What's New in QuickBooks 2014 for Accountants

QuickBooks® Accountant (QBA) 2014 is full of new and improved tools to make what we do easier and more impressive to our clients.  With these new and improved QBA features – and accounting professionals supporting enterprise clients with the Accountant Edition of QuickBooks Enterprise – you will not only improve your efficiency; you'll also prove to your clients just how indispensable and responsive you are to their needs.Some of the features are enhancements of previous functions and others are brand new.

New for 2014

New QuickBooks Accountant Plus – including Client Collaborator

QBA Plus users (including QuickBooks ProAdvisors®) have exclusive access to the new Client Collaborator feature, a great tool designed to solve many of the challenges accounting professionals encounter when dealing with their clients

QuickBooks Accountant Plus is a new subscription offering that saves accounting professionals time by giving them the option to automatically obtain the latest QuickBooks Accountant version each year.

QBA Plus users (including QuickBooks ProAdvisors®) have exclusive access to the new Client Collaborator feature, a great tool designed to solve many of the challenges accounting professionals encounter when dealing with their clients.

For example, the accountant can now contact the client directly through the client's QuickBooks' file to inquire about a particular transaction. The interactions and conversations are tracked and linked to specific transactions, so the accountant always has a point of reference. These interactions between the accountant and client are stored on a secure server and accessed online, ensuring that nothing is lost. This new feature, which transcends the world of desktop accounting and touches on cloud computing, eliminates the need to keep track of disparate email strings and trying to remember what specific transaction was being discussed. All discussions are linked and accessible.

Here's how the Client Collaborator works: the accountant selects the Ask Question icon on the right of the menu bar to contact the client through QuickBooks. Selecting this icon enables the accountant to tie the question directly to this transaction within the client's file.

The client opens their copy of the company file in their-non accountant version (such as Pro) and then selects View Conversation List from the Company menu.

The accountant can document what he or she did for each transaction and view it all in the Transaction Conversation window. To close a Transaction Conversation, simply click the Close button.

The accountant's client will need a version of QuickBooks 2014 to use this feature; an Internet connection is required for both parties.

What's New in QuickBooks Pro and Above

Although this article is focusing on the new and enhanced features of QBA 2014, since QBA has all the features of QuickBooks Pro and Premier (and the Accountant Edition of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions has all the features of all editions of Enterprise), I feel compelled to list at least some of my favorite new features in QuickBooks Pro and above.

New! Income Tracker

Select Customers > Income Tracker and you'll see this new dashboard view of all customer and sales-related activity.
The Income Tracker includes a visual display that allows the customer to drill into each color block and filter the dashboard quickly for transactions like all open Estimates or unpaid Invoices. Also, the QuickBooks user can sort and filter the information provided in the Income Tracker and even take action, such as converting an Estimate to an Invoice.

New! Record Bounced Checks

I'm pretty impressed with this one, since I previously created my own workaround for dealing with bounced checks and put it on the Tips and Tricks page of my company website. This new feature makes my creative workaround obsolete.

If a customer bounces a check on your client, simply open the Customer Payment window where that payment was entered and select Record Bounced Check.

With just a few simple steps, QuickBooks will create or change all the necessary transactions, including marking the Invoice or Sales Receipt as unpaid, removing the deposited funds and applicable service fees from the bank account, and creating a new Invoice for any bounced check charges passed on to the customer.

Improved! Bank Feeds (previously Online Banking)

The enhancements to the Online Banking workflows for 2014 are so significant that the feature has been renamed Bank Feeds. This feature includes a simplified setup process, an improved visual presentation of bank accounts and transactions, and simplified and expanded matching rules. Bank Feeds are accessed by selecting Banking > Bank Feeds.

Bank Feeds offer all the following:

All bank accounts are in one list.
An overview of downloaded transactions.
A link to downloaded transactions.
A summary of items to send.
Matching of transactions is easier: rules are written in plain English for better understanding.

