WSW - Janice QuickBooks Issue
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[00:00:00] [00:00:30]
[00:00:38] Dan DeLong: Oh, welcome to another workshop Wednesday brought to you by school bookkeeping. com, which is being the best bookkeeper that you can be, but we're having casual conversations for serious workflows and you may notice that Carrie doesn't look like Carrie because we pulled an audible today and we wanted to have Janice come on and talk about a specific [00:01:00] situation that she had, and we want to talk through What happened and how we were able to help Janice and Janice, how do you pronounce your last name?
Because I hate to butcher it. Yeah, it's BarcelĆ³. And how long you've been using QuickBooks, been a ProAdvisor, tell us a little bit about your
[00:01:17] Janice Barsalou: Yeah, I've been QuickBooks, I started off with Desktop, ProAdvisor since 2009, and I think I got my online certification in 2014. 14. That's when it [00:01:30] started really getting popular.
And then I moved into the advanced world in, I think, 2018 and just recently got my payroll certifications. Working my way up slowly but surely. And in
[00:01:50] Dan DeLong: terms of your In terms of your clientele, would you say that you're a generalist or do you specialize in a
[00:01:55] Janice Barsalou: specific industry? Yes, so I do not specialize in any [00:02:00] one particular kind of business.
I try to help everybody. I am solo, so for me it doesn't really matter. My, my biggest focus is on cleanups though. I spend a lot of time doing cleanup work. I have, a Good two handfuls of regular clients that I service at all times. But I educate, I teach, I train, I clean up and fix the mess.
And then, cause they want to do it [00:02:30] themselves. A lot of these small businesses, but some of them just don't have it. I will consult and give advice and But but, yeah, definitely the cleanup is always the fun challenges. So
[00:02:43] Dan DeLong: you have you had an issue and we want to talk through that situation.
Speaking of cleanup, right? Because this was a, and I saw. Your cries for help as this, I want to share my screen real quick because this was the situation. Let's talk [00:03:00] about it a little bit. This was a screenshot that you were posting on a multitude of Facebook groups looking for assistance.
But this was the vendor screen in, in, in a client's QuickBooks online. And in everything was paid. Talk to us about what was wrong when you were looking at the
[00:03:23] Janice Barsalou: right. I'm running my reports and my client actually reached out to me and said, why [00:03:30] is this? Vendor saying that I owe him money when I don't have a balance.
And I'm like, so that kind of triggered me to go in and do a little research. And I ran my AP reports and my open balance, for vendors and it shows nothing, but yet when I came into the customer center, it came up with this balance showing a 5, 000. And I'm like, how is this even possible? [00:04:00] So that just signaled me to do a little bit of research and try to find out, did something not apply correctly?
Was there something that just, maybe there was no unapplied balance in any of the invoices or bills that were entered. So I went through the whole. All of the expenses and bill [00:04:30] payments and checks that were written and, some of them were legit expenses or checks, things that came through the bank feeds that there was never a bill created for it.
I did find occasionally that the client would. Never entered the bill. I didn't know where it went. So I would just enter it as an expense. And then, say, go back to the client and say, what do you, what account does it, [00:05:00] let me at least get it reconciled. So it would just go in as, ask the client and then I come back and put it towards cost of goods sold.
And. And I would find out later on that it actually was a bill payment. There was an invoice for it, and I'd have to go back and pull it in from the, that right hand what do they call the
[00:05:22] Dan DeLong: Drawer? Yeah. Pull it in the drawer that slides open from the right and then add
[00:05:26] Janice Barsalou: it on and then add it on so it [00:05:30] still shows up in your customer.
center. You see the bill payment and then you see the expense and one has got the payment amount and one is a zero amount.
[00:05:48] Dan DeLong: Yeah, they're just tying those two together.
[00:05:50] Janice Barsalou: Yeah. So I sat there, as I'm going through everything and I'm like, what the heck am I going to do?[00:06:00] And when I shared it on, the Facebook groups, everybody's why don't you try to recreate a new vendor and merge them together?
I tried.
