September 2006
Message from Doug Sleeter

Doug SleeterQuickBooks 2007 Has Arrived!

With the arrival of the new versions of QuickBooks Financial Software and QuickBooks Point-of-Sale, consultants are busy getting to know the new features. We’ll publish a complete "What’s New" article soon, but here are just a few new things to check out.

Multiple Units of Measure
There is now support for multiple units of measure. So you can handle situations where the client purchases in one unit of measure, and then sells in another.

Improved Accountant’s Review Copy
There is a new "Dividing Date" for the Accountants Review copy that allows the client to keep working this year, and the accountant to work more fully in previous periods, with a different "copy" of the data file. Then, when the accountant returns the "changes", they are merged back into the client’s file. Also, in cases where the restrictions are too great, the accountant can "convert" the accountant’s review copy into a normal company file. Of course this makes it impossible to combine the data files together again, but it’s a nice "escape" for some situations where the accountant needs full editing capability. Check out this new feature. It may answer some of the issues you’ve had over the years.

New Default Charts of Accounts
The new version has a completely revised set of default charts of accounts for new company files. In the Easy Step Interview, you can pick from 30+ industry types, and the software suggests a better set of accounts than in previous versions of QuickBooks. It suggests the most common accounts for the industry, plus other accounts that you can select to have included. Also, the Easy Step Interview does a better job in the Equity section of the Chart of Accounts (for example, it renames the Retained Earnings account to "Owner’s Equity" if you select Sole Proprietorship as the business type).

After-the-Fact Payroll
Accountants should appreciate the new After-the-Fact payroll feature that allows you to very quickly enter payroll into QuickBooks. It auto-calculates taxes and deductions and you can override any of them as needed. It allows you to fix the net amount, or have it calculate net pay, depending on the need.

We’ll give a more complete review of all the new features soon.

Conference Update

The Sleeter Group
The Sleeter Group’s annual QuickBooks Consultant’s Conference will be held November 7-10 in Las Vegas, NV. The main conference is a three day event (11/7-11/9) plus “Post-Conference Optional Sessions” on Friday 11/10/06.

All Registered Conference Attendees Should Book Hotel Rooms By October 7th.
The Sleeter Group discount rate at the Tuscany Suites hotel will expire on 10/7 (or when the room block is full). If you are a registered attendee, please book your room ASAP. Your email confirmation has the hotel contact information to book your rooms. (By the way – Southwest Airlines is currently offering some great rates to Las Vegas. Go to www.southwest.com).

Main Conference – Wait List Names Still Being Accepted
The QuickBooks Conference officially sold out at the end of August. We were able to reconfigure some seating arrangments at the hotel and we were able to offer everyone who was on the waiting list a seat. We are still contacting wait list members and processing registrations. If you hado so. If a seat opens up you will have an opportunity to attend. Please contact our office if you have think you are already registered but have not received an official email confirmation.

Post Conference Optional Sessions – Seats Available. We have room in all three of the November 10th Post Conference Optional Sessions: Three concurrent sessions are being offered: QuickBooks Point of Sale Consulting, The QuickBooks University and Train the QuickBooks Trainer. Register by Oct 11th to receive the early bird discount.

Welcome New Conference Exhibitors
New Premier Exhibitors include: Act! and InSynQ. Visit our conference web page and click on “Exhibitors” to check out all conference exhibitors.

To read more about the conference and to sign up for the wait list visit our seminars page.

DuoShare's Address Quality Integrator

Most QuickBooks users probably don’t give a second thought to the addresses of their customers, vendors and prospects, that is, until an invoice comes back with a yellow return mail sticker pasted on the lower right corner of the envelope. This means your customer never got the invoice. What do you do now? You probably need to get on the phone and track them down. Or, you could check out DuoShare’s Address Quality Integrator (DAQI) designed for QuickBooks. This simple add-on module integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks and validates addresses against the US Postal Service database right as they are entered into QuickBooks. There’s also a batch validation process to ensure your existing QuickBooks addresses are valid.
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".

Sales Rep Report
My client has a need to create a Sales Rep report by item (he pays different commissions rates per item) that reports only invoices that have been paid within a specified date range. Commissions are then paid 15 days after the close of a month. We’ve created a custom item field called "commissions" to assign commission rates per item. The report is then exported to Excel where the commission rate per item is calculated and total commissions are summarized per sales rep.

The canned QB Sales Rep by Item Report (cash basis) works fine as long as the invoice was paid with one payment. But when the invoice was paid with multiple payments, the cash based report, shows every item multiple times. i.e. if there are two payments, the cash based report displays two of every item.

Does anyone know of a way to turn this "feature" off?

The only other partial solution I’ve come up with is to run the Sales Rep by Item report on an accrual basis and then to turn on the "paid status" option and set it to "closed". This takes care of the duplicate item problem BUT creates another problem. The accrual based report only works if I run it the last day of the month. If it’s run after the last day of the month, then it will include any invoices that were dated in the month I’m paying commission for (say August on Sept 15th) even though the invoice wasn’t paid until Sept 1st (meaning these commissions aren’t payable until October 15th)

Susan Orgen suggests:

Modify the report to show total as of report date and use the last day of
the month as the report date. This applies to many of the reports run in
QuickBooks when you are running them after the period ending date.

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

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