Quickbooks

Your employees probably don’t need access to every corner of QuickBooks Online. Here’s how to set limits.

One of the best attributes of QuickBooks Online is that multiple users can access it without having software installed on their PCs. No more paying up front for a boxed copy that you’ll store on your hard drive. You just pay a monthly subscription fee.

Unless you assign specific access rights to your users, though, they’ll be able to see and do everything that you see and do on the site. You undoubtedly trust your employees or you wouldn’t have hired them, but it’s just good business practice to restrict individuals to their specific work areas. You probably did the same thing if you ever ran a manual accounting system.

QuickBooks Online makes this easy. Once you’ve set up individuals for a specific set of screen permissions, that’s all they’ll see when they log in with their user names and passwords. Here’s how it works.

Several Levels

Click the gear icon in the upper right of the QuickBooks Online screen, then select Manage Users under Your Company, then click New. This mini-interview will open.

QuickBooks Online’s mini-interview will walk you through the steps required to assign access rights to employees.

As you can see, four access levels are supported. You’ll probably select Regular or custom user most often because you can drill down and set permissions at the screen level. The Company administrator is you, of course, unless you’ve assigned this role to someone else. The user at this level has access to everything.

You can also let someone see Reports only, with the exception of payroll reports and those that contain contact information about customers, vendors, and employees. If you have employees who submit time sheets but don’t otherwise work in QuickBooks Online, you can let them in to do Time Tracking only.

Tip: There’s a fifth option here. You can grant us access to your QuickBooks Online company data, making it easier for us to monitor and troubleshoot your accounting information. Let us know if you want to take advantage of this.

Paring Down Access

Click the button in front of Regular or custom user if it’s not already highlighted, and then click Next. This third screen in the mini-interview deals with Customers and Sales and Vendors and Purchases Access Rights. Click All or None if appropriate.

This screen in the mini-interview helps you restrict user access in Sales and Purchase areas.

If you’re allowing Limited access in these two areas, be sure to read the fine print explaining what is and isn’t allowed. When you’re satisfied with your selection, click Next.

On the next screen, you’ll set administrative rights for that user by indicating whether he or she can manage other users’ access rights and work with your subscription status and other company information.

You’ll supply the individual’s email address and name on the following screen. This will be used to send an email inviting the user to sign in using an existing Intuit Business Services user name or one he or she creates. Click through the next screen and click Finish when you’re done. The mini-interview will close, and you’ll be back at the Manage Users page.

Your User Overview

The Manage Users page displays a list of all users who have been invited or are active.

The Manage Users screen

The table here lists all users’ names, email addresses, access rights, billable standing, and status. If you haven’t received a response to an invitation (Invited), you can click the Resend button to issue another email. When he or she responds, Invited changes to Active. Click on a row to highlight an individual, and you can Edit or Delete him or her, and see an audit log of Activity.

You or your appointed Master Administrator should set up access rights before any new employee is admitted to QuickBooks Online. Let us know if you’re having trouble with this element of the site, and if you’d like us to join your list of active users. It’s a lot easier for you and us if we can get in there and see what problems you’re having — and resolve them.

Take advantage of QuickBooks today! Request a free initial consultation or call us today at 704-609-1119 and ask for Matt Rice.

Not finding quite everything you need in QuickBooks Online? Here are some handy add-on apps available.

QuickBooks Online may work for you just fine as is. After all, it was designed to meet the needs of the millions of small businesses that want to manage and track their income and expenses, create records and transactions, and run reports to gauge their financial health. QuickBooks Online was also designed to grow along with your business. But there’s no need for Intuit to add internal features to do so. In fact, that would make it too expensive and unwieldy for many companies.

Instead, Intuit has partnered with other small business websites to provides add-ons–applications that extend the usefulness of QuickBooks Online in one or more areas, like accounts receivable and payable, inventory, and expense-tracking. They integrate easily to share data and do the extra work you need. Here are some of them to consider.

You can certainly enter and pay bills using QuickBooks Online. And you can send invoices to customers and receive payments. But adding a connection to Bill.com gives you more advanced options for accounts receivable and payable. Simply send your bills to Bill.com by scanning, emailing, faxing, or taking a picture with your smartphone. The site’s automation tools turn them into digital records and route them through your specified approvers. Once approved, they’re paid electronically or by paper check. Invoices are just as easy to process; customers can pay by using PayPal, credit card, or ACH. Bill.com’s mobile app makes it possible to keep up with invoices and bills while you’re out of the office.

