WSW Podcast - Managing Fixed Assets in All Versions of QuickBooks Online
===
[00:00:00] Dan DeLong: You're listening to the audio portion of Workshop Wednesdays. Workshop Wednesdays is a free live discussion about topics affecting accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners. You can join the Abo group in Facebook to participate live Wednesdays at 10am Pacific Time. Just search for ABBO Wednesdays.
This podcast is brought to you by School of Bookkeeping. com, where you will learn, grow, and build a thriving [00:00:30] bookkeeping practice. We have hundreds of lessons with almost every aspect of the industry. Start your free month today at Oh, welcome to an international version of Workshop Wednesday today. And we're all in different locations. So I'm in Seattle, Washington at my son's house. And Rachel, where are you today?
[00:00:50] Rachel Dauchy: I am in New Jersey. I'm on the Jersey Shore.
[00:00:53] Dan DeLong: All right. Spend your weekends at the Jersey Shore, like the song says.
No, it's actually Wednesday. [00:01:00]
[00:01:00] No One: Yep.
[00:01:00] Dan DeLong: And, and we're joined today by, by Ash. Ash from nettTracker and where are you? Because you get the, international label today.
[00:01:14] Ash Beetson: Thanks for having us on. yes, I'm in the UK, United Kingdom, in the east, in the sort of countryside a little bit. Cambridge is the closest city, if you like.
[00:01:26] Dan DeLong: Got it, So we have had, a couple weeks ago, Rachel and I [00:01:30] were talking and we demoed the, Fixed Asset Depreciation, very exciting, workshop that we, did there and, in QuickBooks Online Advanced. And I wanted to share that in the comments here. So if you hadn't, ca hadn't caught that a couple weeks ago about the, depreciation calculator that's in QuickBooks Online Advanced, you could certainly, check that out on our YouTube channel.
appreciate that. but the, whole thing about that is [00:02:00] that there's a, yeah. But when it comes to depreciation, . Calculation in QuickBooks Online, you gotta be on QuickBooks Online Advanced in order to do those things. And there's other things that, that are involved with, that, that kind of lead into, the depreciation calculator.
So one, if you're not on QuickBooks Online Advanced, what do you do, with, fixed assets? And then there's, other circumstances. And so we wanted to bring Ash on from nettTracker because he has a [00:02:30] really cool, application that feeds into QuickBooks Online. so, talk a little bit about, Ash, the, the genesis of, nettTracker because, did you just create this out of the blue or was this out of a necessity?
[00:02:49] Ash Beetson: so yeah, it didn't just come out of the blue, Dan, so a little bit, not quite, so a little bit of background on me. So [00:03:00] I've worked in accounting and bookkeeping for quite a while. the last 10 years been heavily involved with QuickBooks training in the UK. So I'm one of the UK, TWN, if you like.
I used to travel around basically all over the countryside, doing classroom training, and now it's all webinar, webinar based. Cause I started off with QuickBooks desktop and then in. 2014 you know when everything basically everything [00:03:30] went online and while I was doing lots of training I had my own little bookkeeping practice as well and some of those clients had you know management reporting requirements and I was also, I also used to work for a firm of accountants and part of that job involved preparing accounts at the end of the year.
And basically I'd always get to the point where I'm doing something and there is fixed assets to deal with. so it's a case of, okay, I've got a list [00:04:00] of the assets and I know what the depreciation is at that particular point in time, but have they bought any new assets? And if they have, they've got to go onto that schedule and Now, I've got to calculate that depreciation and I've got to deal with the journal entries and everything and I just thought There's got to be an easier way of doing this you know opening up because it's not
[00:04:22] Dan DeLong: like you're it's not like you're not busy in the month of january when it comes
[00:04:27] Ash Beetson: to Let's just add
[00:04:28] Dan DeLong: that to the mix, [00:04:30] right?
[00:04:31] Ash Beetson: Maybe any sort of particular time and I thought there's got to be an easier way of doing this than just You Opening up spreadsheets, doing what I need to, creating journals. so I had this, basically this idea, this concept, it'd been in my mind for probably since the first QuickBooks Connect that I went to in the UK, which was probably about 2015, [00:05:00] 16.
