QB Power Hour Podcast
QB Power Hour Podcast
Client Collaboration: Accessing QuickBooks Client Data
Mathew and Dan will be discuss that variety of ways to work with clients QuickBooks files in Online and Desktop. We will be joined by our friends at Qbox to take a closer look at how this option works.
Learn About Qbox - https://snip.ly/SOBQBox
QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Dan DeLong and Matthew Fulton who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.
Earn CPE through Earmark: https://bit.ly/QBPHCPE
Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog
Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/
00:00 Introduction to QB Power Hour Webinar Series
00:28 Housekeeping Tips and Resources
01:02 Earning Continuing Professional Education Credit
02:08 Technical Difficulties and Panelist Introduction
02:49 Client Collaboration in QuickBooks Desktop
05:57 Introduction of Sarah and Her Background
13:19 Intuit News and Pricing Changes
19:14 Working with Clients in QuickBooks Online
26:22 Accountant Tools in QuickBooks Desktop
31:45 The Ping Pong of File Transfers
32:39 Challenges of File Restoration
33:58 Remote Access and Screen Sharing
34:19 Accountant Copy Process
36:57 Web Service for File Transfers
38:55 Issues with Accountant's Copy
41:54 Journal Entries as a Backup
42:47 On-Site Work vs. Cloud Hosting
46:59 Remote Access Solutions
48:46 Introduction to Q Box
49:42 How Q Box Works
55:23 Benefits of Q Box
57:38 Conclusion and Next Steps
welcome everybody to another. QuickBooks now QB Power hour. Go And our our panelist is looking for their panelists link. So frantically find, trying to find the the panelists link to be able to have extra folks enjoy joining us here today. Uh, but as we were talking about today, we're talking about, uh, client collaboration inside of QuickBooks online desktop. This is one of the token, token, uh, desktop heavy versions of the QB Power Hour. So we'll actually be talking a lot about the desktop today and we can finally get our panelist in here. So I apologize for for that. So a little bit about myself. Uh, my name's Dan DeLong, owner Dan with and School of Bookkeeping. Worked at Intuit for nearly 18 years and now doing things on my own, uh, co-hosting workshop Wednesdays, and, uh, also doing the feature deep dive guest hosting at the unofficial QuickBooks Accountant podcast. Matthew is unable to attend today. We, uh, look forward to seeing him, him back here, and we'll let Sarah join, uh when she, joins, introduce herself. But, uh, she should be joining shortly, a little bit about the QB Power Hour. Every other Tuesday. We don't. Do live CPE. That is all done through our earmark partnership. There is a link there for the channel there on, earmark. And so our, wait a minute, our agenda, I was confused by the TBD because I thought I updated that in the, slides. Uh, but today we'll be talking about the, uh, in the Intuit news will be the the changes in the pricing for QuickBooks, uh, online. And here comes Sarah. Hooray. We'll be talking about the Intuit news of the pricing changes and the, agents. We'll, we'll do a little deeper dive into the Intuit agents on the workshop, uh, tomorrow if you wanna join us for that. Uh, but today we'll be talking about working with clients in both QuickBooks Online and desktop. So we'll be talking about the invitation process for, for QuickBooks online and then talk unpacking a little bit about the desktop accountant version, the accountant copy process, and different ways to, uh, collaborate and work in your QuickBooks desktop clients. Now. Sarah, thank you for joining us. Looks like you're muted, though.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:The only thing I can think of is maybe the invite went to quarantine. Oh, I have some new security things set up with the new laptop, so, or my new Microsoft 365, so maybe. We'll have to get with the IT director and find out what's wrong there.
Dan DeLong:That would be your husband, wouldn't it?
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:That'd be Mark.
Dan DeLong:All right, so, uh, introduce yourself for the folks that, uh, uh, don't know who Sarah is today.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Yes. I've been, um, a public accountant for over 40 years, and one of the first pro advisors with Desktop Way in the beginning. I started with DOS Quicken, so I've I've been with Wow. Yeah, I've been working with Intuit for the long haul. And then, yeah, so, and surprise, I semi-retired on June 30th I have my full charge bookkeeping, CS division, and my bookkeepers, uh, on one part. And then I was doing consulting and, and I love playing with technology and programs and all. And so my employees have all brand new jobs. They're all happy as clams. So, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to some traveling and, and uh, alright. I'm not going anywhere.
Dan DeLong:We will see, still see you around, but not, uh, absolutely not as, uh, heads down in, into client work as, as you were in the past.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Exactly. Exactly.
