Quick Tip! Where's My Recurring Payment?

Four months back I converted my firm's information from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.  I was very excited to use the Recurring Transactions feature in QBO to simplify my monthly billing and save time.  There are many great features in QBO, but this one in particular was the one that got me to pull the trigger and make the conversion.  I went in and set up my monthly invoices, recurring payments, and sales receipts.

When it comes to recurring transactions I want to make sure that all goes off with out a hitch so I go in and make sure they are all set to go. Some of my Invoices may change a bit every three months or so, so I manually make those corrections.   A couple of days ago I went through to ensure that all of the transactions were correct, I made my changes, saved the templates, and moved on.

Today I noticed that my recurring transactions had not been processed.   As I went back through my QBO account I was a little surprised when I  noticed that the little check box titled "Process Credit Card" had mysteriously become unchecked.  I was baffled.  Why would this happen?  What happened to my payments?

After numerous attempts to pin down what was happening we finally figured it out. This is something for every QBO user with "Recurring Payments" to be aware of.  If you go in to your recurring payment and click "Save Template" for any reason, regardless of whether or not you make a change to it, you will need to go back in to your template and recheck "Process Credit Card" and click "Save Template" again.  If you don't the payment won't be processed.  A simple, quick fix that we wanted to share with you.  Until next time!

Why QBO?

As a long time advanced QuickBooks Desktop ProAdvisor, much of my business was helping clients who contacted me off of the Find a ProAdvisor site to troubleshoot issues on QBD or reconcile there accounts either at there offices or from a portable file sent through a secure portal. While business was good, it was definitely taxing.  In late 2014 I looked at the JCL Accounting Services business structure and started to wonder......How can QuickBooks Online simplify my business and allow me to offer my clients a great accounting platform?  I decided to investigate and compare, and here are three of the major advantages that became apparent.

QuickBooks Desktop is a great product and is very appropriate for many business structures.  Like any other desktop applications, links break.  Running a verify data is important to maintain the health of your desktop file.  It verifies that the data links aren't broken.  Wonder how?  File - utilities - verify data.  With QBO, you don't have to verify because it is a virtual program.

Data loss due to file corruption was always a troubling issue.  The first question I asked was "Did you back up your file?" It's amazing how many perspective clients had never backed up there data, or there computers broke and they had backed up to there desk top, so there files were wiped out.  QBO eliminates the need for remembering to back up. Cloud accounting definitely has many advantages, but this one was huge.

And finally third party applications allow my clients to have a more personalized accounting package.  Instead of the one size fits all of QuickBooks desktop, third party applications make QuickBooks Online advantageous for a wider array of users.

All in all, QuickBooks online has become the preferred accounting platform at JCL Accounting.  Virtual accounting is the wave of the future.  If you are looking for help getting set up with QBO, give us a call.

Reconciling our Differences

Looking up the definition of reconcile, one will find synonyms like resolve  or check, as in, resolve the difference or check the differences. When it comes to reconciling an account in QuickBooks, those definitions don’t go far enough.

If I had a dime for every time a QuickBooks user told me they “reconciled” their bank/credit card accounts, I’d be rich! On the other hand, if I had a dime for every time they did it correctly, I’d be broke. Come to think of it, I darned near am broke! You’re probably asking yourself, what is he talking about? Well let me spell it out.

In QuickBooks reconciling an account goes beyond resolving the differences between the account register and the bank statement.  Once all the transactions have been identified/matched between the QuickBooks account register and the bank/credit card company’s statement, you’re only part way there. It’s necessary to “record” the balance you reconciled so any accidental changes/adjustments to cleared transactions become obvious by changes in this balance.

To do the job properly in QuickBooks, it’s necessary to go to the “Reconcile” screen and after entering the closing date and ending balance from the bank statement, begin “clearing” matched transactions. Clearing or checking off matched transactions in the reconciling screen is an integral part of resolving the differences. Clearing the transactions identifies it as having been verified to a transaction on an actual bank/credit card statement. This insures that the transaction not only is accurate but also that it has not been duplicated. Transactions on the bank statement not appearing in the QuickBooks reconciling screen, should be added to the QuickBooks account register and cleared. This keeps the process in balance.

And now for the crème de la crème, remember that ending balance from the bank statement you entered in the beginning of the process? The QuickBooks reconciling screen has been tracking your efforts at clearing transactions and the results are displayed in the lower right corner of the screen. See the “Difference” amount? If you did your job well, the amount will be zero. You can now click on the Reconcile Now button. This records the reconciled balance as next month’s beginning balance and if it changes, you know someone or something has “unreconciled” your previous work. You can’t get that kind of reconciliation protection by simply resolving/checking  the transactions against one another visually or on paper.

So folks, give an old beancounter a break. Reconcile your bank and credit card accounts through QuickBooks the proper way to insure the accuracy of your balances. Reconciling by any other means is simply “checking” your accounts and it don’t get me any further away from broke.