I was, I've been thinking about this, but then it wasn't until three years later that I haven't thought Make someone I could create it with through me, but it's always been it's been brewing for a while
[00:05:14] Dan DeLong: So so tell us a little bit about what more than and we'll go into a little high level demo in a bit But what more can nettTracker do?
then a depreciation calculation [00:05:30]
[00:05:31] Ash Beetson: as well as your depreciation calculations on the, fixed asset terms, it will do those also pretty much anything that you need to do with a fixed asset that we can make an entry for. But, my sort of end goal, if you like, with what our software does is that, there's lots of areas within accounting, that when you get to an end, period, but it's a month and quarter [00:06:00] and year end, that you need to make adjustments for.
So whether that is, you need to do your accruals, to accrue the costs that haven't happened, whether it's to pre pay your costs because you've got paid all these things in advance and they relate to future periods. so you, Cost your income that might need deferring. Lots of little things. we've got on the way, we've got, loans, you've got a loan, you've got interest at least calculating and does all that balance up.
And [00:06:30] historically, all of these things basically have always been done on. a dozen or so different spreadsheets that are probably ultimate, not all in the same place as well. So when you try to do a set of accounts, you think, Oh, where, did I have that spreadsheet? And it shouldn't be in the folder that I've had everything else in, but chances are it could have been lost or saved somewhere else.
But
[00:06:53] Rachel Dauchy: that's how I've always done it as well. And just FYI, that's how they teach you how to do it. So [00:07:00] it's always, they teach you how to do it in Excel. So that's the default that, you're expected to do everything externally like that.
[00:07:10] Ash Beetson: Yeah, absolutely. And quite often from, and I get this from an accountant's point of view, that, you've used, You know what you are used to using and it's there and it works.
And so when think about changing something else, there's always that bit of, I'm used to doing what I'm, what I am doing, but, if I, [00:07:30] can try to automate as much as that as possible and then make sure everything ties in with what is, should be on the balance sheet.
That's my, I've got this thing. Oh yeah. Making sure that if I've got a value there in my. report that should look tie in exactly with what's on my, QuickBooks balance sheet. Oh
[00:07:49] Rachel Dauchy: yeah, that's, that's my jam. Anything I can automate 100%. that's that this, what you're doing is for people like me, because if I want something [00:08:00] automated, if I can automate it for sure.
[00:08:02] Dan DeLong: Yeah, that way you can spend more time at the Jersey Shore.
[00:08:05] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah,
[00:08:06] Dan DeLong: instead of,
[00:08:08] Rachel Dauchy: I
[00:08:08] Dan DeLong: gotta
[00:08:09] Rachel Dauchy: take these kids out for ice cream as soon as we're done, like we're busy.
[00:08:15] Dan DeLong: The natives are restless there.
So I'm going to, share, share Ash's screen here, and he's going to walk us through a little bit of a high level of, what you can do inside of, inside a nettTracker.
[00:08:27] Ash Beetson: Okay, cool. Thanks Dan. I'm [00:08:30] logged into, into a company. And on this particular one, I messed around with it a lot.
So I've got a financial year here at the top, which is running from January to December, 25. And just in case anyone spots, that, date that says 31 12. If you are in the U S it says 12 31, because I get asked that quite a lot. and and also when I'm looking at my, values, I've got a [00:09:00] pound sign and it would have a dollar sign in every U S company.
So I, I've got on my sort of current financial year at the top and then.
[00:09:08] Rachel Dauchy: sorry to interrupt you. just really quick. do you like within, do you have a, like a switch where, you If I'm a U. S. user, I can set it to U. S. and then everything will be in U. S. dollar in all the settings and that kind of thing.
[00:09:25] Ash Beetson: so when we're connecting to QuickBooks, if you're setting up a file and you're connecting [00:09:30] to QuickBooks, it will put the, basically set up, How, how would the QuickBooks final set up?
[00:09:36] Rachel Dauchy: Okay. So whatever native currency it's set up, it'll, follow whatever that is.
[00:09:42] Ash Beetson: It detects what the financial year is.
It takes the currency that's used and where you're located basically. And it will put those settings in,
[00:09:51] Rachel Dauchy: perfect.
[00:09:53] Dan DeLong: Which is a good call out because, I'm sure that's a question that a lot of people will have he's in [00:10:00] the UK. Is this only for the UK region? does it work with all regions of, QuickBooks, like Canada and Australia, or is it just, specific?
[00:10:10] Ash Beetson: Yeah, basically anywhere in the world where you've got a QuickBooks company. India, Singapore, we've got people using it, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, yeah, every, everywhere, people are using it. And sometimes, occasionally, when people [00:10:30] create a company, if we've not detected that region before, so when we're looking at, So on this fixed asset register status area, it's looking at the external balance, which is basically looking at the QuickBooks report, the balance sheet where it says fixed asset totals, and it's bringing through that total.