Dan DeLong:Well, excellent. And one of the, one of the reasons I, I really wanted to have you on the show is for your. The, the, time and the legacy that you've, uh, that you've been using QuickBooks Desktop you wrote and really eloquent post on our, on our Facebook group. So much so that Intuit asked us to take it down and we refused. Which
No One:post was that?
Dan DeLong:It was one where you were talking about your disappointment, I guess is the nicest way to, to, to talk about mm-hmm. The, the sunset or the discontinuation of the enhanced payroll for accountants service
No One:mm-hmm.
Dan DeLong:A couple years ago. How was it? And, and, uh, yeah. And, it was really, it really brought to, to light to myself of how impactful the degradation of, the desktop client. Where, a lot of accountants and bookkeepers had really built their practice around desktop and working with clients and really kind of what's, I'm trying to the stay at the politest way possible. The, um, the transition and, and the replacement of, these services in the, the cloud-based offering. Just really don't have the meat and potatoes things that you, you found that were really great about those services. Just really kind of boiled that up to the surface with, these discontinuation of, of services that were marketed and. Geared towards will charge bookkeeping practices. But really you are doing the lion's share of the data entry and Right. Ultimately the out, uh, the outputs, the output that that you're doing for your clients. Was having, um, a, a big impact,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:a huge impact to, well, the name of my business is Accounting Services Bureau. Mm-hmm. Where we are a, that's what the IRS used to call companies like us back in the day where service bureaus and, um, I didn't mean to interrupt you but we do, we are the accounting office. The clients never see the ledger, they don't see the software, they don't care about the software. So that's been the model for so many years, is that we, we do all the payroll, the a r everything, we're we, know. Like I said, we are their accounting office. So that whole, that shifted and it wasn't so much going to the cloud because that was cool. Mm-hmm. And everything that comes with having SaaS software. But the model of us of one firm taking care of many clients, shifted to the software, belongs to the client, and then we're invited into their software. And, it was a look what was which is dangerous to me, is because when you have the clients have control over their data, then they're going in and they're, they don't depending on the client, may not know what they're doing and very instantly do things that undo what we're doing. So it's a completely different, uh, way to do business. Mm-hmm. So it was a a, part of it was that, that it's just not designed. For firms to use the software to then provide services to multiple mm-hmm. Clients. And then you fall back to you've got a a, product that's been on the market for decades and the things I could do and little old pro or just mind blowing. Um, and then I always fall back to payroll and all the different allocations of payroll and really chopping up payroll to I could use, quantity for salary hours as percentages and, you know, split it 15 different ways. I mean, as a nonprofit accountant, that was just amazing. So I guess what was so scary is not seeing anything replace that.
Dan DeLong:Yeah.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:So I love the fact that I. We need to be on SA software. I understand that. But desktop still has a place. And, um, so at this moment, everybody's on enterprise, but, um it's not knowing the future and trying to plan your, your plan, your business around unknowns.
Dan DeLong:Un unknown changes. Unknown changes, unknown timelines,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:time. How much is it gonna cost? When are they gonna put the hammer down? You know, how do you plan. But anyway. Yeah.
Dan DeLong:Yeah. And I'm vocal. Yeah. And we appreciate your voice and, uh, and that here, so I really appreciate you, you joining us here today. So let's talk a little bit about our Intuit news for the day. As, you, unless you've been living under a rock July 1st. Because there's never a great time. To launch new things for accountants and bookkeepers and, no one loves change better than accountants Sarah? Big, uh, big updates. July 1st inclusive of the pricing and, uh and, this is the Intuit's first wave of introducing the Intuit, not so secret agents, which is why I threw a little get smart reference in there. So there's seven AI agents. We'll talk a little a lot more, a little deeper dive into them tomorrow on the, the workshop, Wednesday over school bookkeeping. But you may or may not see all of these based off of the different versions or different levels that you have inside of. QuickBooks online. So Simple Start doesn't get any agents. They kind of get relegate that to the bank feeds. That's, your ai taste inside of, Simple Start. And you get a, a slight increase in the monthly cost of simple start for new subscriptions. Existing subscriptions I think are gonna update in August as far as the monthly pricing. Essentials is gonna go up to 10. Do going, it's going to increase$10 a month, not go up to$10. That would be a nice discount for that. And you think for essentials, you get one one agent plus has, uh, a few extra agents and they get a$15 increase and advance. It gets a$40 increase and gets all seven AI agents. Again, we'll talk, uh, a little bit more detail as to what those agents are and what they're designed to do. They do have some pretty nifty features, uh, but I've from what I've seen on the Facebook group the, reviews have been mixed. At best we'll talk more on the QB Power Hour or the, the Power Hour that's focused on the Intuit changes. So they're there and rolling out. And as far as existing existing client access you may see them right away, or it may be rolled out. It really just typically the rollout schedule is new. People get it first, and then existing clients from. Complex easy, ease of complexity of their data, uh, get it in to the, most complex. They, get it last. The ones that really need it the most tend to get, tend to be at the back of the line, unfortunately. So let's start off with our first, uh, polling question. What version of QuickBooks do you support with your clients? I'm guessing since the, we're at about a hundred participants here today most folks are are in the desktop realm, but I may be on the, or at least on the both. Typically over, over the time that we've seen is the own, the QuickBooks only are percentage is getting smaller and smaller. Now do you have clients there on, on QuickBooks Online? Do you help with, uh, QuickBooks Online as well?