Better rules: a powerful rules engine is more flexible and automates matching more frequently.
Improved! Job Costing

Reports can now be filtered by Job Status. Also, QuickBooks now has a Rep field at the Job level, allowing businesses to assign a rep to individual jobs, rather than simply at the customer level.

Improved! Reporting Ribbon

The Reports tab in the Ribbon at the top of transactions now contains more reports such as Average Days to Pay Summary at the top of Invoices:

New! Customize View Balances

When you are using the Left Icon Bar view, you can click on Customize view balances at the bottom of the View Balances section:

This allows you to choose to view balances for accounts of all types, including revenue, cost of goods sold and expense accounts:

New! Copy/Paste Line Items

Line items on a transaction can now be copied and pasted within that transaction, simply by right-clicking on the row in the body of the transaction, or by highlighting any part of that row and selecting Edit. I've been waiting forever for this one!

Improved! Bill Payment Stub

In previous versions, if a vendor bill was paid 100% by a vendor credit at the time of the bill pay run, that bill and bill credit did not get included on the bill payment stub; now they do. Hooray!

Improved! Report Print/Preview Scaling

You're no doubt familiar with being able to scale a report so that it is a specified number of pages wide. That's been in QuickBooks for eons. However, now you can choose to scale the report so that it is also a specified number of pages long. You can combine the two scale options or choose only one when printing or previewing a report.

Enhanced features in QuickBooks Accountant 2014

Here are my top picks for the great enhancements in QuickBooks Accountant 2014:

Improved! Batch Enter Transactions now includes Invoices, Credit Memos, Bills and Bill Credits

I really like the Batch Enter Transactions feature, which was introduced last year. It was great for taking a client who recorded year-to-date company transactions in a different accounting system (or just in spreadsheet format) and bring them into the QuickBooks universe with very little effort or chance of entry errors. All you needed was to get the "old system" transactions in spreadsheet format and copy and paste columns from there. If everything in the client's old system was manual or couldn't be exported to a spreadsheet, at least you could enter transactions of the same type (the different types being checks, deposits, or credit card charges and credits) in a "heads down" fashion without ever touching a mouse in one screen and review them before recording them all. Bookkeepers, in particular, loved it.

Now for 2014, Batch Enter Transactions has expanded capabilities, offering a screen for entering bills and bill credits and another for invoices and credit memos. This offers up more ways to automate getting a client's old-system transactions into QuickBooks, either by copying and pasting columns from a spreadsheet or, if necessary, manually entering them into one screen without interruption.

Improved! Send General Journal Entries Now Support Mac Clients

Last year, we were introduced to the cool concept of QBA users sending journal entries (as a *.QBJ file attachment) to their clients by email;the email would instruct the client how to import the entries seamlessly on their end. This year, sending general journal entries to clients is even cooler, because QuickBooks for Mac clients can import those entries as well.

Imagine your QuickBooks for Mac client sent you a data file. You've converted it to Windows to open it in QBA. While your Mac client continues with business as usual, you work your year-end magic and create a bunch of general journal entries in your Windows copy of the client's data file. You select Accountant > Send General Journal Entries, choose your date range and the entries to send, (then decide whether you want to allow your client to choose specific entries to import or not) and then select Email as Attachment and follow the prompts.

Your Mac client receives the email with instructions for seamless importing of the entries, just as your Windows clients do. Presto! The entries are in. No fuss, no muss and no client entry errors messing up your skilled work.

Improved! Client Data Review Now Offers Reclassify Source Account Feature

Find and fix client errors quickly using the ever-popular Client Data Review (CDR) feature, enhanced yet again for 2014! CDR now has a Reclassify Source Account function, which handles all of the following, quickly and easily, without resorting to reports and drilling down on individual transactions:

Locate transactions written from a specific bank or credit card account.
Reclassify the source account of multiple transactions in just a few clicks.
Works if the two source accounts are of the same type (for example, two bank accounts).

Free! Accountant copy File Transfer Service

Here's a great bonus: the Accountant Copy File Transfer Service is free to QuickBooks Accountant users this year.

