March 2nd Meeting Minutes, Chuck Palmer, Heartland

Melissa Barton, our vice president, started the meeting.  She had those present introduce themselves.  Today’s guest speaker was Chuck Palmer with Heartland who discussed the timely topic of professional liability.  Chuck owned a business performing outsourced CFO services.  Chuck provided a real-life example from his personal experience of a roofing company that needed bookkeeping services.  The relationship with the roofing company was positive until a general manager was later hired.  As the relationship was ending, a final bill for $6,700 was submitted by Chuck’s company but the bill went unpaid.  The roofing company filed a lawsuit against Chuck’s company alleging 26 points in a letter.  Of the 26 points, 25 were incorrect and the one correct point was already addressed.  The case went to court.  In the end, the lawsuit was dropped and the bill was written off.  In many cases, litigation has more to do with emotions than facts. Two questions were raised.  First, how do we prevent litigation from occurring?  Secondly, how do we resolve litigation?  One critical step in preventing litigation is screening clients during the client acquisition phase.  Questions you may wish to ask a potential client include:

1. Why are you looking for a new accountant?
2. Ask for a copy of the QuickBooks file to review the file for problems.
3. Use a professional services engagement letter and be as specific as possible
4. Be clear that business management is not included
5. Recommend an automated payment policy for payment of fees
6. Have a solid insurance company. Understand what is covered and what is not.  Sit down with your agent to review your insurance coverage.

Communication and documentation are key.  Email your understanding to your client.  You may also wish to run a bank reference check before acquiring the client.  Document retention is very important.

Linda Lagraff asked how to deal with liability in an engagement letter for clients that provide bank account and credit card access to bookkeepers and accountants.  One suggestion was to recommend password security in an engagement letter.  Another comment recommended use of read only access for bank and payroll for bookkeepers and accountants.

We are looking for speakers for upcoming meetings.  Kim will be the speaker for April and the topic is “What is your Super Power/Niche?”  If you don’t know, we’ll help you discover it.

Our group will continue to meet at the Meals on Wheels site until we have space on the eastside of Portland for 25 to 30 people.

Bullet Points:

• Melissa Barton, our vice president, started the meeting. She had those present introduce themselves.
• Today’s guest speaker was Chuck Palmer with Heartland who discussed the timely topic of professional liability. Chuck owned a business performing outsourced CFO services.  Chuck provided a real-life example from his personal experience of a roofing company that needed bookkeeping services.
• The roofing company filed a lawsuit against Chuck’s company alleging 26 points in a letter. The case went to court.  In the end, the lawsuit was dropped and the bill was written off.  In many cases, litigation has more to do with emotions than facts.
• Two questions were raised. First, how do we prevent litigation from occurring?  Secondly, how do we resolve litigation?
• One critical step in preventing litigation is screening clients during the client acquisition phase.  Questions you may wish to ask a potential client include:

1. Why are you looking for a new accountant?
2. Ask for a copy of the QuickBooks file to review the file for problems.
3. Use a professional services engagement letter and be as specific as possible
4. Be clear that business management is not included
5. Recommend an automated payment policy for payment of fees
6. Have a solid insurance company. Understand what is covered and what is not.  Sit down with your agent to review your insurance coverage.

• Communication and documentation are key.
• Linda Lagraff asked how to deal with liability in an engagement letter for clients that provide bank account and credit card access to bookkeepers and accountants. Suggestions included recommending password security in an engagement letter and use of read only access for bank and payroll.
• We are looking for speakers for upcoming meetings. Kim will be the speaker for April and the topic is “What is your Super Power/Niche?”
• Our group will continue to meet at the Meals on Wheels site until we have space on the eastside of Portland for 25 to 30 people.

February 2nd 2017 Meeting Minutes -Bullet Points

ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC. Meeting Minutes- Bullet Points

February 2, 2017

• Kim Boaz opened the February meeting asking each attendee to introduce themselves, provide shout outs to other members and allowing each member to state a goal they have for 2017.
• Alicia Katz Pollock was today’s presenter and provided a slide presentation on QuickBooks Online. Alicia is a QuickBooks trainer with Royalwise and offers QuickBooks training and classes.    She specializes in QuickBooks accounting setup and questions.
• Alicia mentioned that QuickBooks Online (QBO) does many of the same functions as the desktop but in different places. She discussed the QuickBooks Labs option and the Audit Trail.
• The cost per month for QBO is $40 for the Plus version, $30 for Essentials and $15 for Simple Start. Wholesale pricing for clients is available to bookkeepers and accountants, where the client pays you instead of Intuit.  Alicia provided a helpful tool for cleaning up errors in billable expenses  and discussed management of rules to classify transactions for Bank Feeds.
• QuickBooks Online be backed up but you must use Internet Explorer. Select the “gear” icon, then export data.
• It is also possible to convert QuickBooks Enterprise to QuickBooks Pro or Premier if none of the Enterprise features were used previously.   Use //royalwise.com/?p=9793 to help convert your file.
• Alicia next explained several keyboard shortcuts including “Ctrl-Alt-?” for a shortcut list.
• You can have the software be used as a calculator by doing a calculation in an amount field.
• When working between different areas of QuickBooks, you can open multiple tabs by right clicking on the tab and duplicating a tab. You may need to hit the refresh button if you make changes and want to see the results.
• To see two different files, you would open two separate files, each one in a different browser, such as Chrome and Firefox. Using Chrome incognito allows for a cleaner experience.
• You can use your browser’s search function (Ctrl-F) to search within QBO as well.
• Alicia’s contact information is as follows: Alicia@royalwise.com; info@royalwise.com; 503-406-6550.  You may also sign up for their newsletter on the Royalwise website.  Thank you, Alicia, for a great presentation!

Meeting Minutes September 3, 2015

Kim Boaz opened the meeting and had each person select a name from the group.  She encouraged everyone to acquire the contact information of the person’s name they drew and meet to get to know each other better. Kim briefly recapped some highlights from the August meeting.  She mentioned that E & O and liability insurance for bookkeepers averages $875 per year.  Kim recommends calling Colleen Byers of Pacific Benefit Consultants at 1-800-588-8688 or emailing at cbyers@pbeins.com to discuss insurance needs.  If you mention that Kim Boaz is the daughter of Donna Corwin you may receive a better rate.

Our group is officially registered with the Oregon Secretary of State and we have a fiscal year ending June 30 so the IRS Form 990-N will be due November 15.  Kevin provided Web Title software for $76 that could assist with our website.

Diana Chung volunteered to be secretary for the group and Sandy is co-secretary.  Dues will be $50 for the first fiscal year ending June 30, 2016 and $60 per year thereafter.  Starting October 1, you may send Linda Lagraff your dues.

Our group will meet on the East Side at Kevin Minkoff’s office for a Hubdoc webinar.  Kevin’s office is located at 11618 NE Halsey St., Portland, OR 97220.   Hubdoc allows scanning receipts and connects with our phones and banking.  For our November meeting, we will do a recap of the year and we’ll have our second annual Christmas lunch in December.