In some countries, so like Canada, I think the fixed asset total might say, total plant machinery and equipment [00:11:00] and in another country, it might say total fixed assets and another one. They've got some slightly different names. So if we have a brand new country that we've not seen before, sometimes we don't detect that total.
but then quite quickly we fix it basically. So yeah, it should be anywhere. So if I'm looking at this fixed asset area, I'll just make that slightly bigger. So you can see a bit better. The, I've got a [00:11:30] total there, which is based upon my asset register. And below that is what's coming through from QuickBooks and I've got a difference there of four and a half thousand, Pounds for me.
and that's because within my, QuickBooks a minute ago, I put on a new supplier bill, which was for, some computer equipment and that's for a laptop on a printer and back in nettTracker. if I choose to view my [00:12:00] transactions, those two entries have come through based upon the supplier bill.
It could be an expense or however it's created in QuickBooks basically. And. Because I coded that particular supplier bill to, computer additions, I've got an asset group in nettTracker called Computer Equipment. So I can simply, from here, where it's in the state of pending, like a bank feed, if you like, from here, I can choose to create the asset [00:12:30] off the back of that entry, and it's bringing through what was on the supplier bill, which was the details of the asset that was purchased, when it was purchased, the date put into service, which I can change, it defaults to be the same as the purchase date, the asset group, which is a computer equipment, and I've got a default depreciation rule against that, five year straight line, but I can change that, if I need to.
And [00:13:00] if I'm using classes or locations in QuickBooks, I could turn those features on in nettTracker and they'll filter through as well. So I'll just click OK to add that, and I'll just add the other one. As well. So if I pop back to the dashboard now and that refreshes, now my asset register has been updated.
I don't have any difference between the asset register and the balance sheet because I've captured absolutely everything. [00:13:30] If I look at the asset register, this is made up of however many asset groups I have. I've already got two here, which is computer equipment and motor vehicles. And if I go to the last page of this asset group and just come down, Oh, that's not the last page.
So within my asset group, I've got the names of the assets and. locations, references, if used, when they were [00:14:00] purchased. So all your standard, asset register stuff, what it costs depreciation from a prior year depreciation in the current year. And if I just scroll down to the bottom of this, I've got the, laptop and printer I just added.
And they're currently there in this sort of current year. Additions of 3000 and 1500. So that's what I've got those additions. I've not put any depreciation through for those assets yet. if I looked at my depreciation forecast, [00:14:30] let's change that page size.
Those that asset that I just bought the laptop and printer, I've got the forecast depreciation that's running through for the rest of this current year. So where they're in blue, it's future depreciation to be, Updated, journaled into QuickBooks and where it's in green, it means we've calculated it and posted the journal entries.
And if I were, just to update the last month. So at the moment, my next month end is [00:15:00] March 25. So if I just updated that and let's say we're going to post March 25, and it's now run forward to March or April 25. And if I update the asset register balance, these values have changed. But stayed in line and the asset register for those two assets
have now got depreciation 50 pounds and 25. It's just been posted for that last month only. It's that [00:15:30] easy.
[00:15:32] Rachel Dauchy: You can set it to automatically post. Yes. You don't have to go.
[00:15:36] Ash Beetson: , Basically my main initial idea of nettTracker for, people that don't need to do like password, even monthly reporting.
you can literally turn this on for fixed assets and set it up and only really need to log into it once a year.
[00:15:54] Rachel Dauchy: So
[00:15:55] Ash Beetson: in the, settings, you can basically say, enable monthly journals, [00:16:00] enable auto detection of new asset purchases. And if you detect new asset purchase, you can automatically add it there.
So if you've got computer equipment. so that could have detected those purchases. We've got a default depreciation over five years. So it would detect the purchase and you can set a threshold for the value. So you can say, it sees
[00:16:23] Rachel Dauchy: it in the bill. When you enter the bill in QuickBooks, if it's coded to that account, when you put it in, [00:16:30] it'll catch it on this side and it'll see, Oh, it's over a threshold and it's going to this account.
Okay. It automatically will put it in this, register and set it up. Yeah,
[00:16:40] Ash Beetson: exactly. Yeah. Because if someone should put some office supplies that was at 25, they wouldn't want to go on the asset register. Probably not. Exactly. Yeah. But appreciate
[00:16:49] Dan DeLong: your ink.
[00:16:50] Ash Beetson: Yeah, exactly. You probably don't need to do that.
