As summer winds down and the kids go back to school, we're quickly entering the education season. The time when we need to learn all about the technology, tax laws, and new gadgets that will help us make our clients succeed in the coming year.

At The Sleeter Group, we're busy developing the tools you'll need to help your clients in the coming year. We've taken a hard look at the new accounting software offering from Microsoft and we're beginning a series of articles on this new product, beginning with this newsletter.

We're also preparing for the release of new software from Intuit and others. Developers are churning out add-ons like crazy and we're really impressed with the pace and quality of the solutions coming to market.

I recently ran across an interesting article on the Frog Design web site (http://www.frogdesign.com/mind/mindarchive.html) that theorizes that the “Information Age” is now quite mature, and that we are new entering the “Recommendation Age.” According to the article's thesis:

“We are leaving the Information Age and entering the Recommendation Age."

The Sleeter Group's Annual QuickBooks Consultant's Conference Schedule Posted

Intuit Announces QuickBooks 2006: A Giant Leap in Simplifying Business

Intuit Offers $100 off ProAdvisors program to Sleeter Group Network Members

ASPs provide computer access for hurricane Katrina victims

The Sleeter Group's Annual QuickBooks Consultant's Conference on November 9-11, 2005, Las Vegas, NV is a three day event for Accountants, QuickBooks Consultants, Bookkeepers and QuickBooks Add-on Software Developers.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. The conference is already 80% of capacity, so if you plan to attend, please register today.

Early Bird Discount! Register before 9/9/05 and save $100 off the regular registration fee.

New! Detailed session descriptions are now posted on our Conference Web page.

All conference attendees will receive:

The Sleeter Group’s Annual QuickBooks Consultant's Conference is endorsed and sponsored by Intuit Inc., the makers of QuickBooks. Register today and save $100! Call (888) 484-5484 or register at www.sleeter.com.

Here is part one of our report on the new SBA product from the QuickBooks consultant’s perspective. In this article, we assume you are already an expert with implementing QuickBooks systems for your clients, so we won’t cover the basics of the program. Instead, we’ll introduce both the “Assets” and the “Liabilities” we have uncovered in the SBA product, and in future articles we’ll suggest workarounds for problems we’ve found. I encourage everyone to attend our QuickBooks Consultant’s Conference in Las Vegas on November 9-11 for an in-depth session on the SBA application.

If you’ve been thinking about adding client payroll services to your firm, I recommend taking a close look at PayCycle.

The impressive online payroll solution includes everything you need to automatically manage client payroll, from paychecks to W-2s, for an all-inclusive price of $14.99 per client per month. It integrates with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online Edition, so you don’t have to enter data twice.

PayCycle’s co-founders Rene Lacerte and Martin Gates, built QuickBooks Payroll functionality, before leaving to start PayCycle in 1999. Since then, the company has added over 20,000 customers, and is well-known in the industry for making client payroll easy and profitable for accounting professionals.

Adagio FX (www.GreatStatements.com) from Softrak Systems Inc. (www.softrak.com) is designed to allow consultants to quickly create presentation quality financial statements, and automate their production at month end and year end.

Adagio FX users receive the following benefits:

Financial statements automatically adjust presentation to suppress inactive accounts, or move bank accounts between the Asset and Liability section of the balance sheet depending on account balance.

Automatically highlight over or under budget accounts, or unusual variances to prior year.

Instant feedback as the fiscal period and department selector is changed, with drill down to the posted transactions to explain figures.

Automatic printing of entire “statement sets” at period end.

Portability of financial statements between companies and organizations without complex account mapping.

Statements combining multiple accounting datasets without recourse to Excel.

You want to get paid fast. You want it to be easy and fast for clients to pay you.

Many firms accept (or are considering) credit cards as a client payment option. But there are downsides.

To perform this task efficiently and securely requires finding and training the right staff—sometimes over and over again. It may be fast and easy for clients, but it’s a hidden cost that hits firm productivity and profits.

Identity theft is a real concern. Clients increasingly hesitate when asked to hand over credit card information. They don’t know how secure your systems are, where their information is being kept, and who can access it. Most don’t know how to ask security questions, and usually can’t understand the answers. Mostly, they feel asking will insult your integrity.

