plus a way to make it more cost-effective.
by roman h. kepczyk
quantum of paperless
in the united states, quickbooks is by far the most dominant small business accounting product on the market and will be the application that the majority of the firm’s clients use. therefore, it is obvious that the firm must become proficient with supporting quickbooks.
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unfortunately, one of the biggest wastes of time is when firms support too many older versions of the software, which often leads to incompatibilities that can corrupt the database and make it unusable for clients. fixing these errors creates lost time that is seldom charged to clients and instead impacts the profitability on these jobs.
firms have found that it is significantly more productive to support no more than the three most recent versions and to either require the client to update their software or include the cost within the monthly service fee. updating software versions should be a standard procedure as part of the firm’s bookkeeping.
one area of difficulty is the licensing of quickbooks, which can be expensive if the firm has a large number of users. many firms have figured out that a better and more cost-effective method is to have personnel certified as quickbooks proadvisors. certification has traditionally provided five discounted licenses through each certified proadvisor. getting multiple personnel certified is easy today as it can all be done online.
while there has been a strong trend toward cloud computing, the quickbooks online accounting product has not always been seen as adequate for clients used to the comprehensive features in quickbooks professional. while there have been significant improvements in the past two years, quickbooks online sometimes lacks important capabilities that clients rely upon. this has led to hosting companies such as rightnetworks delivering full versions of quickbooks professional on the internet. we believe that quickbooks online will narrow the features gap within the next two years so firms should re-evaluate quickbooks online capabilities annually as well as products such as xero and intacct.
recommended action: designate one quickbooks proadvisor for every five licenses required and actively monitor the progress made by web-based accounting products.