Expensify

Are your employees still paper-clipping receipts to handwritten expense reports? This method is unnecessarily time-consuming – and often inaccurate. Expensify solves both problems. Your staff can take photos of receipts with their smartphones. Expensify then converts the expense information into coded digital records and submits them for approval based on your company’s policies. Credit card purchases can be automatically imported, too. All data is synchronized with QuickBooks Online in real-time and coded to reflect your preference of QBO’s expense accounts, customers/jobs, etc. Once you’ve approved a report, you can have the money deposited in the employee’s bank account the next day.

TSheets Time Tracking

TSheets employee scheduling software automates tasks that QuickBooks Online doesn’t do: scheduling and remote time-tracking for your hourly employees. Your staff no longer has to fill in paper timesheets. Instead, they can use their smartphones to track their hours and GPS location points. And while Excel is certainly better for creating schedules than paper, TSheets takes over that task, too. After you’ve approved timesheets, that information is sent over to QuickBooks, ready for use in your payroll processing.

Your employees can easily “punch” in and out using their smartphones. TSheets also uses GPS technology so that your staff members’ locations are always known to you.

SOS Inventory

QuickBooks Online performs some basic inventory management tasks. You can create records for items and use them in transactions, and keep track of the number of items in stock so you know when to reorder (or have a sale). SOS Inventory goes well beyond those capabilities. You can create sales orders, track cost history and serial numbers, and document work-in-progress (WIP). SOS Inventory supports multiple locations and the entire pick/pack/ship process.

Insightly CRM

You can create thorough customer records in QuickBooks Online and document some of your interaction. But it doesn’t facilitate true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) nor project management. Insightly CRM does both. It lets you build exceptionally thorough customer profiles so that you can view social streams, email history, and any events, opportunities, or events related to them. Its project management features include the ability to track by pipelines or milestones, define contact roles and custom fields, and generate advanced project reporting.

QuickBooks Online Integration Key

All of these apps can work in standalone settings, but their integration with QuickBooks Online and their mobile capabilities create powerful partnerships that help you serve both your customers and your employees in ways that QuickBooks Online alone can’t.

We’re not trying to sell you applications here. Our concern is that you’re getting as much out of QuickBooks itself as you can. We can steer you toward add-on solutions if that seems necessary, but we’re always happy to work with you on getting to know QuickBooks Online better and matching its capabilities to your company’s needs.

Matthew J. Rice CPA also offers training and ongoing assistance for you and your staff. We address your specific needs, ensure the proper set-up of QuickBook’s functions, and help you make the most of your software investment. Take advantage of QuickBooks today! Request a free initial consultation or call us today at 704-609-1119 and ask for Matt Rice.

Tracking Bills in QuickBooks, Worth the Effort

Next to payroll, paying bills is probably your least favorite task in QuickBooks. You don’t have to use this feature – you can keep stacking bills on your desk, scrawling the due dates on a paper calendar, and writing checks.

 

If you’re still operating this way, though, you’re missing out on the numerous tools that QuickBooks offers to track your accounts payable, including the ability to:

 

Enter bills as they come in

Set reminders for bills due

Pay bills easily 

Locate a bill or payment quickly

Enter bills as (or after) you receive items

Link bills to purchase orders

Have instant access to a bill’s status

 

 

Settling your debts

 

It’s good to set reminders for bills. Go to Edit | Preferences and click Reminders. Make sure that that Show Reminders List… box is checked, then click Company Preferences. Find the Bills to Pay row and enter the advance notice you’d like. Indicate whether you want to see a list or a summary, then click OK.

 

When bills are due, click the Pay Bills icon or select Vendors | Pay Bills. A window opens displaying all outstanding bills. You can pare this down by selecting a date in the Due on or before field and filtering by vendors.  

 

 

You can easily select the bills you want to pay.

 

Enter a check mark next to the bills you’re paying, and change the amount in the Amt. To Pay field at the end of the row if necessary. At the bottom of the screen, you can set the payment date and type, use any discounts or credits, and make sure the correct payment account is selected. When you’re done, click Pay Selected Bills.

 

Tip: You can have credits and discounts automatically applied by going to Edit | Preferences | Bills.

 

After You’ve Paid Up

 

There are a number of places where your bills appear in QuickBooks, including:

 

The Unpaid Bills Detail report

The A/P Aging Detail report

The Vendor Center

QuickReports

In the Recent Transactions pane of some forms 

On the bills themselves

 

 

You can just pay bills by using Banking | Write Checks or Enter Credit Card Charges. But the payoff for tracking bills is instant access to your accounts payable status,  better relations with vendors, and a more insightful accounting of your company.

 

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