WSW - Podcast Intuit Accountant Suite is the New QBOA: Pt. 3 - Books Close
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[00:00:00]
Dan DeLong: Oh, crap. What,
There's a lag, right? So the intro, the one minute intro is long, not long enough for me. The things that I need to do. [00:01:00]
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And again, also blurred again, Dan.
Dan DeLong: Oh, God.
Rachel Dauchy: I know. It's not, like I said last week, it's not, impossible to see you, but you're it, you're just definitely a blur.
You're not a hundred percent clear.
Dan DeLong: Okay.
Rachel Dauchy: And actually, you know what? The closer you come to the screen, the clearer you are
Dan DeLong: all right in your face.
Welcome everyone to another workshop Wednesday, the blurry of Workshop, workshop. Wednesday, you by school of bookkeeping.com.
Intuit Accountant Suite Overview
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Dan DeLong: Wing, QuickBooks your Way, and today is our third, of the Intuit Accountant, and we're gonna be focusing on the books. Close [00:02:00] portion. This is one of those things that they talked about at Intuit Connect that will have a fee associated with it and right on queue, Intuit has dated or as actually announced what those fees actually are.
Wanna do is talk about those, feeds 'cause the line of catching you up to today, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Did they release that today?
Dan DeLong: Did, Monday or Friday? Oh, okay. I think Friday. Friday as, as far as the pricing is concerned, right? So once that, qBOA QuickBooks Online accountants being transitioned to Intuit Suite. And as of the Intuit Connect, you were able to opt [00:03:00] in, you were, click, happy and opted in early. But as of Intuit Connect you could opt in to the Intuit Accountant Suite. And there were two flavors, talked about those on a prior, workshop.
So you've got core and for the undisclosed future at time, back in October of 2025, they were in beta for free, right? They were free to use. And you could use and set up books close and you could use and set up client's insights. We're gonna talk about client's in client insights to next week, but for, they were during this period of October, 2020, October, 2025 until May 1st, 2026.
They are evaluating the, gathering feedback. [00:04:00] Input from from people that use it and trying to find the right price point for, these paid for features, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Pricing and Features Discussion
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Rachel Dauchy: I have to tell you though, Dan, I don't like that they're gonna be charging anything extra for books closed because, and maybe some of the other things that'll be in corn accelerate.
Because on the one hand, I do appreciate the fact that there will be a paid. Part of it really to weed out the people that aren't serious about using it for clients. If they were hacking away to get a free instance of QuickBooks online. But the fact that they're thinking about, I don't know, we already pay a lot, or not we, but clients actually.
Nevermind, we wouldn't be paying for iass. So really we would just be paying for the books [00:05:00] close. Okay. Nevermind.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. And
Rachel Dauchy: that's, I'm very brain dead today.
Dan DeLong: You bring up a, you bring up a good point because during, at this year, right? The. The cost. It's so from let's see.
Evolution of QuickBooks Online Accountant
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Dan DeLong: In QBOA started in 2013. At that genesis of QBOA, it was a client dashboard. And a client dashboard was. It's just a way to, that are using QBO, right? Yeah. At that point from that, from those humble beginnings of, that. It has, [00:06:00] changed a lot. And, there's been a lot of new things that that have been added. And it's not just the accountant features that you have inside of your clients. When you are listed as the accountant now they are transitioning of. Activities, right? That account is Intuit, accountant Suite, and, coming from hey, right?
Like everything that you initially, you know, 2013 a thing, right? They, didn't even have being a part of that, right? So they have given two Intuits credit, they have two accountants, a lot of free stuff, right? And
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, they haven't. I was just gonna say sometimes US accountants aren't always the best at doing our own books, [00:07:00] although, I always keep up.
Yeah. I always keep up with the bank feeds, but I am not the best at keeping up with reconciliations. But, but I will say.
Integration with External Apps
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Rachel Dauchy: A lot of these were up to this point, really found in external apps, and that was really a big part of, ever since I joined the Intuit world external apps were always such a big part of using QuickBooks online.