[00:06:10] Dan DeLong: You can see me I actually posted on AP aging and vendor balance report shows nothing for this vendor. And that was true. That was when you actually did. Run those reports. There was nothing for this vendor. The only place that it showed up was this 5, 000 and open [00:06:30] when open means it's open, but it's current to, to QuickBooks.
It's not overdue. So all of this, there was like what, a couple of years of history for this particular event,
[00:06:42] Janice Barsalou: 2020. Yep. And I'm sitting there and I'm scratching my head, and I did wind up getting into it support on the phone, I'm was that your first
[00:06:53] Dan DeLong: outreach?
You, you reached out to them first.
[00:06:56] Janice Barsalou: Yeah, that was like on Monday or Tuesday of last [00:07:00] week. And and I had actually put it on the Facebook group, I think prior to me calling. I reached out to peers, I had a good friend of mine who's also a pro advisor. She's part of my Woodard group and Lynn, I, I thank her for her time because she came in and, willingly said maybe I'm missing something.
something. Nope, nothing. She's scratching her head. I'm scratching my head and then I put it on another [00:07:30] Facebook group and I'm just like, I don't know what and in the meantime, my client is annoyed because it's I gotta send my reports to the, I'm trying to apply for a loan and I can't have this showing and I'm just like, I'm doing the best I can.
I don't know what to do, and I was so thankful, Dan, that you said, All right, hey, let me take a look. And I know for a fact that you went in there and you saw exactly what I saw. [00:08:00]
[00:08:00] Dan DeLong: Yeah. So yeah, I was scratching my head as well. Just to quantify, how much time did you spend trying to figure out this issue, like up to this point, before I got involved, right?
Yeah,
[00:08:15] Janice Barsalou: Easily eight to ten hours.
[00:08:17] Dan DeLong: And of course that's not billable time for your client, right? Because it's a, and then you're bringing in other people's time, your colleagues and posting on Facebook they're trying to help you. And a lot of times [00:08:30] when you post, this is what I see a lot of times, especially when people cross post things on Facebook is you end up having to start over with explaining the problem.
And then, getting getting to where you left off with other groups, right? So I saw Janice's cry for help amongst all of these different Facebook groups. And I finally said, okay, I, she's clearly. Doing something or not saying that you're, you were doing something wrong, but clearly [00:09:00] something is wrong and it's not resolving itself from all of the help that she's gotten even, myself trying to help out with, run these reports and see what's going on.
So I'm like, all I got to see this. So I reached out to Janice. I said, Hey, can you invite me to the client so I can take a look at it? And then she was watching me doing things in the audit logs. Okay, you're doing the same thing I did. I merged the vendor. Cause that's, that was my. Last ditch effort [00:09:30] of thinking that, okay, there, there's something askew here.
It's the wrong vendor. There's something wrong with the vendor itself. And my, just to be transparent, my thought was that you were merging the wrong direction. So okay let's make sure. And I looked in your audit log and I can see that you did merge. And I'm like, okay let me just make sure and I'll merge again.
And lo and behold, it did not resolve itself. Oh my gosh. Now I'm scratching my [00:10:00] head. I have no
[00:10:00] Janice Barsalou: right. And every time I would do something, my fingers were crossed and I was praying like, please let this fix it. And it's Nope.
[00:10:09] Dan DeLong: And so I reached out the following day To my my colleagues over that still work at Intuit to see, because I know you already went that route.
You tried to talk to support and they were scratching their heads. But sometimes I have a tendency to be able to tell them what to do. I don't want to necessarily say that in like a demeaning way or anything like that. But I immediately [00:10:30] started the conversation is there a product investigation on this situation?
And then they had me run through some of the similar things and they, we did a screen share and I showed them, This is where it is. I run this report. It's not there. So that is a problem. That's good.
[00:10:49] Janice Barsalou: I didn't know that's, that you actually had them on there and they solved that.
Yeah.
[00:10:54] Dan DeLong: Yeah. So then when they could understand the problem, right? Then we [00:11:00] essentially at that point stopped troubleshooting the problem because we could see the problem. So all the things of like You know, cause they, they even told me clear cache and cookies. I'm like, look, Janice is in another state, right?
