February 1st 2018 Meeting Notes

February 1st Meeting Notes Bulleted By Linda Lagraff

Technology: What's Working and What's Not.

February 1, 2018

Vice President Melissa Barton opened the February 1st meeting with a discussion of what is working and what isn’t with technology.  She told about a small manufacturing company that was trying to do too much in QB, when what they needed was to only track finance in QB and move everything else out.  She got them using ShipStation.

  • Discussion followed regarding other programs
  • LightSpeed was recommended for restaurants and small to medium size retail businesses. It integrates with QBs
  • Adobe, at the paid dues level, allows you to transfer pdf files to either excel or word programs.
  • The pdf2qbo program makes transferring bank statements to QuickBooks easier
  • com was highly recommended. It has authorizations features and allows clients to set up systems to assure those that need to see and approve bills prior to payment can.

Discussion then turned to 1099s and what worked or changes to consider for 2018

  • Have all vendors fill out a new W9 in Jan every year. This way all information is current and not waiting until a vendor reaches the $600 limit before remembering to collect a W-9
  • Clients should set up a policy that vendors will not be paid until the W-9 is received

As tax season is upon us questions were presented to the CPAs in attendance for their advice

  • Most liked to receive back-up or portable QB files.
  • Most liked that their clients used account numbers
  • Most also agreed that they like to be able to discuss things with a client’s bookkeeper. If your clients allow it, introduce yourself to their CPAs

March 1st meeting will be a demonstration of XERO software.  Presented by staff from XERO.  There will be time for questions.   Meeting will be at Meals on Wheels locatons at 7710 SW 1st Ave., Portland, OR 97219.  11:30-1:00 pm and it is a bring your own lunch style meeting.

August 3, 2017 Meeting Minutes - Getting to Know You

ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC. Meeting Minutes Bullet Points August 3, 2017

  • The August 3 meeting was held at the Meals on Wheels location in SW Portland. The purpose of today’s meeting was to get to know each other’s specialties.
  • We broke into smaller groups and discussed questions listed on the overhead projector to get to know each other better. We discussed the kind of clients we worked with, software, apps, any specialties and our experiences. At the end of our small group session, we came together again as a large group and explained what we learned about the other members in our small group.
  • This exercise was helpful to get to know our fellow members’ services and specialties better.
  • Please see the complete meeting minutes for August 3, 2017 if you are interested in a short comment about those who took part in the small group exercise.
  • There is an upcoming All‐Star Accounting Professionals social on September 21 at Grand Central Bowl at 6 PM. This is an event for the entire family. Please come and join us! Address is 808 SE Morrison Street, Portland 97214.
  • If you are interested in joining our group, please go to our website at asappdx.com.
  • The next All‐Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on September 7, 2017 at the
  • Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31st Avenue, Portland 97219.

July 6th 2017 Meeting Minutes - The Cloud Ecosystem

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!