And so it feels like they, they wanna back away from that a little bit. And they, basically, what they're saying is, Hey, we understand that. Oh what I was gonna say is it's almost like a, it's almost like a feature of. Or a by byproduct of competition, right? Because as all of these apps get better and better we see them get better and better very rapidly.[00:08:00]
It's oh and then you can do this, and then you can do this. And then, oh, by the way, firm, you can use this for your firm. And it's like over the past several years, that's what I've been doing. And so I've gotten accustomed to using the set, but then I can use it for my firm. So it seems like Intuit is really.
Jumped onto that. And it's always when you're working on a lot of different clients' books and your own, it's, for me, it's easy to get a little confused on weight from what perspective am I thinking of. And that's why I got confused about client paying for their thing. We don't pay for but, I do.
I am very, and I know we can talk about this a little bit later, but I am very conscious about what I am paying for as a firm. And like I told you before, I don't mind paying for the exclusive part of, okay, I'm a serious pro advisor, so I'm willing to pay that nominal fee. So I have [00:09:00] a legit or verified for lack of a better term, QuickBooks account, but I don't want you to start nickel and dimming me for these things that I can get from somewhere else.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And that's the period of time that we're in today, right? As yeah.
New Features and Tools
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Dan DeLong: New, features and we'll talk about the, books close, what you can do, enterprise Suite, and how that stacks up. Against something that maybe you as a firm your, own practice as a, tool. Yeah. Tool to use. And now you're comparing, okay, is this worth, switching and changing my workflows that I've already established somewhere else into QuickBooks online.
And this is, yeah. That's
Rachel Dauchy: a really,
Dan DeLong: really
Rachel Dauchy: big
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And this. This is the pendulum that is going to, swing [00:10:00] as, Intuit either develops its own solutions or acquires and incorporates those solutions into QuickBooks online, natively. And then,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah, because don't forget, a lot of you're,
Dan DeLong: you're gonna be stacking that up against something else you, that you've already had to incorporate and maybe you're paying for.
Mething else on top, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Because a lot of this is stemmed from saying, okay, did I have I guess let's rewind was this available in QuickBooks Online to do? No. Okay. I'm forced to go get it from somewhere else if I want something that's gonna maybe do it faster and more effectively, and so then you incorporate it into your workflow and then you have a team, and the team is doing that, right?
So it's not always easy to bring it back to something else. It [00:11:00] really boils for me. It's gonna boil down to what the cost is, because if. It does it more effectively and the cost is reasonable then that I would think. Would be something that would move the needle. Because remember a lot of these other apps as an integration gal, these things integrate.
I know you hate this word seamlessly, but it really does. It depends on which one we're talking about, what
Dan DeLong: you were gonna say.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. But for for example, we can get into the example of Double Formerly Keeper. When we talk about books close it, it's like you're in QBO. They've developed that fantastically that instant update that if it doesn't work better than that, why would I switch if I'm going to have to pay?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah.
Comparing Internal and External Solutions
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Dan DeLong: And I think that will make for a good, an additional workshop where, we actually, you know, [00:12:00] side by side compare double and
Rachel Dauchy: yeah, I'd love to do that
Dan DeLong: and see Yeah,
Rachel Dauchy: because we're, a firm.
Dan DeLong: Is it worth it?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, we're a firm at Net deposited. We typically, and this is actually a really interesting topic, because when I first started out there, I know that there were a lot of people that really were rah, Intuit, and they really wanted to only use Intuit products. And as a matter of fact, when I went to scaling New Heights for my first couple years, there were even a few different.
Classes that you could take on how to run your firm only using Intuit products and using TSheets and using this and using that and basically not ever branching out and using anything externally. Then I met a whole bunch of other people that were like, oh no you wanna use all these other external tools 'cause it does everything so much better.
And so [00:13:00] I really settled on somewhere right in the middle, but, probably more leaning towards external apps and not as many QuickBooks apps but, relying on like the core functionality of QBO big time and the fact that that it's got a strong integration ability, which I appreciate.
So for me the question boils down to. Will they kick other apps out? That's what I wanna know. It's never gonna be Okay. We're gonna voluntarily start using all of these QB built-in apps. People like me aren't gonna do that and say that even if it boils down to money,
Dan DeLong: right?
Rachel Dauchy: It's gonna be ha have they disallowed this and am I forced to?
