Nonprofits: QuickBooks Tips and Tricks

Join Carolyn Sechler, CPA for a tutorial on getting the most out of QuickBooks as a financial reporting tool. She'll show you some valuable techniques for delivering basic and specialized reports for your organization. Learn to tame QuickBooks and make it sing your tune!

STRENGTHEN YOUR BUSINESS WITH IMPROVED INSIGHT!

Helping You Keep Better Track of Your Business!

You can select from a wide range of professional services designed to help your business reach the next level. We provide accurate, comprehensive financial information on a timely basis along with critical analysis, adding value beyond traditional reporting. Whether you're a start-up or an established business, we can point you in the right direction and keep you on course!

Consider the value we offer:

Provide management with up-to-date financial statements needed to make informed business decisions.

General ledger maintenance, bank statement, credit card and investments reconciliation; Accounts payable/ receivable tracking and analysis; On-time bill paying electronically or by check.

Maximize the latest technologies to deliver our services in a productive, efficient, and cost-effective manner.

All data is exchanged in real-time, giving you a quick and accurate picture of all your business activity anytime, anywhere.

Conference with you regularly to review and interpret financial results ensuring you understand the data and how it affects your business.

You can rest easy knowing that your accounting records are in the hands of your trusted bookkeeper, committed to your ongoing success.

Kathryn C. Tiffany, LLC
Bonded and Insured
Certified Professional Bookkeeper and Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor
Voorhees, NJ
856-803-4651
Intuit QuickBooks Profile: http://proadvisor.intuit.com/quickbooks-help/kathryn-tiffany
Website: http://www.TiffanyAccounting.com
Email: Kathryn@TiffanyAccounting.com 

What's New in QuickBooks 2015: Accountant ToolBox and Insights Page

Either an active QuickBooks ProAdvisor membership or an active QuickBooks Accountant Desktop Plus 2015 subscription permits you access to the Accountant ToolBox in your client’s QuickBooks Pro or Premier 2015 files!  You will have access to the Accountant Center, Batch Enter Transactions and Client Data Review when you log into your Accountant ToolBox!


Insights Page is new to QuickBooks 2015 and provides at-a-glance details of the company’s financial position!

Intuit QuickBooks Year End Procedures

Setting the closing date and requiring the override password helps protect prior periods from unauthorized changes, but these measures do not entirely prevent them if a user knows the password. The QuickBooks Administrator can grant or deny users the right to change prior period data (provided that there is a closing date entered in the file). Unless other security measures are breached (such as an unauthorized user logging in as the Administrator), this prevents unauthorized users from changing prior period data even if they have learned the password to override closing date restrictions.

Intuit QuickBooks Year End Procedures and Periodic Tasks

The Review List Changes in the Client Data Review will show any accounts added, deleted, name changes and merged.

Intuit QuickBooks Reporting

The Sales by Customer Summary report shows total sales for each Customer:Job. It provides a simple, quick way to determine how much each customer purchased during the period.

Intuit QuickBooks Payroll and Time Tracking

You can transfer time data for existing employees by selecting the “Use time data to create paychecks” checkbox on the Payroll Info tab of the employee’s record. Note, however, that selecting this checkbox on the Employee Defaults will affect new employees, not existing ones.

Intuit QuickBooks Payroll and Time Tracking

Unscheduled Payroll should be used to cut off-cycle checks and bonus checks that are not included in the employee’s regular paycheck.

Intuit QuickBooks Payroll

Intuit Full Service Payroll can be used by QuickBooks for Mac users and those who do not currently use QuickBooks.

Reconciling isn’t just for bank accounts

All accounts with activity on the balance sheet should be reconciled regularly (with the exception of Retained Earnings which cannot be reconciled in QuickBooks).

QuickBooks service discontinuation policy and upgrade information: Calendar Year 2015 Discontinuation Policy (QuickBooks 2012 Products)

In with the new, out with the old. If you happen to be still using QuickBooks 2012, (both the Mac and Windows version) then come May 31, 2015 certain features will go kaput.

Before we delve in, you can see further details and documentation from Intuit here.

So, what does that mean for QuickBooks 2012:

Any “add-on service” that you use by Intuit (be it payroll, online banking, etc.) won’t be available until you upgrade to a new product.

Intuit will seize live support.

Intuit won’t guarantee the registration of products or retrieval of keycodes.

Intuit stop providing manuals or replacement CD’s (although you can download them here).

These changes apply to the following products:

QuickBooks Pro 2012
QuickBooks Premier 2012
QuickBooks Accountant 2012
QuickBooks for Mac 2012
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions V12

Remember, you can avoid these inconveniences by upgrading to a more current version of the product.

Services Discontinued for QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise and Mac 2012

After May 31, 2015 you won’t be able to utilize the following services if you are using the 2012 versions:

Basic, Standard, Enhanced or Assisted Payroll: After the cutoff, QuickBooks 2012 will seize to automatically calculate the correct payroll taxes, provide you with updated forms, or send payroll data.

You will no longer have access to the Employee Organizer.

The 1099 Wizard will retire.

QuickBooks Merchant Service will not process any credit card transactions with QuickBooks 2012 (you can still process outside of QB). If you’re a terminal customer your credit card transactions will still go through, you just won’t be able to download them to QuickBooks 2012.

Automatic Credit Card Billing will be RIP.

Check Solution will no longer process transactions in QuickBooks 2012.

Bill Pay will be no more.

Billing Solution is retiring for good. Although, if you upgrade to a newer version of QuickBooks you can convert to the new QuickBooks Payments product (which has a different set of features).

Intuit PaymentNetwork won’t process or download online payment transactions with QuickBooks 2012.

Can’t use Accountant’s Copy File Transfer (ACFT).

Online Banking will no longer work.

You must upgrade to use Enterprise Solutions Full Service Plan (FSP)

Live Technical Support will be no longer.

No more Online Backup function.

Third party add-on apps and products shouldn’t be affected, but you should check with that vendor to make sure.

Above is an excerpt from an article by Charlie Russell on QuickBooks and Beyond. To see the article in it's entirety, click here.

Allowance Method To Write-off Bad Debt

Allowance Method

The allowance method records an expense to bad debt using an estimate of accounts that are unlikely to be collected before specific customer accounts are identified as being uncollectible. 

The estimate is determined by management and is based on a percentage of accounts receivable or sales.

The percentage rate may be based on historical trends, economic trends or some other form of measurement. 

The method uses a contra-asset account to accounts receivable ... allowance for doubtful accounts, to maintain the estimate of accounts that will become bad debt. 

The account is adjusted as accounts are written off.

Recognition Entry

The first step in the allowance method is to pass an adjusting entry at the end of an accounting period to recognize estimated bad debts expense. 

Unlike direct write-off method, we do not credit accounts receivable at this stage because it is actually a control account of many individual debtor accounts and we do not yet not know which particular debtor will make a default. 

We only know the estimated amount of receivables which are likely to end up uncollected. 

Therefore a provision account called allowance for doubtful accounts is credited in the adjusting entry.

Thus:

Bad Debts Expense  600

Allowance for Doubtful Accounts 600