March 2019 Meeting Notes

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”.

September 7th Meeting Notes - Data: Bring it in or leave it out?

Meeting Minutes Bullet Points September 7, 2017

• The September 7 meeting was held at the Meals on Wheels location in SW Portland.
• The speaker for the September 7 meeting was Melissa Barton. Melissa’s topic for the meeting was “Data – Bring it in or leave it Out?”  The high points of her presentation are stated below.

1. What Kind of Data Could You Bring In?
   1. Databases, sales contracts, timesheets, fixed assets.
   2. Software to assist in bringing in data: Clio, Square, Lightspeed, Esty, Bill4Time, Gusto, MJ Freeway,  Biotrack, SalesForce.
2. Why Should I Bring Data In?
   1. Balance Sheet may be incorrect without bringing in data
   2. Clients may be using outside systems that aren’t reconciled to your books.
3. Why Shouldn’t I Bring Data In?
   1. Burden of bringing data in
   2. Too much data to bring in
   3. Not enough data to bring in
   4. Possibly inaccurate data
4. How Should I Bring Data In?
   1. Sync
   2. Manual upload
   3. Run report and enter manually
   4. Enter adjusting journal entries
5. How to Bring Information In?
   1. Mapping for integration
   2. Create a manual for yourself and client
6. Make sure your system is maintainable
   1. Melissa uses Zoom meetings with clients. It is free if you stay under 50 minutes per meeting and is $15/month thereafter

• Alicia mentioned that on October 5 she is doing a QBO tips and tricks presentation.
• Our All Star Accounting Professional group will host a “Meet Our Members” event on October 26, 2017. The purpose is to invite other accounting professionals to grow our group and expand the expertise and collaboration of our members.  Kim will be emailing out an evite and RSVP for this event which will be held at the Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue, Portland 97219.
• During the month of December, we get together for lunch and socialization in lieu of our regular meeting. We will post the date and location for our luncheon soon.  As a reminder, our group does not meet in January due to the heavy workload that month.
• We will be launching an opportunity for members to give a two-minute commercial about their business and services in exchange for providing a $10 or $15 gift card during our monthly meetings.
• If you are interested in joining our non-profit group, the first meeting is complimentary. Please complete an online application and pay the annual dues before the second meeting.  The application may be found at asappdx.com.
• Next meeting is Thursday, October 5 at the Meals and Wheels location at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue, Portland 97219.

QBO Tips and Tricks link to presentation

QBOA Tips and Tricks presentation from 2/2/17 meeting

February 2nd 2017 Meeting Minutes -QBO Tips and Tricks

ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC. Meeting Minutes

February 2, 2017

Kim Boaz opened the February meeting asking each attendee to introduce themselves, provide shout outs to those members who helped them during the last month or so and allowing each member to state a goal they have for themselves for the year.

Our presenter today was Alicia Katz Pollock and she provided a slide presentation on QuickBooks Online.  Alicia is a QuickBooks trainer with Royalwise.  Training services offered include one-on-one, group, beginner, advanced and webinar classes.  She is in business with her husband, Jamie Pollock and they are Microsoft and Apple certified trainers.  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 explained that the QuickBooks Labs option, selected by clicking on the “gear” at the top right side of the screen, allows the user to turn on or off experimental features that QuickBooks is deciding whether to incorporate in future program releases.  The Audit Trail allows the user to see which prior user made changes, when the changes were made and the transaction before and after the change.  You can filter the changes as well to help locate specific information.  The Audit trail works best if each user has their own login.  You can also select the “More” button at the bottom of the computer screen to access the history of the transaction you are viewing.

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.  Use QBO.intuit.com/app/managebillableexpense.  She also went over how to manage rules so that the software helps to classify transactions for Bank Feeds.

A common question asked is “Can QBO be backed up?”  Yes, 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, +++ to advance the date, --- to reverse the date, “Y” to advance to beginning of Year, “R” to advance to end of Year, W/K for week and M/H for month within the date fields.  In addition, 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.  To make a memorized transaction, select “recurring” on the bottom of the transaction.

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!