But the thing is, even if that did happen, and it may do if one of those assets went on by [00:17:00] mistake, it was a duplicate, and I started posting the depreciation, if I delete the asset, so if I selected an asset and chose to delete it, there's a delete option. And when you do go through this sort of, check, you'd say, do you want to reverse any depreciation?
And when do you want to do what date do that? So it will, automatically create a journal to reverse any depreciation that you didn't want to go through [00:17:30] because, again, if I just deleted the asset and didn't do that and the depreciation is already in the balance sheet, then straight away, my balances aren't going to agree because I've got 25 of depreciation has been posted.
And I'll have a difference. So even if I delete the bill and delete the asset, if I don't reverse the depreciation, things don't agree.
[00:17:54] Dan DeLong: Ash, we had, when, Rachel and I were talking about the QBO fixed asset, [00:18:00] there were. three main, depreciation, basis, base I, basis Cs, three basis of, depreciation.
And do you, follow those main, three ones or do you have, all of the.
[00:18:18] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I think they were, they had straight line, maybe double declining and maybe, Something else,
[00:18:26] Dan DeLong: whether or not you wanted to depreciate it all, [00:18:30] in a, straight line or balloon it up front.
Oh, yeah. Look
[00:18:34] Rachel Dauchy: at him. Look at him. He's got all kinds of different ones.
[00:18:38] Ash Beetson: So with your, with the depreciation rules, you've got, we've got a few different methods really that we can, follow. So in terms of, so if I want to create this, there's about a dozen that are in here by default, a mixture of straight line, reducing balance, double decline.
If I wanted to create another [00:19:00] rule, you just give the rule whatever name you'd like basically, and then you've got some different types. So straight line over a number of years even though it's fine even about five years straight line. All of our adjustments are always monthly. So that will just create 60 Adjustments for depreciation over five years Yeah, reducing balance, which is just your percentage your decline balance and then we've got the double decline over the number of years and we've got straight [00:19:30] line over a number of months.
So if you've got leasehold improvements is a good example where Sometimes the, thing that you're depreciating is not going to be exactly three years because you're only going to, you've got, I don't know, 42 months left, leasing that building that you're in with the improvements in. we don't do part years.
so we need to do a straight line month so that we can make sure that [00:20:00] it's over the exact number of periods that you need. and we've got some ideas of put putting some other, things in here. So we're, in the middle of actually, creating what's like a brand new version of nettTracker.
people that are already using it will just migrate on to that but we'll you know it's a different sort of user interface and at the moment where we've got a fairly strict financial year what we're also going to have is the ability of people could adjust [00:20:30] depreciation at any time so if They looked at one of their assets and thought, actually, I want to go straight in and put, 2, 000 worth of depreciation in now, and then just let it right off the rest over whatever people could do that.
So there's loads of, extra little things in there to come.
[00:20:50] Rachel Dauchy: So you're not locked into something if you've said it and you need to change it?
[00:20:55] Ash Beetson: Yeah, people can do that now. if, [00:21:00] if people, or someone has put in an asset. and select, let's say, five years straight line, then It could be at this point in time, the, total cost of the asset was 5, 000.
And at the moment over one year, we've written off a thousand dollars. So the net value is 4, 000, but actually, no, I'll change that to three year. I've got two years left, so what nettTracker [00:21:30] will do, it won't, it never calculates depreciation based upon original cost, it always calculates it based on what's the net value that's left.
Got it. Ah, so okay, so you've got 24 months left, you've got 4, 000 net value, so it will be 4, 000 divided by the 24 months and we'll write it off over that period in time step.
[00:21:53] Rachel Dauchy: Okay. Okay. Okay.
[00:21:54] Dan DeLong: Now we had a, quick answers from the past week, so it was like serendipitous that, [00:22:00] that you were coming on, because, of the three of us, I'm not the accountant in the room.
the situation was, they had a vehicle and it was totaled. In a, in a, car crash. what about disposal of, like what is the accounting thing to do, Rachel or, Ash, about, they were depreciating it off. Does that all go to depreciation or do they [00:22:30] go to a different, account to basically reduce the value to nothing at that point, because it's a, it's disposed of at that point.
[00:22:43] Rachel Dauchy: I'll, Ash, you can explain how you would do that in your, it with your, as it pertains to your
[00:22:49] Ash Beetson: app. Yeah, sure. No problem. if I'm looking at my, assets, I've got any motor vehicles, I've got one left. So [00:23:00] this particular car, has got, it costs 50, 000 and the book value of this at this point in time is, 32 and a half.
