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.

QuickBooks 2012: New Paths to Better

As it usually does this time of year, Intuit has introduced new versions of its Pro and Premier products. QuickBooks 2012 promises to help you get better organized, save steps, and acquire more in-depth financial insights.

The new Express Start is designed for businesses that want to blast through setup and start entering customers and invoices. You have two other options, though: Advanced Setup is the old EasyStep interview that solicits more details. You can also open an existing file or convert data from Quicken or other accounting software.

Express Start requires minimal input: company name, industry, company type, tax ID, and contact information. After you save your company file, it lets you start adding or importing customers/vendors/employees, products/services, and bank accounts.

Figure 1: Express Start simplifies company setup.

An Activity-Driven Calendar
QuickBooks' Reminders keep you apprised of each day's tasks, but they don't provide any information about the past or future. QuickBooks 2012 solves this problem with its new Calendar. When you enter an appointment, to-do, or key business task (invoices, bills, purchase orders, etc.), it appears in the calendar. You can display a graphical view of the month that tallies activities for each day and lists them below. Daily and weekly views are in list form. And links open the original documents.

Figure 2: The new Calendar displays daily, weekly, and monthly views of your financial transactions.

Save Excel Formatting
Once you've formatted a QuickBooks report in Excel, it's frustrating to have to reformat it each time you run it for different time periods and/or with your ever-changing content. Excel Integration Refresh simplifies this process. You can now export a report to Excel, make formatting changes and save them, and then reapply them later to the same type of report using different date ranges and your updated QuickBooks data. Acceptable alterations include:

• Row and column header font formatting
• New formulas
• Renamed column and row headers, and report titles
• Resized columns
• Inserted columns and rows
• Inserted formula text

You can do this by opening your report in QuickBooks and clicking Update an existing worksheet, or by launching your report in Excel and clicking the QuickBooks tab on the toolbar, then the Update Report button.


Figure 3: This window opens when you click Update Report in Excel.

A New Report Community
There's always room for more report formats. QuickBooks 2012 offers a library of Contributed Reports, variations created either by Intuit or your fellow users. You can select one of these, like Customer Sales By Quantity By Item Detail and instantly populate it with your own data.

You can sort these templates by industry and rating, and view them as a list, in a grid, or in the Report Center's Carousel view.

Centralized Operations
QuickBooks 2012 also saves you time with its new Centers. The Inventory Center works similarly to those available for customers, vendors, and employees. It's a clearinghouse of item records and transactions that can be viewed and sorted. You can also do inventory housekeeping tasks here, like adding items and launching transactions.

The Lead Center helps you carefully track new leads that you either paste in from Excel or enter manually. You can add to-dos and notes to contact records, and convert them into customers.

Upgrading Can Be Tricky
Intuit has included other, smaller time-saving organizational and reporting tools in QuickBooks 2012, like One-Click Transactions, which lets you create related transactions from existing ones (i.e., invoice to credit memo) with one click.

There's nothing especially difficult about using most of QuickBooks 2012's new features. But upgrading and setup are sometimes quirky, and the Excel Integration Refresh tool has a learning curve. We're happy to help you start your company file on the right foot or get acclimated to this latest version.

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/

2011 Year End Tax Strategies

With the economy still in the doldrums, this year has not been the greatest year for most individuals.  Unemployment is still high, incomes are lower, retirement savings have declined and many taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet.  The government has provided a variety of tax incentives to help weather the economic storm, and you are urged to take advantage of these special tax benefits as well as other strategies to keep your tax bill as low as possible.  

• State Estimated Tax Payments Although the deadline to make the current year 4th quarter state estimated tax payment is January 15 of the next year for most states, the payment will count as a tax deduction on the federal Schedule A for the current year if that payment is made before the end of December.
• Property Taxes Generally, your property taxes are billed in installments, and thats how most people pay them. However, the tax can be paid all at once, if it provides a greater tax benefit for the current year. 

Caution: The preceding two strategies do not benefit taxpayers who are subject to the alternative minimum tax (AMT), since taxes are not deductible to the extent a taxpayer is subject to the AMT. Taxpayers subject to the AMT might, instead, consider deferring deductible tax payments to the subsequent year.