So if she's having the same problem with a different computer and a different browser, okay, fine. I'll use a different browser just to humor you. And of course, same problem, right? A lot of times that. Anytime that you throw the word weird in the same sentence as QuickBooks [00:11:30] Online, that is a common thing, right?
There's probably an extension in your browser or a temporary internet file. Going into incognito and trying another browser is typically the first thing to answer those weird types of situations. Now it does stop. Desktop QuickBooks. Anytime you throw the word weird, you're thinking data damage, right?
So the challenge here is that you don't really have data damage in QuickBooks Online simply because it's [00:12:00] redundantly backed up. As soon as you save it on a transaction in QuickBooks Online it's saved up in multiple places. So the chance of something being damaged is very slim, right? So you don't have these.
Verify data, things, utilities that you can do inside of QuickBooks online because it does, it just does it. Now, what I learned from this whole experience is that QuickBooks actually does a data validation [00:12:30] for you on a nightly basis, right? And that's what they told me is that we've seen this before.
We've seen some product investigations. They've been closed because. The table, which is the vendor table that, and that's why the only reason that you were seeing this open balance was in here, that table had a figure that was incorrect and it would and it could have been any types of these transactions that, that would have calculated that [00:13:00] way, one of those transactions that, and there was several that were just for 5, 000, which was the.
Reason. I think that we were it's gotta be one of these transactions and why you spent so much time trying to fix it manually. But ultimately there wasn't anything that you could have done. There was no reason or no cause to it. And there's no. Remedy that you could do inside of QuickBooks,
[00:13:28] Janice Barsalou: right?
And [00:13:30] it's really frustrating too, because that's, I see it all the time where you're on Facebook in these groups and People are reaching out. Hey, I need help. Can you help me look at this? Can you help me look at this? And we have such a strong community and we're all usually able to help each other.
But the fact that we were not able to and then, It's like you just are like, that's one of the things that's [00:14:00] frustrating about QBO that, you know, and you came back and you said to me, they said, give it a few days, right? And it did finally clear out. And then you sit there and you're like, wow.
Okay, it resolved itself. Okay. Thank the Lord. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a manna. Miracles happen,
[00:14:25] Dan DeLong: your manna from heaven, your balance is no longer there. The
[00:14:29] Janice Barsalou: balance was, [00:14:30] I came in on Monday morning, after the weekend, and it was gone. And it was like, yes, thank
[00:14:36] Dan DeLong: God. I'd love to take credit, but ultimately, What ultimately happened was it there was some something askew and the validation checks that Intuit has in place eventually resolved
[00:14:51] Janice Barsalou: itself.
And I wonder if really without us pushing it a little bit and trying to make it, would it have resolved on its [00:15:00] own at
[00:15:00] Dan DeLong: some point? If your customer never noticed it and then popped in, a week later, right? They would have never saw it, right? I, I. It's hard to it's hard to say, because, of course, that's a, tree falls in a forest with no sound, right?
[00:15:16] Janice Barsalou: But it is. But it's infuriating for us because we are putting so much time and I kept thinking to myself, Oh, my God, should I just let this go? What do I do? Do I really want to keep [00:15:30] pursuing, trying to figure it out? But I just didn't feel right inside in my gut. It's just saying, it's not my fault, but that's what us as, the pros that we are is that we do what we have to do to make things right.
[00:15:45] Dan DeLong: And that's part of the community of accounting professionals is that. Every number has to have a reason that is there, right? So the fact that there is a 5, 000 open balance for a vendor who's been paid in full is that's a [00:16:00] puzzlement, right? And then that's what keeps you up at night, wondering and scratching your head.
Why is, why did that even happen to your point? Of course, that is frustrating. But a shameless plug for us at school bookkeeping, as far as quick answers a lot of times you could just reach out to us and we could take that burden off and, do the I don't know what's what's the best way to describe it is being able to speak to Sherp, Sherpa your way through the support channels and maybe got that answer a lot [00:16:30] quicker.