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Absolutely. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it's a great fit for the right client,
Dan DeLong:right? Yeah. Got 45 seconds or so. Um, now you have a, a A TBX. Talk a little bit about, uh your, TBX software that you're
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Yeah,
Dan DeLong:the trial balance,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:trial balance exporter. TBX is the whole Matthew's gonna kill me. It's the fastest, easiest way to get summary data at a desktop. That was my little elevator thing. Yeah, I wrote it many, many years ago. I couldn't get a trial balance with the net change. It only did as of, and when I had QuickBooks for bookkeeping and creative solutions for my writeup, and I wanted to get all my. I wanted to switch to QuickBooks for the actual day to day. I needed to export journal entries into creative solutions. So I called a programmer. I didn't know what I was doing. I desi, I told'em what I needed and we wrote this little program 2005. And it's morphed into, um, a great little app that works with desktop, but it's mainly used for migrating monthly, um, journal entries for history, going to either QBO or Sage and Intacct and NetSuite. And so yeah, as long as, uh, desktop's alive, um, I'm in business.
Dan DeLong:So, lemme go ahead and share the results here. So it looks like about 25% are QuickBooks online only and rest are smattered. Or split between. Split Between, yeah. Supporting both. So holdouts for 6%. Desktop, QuickBooks Desktop only. So let's go ahead and kick off of our, our main topics here, working with clients. and then we'll start with QuickBooks online, because that's the easiest one to explain. Really all you're dealing with is an accountant user, right? So the biggest platform difference between QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop is with desktop you have to download something, you have to install it, you have to make sure it's in the right environment. Everything that you're putting it on is, up to date with QuickBooks online, as long as you have a a, supported web browser, and that's up to date and internet access, you're able to access your QuickBooks in, in the cloud. With an accountant user, you. Invite your client or your clients can invite you to give, give you access as an accountant user. It's a non-billable user, so the user allotments that you're given as far as the number of users that you're allowed to invite and have access to your QuickBooks online. Quick Accountant users are non-billable and at least two users or two accountant users can be invited. QuickBooks call online Advance gives you access to three. Uh, once the, accountant invitation is accepted within your QBOA firm, you can have virtually an unlimited number of users as team members. So you, you can invite people as team members, or you have your client your, team members at your own firm, and they dovetail off of that one accountant invitation. Just access the client. This allows you to work concurrent, concurrently with the client, which allows, you know, I guess it does have its own double-edged sword, right? While they're working in live data, you're also working in live data. So sometimes that makes a little, little challenge of, especially when you're running reports and those types of things, if the numbers keep changing because they're entering in data at the same time. Uh, there's the video here for how to invite accountant users as well as a link there for the Intuit account.
No One:This is Shanna. We're
Dan DeLong:not gonna watch demonstration, but, uh it's not all rainbows and butterflies as the, the, or the, uh the, meme is talking about here. Sometimes those invitations aren't received much like panelist invites, uh, to. Your
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:technology. Gotta love it.
Dan DeLong:Sometimes there's a typo, uh, in the email address, and of course that if there's a typo in the email address, it's never gonna get to you. Sometimes your husband has a, has a filter or
No One:filters
Dan DeLong:junk or spam, you know,'cause these, invitations are being sent out of the QuickBooks online system. Mm-hmm. Which if that is not an allowed to pass through your email, program, whatever, that to be those things can get quarantined or not deliverable. And then of course, accepting the accountant indication sometimes has its challenges which will tend to, uh, which will tend to result in a cash issue or. Browser extensions getting in the way. Uh, a lot of times people have had some success by accepting them on your phone or the mobile device. Once it's accepted, then you're able to access and log into the, client's subscription or their QuickBooks online. Any best practices that you've you've had over your 40 years of accounting invitations? Eric?
