QuickBooks Automatic Report Generation, 21st Century Workflow Automation
**By Bob Wolff, BQE Software**
Every accountant needs more time everyday—more billable time. The whole point of using a product like QuickBooks is so that you can quickly and easily generate reports you rely on to prepare tax returns, or otherwise analyze the health of a business. You demand information from QuickBooks to help manage your organization, perhaps even generate reports for multiple clients. Your clients may also use QuickBooks reports to guide their decision-making.
The problem is while printing QuickBooks reports is fairly easy, customizing reports (entering filter values and other parameters and navigating through the menus and other screens) to produce the right information is time-consuming, and often your clients never really learn how to create the right report for their needs. Enter workflow automation.
Workflow automation is a simple concept. Everything we do follows a path or “flow” of procedural steps. While humans often vary in executing the flow of tasks, software is exceptional in its ability to logically and precisely carry out procedures.
Case in point: Generating reports. After capturing data, you want it returned as information in order to monitor events and make timely decisions. QuickBooks does this very well, slicing and dicing data into information presented on scores of reports and graphs.
A fine solution—except for the time eaten up by repetitively defining the same parameters and filters for the same reports—day after day, week after week, month after month. Think about the minutes each day and how they add up throughout the year. What could you do with an extra 20 or 30 hours per year saved by automatically generating the reports you want? What if there was another 150 or 200 hours per year available by automatically generating and delivering QuickBooks reports to clients? Even if a lower cost per hour staffer generates your reports or ones for clients, would that person’s time be better utilized nurturing customer relationships and/or generating more billable hours, greater revenues, and higher profits?
**Enter AutoReporter for QuickBooks from BQE Software**
AutoReporter saves time in two ways. First, AutoReporter provides a simpler, more efficient interface for generating QuickBooks reports. After choosing a report from a list, you can define report-specific filters and parameters. Then, you can immediately preview the report, fine-tune the information you want to review, and then print the report if desired. This increased report-generation efficiency saves a minute or so every time you produce a QuickBooks report.
Nice start, but why not save even more time using 21st Century workflow automation?
Let’s say you review six reports every Saturday morning. When you leave home, it’s tough hiding your guilt from the family. Even though you’re only away for a couple hours, it’s still precious time away from your family. You don’t have any alternative.
AutoReporter's second major function gives you an alternative.
Once you choose a report and its filters and parameters, simply tell AutoReporter to memorize it. Then, choose when you want the report delivered, and how often AutoReporter should generate the report and deliver it—daily, weekly, biweekly, half-month, monthly, quarterly or annually. Last, choose where the report should be delivered. AutoReporter lets you email an HTML report to any email address(es), to the default printer, or to your computer screen.
Back to your family. Now you don’t need to go into the office. Catching time over the weekend, you simply open the emails containing the weekly reports from your home office.
Using AutoReporter’s workflow automation features, you can receive any QuickBooks information you need and want to manage your business. Produce one or a group of reports to print every day, week, or month, for yourself or any member of your team. Send financial reports to clients, their investors, and their bankers on a set schedule. Automatically provide yourself or your clients with job, payroll, profitability, customer, and other information.
With AutoReporter, rather than expending time to produce reports, turn the saved minutes a day (for each client) to client and staff matters and to firm growth.
Bottom Line: Select the reports you need, want and desire to effectively manage your business, and then have AutoReporter deliver them to your screen, printer, or email addresses on the schedule you want.
For more information on Autoreporter, go to www.bqe.com/AutoReporter