QuickBooks has so many great features but some small business owners may only buy this software for one or two main objectives. For us, as outsourced bookkeepers, we always push our clients to use QuickBooks to its fullest capabilities. Depending on how QuickBooks is used, we can sometimes gauge the level of bookkeeping sophistication your company may have.
Either way, we excel at helping a small businesses harness all relevant features of QuickBooks so that goals are not only met, they are exceeded. Here are a few examples of varying ways we have seen QuickBooks over the years.
Using QuickBooks Just As An Invoicing Tool
Not all business owners know how to fully handle their books but they do know how to get paid. These owners may use QuickBooks for invoicing purposes only and that's it. The custom invoice feature in QuickBooks allows for some great ways to make your company's invoices standout.
However, invoicing is only one small portion of QuickBooks. Once the invoice is created payment should be received against it and then the funds should be properly deposited into the main bank account. These steps allow for smoother reconciling come month end.
Business owners that tend to use QuickBooks for just invoicing may treat their business more as a hobby and not as investor ready. Take the extra steps and utilize the system at hand.
Only To Pay Bills & Print Checks
This doesn't happen as often as the topic above, but we do encounter this situation once and while. A business owner has an office manager that just enters bills into QuickBooks for the sake of printing checks. Check printing and bill pay is a great feature in QuickBooks but again it's not the only feature.
Accounts Payable is a great tool for helping track cash flow and financial budgeting. It would make sense to make sure your office manager is properly trained and using QuickBooks to its fullest capabilities.
To Monitor Growth
It's great when talking with business owners that want to use QuickBooks for monitoring growth. To us, as outsourced bookkeepers, this shows that the owner is focused and driven to make sure the proper bookkeeping system is put in place and QuickBooks is being utilized at it's highest level.
In order to monitor and predict growth several bookkeeping processes need to be put in place first; accounts receivable, accounts payable, reconciling credit cards and bank accounts, budgeting, etc.
The bottom line is that using all the features in QuickBooks makes for easy growth monitoring, budgeting, forecasting, and predictability.
To Stay In Compliance
Some industries are held to certain rules and regulations by the government. Some that come to mind are law firms and real estate brokers. The one noticeable similarity in these two industries is that they have to have trust bank accounts in order to operate legally.
If a trust account is ever out of balance during an audit then the unthinkable could happen; they would get shut down. Bookkeeping makes this worry almost non-existent. By a few mouse clicks, reports can easily show the balances of these trust accounts and the corresponding liability accounts. QuickBooks makes this easy as long as the bookkeeper knows what they are doing.
Not having the proper bookkeeping methods in place to prevent an out of balance trust account is something that any smart business owner should avoid.
Under utilizing QuickBooks is something can be avoided if you have a smart, experienced, and diligent bookkeeper. Maybe you are in the early stages of getting your business up and running and want to outsource some of these tasks.
Or maybe your bookkeeper isn't up to snuff, then it might be worth your while to reach out to us for some training.