• Bunch Deductions - If your tax deductions normally fall short of itemizing your deductions, or even if you are able to itemize but only marginally, you may benefit from using the bunching strategy. For more on this technique, read the article Bunching Your Deductions Can Provide Big Tax Benefits.
• Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from Retirement Plans If you are in a low or zero tax bracket this year, it may be to your benefit to take a withdrawal more than the minimum. RMDs generally apply to individuals age 70 ½ and older, but even younger retirees who are not yet required to take a distribution may find this strategy beneficial. If you receive Social Security benefits, IRA distributions can sometimes be planned to minimize the taxability of the Social Security income.
• Tax Credit for First Four Years of College - The American Opportunity Credit (AOC) takes the place of the Hope education credit and provides a credit for tuition and certain other expenses of the first four years of college (Hope only applied to the first two years). So even if you used the Hope credit in prior years you may still qualify for the AOC. The credit is 100% of the first $2,000 of qualified expenses and 25% of the next $2,000. 40% of the credit is refundable which means that taxpayers with little or no tax liability can still benefit from the credit. This credit does begin to phase-out for single taxpayers with AGI above $80,000 ($160,000 for joint filers) and no credit is allowed for taxpayers filing married separate.

Important: The AOC is only applicable to tax years 2009 through 2012. Without Congressional action, 2012 is the final year for this more lucrative education credit.

• Energy-Efficient Home Improvements Homeowners who have or will make certain energy-efficient improvements to their existing homes may qualify for energy credits up to 10% of the cost (credit limited to a lifetime maximum of $500 taking into account credit claimed in prior years). This credit applies to the following qualified energy efficient improvements: exterior windows and skylights, exterior doors, metal and asphalt roofs, heating systems, air-conditioning systems and insulation. With many contractors without work this could be an opportune time to negotiate reasonable prices and make those home modifications, but the work must be completed before year-end if you want the credit. Without Congressional action, this credit expires at the end of 2011.
• Roth IRA Conversions If your taxable income is low or a negative amount for the year, it may be appropriate to convert some or all of your taxable traditional IRA to a Roth IRA for little or no tax cost. Taxpayers are able to convert funds in regular IRAs (as well as qualified retirement plans) to Roth IRAs regardless of their income level.
• Review Estimated Tax Payments and Withholding Ensure they are sufficient to meet the safe-harbor payment amounts so as to avoid underpayment penalties.
• IRA and Self-Employed Retirement Plan Contributions The primary purpose of these plans is to provide for your future retirement and whenever you are eligible and financially able, you should always contribute as much as possible. Contributions also provide a tax deduction when they are made to Self-employed plans and to most traditional IRAs. The benefit derived from this tax deduction is based upon your tax bracket. (Some contributions to traditional IRAs may not be deductible if you also participate in another retirement plan, depending on your income level.) Those individuals who simply prefer the Roth option, but are barred from making Roth contributions because their income exceeds the AGI phase out limitations, might consider making a non-deductible traditional IRA contribution and then converting it to a Roth IRA since as of 2010 there are no income limitations on conversions.
• Establish a Retirement Plan If you do not already have a retirement plan and you are considering one, there are several options. Some, such as Keogh or 401(k) plans, must be set up before the years end. If you are an owner-only business, you should review the article Owner-Only Businesses Should Consider a Solo 401(k) Plan, which provides great benefits for business owners with no employees other than their spouse.
• Capital Loss Carryovers If you have carryover capital losses remember you can only claim a maximum $3,000 net capital loss on your return and the remainder carries over to the subsequent year. However, you may have some gains you can take to offset the carryover. (If you sell at a gain but wish to repurchase stock in the same company, note that the wash sale rules dont applythey only apply to losses so you will not need to wait 30 days to make the repurchase.) For long-term planning, it is important to keep in mind that the current lower capital gains rates of 0% and 15% are only available through 2012. After that, without Congressional intervention, the rates return to the pre-2003 levels of 10% and 20%. 
• Non-Cash Charitable Donations If you itemize your deductions and your garage and closets contain never-used items, you might consider donating those items to charity before year-end to increase your deductions. To claim a deduction for donated clothing and household goods, they must be in good condition or better, and the donations must be substantiated by a written receipt that includes the name of the charity, dates and location of the donation and a reasonably detailed description of the property donated. A receipt is not required where the value is less than $250 and it is impractical to obtain one (for example, when items are left at an unattended drop site). If, instead, you decide to sell some of the property, the income is generally tax free provided you sell each item for less than your cost or basis in the property.
• Deduct IRA Losses If a traditional IRA account that includes non-deductible contributions declines in value and the value of all of your IRA accounts combined is less than the sum of your non-deductible contributions, you can take a loss by withdrawing from (closing) all your IRA accounts. However, this loss is beneficial only if you itemize your deductions and the loss, along with your other miscellaneous deductions, exceeds 2% of your income (AGI) for the year.

