Contents
- A Message From Doug Sleeter
- LaGarde
- Fishbowl
Inventory - Inventory Control for QuickBooks Users
- QDA
+ , Automated Data File Analysis
- The
Sleeter Group Presents "The QuickBooks User" Newsletter Service
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2004 QuickBooks Consultant's Conference Report
At the beginning of this month, we held our 2004 QuickBooks Consultant's
Conference in Boca Raton, Florida. This three day event included 26 speakers
from The Sleeter Group, Intuit, Developers and other leading QuickBooks
Experts from the industry. The turnout was tremendous, and we all learned
a lot.
First, let’s talk about the parties. The night before the conference,
we held a private cocktail reception for 60 members of our Consultant's
Network, and many of them got to put faces to names they’ve known for
years. It was fantastic, and really set the conference in motion. We also
held a reception open to all conference attendees on the 2nd night of
the conference, and this proved to be great networking time for everyone.
Suffice it to say, the parties were a great “feature” of the conference.
The first day began with Joe Woodard talking about how to build your
consulting practice, how to look at four different levels of client engagements,
and how to streamline your business to give more client satisfaction while
billing more time. As always, Joe’s talks inspire us all to really go
out there and make our business run better. The rest of the first day
included sessions with technical solutions for construction, retail, non-profit,
and professional services businesses.
The second day of the conference was devoted to Intuit, and their introduction
of QuickBooks 2005. Executives and product managers presented the new
version updates and improvements. One of the most well received new features
was when Tina Gray demonstrated the new Financial Statement Designer,
which is a HUGE improvement over the Financial Statement Reporter from
the previous year. And best of all, it’s included for FREE in the Accountant
Edition of QuickBooks 2005. There was also a "Feedback to Intuit"
session at the end of the day. This feedback session was very productive
and the audience really appreciated that Intuit was there to listen.
The third day began with a keynote presentation from Rene Lacerte, CEO
of PayCycle. He gave a great overview of technology trends, and how accountants
can capitalize on them.
We then announced our list of Ten Awesome Add-ons for Consultants. These
are a special group of “utility-like” add-ons that QuickBooks consultants
will find extremely useful. What is an Awesome Add-on?
- An Awesome Add-on is a QuickBooks add-on that enables consultants
to do their job more professionally, efficiently, and profitably.
- It generally applies horizontally across industry markets.
- It solves problems not addressed by the QuickBooks program itself,
or in some cases solves a problem “better” than QuickBooks does.
- Awesome Add-ons make consultants look better to their clients. Often
by allowing us to perform miracles on hopelessly broken data files.
- Awesome Add-ons make consultants richer (or less poor). They often
automate processes that we used to have to do manually, so these save
us tons of time and therefore money.
- Awesome Add-ons allow consultants to say “OK” – When we used to say
“No Way”. Before these add-ons were developed, there were several tasks
we wanted to do, but there was just no way to do it. For example, a
client once asked me if I could combine two data files together into
a single file. Well, with the Transaction Copier by Karl Irvin (www.q2q.us),
I can now do this, or at least most of it.
For
a complete list of these awesome add-ons, see the article posted on our
Web
site.
Leslie Shiner, a Sr. Industry Advisor with the Intuit Construction Business
Solutions Group gave a fantastic talk on knowing when your clients are
ready for Master Builder.
We rounded out the final day with industry specific breakout sessions
for non-profit, retail, construction & job costing, and professional
services.
We had 16 developers present, and the audience was very appreciative
of having them there to learn about their solutions, and to consult with
them on how to solve client issues. Both developers and audience members
went out of their way to tell me how much they appreciated each other’s
presence, so we’ll make sure to include this in our future conferences.
We did video tape the conference, and we’re finalizing the DVD version
of the conference now. If you missed the conference, but want the video,
please contact our office.
Learn
more about conference sponsors
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For many of your clients, Inventory is one of the hardest areas to provide
good solutions. And in many cases, the clients who need better inventory
systems are considering switching accounting systems away from QuickBooks
to a higher end solution.
However, when used with QuickBooks, Fishbowl takes over the inventory
control, point of sale, sales order, and purchase order functions while
QuickBooks continues to handle the accounting side of the business.
Read
the Full Article...
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If you attended our conference, you probably heard about QDA Systems
and their new software that automates the QuickBooks Consulting process
from Data File Anaylsis, to engagement management, to staff skills assessment.
This revolutionary tool automates what we've been promoting for years
in our seminars, both on the technical side and the engagement management
site.
The tool was developed in by QDA Systems in partnership with The Sleeter
Group, and we're proud to be part of their team.
Every serious QuickBooks consultant should be using this product.
For more information and purchasing, please contact The Sleeter Group
office at 888-484-5484.
Read
More about QDA+
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