March 2019 Meeting Notes

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ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC.

Vice President Melissa Barton opened the March meeting.  Participants introduced themselves and gave shout outs.

·        Today’s topic: QuickBooks and e-Commerce.  Speakers: Alicia Katz Pollock of RoyalWise Solutions and Melissa Barton of SimpleBooks.  One of the hallmarks of e-commerce is the use of electronic payments via website shopping carts.  Amazon and Etsy were mentioned as two retail marketplaces.  The use of third-party merchant processing allows connection to payment processing.  Options for third party processing include Stripe/Authorize and PayPal. 

·        There are pros and cons of integrating electronic payment processing with QuickBooks.  Advantages include reporting and data hub.  Disadvantages include setup, maintenance and redundancy.

·        In discussing sales tax features, shopping carts generally work better than QuickBooks due to the setup work involved. 

·        QuickBooks and clients with inventory-  drop shipment inventory sales, like that used with Amazon, come into QuickBooks monthly.  Third party inventory solutions, such as SOS Inventory or Locate were brought up as better alternatives than QuickBooks.

·        Recording sales into QuickBooks can occur in various ways.

A.      Import actual sales.  This works well for repeat customers because customer names are in QuickBooks.

B.     Import generic sales

C.     Manage as clearing accounts:  Zapier- links any 2 apps; Webgility – maps e-commerce to QuickBooks

D.     Manually enter totals via adjusting journal entries or monthly sales receipts

·        Lightspeed is a point of sale system that connects to QuickBooks.  It is a good value and can map sales.  Ship Station allows customer tracking and creates barcodes.  A core question is what level of mapping is available.  The web designer should be interviewed as to the level of mapping that is available before they provide services. ShareARefund.com tracks shipments and automates shipping refunds if an item has not shipped timely.

·        Software solutions for sales activity include Shopify, Cloud Cart Connector and Webgility.  Zapier can create sales receipts for many e-commerce websites.  Another choice is to not use software but to import from the bank and use the banking rule to automate transaction entries.

·        Roadblocks and problems: 

1.      Returns or credits can be tracked in up to three places – in the shopping cart, at the merchant processor level or in QuickBooks. 

2.      Reconciliations – clearing accounts may not have statements – Shopify doesn’t have a statement.  Also inventory likely needs adjusting with returns.

·        Many business owners like using Stripe but it is harder on bookkeepers. 

·        The next meeting will be April 4, 2019.  The meeting topic will be “Tax Season – What worked and what didn’t work”.

 

 

 

 

 

March 1, 2018 Meeting - Xero Demonstration

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Xero Software March 1, 2018

President Kim Boaz opened the March 1st meeting with introductions.

The meeting was a demonstration of the Xero software program by Sarah Courtney and Tina Miller from Xero.

Xero was started 15 years ago in New Zealand and introduced to the United States in 2012.  The program was developed to have access to accurate, up to date financial information.  It is a cloud-based program that uses bank and other financial institutions continual online downloads.  It was developed for small businesses. Each account can have unlimited users and updates to the program are done every 3-6 weeks.   There are currently over 600 add-on partners, including T-sheets, hubdoc, shopfy and square allowing users to customize the software to fit their company’s needs.

Xero has several pricing points depending on the business needs.

Sarah and Tina then gave a demo of the program.  When you become an advisor, you get a free subscription to the program for your business.  Xero has online training videos along with Xero U, Xero TV and a certification program all free for advisors.   Their Facebook page is Xero NH America.

It was a good presentation.  Xero is worth checking out.

April 5th meeting will be an open discussion, bring your questions, issues and recommendations of things that work.    Meeting will be at Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 1st Ave., Portland, OR 97219.  11:30-1:00 pm and it is a bring your own lunch style meeting.

 

July 6th 2017 Meeting Minutes - The Cloud Ecosystem

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ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC. Meeting Minutes

July 6, 2017

The June 6 meeting was held at the Meals on Wheels building located at 7710 SW 31st Avenue in Portland.  President Kim Boaz opened the meeting by having guests introduce themselves.  Regular members then introduced themselves, giving shout outs to fellow members and mentioning any needs.