A Final Word

All in all, I really like the new features of QuickBooks Accountant 2014, and I'm especially excited for all of us to start using the Client Collaborator in QBA Plus, because we'll be even more indispensible to our clients than we were before. I'm also very pleased for our QuickBooks clients, because they'll reap the benefits of QuickBooks 2014's enhancements, and they'll also be benefiting from having indispensible accounting professionals – like us – supporting them.

October 18, ns product, and then re-enter summary or detail information into QuickBooks for the purposes of preparing financials.

Point of Sale Goes Mobile

Here’s some exciting news for retailers looking to grow! QuickBooks Point of Sale software now integrates beautifully with GoPayment, ensuring that you never miss a sale — whether you’re in or out of your brick and mortar location.

QuickBooks Point of Sale gives you the powerful tools needed to manage your store and make better business decisions. It enables you to track inventory, set automatic re-order points, manage customer contact information, send personalized customer communications and access detailed business reporting.  And now you can keep inventory and sales in sync no matter where you get paid, thanks to GoPayment.

So whether you’re at a tradeshow, having a sidewalk sale, or simply want to step out from behind the counter to get that line moving, your inventory and sales data will match up, which means no more manual data entry when you need to be on the go.

QuickBooks Point of Sale can manage data for up to 20 locations. In addition to the features mentioned above, it also helps you track employee hours and commissions.

Check out pointofsale.intuit.com to learn how you can get set up to get on the go.

Spring Cleaning Never Throw These Important Papers Away

Spring is a great time to clean out that growing mountain of financial papers and tax documents that clutters your home and office. Here's what you need to keep and what you can throw out without fearing the wrath of the IRS.

Let's start with your "safety zone," the IRS statute of limitations. This limits the number of years during which the IRS can audit your tax returns. Once that period has expired, the IRS is legally prohibited from even asking you questions about those returns.

The concept behind it is that after a period of years, records are lost or misplaced and memory isn't as accurate as we would hope. There's a need for finality. Once the statute of limitations has expired, the IRS can't go after you for additional taxes, but you can't go after the IRS for additional refunds, either.
http://bookkeepergirlsinc.brandyourself.com
The Three-Year Rule

For assessment of additional taxes, the statute of limitation runs generally three years from the date you file your return. If you're looking for an additional refund, the limitations period is generally the later of three years from the date you filed the original return or two years from the date you paid the tax. There are some exceptions:

• If you don't report all your income and the unreported amount is more than 25% of the gross income actually shown on your return, the limitation period is six years.
  
  
• If you've claimed a loss from a worthless security, the limitation period is extended to seven years.
  
  
• If you file a "fraudulent" return, or don't file at all, the limitations period doesn't apply. In fact, the IRS can get you at any time.
  
  
• If you're deciding what records you need or want to keep, you have to ask what your chances are of an audit. A tax audit is an IRS verification of items of income and deductions on your return. So you should keep records to support those items until the statute of limitations runs out.
•  

Assuming that you've filed on time and paid what you should, you only have to keep your tax records for three years, but some records have to be kept longer than that.
Remember, the three-year rule relates to the information on your tax return. But, some of that information may relate to transactions more than three years old.

Here's a checklist of the documents you should hold on to:

1. Capital gains and losses. Your gain is reduced by your basis - your cost (including all commissions) plus, with mutual funds, any reinvested dividends and capital gains. But you may have bought that stock five years ago and you've been reinvesting those dividends and capital gains over the last decade. And don't forget those stock splits.
   
   You don't ever want to throw these records away until after you sell the securities. And then if you're audited, you'll have to prove those numbers. Therefore, you'll need to keep those records for at least three years after you file the return reporting their sales.
   
   
2. Expenses on your home. Cost records for your house and any improvements should be kept until the home is sold. It's just good practice, even though most homeowners won't face any tax problems. That's because profit of less than $250,000 on your home ($500,000 on a joint return) isn't subject to taxes under tax legislation enacted in 1997.
   