So if that was wrecked, basically, we could choose to dispose of it. when you dispose, you put in the date of disposal. So I'll just select the date here, which is going to be the 15th of April in there. If we had any sale proceeds from that, I can [00:23:30] note it. Although, Sale proceeds in nettTracker doesn't actually create an invoice.
So this is more like a notional value because the sale invoice should be raised in QuickBooks, for this, or you record your deposit for the money that you write might receive. But if we had nothing and it was just scrapped, then I could choose to leave that at a zero. and then I can click okay. Now, what that would do is we'll mark that as disposed and that will show now [00:24:00] that I basically got a loss in my, accounts.
And if I go to take a look at. The journal that's just created. It's based on. Depending on how I've set up my account mappings because it will take the, it's up the value out of my balance sheet. So it's reduced my balance sheet by 50, 000, for the cost. it has put 17, 000 back in the balance sheet because [00:24:30] that was depreciation that was provided.
but overall, I've got two values which have gone to this account in the profit and loss for gains and loss on disposal, which. Net after 32 So
[00:24:42] No One: in
[00:24:43] Ash Beetson: fact if I looked at my
[00:24:46] No One: reports Let's
[00:24:48] Ash Beetson: look at the profit and loss for and this is for april 25
And if I ran that report
[00:24:57] Dan DeLong: so essentially, as, I'm watching you do [00:25:00] this, you will pre map those, sorts of things for, disposal of assets, whatever that happens to be. And then if they, if this is a specific thing that they wanted to, Show itemized out on their profit and loss, total asset, total loss of vehicle or what have you, they could either create a new account, change to change the transaction or just notate that transaction in a memo or [00:25:30] something like that, right?
[00:25:31] Ash Beetson: Yeah. So every, so every asset group when, it's created is mapped to your chart of accounts for different reasons. So we map it to, to detect the new asset purchases that come through to detect, or to choose what accounts are used when the or depreciation is journaled each month and what accounts you'd like to use when you dispose of an asset.
So that means that really, whenever you do anything, then you don't have to think about what [00:26:00] double entries you need to do because it will, the NetTrack will just do it for you. Yeah, because if
[00:26:05] Rachel Dauchy: you have it maybe against a note payable or something like that, and then you get some, maybe an insurance payout or something like that can go against the note payable.
it, you probably wouldn't have a disposal expense. It probably, yeah, it all just depends. Yeah,
[00:26:25] Dan DeLong: that's what I told them.
[00:26:29] Rachel Dauchy: Don't you [00:26:30] just love that? It always depends. it just really just depends on what you're set up. If it's a vehicle, like if it's a vehicle you own outright, then that would be, then yes, you would have a loan on disposal.
They were
[00:26:42] Dan DeLong: carrying a loan on it, so they still had it. Yeah. pay off the loan and all that stuff. So yeah, it's a, it's the adult diapers answer of accounting.
[00:26:50] Ash Beetson: Yeah. If the two ever got a loan, it gets a bit more complicated.
[00:26:57] Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. [00:27:00]
[00:27:00] Dan DeLong: And so with nettTracker, not just, in, so you'll have a client dashboard in essence, right?
Where you'll be able to switch between the different clients. So this is an organization of your spreadsheets. yes, we were talking before, right?
[00:27:18] Ash Beetson: Yeah. So basically when you're logged in as an accountant, one of the first places that you saw, you can see when you log in or actually, depending on how often you log in, [00:27:30] usually the last company that you, worked on opens up immediately.
But then if you need to open up a different client, You, just go back to your few companies and they're all listed.
[00:27:41] Rachel Dauchy: I love that. I love that because one of the things for me is, sometimes I have a hard time with an app if they don't have a really nice and understand, easy to understand accountant dashboard because sometimes I don't know why just sometimes they don't think of that.
So for me to be able to [00:28:00] easily see, on a dashboard, my different clients. And organized in a nice way. Now I was gonna ask you, 'cause you had brought this up before. or not you had brought it up, but we had asked you about this before. if I have lots of different clients in my dashboard and that each of those clients, they, it's connected to their QuickBooks and if their home currency is.
Not necessarily U. S. Dollar. It's [00:28:30] you can. In other words, it can connect to different home currencies and one accountant user. Yes.
[00:28:36] Ash Beetson: Yeah, I could be logged in, and I could be working on one company that's in U. S. dollars and one's in Canadian dollars.
[00:28:44] Rachel Dauchy: Okay,
That's what I wanted to make sure because I wasn't sure if it had to be like an independent file that was connected to, their home currency, but those were just like business users.