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Uh, I, uh, the trick about answering it on your phone. Responding on your phone, which tells me it's a browser.
No One:Yeah.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:The browser and the cache. And it's, it's touchy, isn't it? Touchy,
Dan DeLong:yeah. Alright, so we're gonna launch our second whole question of what has been your experience with,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:oh, I'd like to see this, the account
Dan DeLong:invitation. So, we'll, we'll see how that is. Now the, the other way is of course, if you create the subscription inside of QBOA, you become the account, the invited accountant user, the get go. So that is a way to avoid this whole challenge of the invite, accepting the invite by creating those, those subscriptions inside of QuickBooks online directly. And then of course you can also be the, the primary admin or sure. That the client is the primary admin, say, except that mantle hiring admin. So you, you have no issues with the with the invitation, but you of course now are transferring the acceptance of the invitation and, the challenge of, of which to the client as opposed to. Opposed to you, but if you're, if that's part of your engagement, typically to set up the subscription or set up, set up QuickBooks, that might be the best, uh, best practice to work around that.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:People are saying we need to select more than one. I love the invites of ghosted me.
Dan DeLong:Oh, I thought I did set this up as a, uh, multiple choice. Oh, well, my, I thought it was a multi-select option.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Well, any of us in public accounting understand that being ghosted.
Dan DeLong:Yeah. Sometimes they just don't, they just aren't, aren't received. Yeah. And that leads to those challenges of
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:they don't check their email.
Dan DeLong:Yeah. Check their, um, check spelling or, yeah. When, when everything hinges on accepting of an imitation, it's. Just exacerbates the, um the problem. Go ahead and close the poll here and share the results. Some, uh, it looks like the, the most error is, getting an error and it's, what
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:is that?
Dan DeLong:And those, errors are never specific. Right? It's either like, Hmm, that didn't work.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Yeah, that's right. That's right. You have an error. What's the error? Yeah.
Dan DeLong:All right. So let's get to the meat and potatoes of, this and working with clients in QuickBooks Desktop. So let's first talk about the accountant version. So the accountant version is a version edition of QuickBooks Desktop. Uh, that, that gives a, a host of. Accountant tool, accountant only tools, uh, where it's the client data review, which is a collection of tools and resources that accountants will, typically, will, will use. There is a built in sorry for using the the abbreviation. I should have spelled it out. Fixed Asset Manager. Not, a, there's no family.
No One:Not your family.
Dan DeLong:No, it's not, not the fam. But it's a Fixed Asset Manager, which is a depreciation calculator built into, uh, QuickBooks. Allows you to, uh, utilize the, depreciation schedule and post those journal entries back to QuickBooks. The, uh, lovely reclassification tool, much the same as what we see inside of QuickBooks, uh, online, uh, writing off of invoices. Calculating that to bad debt. It's important to note that the write off tool inside of desktop is different than it is inside of QuickBooks online. How it writes it off, where it will actually write it off in the current period, as opposed to going back to the past, the past, which is a no-no, especially would've thought. Yeah, especially on things that are where the tax return's already been filed. Really cool tool that, uh, Michelle would be super proud of. They find and fix tax payments because she helped create you know, with her feedback on that, being able to fix incorrectly recorded sales tax payments. And then this tool of fixing unapplied customer and vendor payments is a really nice function. It's not as one click as one would hope, but it does allow you to do that on customer or vendor basis and then an unused tool. I've never seen anybody actually use it. This troubleshoot of inventory has a lot of really robust options inside of the, inside of the accountant tools. Being able to tell if what and if some, something is in a negative quantity, and being able to just that, fix that.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:I'll tell you one more.
Dan DeLong:If you're in the account
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:version, if you're in the accountant's version, you can toggle over to any of the other flavors of QuickBooks and see the screens that your client see. That's sees that's really good for, troubles.
Dan DeLong:That is, that is a good one. Yes, you can toggle to different versions. When they say, well, I clicked on the job costing center, and like what, job costing center are where are, you at? That's a good, good call out there. The accountant's copy process, which we'll talk about a little bit later is only available in the accountant's version. And you're able to export journal entries as an importable file, right? This is one of those oh, I forgot this was a possibility type of, uh, feature.
No One:Mm-hmm.