Taking on the challenge, BQE Software improved its top-rated BillQuick Time & Billing software by adding PayPal Integration.

Leading companies in the distribution or Direct Store Delivery sales market are increasingly updating their systems to provide new ways to reduce paper handling, reduce invoicing & delivery errors and provide more efficient ways to access data. All of this enables the company to reduce net costs and therefore contribute to the business’ bottom line and improve the quality of customer interaction. ActiSales MobileSales solution addresses these issues through leading mobile and wireless technology, yet maintaining the current accounting and IT infrastructure, and makes it affordable for small to mid-size companies to have this technology, once only available to large corporations.

Every day, members of The Sleeter Group 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 Consultant's Network Forum".

Scanning and Attaching Bills

Question: "I am wondering if anyone knows if it is possible to scan a copy of a vendor's bill and 'attach' it to the check by which it was paid? I am working with a client who wants a 'paperless' office, and would like to have all bills scanned and then thrown away. Is anyone doing this? I'd be very appreciative of any helpful hints on this subject."

Sleeter Group Consultant - Hubert F. Hawthorn, CPA, answers: "Check out Sourcelink at www.personable.com"

Sleeter Group Consultant - Mark Sticker, CPA - adds: "Ditto on SourceLink. I already have a client using it. CabinetNG is another option ..."

Printing PDF Problems

Question: "I've been emailing invoices through QB and my clients are receiving blank pages. I hadn't given it much thought since I just printed to Adobe and attached the invoice. It's an OK solution if you're sending just a few invoices, but regardless of the number of invoices being sent, the problem is removing a useful tool from QB. But, today another client mentioned it. I think it's just in QB 2005, but haven't isolated it. Any KB/FAQs/workarounds out there that I haven't seen?"

Mike Verucchi, CPA - answers: "I have experienced this with reports using Adobe. The intuit help desk had me go into the control panel and reset my intuit internal printer by renaming the current 'internal intuit printer' to another dummy name and reboot. After rebooting QB will reinstall the printer name "internal intuit printer" and the reports seem to work. I have had this with the 2004 version also."

Continuous Printer Problems

Question: "We have a customer who uses continuous preprinted invoices. They just upgraded their computer network, reinstalled QuickBooks Premier 2004 and reinstalled the printer driver for the invoice printer. Now the coarse alignment will not hold and even if they are able to align the first invoice, the following forms are not printing correctly. The printing is either too high or too low. Has anyone else encountered this situation and, if so, were you able to determine a fix for the problem?"

Mike Crosa, CPA - answers: "Had a client who wanted to use their preprinted paper from another program with QuickBooks. At first could only do an invoice skip an invoice and then do an invoice and so on. Kept playing with the program with no luck. Even called the printer company and they laughed and said the printer was too old and that they did not support anymore. The computer guy came in and through windows changed the page length for the printer. Now the preprinted paper works great. I guess this is a long winded way to say check the printer settings on the printer itself. Not in QuickBooks."

Update Payroll Tax Table Error

Question: “I have a client who has tried several times to download the update for QB and the payroll tax table. She keeps receiving an error 1373. So far intuit support has not been able to help. Does anyone have a solution or knowledge of this error? Thanks for all your help!"

Carrie Sheret, Sleeter Group Consultant - answers: "If you've gone the Intuit route (repaired the QB installation), your client's firewall or virus protection may be the issue. Here are some ideas from the Community page: http://www.quickbooksgroup.com/webx?14@@.eea7e7f/0 Another solution that has worked for some is to uninstall your version of Internet Explorer and reinstall.

When I have an unsolvable error, I go to Google and search for it (e.g. 'error 1373 QuickBooks') - the discussions available are often a little ahead of what's available the Intuit technical support team."

These are just a few of the more general Q&A chats shared among the Sleeter Group Consultants Network members (our members-only forum has over 4500 messages to date).

To find a Certified Consultant in your area please go to: http://www.sleeter.com/consultants/directory/search.