan you are planning to fail'. Let's compare two examples of a landscaping company:

A: Implements When I Work with GPS for time, Zen Payroll for processing, and SalesForce for appointments while using QBO for back-end accounting.

When I Work > Zen Payroll > QB Online < Sales Force

B: Implements Jobber for time/appointments/field management and QBO with payroll for back-end accounting.

Jobber > < QBO/QBOP

(If you are not sure which of these is a stack and which is a system, please send me a private email for a consulting session...)

The moral of the story is that both of these examples fill the need, but they are not created equally. You need to know your end goal and choose the apps that work together effectively to make the most streamlined system.

How much control do you need/want over the data?
I have overheard waaaay to much whining that all app data needs to 'sync seamlessly into QuickBooks' to be perfect. I say NO WAY!!! One of the BIGGEST benefits I see to appification is that you can choose an app based on its ability to feed information into your back-end accounting system. We all have 'that client' that no matter how much we train them, they will always mess up their books. I love that I have platform options so that I can put 'that guy' on the POS that allows me to look at their beautiful reports and post them as journal entries (rather than automatically sending every erroneous transaction into QB for me to clean out). I believe that the best apps are those that give you options on how you retrieve your data.

What does your data look like once it is in the back-end system?
My answer to this: who cares? As long as it is accurate and not redundant, I prefer ONE posting from the app to summarize the information. Most people ask my why I would not want every transaction to come through... Well, if I wanted every transaction spelled out in QuickBooks then why the heck did I buy the app??? Of course the expectations for import will vary depending the goal you are trying to achieve, and if you have completed the proper ecosystem engineering process then you should be able to assess the part quite simply. Just remember that you are looking for a streamlined system, not a redundant stack.

Would you be interested in a course on this subject?

Tell us on Twitter @PetersonBizSvcs

The Pro-Apptive Approach to Working with Developers.

I have been hearing a lot of talk and questions from my peers about apps. What they love and what they hate, but mostly what they wonder... There is always a question of why... Why don't you have this, why does this do that, why does this import, why doesn't that export... In my opinion, many of these whys aren't really whys at all, they are When's. What we really want to know is when will it do this, when will that fixed, when can I use this app the way I want too? Basically, we suck at explaining ourselves to developers. I was given some great opportunities to speak with developers at multiple companies this week. Aside from being able to communicate my ideas to them, I was able to learn how they need to receive information I order for it to have any value to their teams.

They don't know what you're saying because it doesn't make sense.

Draw a picture, compare a competitor, remind them that you don't speak their language. I am constantly reminding developers that I have no idea what they have to do on the back end to make my dream come true, and encourage them to re-direct my thoughts according to technical feasibility. Most of the time when we are trying to explain something we are looking at it from a 1-client view or an 'I want' perspective. The most effective way to validate your suggestion is to prove that your 'want' adds value not just to you, but to the platform as a whole. Paint them a picture not just of the what, but also of the why. The how is up to them.

We give input without implementation experience.

Many times we turn away from a product due to the 'feature lack' that we see in a demo. We may not implement that product because of one little thing that is missing, therefore our only experience is the demo. Once we have made the decision NOT to try a product, we need to accept that since we have absolutely no working experience with the program, we have no place discrediting it's application. For example I wanted to integrate Lettuce for a client but I needed a more robust sales tax module, so I only demoed it. I know of some other industries it would be great in and I would apply it in a heart beat. The fact that I implemented Vend instead of Lettuce does not make Vend a better app, it makes it a better app for that client. We need to quit pretending like every industry should have a shoe box solution and work on becoming educated ecosystem engineers.

When you divorce a vendor, forget the no contact order.

I'm sure ALL of us have had bad experiences with apps... Spending hours fixing things that we can't bill for because it was our dumb@$$ that suggested the implementation. I have divorced many an app (I even took a year off from QBO once), but we need to remember to be civil. You are much better off leaving amicably so that you can keep yourself educated on any new things that may put that app ahead. We need to forgive developers of their past mistakes so that we can take advantage of their future triumphs.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

When I demo a product I usually go in super excited about where I want to use it and the clients that I'll put on it. By the end of the demo I generally have a huge paradigm shift and realize that it is not what I thought it was at all. If they fool you once with their sales rep, email, or misleading advertisement, then shame on them for not being clear. I always look at this thankfully with a 'crisis-averted' attitude and throw the app in my toolbox for future use. Now if you choose to implement the product anyway because it's pretty or cheap or whatever, and it turns out not be the right fit, that is YOUR OWN fault. If you have demoed a product thoroughly and asked all of the right questions then there should be nothing that they told you that you did not verify before implementation. Test Test Test!! It is up to you to be the expert.