   If the profit is more than $250,000/$500,000, or if you don't qualify for the full gain exclusion, then you're going to need those records for another three years after that return is filed. Most homeowners probably won't face that issue thanks to the 1997 tax law, but of course, it's better to be safe than sorry.
   
   
3. Business records. Business records can become a nightmare. Non-residential real estate is now depreciated over 39 years. You could be audited on the depreciation up to three years after you file the return for the 39th year. That's a long time to hold on to receipts, but you may need to validate those numbers.
   
   
4. Employment, bank, and brokerage statements. Keep all your W-2s, 1099s, brokerage, and bank statements to prove income until three years after you file. And don't even think about dumping checks, receipts, mileage logs, tax diaries, and other documentation that substantiate your expenses.
   
   
5. Tax returns. Keep copies of your tax returns as well. You can't rely on the IRS to actually have a copy of your old returns. As a general rule, you should keep tax records for 6 years. The bottom line is that you've got to keep those records until they can no longer affect your tax return, plus the three-year statute of limitations.
   
   
6. Social Security records. You will need to keep some records for Social Security purposes, so check with the Social Security Administration each year to confirm that your payments have been appropriately credited. If they're wrong, you'll need your W-2 or copies of your Schedule C (if self-employed) to prove the right amount. Don't dispose of those records until after you've validated those contributions.
   
   Contact us by phone or email if you have any questions about what records you need to keep this spring.
   

Small Business Guide

Keep Your Small Business Advantage
While your know-how is certain to make an important difference in your business' success, you're no doubt well aware that producing a winning combination for a smooth-running operation depends on many other factors as well.

High on the list of considerations for your business should be creating the ability to meet criteria imposed by Uncle Sam and the Internal Revenue Service. To help you avoid headaches that can go with trying to meet tax law requirements, this brochure highlights pitfalls to be aware of and provides some tips on how to overcome them.

"Material Participation" in Your Business:

"Material participation" has become a major issue for business people since Congress passed rules regarding "passive activities" in the late '80s. To show material participation, you as the owner must demonstrate that your activity in your business is continuous and substantial. The IRS has established several "tests" for measuring material participation. An owner who can't pass any one of the tests will most likely be considered just a passive investor in a company. Since deductible losses from passive activities can be limited to the amount of income from such activities, showing material participation in your business becomes doubly important.

If you work full-time in your business, you will have no trouble showing you materially participate. However, if you're an employee at another job and operate your business on a part-time basis, you need to make sure you pass one of the material participation tests. One way you can do this is to show that you spend 500 or more hours during the year running your business.

You can establish material participation in other ways too-e.g., based on your past years' involvement or how your work time compares with others working in the business (including employees).

Your Profit Motive:

The IRS sometimes questions profit motive of a business owner if an activity consistently shows tax losses. This is common with activities that lend themselves to personal enjoyment or hobby such as horse/dog breeding, arts and crafts, etc. You should be prepared to show that you entered your business with the intent to make a profit and that you are taking measures to realize that intent. How do you show profit motive? At least in part by establishing that you have experties in your field and you are using businesslike practices in carrying on operations.

Your Recordkeeping Routine

The Recordkeeping System:Give priority to establishing good recordkeeping practices for your business. Recordkeeping goes much farther than actual check writing, depositing income, keeping receipts, etc. Also involved are the choices you must make about accounting methods, dealing with inventory (if any) and other assets, complying with regulatory and tax requirements, and computerization. You will probably find taking care of all these details time-consuming and frustrating to say the least; many of the choices you have to make may require help from a financial or accounting professional.

When keeping your business records, though, try to follow a few basic "rules":

Don't Co-Mingle Business and Personal Bank Transactions.

From the very outset have a separate bank account for your business in which you deposit only business gross receipts and from which you write checks for business expenses.

Keep Backup For Your Bank Deposits And Expenses.

Keep bank statements and supporting documents so you can trace your bank deposits, including those that aren't income (e.g., loan documents for loan proceeds deposited, insurance reimbursement, etc.)