Renee Trump, membership & promotions coordinator of All Star Accounting Professionals, Inc. was the speaker for today’s meeting on the topic of The Cloud Accounting Ecosystem.  Renee is an owner with the firm of Pasaban Accounting Solutions and has a number of years of experience with accounting including experience at a law firm and in the hospitality industry.  Renee stated that collaboration allows us to do more than we can do ourselves.  Per research, 65% of users use the cloud for bookkeeping; 43% use smartphones to help run their business and 65% use the cloud for invoicing and payments.  The benefits include real time information for decision making and the ability to provide advisory services for clients.  Renee next discussed Defining the Workflow Adoption Curve which can be found at https://content.hubdoc.com/hubdoc-blog/defining-the-workflow-adoption-curve.  This site shows the six stages of the workflow adoption curve, including awareness, research, trial period, initial adoption, client migration and workflow mastery.  In the “Get Visual” portion of her presentation, Renee explained the main software her firm, Pasaban Accounting Solutions, uses to capture and report information.  Pasaban uses Bill.com which allows invoices to be entered quickly and easily, permits approval of the bill and scheduling of the payment, including the method of payment.  Hubdoc automatically pulls bills and statements into one secure hub so you don’t need to log onto multiple sites each month to gather recurring bills.  QuickBooks Online is used as the main accounting software and Futrli allows clients to visualize their financials with graphs and easy to use reports that are more business owner friendly. The final portion of the presentation discussed documenting and refining your processes.  Melissa Barton stated that there is an app called Transaction Pro Deleter which costs about $200 and can quickly and easily remove unwanted transactions from QBO and QuickBooks desktop. Kim was interested in an online ability to store and securely share files for multiple clients in one location.  Box.com was offered as a solution.

To wrap up the topic, we broke down into smaller groups to discuss one of more related questions that Renee included on the overhead screen.

Kim closed the meeting by mentioning our website which can be found either at ASAPPDX.com or AllStarAccountingProfessionals.com.  Meeting notes can be found on the blog tab of the website.  Meetings are the first Thursday of each month from 11:30 – 1:00.  The location is currently at 7710 SW 31st Avenue in Portland but we are looking for an Eastside location as well.  If anyone is aware of a potential Eastside location to hold meetings, please email Kim Boaz at Kim@backtobasicsbookkeeping.com.  We currently pay $50 for a 2- hour timeslot at the Meals on Wheels location.  We also host quarterly social events with the most recent events including seeing the movie The Accountant and an after-hours social at The Punch Bowl Social in downtown Portland.  September 21 is our next quarterly event date so please hold that date open.  Terrie Marsh is working on this event.  We are interested in growing our membership so please remember to promote ASAP on social media.  We are also starting to offer short promotions to those who bring in a gift card or similar item of value for a business card drawing.

The next All-Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on August 3 at the Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31st Avenue, Portland 97219.  We hope to see you there!

 

July 6th 2017 Meeting Minutes Bullet Points

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ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC. Meeting Minutes Bullet Points

July 6, 2017

 

  • The June 6 meeting was held at the Meals on Wheels building located at 7710 SW 31st Avenue in Portland.
  • Renee Trump was the speaker for today’s meeting on the topic of The Cloud Accounting Ecosystem. Renee is an owner with the firm of Pasaban Accounting Solutions.
  • Collaboration allows us to do more than we can do ourselves. Per research, 65% of users use the cloud for bookkeeping, invoicing and payments; 43% use smartphones to help run their business.  The benefits include real time information for decision making and the ability to provide advisory services for clients.
  • Renee discussed Defining the Workflow Adoption Curve which can be found at https://content.hubdoc.com/hubdoc-blog/defining-the-workflow-adoption-curve. This site shows the six stages of the workflow adoption curve, including awareness, research, trial period, initial adoption, client migration and workflow mastery.
  • In the “Get Visual” portion of her presentation, Renee explained the main software her firm, Pasaban Accounting Solutions, uses to capture and report information. Pasaban uses Bill.com, Hubdoc, QuickBooks Online and Futrli.
  • The final portion of the presentation discussed documenting and refining your processes. To wrap up the topic, we broke down into smaller groups to discuss one of more related questions that Renee included on the overhead screen.
  • Kim closed the meeting by mentioning our website which can be found either at ASAPPDX.com or AllStarAccountingProfessionals.com. Meeting notes can be found on the blog tab of the website.
  • Meetings are the first Thursday of each month from 11:30 – 1:00.
  • We are looking for an Eastside location to meet. If anyone is aware of a potential Eastside location to hold meetings, please email Kim Boaz at Kim@backtobasicsbookkeeping.com.
  • Recent quarterly social events include seeing the movie The Accountant and an after-hours social at The Punch Bowl Social in downtown Portland. September 21 is our next quarterly event date so please hold that date open.
  • We are interested in growing our membership so please remember to promote ASAP on social media. We are also starting to offer short promotions to those who bring in a gift card or similar item of value for a business card drawing.
  • The next All-Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on August 3 at the Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31st Avenue, Portland 97219. We hope to see you there!