But so an accountant [00:29:00] user, I can connect several different QBOs, and those individual ones can be in different home currencies.
[00:29:07] Ash Beetson: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And, in some instances, the, so as a dependent, it doesn't matter really who pays for the, subscription. So a, An accountant could just decide to set it up and because it makes their life easier, they'll set it up and they'll use it with their clients.
Sometimes their clients just don't even know that their account is used. [00:29:30] Sometimes they'll have business owners or the accountant in business in industry that is using nettTracker and then they'll, invite an accountant to log into it and view it. basically as many, there's no sort of restriction on users, so you can have as many within a practice as well.
Oh, man, that's nice.
[00:29:52] Dan DeLong: My next question is that, is it, per, can you have team members and invite team members and grant them [00:30:00] access to certain clients?
[00:30:01] Ash Beetson: If I'm looking, if I'm looking at my, organization and looked at my sort of details and looked at my, so that's my contacts and users. So within here, I've got different users, different email addresses.
And if I can edit the user, which is basically there's permissions roomie and I can update. which companies they have access to. So as the, [00:30:30] I can add a user, just like doing QuickBooks, but they don't necessarily have to add access to every single one of the clients that's in here. So it could be that they've only got access to a couple.
So I can see that I've got, there's basically three levels of access, which is no access at all. The standard user, which can do, add assets and, Press the button to process the depreciation. an owner has the administration right. So in terms [00:31:00] of changing company admin settings, changing the financial year and adding other users, that sort of thing, that's what the owner can do.
[00:31:09] No One: And
[00:31:10] Dan DeLong: then as far as like the model, for, the application itself, is it per, is there a cost per company or do you have a, tier where it's a group of companies or how does that work typically for, nettTracker?
[00:31:26] Ash Beetson: Yeah. So current pricing at the moment is. so [00:31:30] there's, there are tiered levels.
and it's the same with really pricing for an accounting firm or for a business, but it tends to benefit the accountants more if they're adding more companies. So if you have one company, one single company, it's 15 pounds a month. And all of our pricing is in pounds. in pounds. So that's approximately I think 18, 18, 19 at the current rate.
As soon as a [00:32:00] company adds like company number two and company number two is two pounds, 50. so if you've added like, if you've got five companies, as an example, so you've got four companies at two pounds, 50 and one, 15. So your four, your five companies is basically then, 25 pounds. So when you average it, when you average it out, then that's five pounds a company, or six, 7 a company.
And then as [00:32:30] once you've got sort of 10, 20, when you average it out, again, it's a lot less.
[00:32:37] Dan DeLong: All right. Now we have, you've been nice enough to offer a, a promo code for, folks watching. so I wanted to, where is it now? there it is. so there's a QR code on here. If you use the, promo code SCHOOL2024, you actually get a 90 day free trial of, Tracker to [00:33:00] try it out before that first.
So that gives you an opportunity to add all those five, 10 clients to minimize the cost of that one, that first company connection.
[00:33:12] Rachel Dauchy: I love that. Cause I just, like I was. Explain to people like we're not in 20. We're sorry, we're not in 2007. We don't need to be in Excel anymore.
We've moved beyond.
[00:33:29] Ash Beetson: [00:33:30] Yeah, I, had a little story. I can say a little story about, I think I lost a client once. About 10 years ago, when I started doing, I said, we're not in 1990
[00:33:43] No One: something, which
[00:33:43] Ash Beetson: is based on sending everything over in a spreadsheet. Oh my God.
[00:33:47] Rachel Dauchy: Okay. So I'm not the only one that says 2007 called, like they asked for your spreadsheets back?
Yeah.
[00:33:53] Ash Beetson: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:33:56] Rachel Dauchy: I'm not always that sassy. I meant
[00:33:58] Ash Beetson: to [00:34:00] slightly in jest, but, unfortunately she's, she took much offense to that.
[00:34:06] Rachel Dauchy: I've, definitely gotten in trouble for that before too. I actually had somebody, Get not very happy with me. They thought I didn't know how to use Excel.
And I was like, no, that's not exactly it. It's just that we've moved beyond. We're automating things. People like we don't want to go into. but my, biggest gripe with it is that, sometimes I'll have A new client or [00:34:30] something like that. And, they just want to send spreadsheets back and forth over email.