And that
[00:16:31] Janice Barsalou: is the thing, like sometimes you sit there and you're like, which community should I reach out to? Who's the best person to talk to? And when you reached out, I was like, Oh yeah I'm part of CBG. Oh yeah, Dan could help, he's got connections, so I just thought that was awesome, and I really appreciate, even though you wound up not doing anything, just
[00:16:54] Dan DeLong: validating.
[00:16:55] Janice Barsalou: Yes, and that's what my friend Lynn did too, because she did the same thing [00:17:00] and we've all been, in the industry long enough to know when you see something that really doesn't look right and you know that. You've done everything that you possibly can. I went so much as to take all of the expenses.
I deleted them and rewrote them as bill payments, just to try to, and still nothing. Yeah.
[00:17:24] Dan DeLong: The only other solution that I thought might, might have helped with this particular situation is creating [00:17:30] another vendor and then one by one moving those transactions to that other vendor.
But that would have been so labor intensive, the, it would have, unapplied transactions
[00:17:40] Janice Barsalou: from each other. And then
[00:17:42] Dan DeLong: you would have to reapply them. And then I'm sure they would have been reconciled. So then you've got that reconciliation to concern yourself with and like that. There's gotta be something of it, something else.
[00:17:55] Janice Barsalou: It's funny because I tell a lot of people, I say, what I do is really [00:18:00] not about the numbers per se. It, I call it a puzzle, it's putting together all the pieces and making sure that everything comes out. You want all those pieces to be put back together the right way, and that's what we would have done.
We would have been undoing that puzzle. And that would have been a royal pain in the butt.
[00:18:21] Dan DeLong: Yeah, that's putting it lightly. You put a lot of explicatives on that. So obviously we're not talking about what's new in QuickBooks [00:18:30] 2024 or the service discontinuation. So we will do that next time on the workshop.
But I wanted to have Janice come on and talk about her tale of woe and how we were able to assist. We didn't, we didn't find any. Missing corner pieces of this puzzle, other than that this sort of thing does happen and it should rectify itself over the period of time, but
[00:18:57] Janice Barsalou: you're not, yeah,[00:19:00]
[00:19:01] Dan DeLong: That's exactly it. And we all just want to make sure that we're not. Not going crazy. That's
[00:19:06] Janice Barsalou: it. Still I totally appreciated the support that I got. And the community. And that's what I love about the Facebook groups is that we're all on there. The younger generation, they're like, eh, we don't like Facebook.
But me, I love my world. And my, all my posts are from, QuickBooks groups,
[00:19:25] Dan DeLong: yeah. If you go look at. Janice's Facebook profile. They're all messages to Facebook [00:19:30] groups about QuickBooks.
[00:19:32] Janice Barsalou: We share what we know and our knowledge to some of the newbies. And thank God we have that.
We didn't have that when we were younger. So it's great to have a place to go. And
[00:19:42] Dan DeLong: Even though you're in business for yourself, you're not in business by yourself because there's other people that are going through similar. Yeah. Misery loves company, right?
[00:19:52] Janice Barsalou: Yep. Just so everyone knows, Dan's the man.
You're going to be my go to person next time.
[00:19:59] Dan DeLong: Alright, next time [00:20:00] all you have to do is go in through quick answers. Yeah, and then you can ask the
[00:20:03] Janice Barsalou: question. True. But there won't be a next time, right?
[00:20:06] Dan DeLong: Not for this one. It'll be something else.
[00:20:08] Janice Barsalou: Yeah. Always.
[00:20:10] Dan DeLong: All right, Janice.
Thank you again for coming on. Oh, you're so
[00:20:13] Janice Barsalou: welcome. I appreciate the kind words. Yeah, I'm happy to have shared that and hope that everybody, saw that challenge and now we all see and but thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
[00:20:26] Dan DeLong: Next week, we'll be talking about the QuickBooks 2024.
What's [00:20:30] the honorable mention of what's new in, in QuickBooks 2024, not a huge thing but the service discontinuation, which always brings up the question of what's happening with QuickBooks desktop. So we'll be talking about that next week. Janice again, thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday.
[00:20:48] Janice Barsalou: Take care. Bye everybody.