Dan DeLong:But it does require the accountant's version, which comes with your desktop ProAdvisor membership. Mm-hmm. Uh, so when you add that on as a, as an option you do have access to this, this version. Um, and also as an active desktop ProAdvisor, if you don't have the, the accountant version, but you are an active. ProAdvisor desktop member and your client is using Active Pro or Premier, it does allow you to log into those accountant tools inside of your client as your use if you are the accountant user, and see some of these tools in your, client's file, talk about how that might happen in collaborating with your, with your client. But that particular version of QuickBooks you know, does need to be again, downloaded, installed locally on your machine. And if you're using, you're outta luck unless you're using some kind of terminal where it's install. Windows based application in your Macintosh, or you just bite the bullet and buy a, Windows based machine so that you can do that. So one of the options or, some of the options is working independently with your, with, with your clients, where you are working with a, backup. And these cats are looking back and forth between the client and the accountant here. Uh this is a ping pong event, right? So when the client sends you a backup or a portable file, that data needs to be sent back and forth, uh, to you, which means that once the the backup's been made, your client really shouldn't be making any changes, right? Because when that file comes back, those changes not gonna be importable into. Into that file. So this is something to clearly communicate with, your client. Terry, do you, um, have you ever worked in with clients in, in this case, where you're sending the back of file back and forth?
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Oh, I remembered that pain. Well, you send them a file and they restore it. They don't know where they restored it. Then, you know, they have so many QBW files on, on the machine. You know, when, when you send it back. I used to do tricks like I'd say Send me back up don't touch your data until I'm done. And then I would put a million dollar check with a check number that said, delete me. And I'm like, if you don't see that million dollar check to, delete. You know, you're in the wrong data. I mean, you start learning anything that will save you. But, um that was one thing that we did. But yeah, passing these, these, oh, how about with CDs and, you know?
Dan DeLong:Mm-hmm.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:It was always, it wasn't, it wasn't just send me a qb,
Dan DeLong:yeah. They'll send you a hard disk.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:It's a hard dis Yeah.
Dan DeLong:So that, that has its own host of problems. And then typically it's where the file where, where, the file is what file, needs to be open, especially if we're in a multi-user environment. Mm-hmm. Um, do our other people have access to that file? They renamed it when it restores. A lot of challenges with, that. And that
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:was before Zoom. See now, now we could at least see what they're doing. So Yeah. We were blind. We were blind.
Dan DeLong:Remote access is a godsend, being able to see what exactly it is that they are doing. Just a screen sharing aspect. Mm-hmm. So the, the next option, the next option is working independently through this accountant copy process. So it allows for coworking and I, I put a side by side washer dryer here. So you have these things separated. So to in indicate that the, way things will, work for, in, in this case is, uh, the, the client chooses a di uh, what's called the dividing date. And the theory, and I'm gonna use air quotes here, is that the theory is, is that anything after that dividing date, the client will be able to work in on their local installation of QuickBooks. Everything prior to that date is where the, is what the accountant will be able to work in. So when that, when it's in that condition where there is a dividing date, uh, there are some restrictions because when the file, the change file comes back and then a couple other slides about that, about this whole process the file needs to be in the same condition of when that export or that change file that was sent out was in. And that's part of the challenge of what happens in this whole process is that something has changed from the time that the, file was sent to the accountant to when the changes are trying to be brought back into, QuickBooks. And we'll talk about that in, in a little bit here. Uh, but, uh. With with this, this is one of the few versions or processes or workflows that allows you to work in a different year's version of, of QuickBooks. So your client could be on 2023 and you could be on 2024. And this whole process again, in theory should work being able to, for them to send you the file, you turn it into an accounts copy file, you make your changes, and send the file back into an older version of QuickBooks of 2023. Now it's only for the one year prior, right? And since 2022 has now been discontinuing anyway that's really a moot point because we only have 2023 and 2024 as desktop versions to work with anyway. And if you are an active ProAdvisor, there is a web service, uh, that's available, which streamlines the process of sending these files back and forth and importing the changes of Sarah, have you ever used, uh the web service for transferring accountants copies back when, first,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:when it first came out? I think the, the problem I have is clients will create a, an accountant's copy, which, you know, limits what they can do in their own books. And then I go, well, is your tax accountant going to send changes back? No. But they asked for a copy and they're my accountant, so I made an accountant's copy. And so yeah, I, I see that probably more than I see. Anything else.'cause um, it can be a little buggy and a lot of clients have, have, or accountants have abandoned it, I think.
