Automate Data File Analysis with QDA+

Gain a Competitive Edge:
“Professionalize” Your QuickBooks Consulting Practice With QDA+
The Automated Data File Analysis Program

By James S. Cambra, E.A., Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor

An Emerging Profession
In recent years, a large and growing number of individuals from a variety of fields—including Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), Enrolled Agents (E.A.s), Certified Bookkeepers (CBs) and computer consultants—have begun offering consulting services in support of Intuit’s QuickBooks products. This trend has been facilitated by the emergence of new professional designations in this area—most notably Intuit’s Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and The Sleeter Group’s Certified QuickBooks Consultant designations—given to those who demonstrate expertise in QuickBooks products by successfully completing an extensive battery of tests covering those products.

The Proper Tools
While these advisors emanate from diverse backgrounds, they have in common a desire to provide QuickBooks consulting services in as efficient, profitable and professional a manner as possible. To accomplish this, they need the proper tools, foremost among which is a computerized system for managing and conducting their QuickBooks consulting engagements. Until recently, no such system existed.

With the introduction of the QDA+ family of products, consultants can now avail themselves of the tools required to “professionalize” their practices. These products are designed and tested by Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors and Certified QuickBooks Consultants to help QuickBooks consultants run their practices more profitably and professionally while providing better service to their clients and, thus, gain a competitive edge over other consultants who have yet to adopt this technology.

The Heart of the System
At the heart of the QDA+ system—both the Basic and Pro Editions—is the automated data file analysis function. This function:

1. automatically interrogates and tests the client’s data file, and
2. issues a professional-quality report, editable by the consultant, detailing the problems encountered, their likely causes, various implications for the client, and the consultant’s recommendations for corrective action; then
3. generates an editable report documenting the agreed-upon follow-up steps to be taken, and
4. creates the engagement letters associated with those follow-up engagements.

The Bane of the Consultant’s Existence
QDA+ addresses one of the major impediments to developing a successful QuickBooks consulting practice. A problem that has been the bane of the consultant’s existence—namely, the problem of how to quickly, efficiently, professionally, and profitably provide that entry-level service from which many, if not most, QuickBooks consulting engagements arise—the data file analysis. Until now, data file analysis has been a marginally profitable service. In fact, for many consultants it has been their loss-leader service.

Your Most Profitable Service
With QDA+, data file analysis is no longer a loss-leader service. In fact, it can become the your most profitable service. The big problem with data file analysis has been that going in, consultants have no way to know whether it will be a three-hour engagement or a five or even six-hour engagement. This is crucial to profitability since most clients demand a fixed price for the service.

With QDA+, a typical data file analysis takes a mere few minutes (not including the time spent reviewing the analysis with the client). That’s right. Just a few minutes to conduct an analysis that can take several hours when done manually. Imagine how many more data file analyses you can conduct in the time you’re currently spending on just one analysis. Thus, this increase in efficiency directly correlates with increased revenue.

Additionally, the QDA+ analysis is far more extensive, including more than twice as many tests than under the commonly performed manual data file analyses, and even more tests in development. Quality is enhanced as well, since the program conducts all of its tests in the same way, every time.

Conducting monthly data file analyses followed by appropriate remedial services—such as data file repair, customization, staff training, and telephone support services, to name a few—allows the consultant to document measurable improvement, as a result of the consultant’s services, in the “health” of the client’s data file and in the performance of their QuickBooks staff. In this way, QuickBooks consultants can actually quantify the added-value they provide to their clients via these services.

Additional Entry-Level Services

Knowledge Assessments
Besides data file analysis, the QDA+ Pro Edition—QDA Systems, Inc.’s flagship product—handles other entry-level engagements that also result in additional follow-up services, including engagements designed to test the client’s QuickBooks staff in the following areas of knowledge.

1. Accounting
2. Computers, and
3. QuickBooks

Like QDA+ data file analysis engagements, in these knowledge assessment engagements QDA+ :

1. issues an editable, professional-quality report, detailing the knowledge deficiencies encountered in the client’s QuickBooks staff, various implications of these deficiencies for the client, and the consultant’s recommendations for corrective action (generally training); then
2. generates a editable report documenting the agreed-upon follow-up steps to be taken, and
3. creates the engagement letters associated with those follow-up engagements.

When used in conjunction with training, the knowledge assessments are excellent tools for monitoring and measuring staff improvement. In this way, QuickBooks consultants can again quantify the added-value they provide to their clients via these services.

Support, Employee Screening and Staff Training
The built-in glossary, primers, More Info buttons and firm’s policy statements can also become the basis for providing such client services as QuickBooks telephone support, employee screening and staff training. They make excellent tools for in-house employee screening and staff training, as well.

Enhanced Professionalism
The firm’s policy statements and engagement checklists also provide a high level of quality control for the consultant’s practice, enhancing their professionalism. Professionalism is further enhanced when the consultant and their staff can “arm” themselves with information (e.g. through the More Info buttons, the glossary, etc.) prior to interacting with the client. This is particularly important when discussing problems found in the client’s accounting system and when recommending changes to the client’s operating policies and procedures.

If the hallmark of a professional is the ability to consistently deliver high-quality service with integrity, the use of tools that ensure your ability to do just that is not an option; it is a necessity. This is even more true when operating in a nascent profession like QuickBooks consulting, in which there is no single accepted regulatory authority that sets standards for knowledge, performance and conduct. Thus, it is up to those of us who are most concerned with protecting our professional image to operate at the highest levels of performance and conduct, thereby setting the standard by which the profession is judged. We must bear in mind, however, that we are only as professional as the tools we employ to provide services and manage our practices.

A Clear Competitive Edge
This ability to increase profitability and enhance professionalism, while providing services that result in demonstrable, quantifiable added-value for clients, will without a doubt result in a clear competitive edge for those consultants who are among the first to implement the QDA+ family of products.

There comes a time in every industry when technology renders current practice obsolete, and continuing to do things the old-fashioned, inefficient, unprofitable way is no longer tenable. Just as no professional tax practitioner today prepares tax returns manually, in very short order no QuickBooks consultant will be conducting data file analyses and providing other QuickBooks consulting services manually. This trend is an inevitable.

When you put it all together—increased efficiency and profitability, automation of time-consuming yet high-value-added entry-level services that automatically generate profitable follow-up services, enhanced professionalism, and the ability to garner that crucial competitive edge necessary for success—you can see it’s time to join the ranks of QuickBooks consultants who are “professionalizing” their practices with QDA+.