Cheah Chun How of High Pines Training & Consultancy shared an overview of QuickBooks Online at the recent Digital Practice Summit 2021 organised by Terrapinn, highlighting features of the application useful for accountants and financial practitioners and business owners.
High Pines has been training organisations to use QuickBooks Online since 2014. In fact, High Pines is the largest QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor in Malaysia with almost 1000 users and has also trained more than 300 accounting firms in the country on their implementation of cloud computing.
QuickBooks Online is an easy-to-use tool where users can input and extract information as seamlessly as possible.
Some of the QuickBooks Online features highlighted include:-
TL;DR
Invoicing
Create and send invoices online. This process saves time and minimises errors.
A common challenge for businesses is that invoices to clients and customers are often delayed. With QuickBooks Online, the invoice feature enables teams to prepare and deliver invoices in a matter of minutes. Instant invoice delivery would translate to businesses getting paid on time.
And what’s more, this feature also enables businesses to track the invoice from the moment it is sent to a client or customer. That means that business owners can see exactly when a customer opens the invoice, and notifications can be set up to send alerts when payment has been made.
Users can even set up automated payment reminders, where the software notifies the client when the payment deadline is approaching.
Expenses
Receipts of expenses can be captured and stored on QuickBooks Online.
The software will keep a photo record of every receipt, so users are organised and can keep track of their monthly expenses.
Inventory
The Inventory module is suitable for trading businesses.
This feature enables users to track stock that is on hand and what has been sold and get alerts when it is time to restock.
Add Accountant
This feature enables business owners and accountants to manage their books easily.
Just by clicking a button, users can re-classify the entire transaction of a certain period or a certain supplier into a different category or a different chart of accounts.
This feature also makes it easier for business owners to collaborate with their accountants through this feature, making the process of reviewing the books and making any amendments to transactions as seamless as possible, especially during tax season.
Bank Feed
This feature allows the user to connect their online bank and credit card account directly to QuickBooks Online.
This way, business owners would be able to avoid any transaction slipping through the cracks. For example, when a payment comes through and is reflected in the user’s bank account, it would match against the record on QuickBooks Online.
This would also help business owners keep track of invoices issued and payments made by clients and/or customers. Among the banks in Malaysia with QuickBooks’ Bank Feeds integration include Maybank, Hong Leong Bank, Alliance Bank, and RHB Bank.
Reporting
Suitable for businesses of various sizes, this feature enables businesses to track customised reports in real-time.
Chun How shared a case study of a past client, PETRONAS Lubricants. The client’s brief was that headquarters needed real-time reporting from their many dealers across the country. High Pines managed to win the bid through their proposal using QuickBooks Online.
They implemented a process in which the team at the client’s headquarters could track daily transactions made in real-time. On top of tracking the performance of each dealer, the team at headquarters was also able to monitor and track the products that were being sold.
From there, they were able to identify the range of best-selling products. This enabled the team to make informed decisions based on data provided in real-time.
Training
There are tons of training tutorials available on QuickBooks Online.
Alternatively, business owners can engage a ProAdvisor like High Pines to walk them through the app's different features and implementation processes. There are also reference materials on various platforms online for potential users to explore.
Mobile App
The QuickBooks Online mobile app allows users to access data like the profit and loss of their businesses; review their balance sheet, issue quotations and invoices; and capture expenses and inventory items - all through the tap of their smartphones.
Chun How shared a case study of managing a client’s audit report. He attended the meeting with the tax agent, auditor, and company secretary when representing his client. Before the meeting started, the audit partner asked one of the clerks to retrieve the company’s draft audit reports and some information required.
In the 20 minutes the staff took to retrieve the reports, Chun How shared that he was able to log into the QuickBooks mobile app on his phone, clicked on that particular client’s account, and showed the various data of the client’s accounts before proceeding to discuss findings of the account with everyone present in the room.
The meeting adjourned within an hour. This experience is a reflection of how time-efficient the application is for all parties involved.
With this mobile app, users’ data of their businesses are highly accessible and allows business owners to stay on top of the performance of their respective businesses.
In a nutshell, businesses can definitely optimise their workflow efficiency through QuickBooks Online. Chun How also shared more tips and nuggets of wisdom on QuickBooks Online; you can catch up on that on that here: Intuit QuickBooks in 10 Minutes: What You Need To Know About QuickBooks Online
For more information on the app, fill in your details here or email directly to chcheah@highpinestc.com.