If possible, pay all expenses by check. They should be supported with sales slips, invoices and any other available documents of explanation. The income and expenses should be recorded in an orderly manner (either by hand or on computer) so that the backup can be readily available if and when needed.

Sometimes you can log your expenses in a timely manner so you don't have to keep receipts. Before you adopt a logging system though, it's best to check with your tax advisor because the rules for logs are quite strict.

Be Sure To Keep All Reports Filed With Government Agencies.

This includes personal income tax returns, sales tax returns, payroll returns, W-2s and 1099s filed for employees and other hired labor, etc.

Length of Time to Keep Records:

From a federal tax standpoint (some states may be different), you should retain books and records of your business for three years after the due date of your income tax return. There are some sections of the tax law where the statute of limitations is longer than three years, however. Because of these, it's wise to keep records at least six years. When it comes to the records that support cost basis of property, equipment or any item that you are depreciating, keep records for at least three years beyond the life shown on the depreciation schedule in your tax return.

Capital Expenses vs. Other Costs:

Costs of assets that will be used in your business for more than a year and the costs of improvements that add to the value of assets are "capital" expenditures. For tax purposes, these expenses are usually deducted over a number of years. Operating expenses, i.e., advertising, office supplies, etc., are currently deductible, as are the costs of getting started in your business (within limits). Try to keep records for capital expenses separate from those for the general operating expenses.

Expensing Normally Depreciable Costs:

Under some circumstances, the costs of depreciable business assets can be deducted all in one year on your tax return (up to a yearly maximum). While this can be a real advantage, taxwise, it also has a negative side - if you dispose of the assets before the end of their normal depreciable life, you may have to "recapture" (i.e., report additional income for) some of the costs you expensed. Be sure to check with your tax advisor before you dispose of assets you previously expensed.

Automobile Expenses:

Many business people are uncertain about what car expenses they can deduct. Those expenses you have for traveling between business locations are deductible. However, COMMUTING expenses, i.e., the car costs of going between your home and your office each day, aren't deductible. But when you travel to TEMPORARY locations away from your regular business location, you can deduct the costs of those trips regardless of the distance. Be sure to keep good records of your business driving by logging for each trip: where you went, your business purpose for going there, who you met with, and the number of business miles you traveled.

You will only be able to deduct expenses for the business portion of your car expense. However, you can choose one of two ways to do this: (1) You can deduct your expenses using actual cost of gas, oil, insurance, repairs, depreciation, etc., or (2) You can multiply your business miles by a standard mileage rate to figure your expense (this rate varies from year-to-year).

"Ordinary and Necessary Expenses":

The tax law only allows you to deduct expenses that are "ordinary" and "necessary" for your business. Taxpayers and IRS auditors often dispute over the meaning of these two terms. The IRS' definitions are somewhat general:

An "ordinary" expense is one which is common and accepted in your type of business. On the other hand, a "necessary" expense is one that is helpful and appropriate in your business; it does not have to be indispensable.

A Pension Plan:

Maintaining a pension plan offers you an excellent way to defer income from your business and plan for your retirement. One good option is a Keogh plan. Different plans have different rules about contributions, reporting, coverage, etc. Be sure to consult with your plan administrator so that you meet the specific requirements and limitations.

Estimated Tax Payments:

If your business is unincorporated, the income you earn from it is reported on your individual tax return and is subject to income and self-employment tax. Since no withholding is usually taken from self-employed income, you may need to pay estimated taxes to avoid getting hit with a penalty. Your tax advisor should be able to help you compute the amount you need to pay to ensure that no penalty is assessed. The usual due dates for estimates are April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15.  However, if a due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday, the due date will be the next business day.

QuickBooks and Double-Entry Accounting: Where’s the Other Side?

Bookkeeping is a little like physics – there are unbreakable rules. So to paraphrase one of them, “For every debit, there is an equal and opposite credit.” But in QuickBooks, that is not always obvious. The “implied side” of a transaction is not staring you in the face most of the time.

