This time of year, many are focused on getting in shape, losing weight and improving mental and physical health. It’s also a very good time to get your financials in order for a more profitable, less stressful, more organized year in business. When your financials are in shape and you commit to healthy habits of accurate entry, you will have a better understanding of your present financial health as well as a clear direction to reach your goals. As we discussed last blog, having a financial software package or app to manage all this data will help simplify all the reporting that needs to be done during and at the end of the year including: profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash-flow statements, tax returns and aging reports. Many businesses choose to use QuickBooks Online and its various versions including Essentials, Plus or Advanced. Because of its versatility for small to large business functions, QuickBooks has over 80% of the market share with more than 30 million businesses choosing their various services.
Common asked questions regarding QuickBooks include:
- Do you have to be an accountant to use QuickBooks?
- How can you tell if you’ve been managing your financials correctly in QuickBooks?
- What if you’ve been using QuickBooks for your business for some time, but your reports are incorrect and inconsistent \, and you have no idea how to fix?
- If it was not setup properly, can it be fixed and reconciled?
CLEANUP OF QUICKBOOKS
I. Do you need to be an accountant to use QuickBooks?
The first step is choosing the right software that fits your business needs, but the second and most challenging step is determining how to use the software management tools correctly. You don’t need to be an accountant to use, setup or manage QuickBooks for your business, but you do need an accountant to ensure compliance. QuickBooks does its best to provide information, tutorials, and tips to perform basic record keeping functions, but the software will not detect errors and confirm your information is complete and accurate for filing taxes. Some of these areas that many business owners tend to accidentally cause blunders include booking contributions and distributions to owners, double booking income or expenses, and not understanding how to correctly add fixed assets and enter depreciation and amortization.
So while we highly recommend seeking the help of a CPA, Accountant or QuickBooks Advisor for the bookkeeping portion of using Quickbooks you do not have to be an accountant for paying bills, running payroll, or sending invoices to your clients. Whether you are just starting out with a new business or have a QuickBooks file in desperate need of clean-up, an accountant can help by ensuring data is entered correctly and provide on-going assistance through the year to answer questions, correct mistakes and help interpret your financial reports.
II. How can you detect if all that data you entered is correct and properly categorized?
Take a good look at your QuickBooks Balance Sheet report. Many small businesses will come to us and explain their Balance Sheet numbers are incorrect, but they don’t know how to fix it. Unfortunately, an incorrect Balance Sheet means an incorrect Profit & Loss report as well. If your Balance Sheet is incorrect, there are common mistakes that may be involved:
- Incorrect entry of Fixed Assets & Depreciation
- Double booking of income or expense transactions, causing duplicate entries and overstating profit or losses on your taxes
- Incorrect reconciliation of bank statements including unreconciled transactions that never left the bank
- Incorrect entry of interest expenses on loan balances
- Booking business expenses that are really personal expenses, so should be distributed to owner or vice-versa
- Balances in ‘Opening Balance Equity’ – this balance should always be $0
- Monetary investments into the business by the owner incorrectly logged as income, rather than contributions
III. How can mistakes be fixed, especially if you have no idea where to start?
This is where our team at Innovative Accounting comes in with are one-time or ongoing service of QuickBooks Setup, Cleanup and Management. To begin, we need your bank statements for the past year and access to QuickBooks account. We will compile a list of questions after an initial review and then complete our clean-up services.
When we begin, we look at every transaction in every account that went through your company for the time period you want us to clean up. We perform all the reconciliations and verify all the balances. We work on your account until we are confident it is accurate, regardless of the time it takes us.
IV. How much does QuickBooks Cleanup cost and what is included in our packages?
Our prices are set based on (1) the time period (months and years) you’ve selected for us to clean up and (2) the amount of the transactions involved in that specific time period. You will know up front your cost based on those two variables, so there are no surprises, regardless of how long it takes us to complete the clean-up process. What does the QuickBooks Setup, Cleanup and Management packages include?
Our QuickBooks cleanup packages include the following:*
- Reviewing your Balance Sheet & P&L Statements to identify errors & variances
- Verifying & reconciling balances on bank accounts, loan accounts, and credit card activity
- Cleaning out and correcting undeposited funds account
- Reviewing & correcting accounts payable & accounts receivable
- Reviewing fixed asset accounts and ensuring depreciation has been posted correctly
- Review payroll expenses, accruals, and tax payables
- Reviewing sales tax payments & liabilities
- Reviewing equity accounts & ensuring opening balance equity is zero
- Reviewing chart of accounts for incorrect or duplicate accounts
- A final virtual meeting scheduled to review accounts, finalize any open items, and review financial reports
- Comparing your Quickbooks account to your previous year tax returns to ensure proper posting of tax items
- A review of every transaction to ensure it was posted to the correct financial account
Our prices are incredibly competitive and very reasonable for all company sizes and industry types. Our one-time package fees start at $469.00 & up – so contact us for a quote today!
CALL INNOVATIVE ACCOUNTING FOR A QUOTE TODAY
We are not your traditional accounting firm. We incorporate innovative solutions to our clients’ bookkeeping and accounting needs. We believe that innovation is happening all around us, all the time, and we take advantage of the technology that is out there in order to provide a better experience for both our clients and our employees. We are a fully virtual accounting company that is not tied down to outdated procedures or geographical location which allows us to offer reasonable prices with exceptional services.
No pressure, no strings. We believe our accounting and bookkeeping products and services speak for themselves. Our goal is to find out what you are looking for and then show you how we can make that happen. We’d be happy to answer any questions you might have, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us below.
Innovative Accounting can assist you with all of your accounting, bookkeeping, tax strategy, and finance needs! What are you waiting for?