What's your opinion? Feel free to post, tweet or email your thoughts on the matter.

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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Internal project budgets - Streamlined!

I became so excited the other night when I took a multi-spreadsheet THING that my client was referring to as a 'marketing budget' and forced it into QuickBooks. This thing was not pretty. The budget had it's own set of items specific to the short term project at hand, and since QB would not track the budget the way that the marketing team needed to track it, there was a constant need to update the spreadsheet manually and hope that nothing got missed.

Before I give you the rundown of how I achieved success, let me just point out that this is not intended to be instructional for a basic user to repeat the process. I am going to make some assumptions that most people reading this are experienced enough in QB to get the point, and that you will contact me with any questions before attempting this at home!

The budget that I received had the short term marketing project broken down into 6 categories. QuickBooks offers me a budget by class (and this client does have a Marketing class set up), but we needed to see the expenses line by line more specifically than the account level offered by a P&L by class.

Create a Budget 'Customer'
To start, I created a Customer named 'Marketing Budget'. This is the only way that I could get QuickBooks to recognize my budget in a way that would provide me with an estimate vs. actual report.

Build your budget item list

Next, I created an item called 'Marketing Budget Expense'. This is my parent item for everything else in the budget. Under that, I created items for the 6 categories on the budget and numbered them as the initial outline was written by the marketing team. Though the original list was not numbered exactly how I would have set it up, there is no sense forcing your client to change things that don't really matter. We are here to make their lives easier, remember?

Each category item then became the parent for all of the line items in it's group. I was able to map each line item to the proper expense account and the hierarchy was lovely!

Enter your budget 'Estimate'
To begin the process of tracking the budget, I went to my client ('Marketing Budget') and entered an estimate with all of my budget items and amounts. This is what QB will use to produce your Estimate vs Actuals report.

Record budget expenses as Job Costs
Next I was able to record expenses by assigning them to the proper items and went back to add items in to previous expenses. Every expense must be recorded as an item and the proper budget (or 'customer') name assigned (in this case it was the Marketing Budget customer) for the report to come out accurate.

Everything was going GREAT, until I hit an expense reimbursement check...

So... what do we do when a budget expense/receipt qualifies as ONE item but needs to be broken up into TWO or more accounts? Well I'm glad you asked...

My real-life example was running into an expense reimbursement. The reimbursement needed to go under the 'Travel' line item in the marketing budget, but the sum of the expenses needed to be broken out into multiple accounts (not just the default travel account set up with the item). For this, we simply enter the total on the items side to the Travel item (so that it maps to the correct item on our budget report), then we CREDIT the expense account associated with the item by recording the amount as a negative on the expenses tab. Lastly, we break it out by DEBITING each individual expense account the amount that needs to assigned by recording positive amounts on the expense tab.

At this point, you are either thoroughly confused, nodding because you've done this before, or smiling uncontrollably because of the time saving tips you've just added to your knowledge base.

But wait, there's more!

None of this means anything until you run your report! This is the easy part :-)

Customize your budget report
Run an 'Estimates vs. Actuals' report and customize to filter for your specific job (here it was 'Marketing Budget'). Next, filter the items to only show your budget items. If you set up your item hierarchy properly, this should be a quick step. Customize your report title according to what your report is about, and if you would like you can uncheck the last 3 columns (I did that for my budget report because the columns were irrelevant for my purposes).

Ta-Dah!

The last step is to send to your client so that they can be impressed that you fixed something in one hour that they have been working on for three months. Woo hoo!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Accounting Automation and Online Banking (The good, the bad and the ugly...)

Monday I was reading an article on IntuitiveAccountant.com that was discussing the hope that Intuit got it right with their new bank feeds in QuickBooks 2014. I was intrigued, pleased to learn that they were integrating the same solution from their online product into the desktop solution. I got excited that I would finally be able to link up US Bank accounts to desktop files and that the transaction posting faster would be so much quicker. Sunshine and rainbows are in our future!