The foregoing are frequently encountered tax strategies that can be employed by most, but by no means all, taxpayers. Please call this office if have questions regarding these issue or others or would like to engage in some year-end tax planning. If you have a substantial increase or decrease in income this year it may be wise to schedule an appointment before the holidays to strategize.

Organizing Financial Records

Keeping good financial records is a common nightmare for most small business. What should you keep? How long? Is electronic OK? How to organize all these documents? Here are some high level guidelines, but bear in mind that the law around bookkeeping records is loaded with exceptions and corner cases. In case of doubt, always check with your CPA or attorney. Another disclaimer: this blog is about financial records as they are relevant to the IRS. Records that are HR related or that involve legal contracts follow very different rules.

1. The IRS is OK with electronic records.

The days when the IRS wanted every bookkeeping record to be on paper are long gone. As long as you can retrieve documents easily and as long as they are very clearly readable, IRS inspectors are fine with electronic records.

2. Electronic records are safer than paper.

The beauty of electronic records, besides their obvious advantage in term of space savings is that you can keep backups in multiple locations. With paper, you are at the mercy of a flood, fire or theft. With electronic bookkeeping records, make sure to have backups offsite. Options include online backup services such as Mozy, online document management solutions such as SmartVault or simply DVD copies kept in a safe deposit box at your bank.

3. Don’t rely on 3rd parties to keep records for you.

Many of your financial records are peppered around with 3rd parties such as your bank, your payroll provider, your CPA, your bookkeeper, your insurance company, etc… By the time you get audited, you may no longer be using these providers and you may not have access to this bookkeeping data anymore. Always store copies on your side. For instance, save a PDF of all your bank statements.

4. Keep everything!

The IRS says that you don’t need to keep receipts under $75. However, it also says that you need to be able to substantiate ANY expense that you incur, implying that, if you don’t keep the receipts, you need to keep a log that includes the date, time, place, amount, who was involved, and the business purpose of the expense. Why sweat it then? Just keep all your receipts and handwrite on them the business purpose. You can then file them or scan and shred.

5. Keep the organization simple.

For small businesses, there is no need to create complex indexing systems. For instance, keeping bookkeeping records in separate folders for each vendor might be overkill. A folder per month for all your receipts and statements is often sufficient. You can then rely on QuickBooks to tell you when a given transaction took place, to help you find the correct folder. This is a case of quantity over quality. Focus on keeping everything rather than on the way it is organized. The more complex your organization system is, the less likely you are to stick with it.

6. Keep records for at least 7 years.

The regulations on how long to keep financial records varies wildly depending on the type of record. If you are current with your taxes and filing, 7 years is a safe rule of thumb. Some people might say that it’s too long, but it is simpler to follow this rule than to have to keep different types of records in different folders and once a year go through the excruciating process of having to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. The main exception is for tax returns. Try to keep those for the life of the company. Digitize them if necessary to save space.

7. QuickBooks is your ultimate database.

Where does the IRS inspector go first when they audit you? The general ledger. The inspector will start asking for supporting documentation based on what he/she sees in QuickBooks. The cleaner QuickBooks is and the more details you have about each transaction in QuickBooks, the less documentation you will have to retrieve.

8. Beware of Meals and Entertainment.

It’s the small stuff that gets you in trouble. Write down who you met with and why on each receipt.

9. Archive your calendar.

The IRS will compare the entries in your calendar to the transactions you made. Each year, archive a paper or electronic copy of last year’s calendar in your files.

10. Keep a mileage log in all your car.

The IRS wants you to track the mileage of your odometre at the beginning of your trip and at the end of your trip. An entry like “2/25/11 – 32 miles to go meet with Bob” is not sufficient. It should look more like this: “2/25/11. 45,000 miles through 45,032 miles. Met with Bob Smith from Acme Ventures at 205 1st Street, Austin. Sales call.” Once a month, rip the pages of your log, enter the mileage into QuickBooks and archive the log.