And, I have to explain like, no way, I just can't do it like that. cause it's just a big mess. so really, this is. It's the, best of everything to manage everything in a cloud based, dashboard that feeds into QuickBooks and you can manage multiple clients at a time and it's the greatest thing ever.[00:35:00]
[00:35:01] Dan DeLong: Sliced bread. The sliced bread to seal of approval from Rachel and stuff, that's pretty good. and, this will only connect with, QuickBooks online. is there, a way to export things or things if they do have a QuickBooks desktop or is it? That's not really the whole idea of nettTracker.
[00:35:19] Ash Beetson: Yeah. So you can use nettTracker standalone. So if you are using QuickBooks desktop, you can, you can even, even with your QuickBooks online, when you set it [00:35:30] up initially, you can import your existing assets. So there's a template to download, copy details into it and, upload. So you've got your starting position.
then in terms of if you're, if you are using a desktop then to get your, monthly depreciation values, it might be looking at the depreciation forecast, then I can download that. I'd need to [00:36:00] subtotal it by, because when it, once it's downloaded, it will show you, the asset group.
So you'd be able to subtotal it by asset group to get your monthly charge, to get your values. one of the things that we're bringing through in our new version while we're working on it is the ability of actually downloading a journal. Because we, in the background, we are creating, even when it is standalone, we are creating the journal entries, but no one can actually see them.[00:36:30]
so that's what our next sort of, on our, links, if it is standalone, download the journal. And also, and what we've had occasionally is, even when people are connected, they can, Obviously, you know all the journals that should be posting exactly as they need to,
[00:36:50] Dan DeLong: but are you able to bring them down as a Yeah.
As a qbj file or are they as a, like an Iif F or, Excel file?
[00:36:59] Ash Beetson: [00:37:00] Yeah, as an, Excel file for the journals. but yeah, occasionally some people will delete the journal in QuickBooks by mistake and they said, oh, I've deleted that journal. Can I have it again? A moment we can't. But that's one of those things that we, we are working on.
So people can just get the journal again whenever they need it.
[00:37:20] Rachel Dauchy: can I also ask you, this is, it works with all QBO subscription levels, yes, including [00:37:30] Simple Start?
[00:37:31] Ash Beetson: Yes.
[00:37:31] Rachel Dauchy: Okay. I
[00:37:32] Ash Beetson: haven't tried it with Ledger yet. I meant to.
[00:37:39] Rachel Dauchy: Oh, yeah, I don't,
[00:37:41] Dan DeLong: know. I would imagine there wouldn't be a problem with Ledger because, Ledger is simple start without customers.
[00:37:48] No One: So
[00:37:50] Dan DeLong: essentially you'll have the same, backend functionality, everything, but customers. So anything sales related, which [00:38:00] wouldn't be what you're talking about here. you're talking about the, asset side of the business side of things. so this is a great, addition, especially
[00:38:11] Rachel Dauchy: if it's, ledgers primarily used.
By accountants. And this would be something that, that they would really like, especially if, they've got lots of fixed assets that they need to manage.
[00:38:25] Dan DeLong: I'm trying to do the foreign currency exchange of 10 [00:38:30] for, ledger. And then two pounds 50, as you said, for, the additional client.
so that's like what 3 or something like that or about, so that's 15 for, for basically a, an accounting suite of, of writeup work.
[00:38:49] Rachel Dauchy: And
[00:38:52] Dan DeLong: then you do other things. In addition to fixed assets, as we talked about, so like the prepaid expenses [00:39:00] or revenue recognition, if you want to split something out over a course of additional months to recognize that revenue, right?
[00:39:10] Ash Beetson: Yeah, so at the moment we can make adjustments for either accrued income, deferred income, prepaid expenses or an accrued. Oh, did I say that twice? Oh, twice. I've forgotten which ones I said. There's basically, there's four options. you've got the option, [00:39:30] if I were to look at my, accrual and prepayment groups.
So here I've got accrued expenses and prepaid. And if I were creating additional groups, so these are my types. Basically, yeah, accrued expenses, accrued income, prepaid expenses, and deferred income, and I've just got the, the sort of the two types within here at the moment, and you can have multiple, items or types within your, Within your [00:40:00] group.
So the these are your balance sheet accounts. I've got two prepaid balance sheet accounts. Sometimes I'll just have the one usually. And the benefit of having nettTracker is that you don't really need to have team different balance sheet accounts because we're keeping an eye on. So if I were looking at my sort of statement of prepaid expenses.
[00:40:23] Rachel Dauchy: Oh, this is cool. So you have a whole schedule here in this back end and then you just have one line in on your balance sheet. Oh, [00:40:30] I like that.