The balancing side of every transaction is there nonetheless, so that your general ledger zeroes out and your financial statements work as they are supposed to.

Where do you find the implied side of the transactions? Sometimes you want to know (or confirm) what the offsetting entry is behind the scenes. That’s where the Transaction Journal comes into play.

You can simply run the Reports / Accountant and Taxes / Journal report. It will show every transaction within the reporting date range (which you can change) and it will break out the debits and credits of every transaction into columns for the accounts that are affected.

In this example (which I split into different lines for viewability), Mr. Teschner made a payment against his customer account. You see the split in the Journal report: Checking account 10100 was debited (increased) by $5,000 and Accounts Receivable account 11000 was credited (decreased) by $5,000.

You can change the dates on this report to focus on a particular date or date range, or you can click Customize Report / Filters to limit the Journal report’s output to particular accounts you wish to see.

A faster way to pinpoint one particular transaction is to pull up the customer, vendor, employee, etc. in its respective Center.

Let’s say you want to see the implied side of an invoice that posted to a particular customer.

Go the Customer Center and click on the customer you want. You’ll see the customer’s transaction in the right-hand pane.

In this example, let’s say you want to see all the debits and credits associated with invoice 1024, the last transaction in the listing.

You just right-click on that transaction, and select “View Transaction Journal”, like this:

A new window will pop up with the debits and credits for that specific transaction. Here’s the rightmost columns of information in the window:

Nice! This is faster and easier than running the big Journal report and filtering down to this level. You see that the implied side of the transaction is listed first: accounts receivable. That’s the implied side of the invoice transaction.

This is a pretty obvious example. But in cases where you’re not sure what the offsetting debit or credit was, you have ways to find out.

Sourced from 

http://blog.quickbooksusers.com/quickbooks/quickbooks-and-double-entry-accounting-wheres-the-other-side/

Tax Season Discounts Bookkeeper Girls

My name is Steve Loomis, CEO of North Bay Real Estate, Inc. dba Fountain Grove Lending. I have been in the real estate and lending industries for over 20 years, I have owned and operated a local real estate and mortgage brokerage for the past six years.

C. Michelle Morgan provides accounting and bookkeeping services for our company, North Bay Real Estate, Inc. located in Santa Rosa, CA. Michelle Morgan provided full cycle accounting services from data entry to financial statement preparation. This was to include, but not limited to: bank account reconciliation, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll reporting and filing, adjusting and closing entries to include depreciation, and financial statement preparation (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash Flows).

I would recommend without hesitation C. Michelle Morgan for any openings, positions, and projects pertaining to accounting, bookkeeping, and business financial services.

Steve Loomis,
CEO, North Bay Real Estate, Inc.

QuickBooks Online Bookkeeping Cloud Style

There’s been much made of late about cloud computing. It seems more and more hardware and software vendors are shifting their focus (thereby ours as well) from local computing, to using software and data in the cloud. We’re used to buying a piece of software, installing it on one computer and working from there. The paradigm shift to cloud computing has us moving towards the idea of subscription-based software as a service (SaaS) instead. SaaS accounting systems are making headway in this realm as well. The Big Daddy of accounting software – Intuit – offers a lineup of online accounting options through its QuickBooks Online products.

QuickBooks Online comes in three flavors: Online Simple Start, Online Essentials, and Online Plus, each with their own features, limitations and subscription price point. For more specific information: QuickBooks Online Options.

So what’s the biggest advantage to shifting accounting functions online? Some of the biggest pluses include the ability to work on your books from any internet-connected computer regardless of platform (PC or Mac with any newer browser), no software upgrades to buy, and data availability on mobile devices.

You have to know that not all options available in the desktop version of QuickBooks are available in the online version. But hey, there’s always a trade-off when it comes to convenience. Some of the trade-off biggies include limited inventory functionality, the ability to record only basic customer and vendor data, minimal integration, and no point of sale.