Dan DeLong:The, um, the, the basic process is the client enters the dividing d creates the file Yeah. Sends to the accountant I typo there. Uh, so it's a QBX file is what? It's the file extension. And that can be sent hard, you know, the hard way with a, an actual disc through email. All that's not secure, but doesn't stop people from doing it'cause it's a very small file. It allows you to, to send that transfer file. And then there's also the web service allows you to do that. The accountant restores the file, they make their changes and they export the file back to the client, which then seems a qb, creates a QBI file which can again either be sent file exchange, or email, also the web service. And then hopefully. Client, the client gets to import those changes. Well, sounds great. It's one of those things that it either works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't work the, the, promise or the likelihood of getting those transactions into your QuickBook, your client's QuickBooks file is, it's, uh you know, it when, when somebody would call and say, well, I'm trying to import my client's changes I have this look of, uh, Jason Soka here. Cross my fingers and maybe hope that it brought these in. Because ultimately what happens is, is that something had changed. A client updated, uh, their file, maybe they updated their version because, uh. While the changes were out, a new version came out, decided to update their QuickBooks, or as you mentioned, Sarah, the there's restrictions and they tried to do something. They tried to resort their lists or they tried to do something and it said, well, we can't do that because you've got these accountant restrictions.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:So they turn it off and then Yeah.
Dan DeLong:Yeah, they'll turn it off and, oh there's a warning message that says you won't be able to import your changes, so I'll just go ahead and make another accountant's copy and hope for the best. That's not the same. That's not the same of when it left. Just putting it back into that condition. And then that causes that pretty frustrating to
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:lose all your work from the accountants. Yeah.
Dan DeLong:Yeah, It's, uh you don't end up having a piece conversation when, when you find out that the client remove the restrictions. And that there's no way to prove it either that
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:that may be why some accountants or why I abandoned is you get stung once and you don't risk it again.
Dan DeLong:Yeah, only once. Shame on me. Yeah. I will not be fooled twice, but there, when those transactions and it, there's a PDF process in all of this. So as you know there the PDFs, creating PDFs in, QuickBooks desktop is reliant on Windows systems and drivers and those types of things. So there's a lot of challenges that could potentially go, wrong with that. But if there's unable, if they're unable to bring in those transactions, there's really no chance of importing those changes. Oftentimes the. The customer reconciled their bank account and one of those transactions was past the dividing date, which then causes those reconciliations to be rolled back. So a lot of un redoing of work that was already done, and nobody likes to do that anyway.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:You don't like redoing
Dan DeLong:work. Yeah. Now, one saving grace again is, if your changes are all journal entries, you can always, even if the those changes don't come back, come in through the import process, you can send those, uh, changes as A-A-Q-B-J file. Mm-hmm. Uh, and those are able to be imported as well. So there as maybe not all of your changes are able to be salvaged any journal entry regardless of whether or not they were able to be brought in properly can be sent through this, uh, journal entry process. So. Most of the time people wanna work in the same file at the same time. So you have a host of prob host of options. Uh, we have a host of options when it comes to that. One is working on site, being able to being physically at the, at the location, get
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:in the car and drive over there, right?
Dan DeLong:The other is online cloud hosting, which allows you to be in a virtual environment at the same time. Another is remote access, where you're physically taking out the car out of the, outta the equation and being able to remote access and then sponsor. Today it's best of both or like the best option is Q Box. And, uh, a lot of people will be wondering what is Q Box? So we'll be talking about that at the end. You're a big fan of Q Box. Uh, what would you say? You know, is, is one of the main reasons that, that they like the Q box of all of these options? Well, there's
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:benefits in every, every kind of concurrent usage. But the Q box turned out to be the least expensive and actually sharing the data file with remote workers is just a brilliant idea. And concurrently, if the first thing I ask is how many, do you have users that are in the data file doing work at the same time? And chances are with a small company, they're not working at the same time? Unless they're in a local office where they're in multi-user mode sometimes they can, they can it's a cue box is like a take turn idea. Yeah, it's just, it's brilliant the way it's designed.
Dan DeLong:So let's run through some of these other options before we, we talk a little bit more heavy about Q Box, uh, on-premises work. I don't, think this is, uh, an ideal system. People still do it, Linda. They still do it. But you physically present, you're focused only on that client, right? There's additional considerations with, uh, rotating of workstations. The license license you were talking about yesterday. The client is hovering over helicoptering helicopter behind you. Yep. You have the consideration of time and mileage. But it's the best way to work together with your client because you're there. Go ahead.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Source documents at your fingertips. You got the client right there. I mean, yeah. A lot of value. But you have to be the type accountant that's willing to get in the car and go,
Dan DeLong:wants to do that.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:Yeah.
Dan DeLong:Client needs to value that that type of client interaction as well. And uh, hey, just said,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:but they give me free lunch every time I go.