[00:40:30] Ash Beetson: Yeah. So the, so this sort of, basically a spreadsheet, but within software is showing me the day spreadsheet. it's not a spreadsheet. It's a, statement
[00:40:43] No One: that
[00:40:44] Ash Beetson: shows this is my current value of prepayments per this list, and that's the current value of prepayments that's in the balance sheet, and they should always agree.
So as they are being added. in different ways. [00:41:00] so I can see the ones that are in green are in a zero because they've basically been fulfilled. They've been fully, the prepayments have been released. and these others, have still got months left to go. And if I look at my sort of projections and I go to my prepaid.
So this shows me all the adjustments that are left over the currently over the next financial year. so I can see there, I've got [00:41:30] different adjustments going through each month. And again, I can download that into, Excel if I want to look, what I expect to go through in total, next month.
And I work pretty simply really. It's just the case of, creating a prepayment using how many months needs to be released and then what profit and loss is going to be adjusted.
[00:41:55] Dan DeLong: That's great. Rachel, you've seen this as a blind [00:42:00] reaction. what is your, initial takeaways of, thnettTrackerker tool?
[00:42:06] Rachel Dauchy: Oh, I love it. And I love it how it has this, way that you can see that it's always in perpetual, reconciliation. You know what I mean? Because that when you're doing it in an Excel, you just, you have to reconcile it all the time. This is, it's giving you alert. If something is off, you can see if it does, if there's a difference, you know that something is off.[00:42:30]
I love it. I think it's great. And I hate it when everything is broken down on the balance sheet. I like to be able to have everything on a separate schedule and then have one line. So for me, I'm excited. I'm going to definitely start using it.
[00:42:45] Dan DeLong: There you go. We got one. All right. Ash, thanks again for joining us here today.
I appreciate you again, talking about the, how this tool can save accountants and their firms a [00:43:00] lot of time in that busy crunch time of year with nettTracker. just a, just a kind of update. we are going to take a Three week hiatus. So we'll be back in three weeks, because if you have been following anything about, me personally on Facebook, my wife got her ankle fused on Monday and those follow ups are exactly at the same time of our workshop.
So we'll be back. We'll just take a [00:43:30] couple, weeks off there and then we'll be, back up with a new, session on the, workshop Wednesday. But Ash, again, thank you again for joining us today. And Rachel, always great to see you. Ash, any closing, thoughts?
[00:43:46] Ash Beetson: No, I'll just say, Dan, Rachel, thank you very much for having me on.
It's, it's always a pleasure. I've only just met you today, Rachel, and Dan, I've known you for a couple of years now, and always great to catch up. [00:44:00] Yeah, within the, there's, we've got plenty of support articles and everything available in nettTracker as well. with my sort of support background, I've tried to make it as user friendly as humanly possible.
and I'm always trying to update that as well. And I'm always listening to the, to feedback from anyone that's using it. So all of the little tweaks that we make and are about to make some huge ones, over the next few months are all basically [00:44:30] based on what our users have said this would be easier if we did that or if we could do this and, So everything is taken on board.
[00:44:42] Rachel Dauchy: is that a N E T tracker dot com?
[00:44:46] Ash Beetson: Yeah. So out the other website is, N E T dash tracker. I'm not sure if we have to, there was a reason why we have to do that way to begin with. But, yeah, that's, it is. [00:45:00]
[00:45:00] Rachel Dauchy: Okay, perfect. I'm bookmarking it right now.
[00:45:03] Dan DeLong: There we go. Alright, so we'll see you next time on the Workshop Wednesday, and we'll hope everybody has a, great week ahead.
[00:45:12] Ash Beetson: See ya.
And that wraps up another insightful episode of Workshop Wednesday brought to you by SchoolofBookkeeping. com. We hope you enjoyed today's discussion and took away some valuable tips and strategies to enhance your bookkeeping practice. Remember, if you want to stay ahead in the [00:45:30] world of bookkeeping and accounting, be sure to visit SchoolofBookkeeping.
com. With a wide range of courses, resources, and expert guidance, you'll find everything you need to sharpen your skills and boost your career. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform, so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please take a moment to leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice.
Your reviews help us reach more listeners, and continue to bring you the best content [00:46:00] every week. If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel Reach out to us on social media or send us an email at support at schoolofbookkeeping. com. We love hearing from our listeners and are always looking for new ideas to explore.
Thanks for tuning in to Workshop Wednesday. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep excelling in your bookkeeping journey. I'm Dan DeLong and we'll see you next week.