Some of the main points in the article were about the ineffectiveness of Web Connect and Direct Connect options. I never liked Direct Connect, it wasn't worth the crazy fees that the banks would charge and I would usually encounter some sort of connection issue. I didn't mind Web Connect, except for when my in-software browser didn't want to download or I accidentally 'over downloaded' transactions (let's be honest, who doesn't have at least one client file with super old duplicates waiting for acceptance in the online banking center?) Then there is batch-entry, a feature that I love to have but hate when I actually have to use it (though that has improved with 2014 as well). For the purpose of this article we will skip that solution ;-).

So what does all of this have to do with the Online Banking solution provided by your bank? Well.... I'm glad you asked!

The Good

When clients are ready for a bank change (for whatever reason), Chase Bank is my GO-TO. As much as I love to be an advocate for small local banks and credit unions, they just don't make sense for many businesses. Chase offers the ability to look at all of your business and personal accounts on one page, see deposit details (and I mean real details and check images, not just your deposit slip!), and check images. You can add accounts with limited permissions for employees or outside accountants as well.

What does this have to do with QuickBooks? To be competitive for QB users, banks should offer the Web Connect, Direct Connect and (obviously) the bank feed option. The detailed information that you can pull from online banking enables you to find information and verification for your transactions. Chase has made themselves a prime banking choice for cloud based accounting and QuickBooks users of all editions.

There are other banks that are competitive with Chase's services (Wells Fargo is one), but I have yet to find one that is competitive with the services and fees.

The Bad

Well, I think that many of us know who falls into this category.... I'll try not to name names, BUT we all know that US Bank has been a little behind in the times when it comes to QuickBooks integration. The bank feed feature for QB Desktop will probably benefit them the most as a banking option, even though they could step it up a notch by offering deposit details online as well.

There are many smaller banks whose download features are buried and hidden within the banking site and have date restrictions that make the feature useless when doing year end projects. Having continuous feed running all year, even for those you only see once a year, will be a huge time saver at tax time.

The Ugly....

Grrrr.....

If you have already used QuickBooks Online and synced up an account, you know how the acceptance process works. You skim the list, make sure that vendor names on transactions are posting the proper accounts, and accept accept match accept. Woo hoo! Good to go.

So how can this go wrong? What could be so ugly about it? Maybe some of you have experienced this before when syncing up with a smaller bank or credit union:

Name THAT vendor! Now imagine a whole month of this, or even longer with some interval clients. Some of you may be wondering what the big deal is... I'll explain. The 2nd column of the downloaded transactions window has the cute little excerpt that your online banking portal or bank statement would give you. Each institution seems to provide a varying number of characters on this screen, but as you can see all of the debit card transactions from this credit union begin with 'Xx Chk Purch', with the only variation being 'Xx Chk Purck Sig' in some places. Luckily we do have a little 'details' pull down that gives extended information, however the time lost from having pull the details on every card transactions is so significant in some cases that I wish I could just curl up with my Web Connect on QB Desktop.

Some of the other ugly's are bank changeovers. The sync window in QBO is not always updated immediatley with the bank change, preventing access (I've experienced this with the West Coast/Columbia change over recently) and sometimes the login window does not accommodate different account types (for example they will only take a username password when your account type may have a username, business ID and password).

* * *

So how do we avoid the ugly situations?

Pay attention to the services that your clients banks are offering. Even if the individual client is not utilizing all of the services you will have the answer when they (or a new client) may need it.

Build relationships with bankers at various banks and educate them on what works for their bank. One commercial lender I know would tell everyone to use QBO (as their bank did not offer Direct or Web Connect), but we all know that QBO is not the right solution for everyone! This should become less of a problem now that we can get bank feeds in QB Desktop 2014.

Inform and other professionals who influence your clients. Share your knowledge with the attorneys, insurance agents and financial planners in your network so that they can guide your mutual or future clients accordingly.

Share your insight about local national banks below or on one of other sites:

contact@petersonbusinessservices.com

twitter.com/petersonbizsvcs

facebook.com/petersonbusinessservices

Friday, September 6, 2013

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.

Questions?

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