Customizing Reports in QuickBooks to Add Value

For an upcoming article in an issue of the Intuit ProConnection Newsletter, CPA Sandi Smith reached out to Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors and other accounting professionals for their best tips on how to customize reports and otherwise add value to engagtements with clients. Here we are sharing those tips.

Workflow Management and Approval of Invoices

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How about customizing reports to manage the flow of invoices? Gary Preisser, Manager at Ireland San Filippo, LLP [ http://www.isfllp.com/ [ http://www.isfllp.com/ ] in San Jose, Calif., offers this idea. “We send all invoices to our client first for his approval. We mark the date it was submitted for approval and show it as ‘to be printed’ and ‘to be emailed.’ Once the invoice is approved, we email it and uncheck the ‘to be printed’ and ‘to be emailed’ boxes.”

Gary says, “In order to ensure that we are receiving approvals on each invoice, we have a customized report called Unsent Invoices that shows any invoices that are still marked ‘to be printed.’ As new invoices are created and approved invoices are sent, this report is automatically updated so we can quickly tell if anything is falling through the cracks.”

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As reported by Sandi Smith, in "Help Clients Make the Most Out of Customizing Reports in QuickBooks," to be published soon in Intuit ProConnection Newsletter. For subscription information, see here [ http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/d69hS41TGr3AiGacfAtdLo/ [ http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/d69hS41TGr3AiGacfAtdLo/ ] ] .

© 2009 by Intuit Inc. All rights reserved.

Liberation from Index Cards

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A great question to ask your clients is, “Are you using index cards for anything?” Go on a search and destroy mission for all your clients’ index cards, and get those things automated and moved to the Smithsonian right next to the 80-column punch cards where they belong.

This tip comes from Michelle Long, author of Successful QuickBooks Consulting [ http://mlongconsulting.com/html/new_book.html ] and proprietor of M. Long Consulting [ http://mlongconsulting.com ] in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

Michelle had a client who was a seamstress. She kept all of her client’s measurements on index cards. Michelle set up a customized report that included custom fields. “The measurements were input into the custom fields, and the seamstress could then print a list of customers and their measurements,” she notes.

“We joked about how women may not want to know that—especially since she could sort based on those custom fields!

But, it was a great idea to get rid of the index cards she used in the past,” says Michelle, a CPA, an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and a Member of the Intuit Trainer/Writer Network.

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As reported by Sandi Smith, in "Help Clients Make the Most Out of Customizing Reports in QuickBooks," to be published soon in Intuit ProConnection Newsletter. For subscription information, see here [ http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/d69hS41TGr3AiGacfAtdLo ] .

© 2009 by Intuit Inc. All rights reserved.

Collapsing Can Be a Good Thing

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“Sometimes we overlook the simple things,” says Caren Schwartz, Founder of Time & Cents Consultants, LLC [ http://www.timeandcents.com ] [ in Southport, Conn.

“I had one non-profit that was spending hours taking the Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Statement information and putting it into Microsoft Excel® because the Board of Directors didn't want to see the detail,” she says.

“We made a few changes to the Chart of Accounts and then used the collapse button on the report,” says Caren, an Advanced QuickBooks Certified Professional Advisor and Member of Intuit Accounting Professionals Trainer and Writer Network.

“Now instead of hours, they have the report for the Board in one minute.”

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As reported by Sandi Smith, in "Help Clients Make the Most Out of Customizing Reports in QuickBooks," to be published soon in Intuit ProConnection Newsletter. For subscription information, see here [ http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/d69hS41TGr3AiGacfAtdLo/ ].

© 2009 by Intuit Inc. All rights reserved.