So, all that said, who would find QuickBooks Online useful? Primarily service-based small businesses with few or no employees are the best candidates. Being able to access your data from home, the office and road via mobile device doesn’t hurt either.

www.MsQuickBooks.com, www.BookkeeperGirls.com, and www.santarosabookkeepers.com in Santa Rosa prefer to use QuickBooks Online for small businesses that have less than 50 employees. It is an ideal virtual Bookkeeping tool and an outsource accounting tool that can not be duplicated.

Selecting Mrs Bookkeeper

Let’s assume that you decided to hire an independent bookkeeper. How should you interview and select such a bookkeeper?

Recruiting in general, whether it is for a bookkeeper or any position, is more of an art than a science, so there is no simple recipe that will ensure that you get the best bookkeeper in the door, but there are criteria that will enable you to mitigate risks. Here’s a short checklist and I’ll cover each item in more details below:

• Professionalism
• QuickBooks knowledge
• Accounting knowledge
• Price
• Availability
• Referencechecks

Professionalism
Why do I start with this criteria? Because it is the single most efficient factor to trim your list of candidates down. If you are reviewing a long list candidates and you test them first on their QuickBooks knowledge, you’ll shrink your list by 50% pretty quickly. If you test them on professionalism first, you’ll shrink the list by 80% right from the get go and you’ll save yourself a lot of time. What do I mean by “professionalism”? That’s the whole package of people skills that the bookkeepers expose to you. How crisp and well written are their emails? How friendly are they on the phone and in-person? How punctual are they to the interview? How well dressed are they? How well do they listen? Did they prepare for the interview by researching your company? A bookkeeper who doesn’t score high on this dimension will cause you problems down the road, because good bookkeeping is not only about the accuracy of the data that you get into QuickBooks. A bookkeeper is a consultant and as such, the bookkeeper needs to know how to adapt to your industry and company, understanding your needs and adapt his/her work to your needs.

QuickBooks knowledge
There is an enormous difference between being knowledgeable in QuickBooks and knowledgeable in accounting. QuickBooks appears simple to use if all you need to do is reconcile bank accounts, but as soon as you start pushing the envelope (job costing, sales tax, inventory management, integration with 3rd party apps, etc…), it’s a whole new ball game. Even if you majored in accounting in college, it won’t help at all. Case in point: most CPAs cannot be called QuickBooks experts. They know how to pull reports out of QuickBooks to prepare your taxes, but the number of CPAs out there who would be able to fix a “broken” QuickBooks file is very small. That’s not their area of expertise.

Accounting knowledge
This one is a no-brainer and you have to test for it. However, you’ll be surprised how few candidates will fail in this dimension, because the accounting knowledge required to keep clean books is actually easy to acquire. This being said, let me stress that this holds true only if all you are looking for is a bookkeeper. If you are expecting your candidate to play a controller or CFO role, it’s a very different story, but then, the job description should not be “bookkeeper”.

Price
Like in any market, you get what you pay for. The lower the cost, the lower the expertise. If you plan on giving your bookkeeper primarily data entry tasks and you will be verifying every detail of his/her work on an on-going basis, you can afford to go lower on the price scale. However, if you expect your bookkeeper to be self-sufficient and you won’t have time to quality control the work, you will be forced to pay more. Keep in mind that the hourly rate is not necessarily a good representation of cost. Jane might charge twice the hourly rate as Joe, but if Jane works twice as fast as Joe and she provides higher quality work, you will end paying Jane less than Joe at the end of the month.

Availability
Supply and demand doesn’t only affect price. It affects availability as well. The better bookkeepers are busier. Make sure that the bookkeeper you hire still has available bandwidth for you and will be able to turn your work around quickly and be responsive to your questions during the week. That’s one of the key differences between independent bookkeepers and firms. When an independent bookkeeper is maxed out, there is no safety valve. You can’t move work around or assign different resources. You just have to wait for your turn.

Check references
Last but not the least, don’t skip on the reference checks. You’re about to give this bookkeeper a lot of sensitive financial information. Better be safe than sorry!