Dan DeLong:Now, cloud hosting this is where you are virtually present. Mm-hmm. You can multitask. There is a cost applic implication to all of this additional logins, not just for you, but also for, yeah. Everybody has to pay. Yeah. Everybody's gotta be on that, in that situation, the infrastructure is gonna be handled by the PO the host. So the updating multi user access. Which is really a double-edged sword, right? Because then you've also got a duplication of utilities potentially you know, on their local workstation as well as in that same environment. Mm-hmm. The ability to transfer files back and forth. Now as a, another consideration printing is, uh, is now a challenge because printing from a virtual environment to a local printer that's installed, not, maybe not even at my office. Um, and is the most costly, but also the most convenient way to work together. Mm-hmm. And there's a host of hosts that are allowing you to do that. Now, remote access again, is, is where you, are virtually present. This could be any. Of the the, solutions that we have listed in there. But the infrastructure and access is handled by the client in this case, as opposed to the hosting provider. So they need to make sure that they're updated, that their multi-user access the wastage of time to figure out who is in the file in single user mode is a, is hunting around the office looking for that. I gotta switch to single user mode, who's, who's logged in as the admin in single user mode you know, trying to find those front and those folks. But you have, uh, a host of challenge or a host of options where it's logged in, go to my BC slash top TeamViewer. Uh, but there's a consideration of attended or unattended mode. You know, where you have a dedicated workstation, uh. For you. So that, but again, it, it, it takes that driving out of the physically being there. There's no time and mileage with just you getting there. Typically, you log in and you're there, and you also have those, you said
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:center where you're logging in. If you're, if you're bumping somebody off of their machine and like, Hey, I need to work, and then they're, they're wandering around behind your waiting because they can't even check their email. Um that's, a consideration. And unintended though, we use that a lot for, I have clients that really need handholding as a controller and everybody I have, they call and they go, can you help me with something? Click boom. I'm on their desktop. So there's, there's the benefits there.
Dan DeLong:All right, so let's talk about Q Box, which is kind of like the best of both worlds is the Hannah Montana of of, these options here, because it allows you to work locally, but access your clients. Virtually, right? So the file is actually gonna be stored online. And you, you have a really interesting way to to talk about this using policemen, right? Policemen,
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:right? Because then people think that Q Box is a hosted server, that you're actually dialing into Q Box to work on QuickBooks. It's not that it's it's like Dropbox and OneDrive and, Google. Google Drive on steroids. Okay. So basically the QuickBooks file is in a shared, is in a syncing folder on your local pc. So quick, uh, Q Box is in charge of handing out that file. To all the, users and it, I consider it a, a, a, a police officer. It's so basically what a traffic
Dan DeLong:cop A traffic cop.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:It's a traffic cop. Yeah, exactly. Not a police officer. It's a traffic cop. So in other words, it's not, it's not doing anything to your QuickBooks file. So everybody has to have QuickBooks on their pc. Everybody has to have a copy of the data file. The trick is who's got the master copy? What it does is you can say, I'm gonna work, and it says, okay. And you, they call it lock You lock the file and say, I'm in here working. And the traffic cop, if anybody else on their machine across town or the next office goes into QuickBooks and tries to open that file and it'll go, Sarah's working. You can come in all you want. You can look and print view, leave it open all day long if you want, but when Sarah's done working, everything that she's done is now going to sync up to Q Box and back down and overwrite your, copy. So it keeps everybody in sync with the exact, with the, uh, most current copy of QuickBooks. Yeah, it's mostly brilliant.
Dan DeLong:I used to think like, a best way to describe it was like your da the data file was like a library book in that you check it out, oh, check in
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:and check out.
Dan DeLong:You check it in and check out. But when I was talking with with Allison over at Ree, that tree, I didn't realize that the clients could actually still open their company file. Oh
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:yeah. Yeah. It has it checked out. It's really a warning system.
