March 2006

A Message from Doug Sleeter

I hope you're having a good tax season. I'm immersed with the upcoming release of our 2006 Consultant's Reference Guide. As our staff learns more about the 2006 version, we're really impressed with it, but it has SO many new and different things! Especially in the data file management and networking installation area.

Intuit just posted a new site with support resources for networking at: www.quickbooks.com/support/networking/. Check it out, and look for more updates in the future.

If you're a QuickBooks consultant, and haven't joined The Sleeter Group's Consultants Network, you're really missing out. Our members are the top experts in the country (even Intuit says so!), and they help each other solve the very hardest QuickBooks problems every day (for free!) through our online forums. If you have questions about our group, or want to join, please see our web site, or call us today.

The Sleeter Group 2006 QuickBooks Consultant’s Conference – UPDATE!

Mark your 2006 calendars for The Sleeter Group’s 2006 QuickBooks Consultant’s Conference. The conference will be held in Las Vegas, NV on November 7-10th*. Conference details will be presented in future newsletters so stay tuned! Interested in becoming a Conference Sponsor? We encourage interested parties to contact the Sleeter Group about sponsorship opportunities as soon as possible. 2005 sponsorships sold out early. 

 

*The 2006 conference dates have changed slightly so please note the new dates.

2005 QuickBooks Consultant's Conference Speaker Awards

Congratulations to the top speakers at the Sleeter Group's QuickBooks Consultant's Conference in November 2005. We have organized the awards into three separate categories (Sleeter Group Consultant's Network, Intuit Guest Speakers, and General Guest Speakers). Conference attendees evaluated all of speakers and while every speaker received excellent reviews, the top three speakers were:

Sleeter Group Consultants Network	Intuit Guest Speakers	General Guest Speakers
Joe Woodard Amy Vetter Bruce Andersen, CPA	Steve Blundell, CPA Brad Smith Atticus Tysen	Randy Johnston (K2 Enterprises) Greg LaFollette, CPA (CPA Technology Advisor) Chuck Vigeant (FLEXquarter Solutions)

Thanks to all of 2005 QuickBooks Consultant's Conference speakers. We are now accepting applications for speakers at our 2006 QuickBooks Consultant's Conference. Please click here to request a speaker application form.  

Product Review: Avalara’s AvaTax Connect

The operational hassle of sales tax compliance is becoming more and more daunting – particularly for small businesses with multiple locations and e-merchants. One of my “Awesome QuickBooks Add-ons for 2006” was Avalara’s “AvaTax Connect™” which automates sales tax compliance tasks for QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise users. Here is an in-depth look at how AvaTax Connect works to streamline your sales tax compliance function.

What's New at Sleeter.com

We have been busy upgrading our web site recently. Here are some of the recent upgrades: 

1. You can now search for articles by keyword: www.sleeter.com/articles
2. In our free area on our site at www.sleeter.com/free, we have two new additions:

- Courtesy of Avalara, we now have a free tax-rate-lookup tool. Look up the tax rate, and taxing agencies of any address in the US for free. It also does address verification and provides you with the zip+4 zip code, plus a satellite map of the address.

- For your new client engagements, use our pre-engagement interview template. We developed this template to help consultants gather the critical information from new clients to ensure successful engagements. Check it out and use it with your clients.

Fishbowl Inventory 4.0 Enhancements

Fishbowl Inventory has recently added several new enhancements into their software that continue to make it a great QuickBooks add-on for inventory.

Tricks of the Trade

Every day, members of The Sleeter Group's Consultants Network tackle the day-to-day problems of their clients in the real world. The following are some of the more general problems and solutions that surfaced this month on our "Sleeter Group's Consultants Network Forum".

Converting Peachtree to QuickBooks?
"My banker has a client using Peachtree.  The bank wants them to use on- line banking, but they don't interact with Peachtree.  Their client is a golf course and pro shop, so they have inventory.  I suggested QB or QB Enterprise.  What experiences have any of you had converting Peachtree to QB?"

Carol E. Garris offered:
"I converted a client from Peachtree to QuickBooks.  I did run into one problem in that the version of Peachtree they were using was old and I could not convert directly to QB.  I had to install a newer version of Peachtree and then convert it.  Of course, it took me several hours to try to convert and find out it wouldn't convert.  But once I called QB tech support, they were able to fairly quickly isolate what the problem was.

Ultimately, the conversion brought over all vendor and customer information, outstanding bills and invoices in A/P and A/R, and the chart of accounts.  There was a little bit of cleanup, but not much."