Dan DeLong:Yeah. Yeah. So like the client can actually still open. They can, view their data, they can run reports. But just with that caveat of if they enter any transactions, which they can still do Their changes are going to be overwritten because the person who has the lock file associated with them once they're finished, it checks that library book back into the library. And now everybody has the same library book again as far as the data is concerned. So it does allow you to it, it's kind of like, uh, and we were talking yesterday, it's kind of like that closing date. Hmm. Setting that, setting that closing date on the client's books. Mm-hmm. Those warnings persist and say, Hey, you're not this, you can do this, but it's not a great idea. Great
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:idea. Right? That
Dan DeLong:you're able to make these changes, but bear in mind you're gonna. Lose those changes if you do make those, make those changes in the, in the company file. So you had a, an interesting scenario where the client was just opening up QuickBooks first thing in the morning
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:and that, that's what I find is, is clients, they come in, they turn on the computer, they open up and they just turn on QuickBooks and they just have the file open all day long. And so I realized that you're not 99% of'em, they're not just working in QuickBooks all day long. And so it turns out that they like it open in case a vendor calls or a customer calls and they look, they can look something up. So once I figured that out when the Q Box worked out beautifully, because I'm like, just don't take the lock. And you can have it open all day long and, and help your, you know, help your clients all work. Or they'll have it locked. They'll do some work, and it's been locked all day. And I'm like, okay, I don't wanna work after five. Can I have the file? And I'll call and I'll say, are you working? Or can you, pop out? Let me work for a while? And, so they'll release the lock and then I, I get their copy and then I can, I can go to work. So yeah. And I know that people are thinking, well, why can't I just put the QuickBooks file in one drop? Why can't I just put it in a Dropbox? And I'll tell you why. Because these sinking programs sink continuously. When you're sharing a document in, a a, a Dropbox, it's syncing that one file continuously. QuickBooks wasn't designed that way. That QuickBooks file isn't just the QBW file. There's all these little hidden files, and it's writing to those files as you work. And if you have it in a a syncing folder, um, a normal syncing folder it can corrupt your QuickBooks file. So Q Box doesn't do any syncing until you log off, say, I'm totally done, and then it goes and puts all the files up and out. So that's the difference between any other s sinking folder and they've got a patent on this. So
Dan DeLong:And, those, those sinking programs are not supported that they, it's not a, it's not a great idea to try to. Full QuickBooks by, by using final transfer, large file storage, storage online system. Right? Right. Um, and we, and we were talking yesterday about some of the, bonuses of Q Box. Now the pricing model is, it's per, client per folder folder. Not necessarily per client. Mm-hmm. But per folder. And then you'll have a, a folder, a company file per, uh, a company folder per company. Per client, sorry. And then, and then as you add clients, then there's additional charges based off of that. Right. But the the, some of the bonuses that is, that it saves 20 versions of that company file. Talk a little bit about, uh. So it's kind of like an online backup service without paying for an online backup service. E
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:exactly. So I do two things. I always either have a client folder that I share with the client, or sometimes I'll say, you know what, why don't you get the account with Q Box, you own your QuickBooks file and then you share it with me. So I also have it that way. Um, so I have Accounting Services Bureau and all these clients, but then I have another client that has shared with me, and if they ever leave me, they just turn me off. Poof. My file's gone. The other be, so in this day and age of, of getting nickel and dime for every user and every little feature, they are so generous. So when they sync a file up, they're saving 20 different renditions. If you have any reason you need to roll back, like corrupt data or, I mean, we, any of us have worked with desktop long enough, no reasons to to restore an old backup. It is one of the cheapest ways to get an offsite backup of your data. Yeah that's, a good selling point, whether they wanna use the Q box or not.
Dan DeLong:And they do have a fully functioning trial without Yes. Billing information, no credit card. So you can either, you check it out for, with a non no, no, credit card required for, Alright. I'll throw out the last full question here. Would you like to learn more about U Box? Sarah, I really appreciate you, uh, joining us, even if it was a light, but that's, uh, we'll have to wag our finger at your husband of, of not getting the panel stand.
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Dan DeLong:Quite all right. It's a, a, a few things. We do have the QB Power Hour, uh, store. Next QB Power Hour we're gonna be talking about, or we're gonna be having our first app showdown for all in one spending platforms. We'll be pitting sorry. Core Pay one, which is a, a bill payment solution with a credit card management. Spend management all in one against ramp. So we'll be comparing those two. Guess
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:who
Dan DeLong:a ramp? So we'll hopefully, uh, you can join us then for that one. That's a problem. If you need specific questions about QuickBooks, uh, learning, QuickBooks your way, we have that over at school of Bookkeeping and you don't wanna talk to Intuit. Well there's someone else available for you to talk to me. We have some chat email, daily, monthly annual options, so it's full of bookkeeping and we can bundle your QBO subscriptions with it as well. And I did talk a little bit about what's happening next week. Anything you wanna close us out with Sarah?
Sara Laidlaw-Woodruff:I just remembered something we forgot to, to put on our bonus list. Okay. You can also share your document folder. Desktop. If you attach documents, it's in a completely separate folder, and there's a different technology to be able to share that. So if you have your source documents also attached to transactions and desktop Q Box has a, it's a little extra cost, but you can actually share the source documents.
Dan DeLong:Nice. It's a good thing to know. Well, we appreciate you all joining us here today on the QB Power Hour, and we look forward to seeing you, uh, again, and, uh, love to hopefully everybody has a, great week ahead and we'll see you next time. Uh, QB Power Hour. Thank you.