Sherrill Sleeter responded:
"There is an article on sleeter.com with a link to a tool to convert: http://www.sleeter.com/articles/1130974464"

Reconciliation
"I have opened a new company in QB 2004 and need to put in the beginning balance for the bank account. I have done this many times, but this time it does not seem to be working. I went to the chart of accounts, found the appropriate bank account, put the beginning date of 1/1/06, put the balance in deposit and then put in opening balance equity under the account. When I go to reconcile the balance is showing zero. I also tried doing this by putting in a deposit through the deposit window and still shows zero in the beginning balance when opening the reconcile window. Has anyone experienced this and have a solution?"

Don Leininger suggested:
"Enter a deposit in the amount of the beginning balance dated as of the previous year end. Now go into the bank reconciliation - your 'beginning balance' will be zero. Enter an 'ending balance' in the initial reconcilation screen equal to the bank balance. Now perform the reconciliation, clearing the deposit you made. You should now have an ending balance that agrees to the bank statement balance. When you do a January recon you will have the beginning balance.

You could always simply enter the deposit amount, and clear it in the January recon process. Your ending numbers will work.

Enter outstanding checks as of the prior year end also - with the debit to your opening balance equity. That way, your book check register balance will be correct - and you will be able to clear any outstanding checks in your January recon."

Annoying Reminders in QuickBooks 2006
"I have a client that had to go to QB 2006. Their QB 2006 runs on just one pc. It will not stop reminding them to do W2'S. You check the reminder box to say that it is done and don't remind you. If you close QB and go back in it comes right back on.  Totally annoying........"

Mark Stricker writes:
"I have had the same issues with the annoying reminders also for 2 different clients.  On the last client we clicked the 'remind us in 2 months' option.  Hopefully that will postpone the annoyance"

Gross Profit by Item for non-inventory parts?
"I have a new client who pays sales rep commission based on gross profit by class. No problem, so I thought.  Gross Profit shown on P&L was correct.  When sorted or prepared by class GP got higher.  Like wise when P&L was sorted and totaled by Rep, GP got higher (by the same amount).

Problem, COGs posted via Non-Inventory Items were dropped out of COGs when GP was sorted by either class or Rep.  This was confirmed by QB support who asked me if I wanted the fix to be submitted as a product enhancement."  

Doug Sleeter responded:
"Ok, I think I understand what you're asking for, and the behavior is fundamental to how QB works (or doesn't in this case).

The issue is that non-inventory parts do not have COGS tracked at the item level. You can use two-sided non-inventory parts to get close, but even that approach falls apart when you generalize the problem and ask it to work on all reports.

So, first let's discuss single-sided NI parts. You can sell those on sales forms, and those transactions hit the income accounts, but do not hit any COGS or Expense accounts. So in this case all reports that calculate COGS and GP for those transactions won't appear.

Now, what about if you use two-sided NI Parts. When you purchase these items, QB will debit whatever expense (or COGS) account you put on the left side of the item setup window. Similarly, when you sell these items, QB will credit the income account you put no the right side of the item setup window.  Of course if you don't use the item on purchase transactions, you won't get the COGS or the GP calculation.

More importantly, the reason two-sided NI Parts won't solve your problem either is that the dates of the purchase transactions may be far apart from the sales transactions. Since QB makes no attempt to track/match/link a given sale with the purchase of a NI part item, the amount of sales vs. COGS on any report won't show a match between sales and COGS at the item level. For example, if you purchase a two-sided NI part in December, but sell it in January, the report for January will only show the sale, not the COGS or GP. And this lack of matching/tracking/linking between purchases and sales (of each item) makes GP reports on NI Parts not reliable, even if it happens to work on some data sets.

The ONLY way you can get reliable Gross Profit calculations with QB is to use Inventory items. The reason these items work is that both the Income and COGS accounts get hit when you sell the item. Since both get hit from the same transaction, you get the matching/tracking/linking behavior that must be there to ensure the report includes the same items in income as it does in COGS."

 

To find a Sleeter Certified Consultant in your area, please visit:
http://www.sleeter.com/consultants/directory/search"

If you would like to learn more about The Sleeter Group's Consultants Network, please visit:
http://www.sleeter.com/membership

Conference Sponsors

This section features advertisements from paid sponsors of The Sleeter Group's Conferences.

ProStores has everything you need to create your own branded web store at your own web address, including shopping cart, domain hosting and real time credit card processing. Open a ProStores web store today and receive a one month free trial subscription.

 

Copyright © 2006 The Sleeter Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
7950 Hillsboro Court
Pleasanton, CA 94588
888-484-5484