Dan DeLong: Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it'll ever come to that because they have built their entire QuickBooks eCom on their API. [00:14:00] And, yeah, that was always, that was all the case, is that, we'll do what we'll do in inside of, or QBOA or whatever. Whatever the product happens to be.
And then for some otherwise workflows that we don't do well or we we do the shallow end of the pool, there, there's other apps for that, yeah. And the bill pay solution is, a prime example of that. We'll, just divert for a little bit to bring this back to Intuit Enterprise.
Or into an accountant suite, first began, there was no way payments to your suppliers or vendors from QuickBooks online. So there lies the example. It [00:15:00] doesn't do the function. So there's, QuickBooks is either faced with a choice of partner with someone else. Or allow other people to be able to do the things that they do or create their own solution to do that.
Yeah. So it takes time to to set to create your own. And this is pretty standard. Four and two is that, hey, there's already an ecosystem available and there's these solutions that already do that. So now let's look at all of those solutions that are out and maybe approach each one to import to into, to basically integrate that solution into the system.
So it appears as if you're [00:16:00] never on. And that was right. That first iteration was with Bill. Bill Dot. Yep. So they worked with Bill did a scaled down version of bill.com, just for QuickBooks online bill payment, and then incorporated that into QuickBooks. Had a varying level of success.
And some people account hated it because. Because there was some cues for accountant users and those types of things. But it worked it, allowed people to pay Bill line without going to some other app to be able to do that. And then yeah, comes lio, right? So then they kicked, bill.com out of the picture, said Get out of my QuickBooks, and then replace that with Elliot.
Which if you didn't know you were [00:17:00] using me, you didn't know you were using. So the whole bill payment process of, Memeo actually had and a memeo green is what they called. Yeah, that was a little confusing though. Exactly. So you could go outside of QuickBooks into mailing to do your things outside of there if you want.
Yeah. A little bit more than what Green would allow you to do, from QuickBooks. But if you didn't know you were using L Elio to pay your bills with the QuickBooks bill pay, then no. It was that deeply integrated. Yeah. That you never left. Yeah. You didn't, if you didn't have to. You need QuickBooks in order to schedule and pay your bills, through.
The, what was powered by [00:18:00] Lio. So then final QuickBooks Bill Pay service comes into play. And so they're like, all right, appreciate your appreciate your integration, but we got from here, right? And build pay Solution is the only one. That you can deeply inside of your QuickBooks online without going anywhere outside of QuickBooks.
So that is, yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: I was just gonna say there's like that positives and negatives to that. I like the idea of if you've got a team and then maybe they're assigned to bill pay, then they don't have to go outside of QuickBooks and the payment gets recorded in the way that you want and you're not necessarily having to search elsewhere for payments to match up to [00:19:00] bills.
And so there's a lot of good things about it. I don't, anyway, go ahead.
Dan DeLong: So here we are. So let's draw that that timeline or that evolution of an mission in here, in into, it Enterprise account suite. See I, can't keep the name straight sometimes.
Rachel Dauchy: You know what, like I have to say is, the way that I see it is that Intuit can. The opportunities are endless.
There's a million, zillion different things that Intuit can say, oh, accounts are using this. Let's put this in here. Oh, that would be neat. Let's add this. And so it really. The possibilities are endless. Yeah. The fact that they're focusing on this is great because it can get pricey and that's really my only [00:20:00] drawback about using an external tool such as the close, which I'm sure you'll show.
But for me it boils down to that I would love to be able to use something internally if it weren't a pain to switch my team to. So let me price. Team switching is the, are the biggest issues.
Dan DeLong: And you might not be their candidate. For for this point in time because
Rachel Dauchy: Right.
Dan DeLong: I'd be for
Rachel Dauchy: solopreneurs. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Not necessarily the solo entrepreneurs, but people who. Or to aren't gonna know any different. So unless you know as you Oh true. Yeah. As, you as if you are starting your virtual bookkeeping, if you were starting today and going into, an accountant suite, you don't know anything.[00:21:00]
Prior to that. So you don't, have that baggage that, okay, I've already got another app that does, this sort of thing.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, that's a really good
Dan DeLong: point. You're not alone.
Rachel Dauchy: And I would, if I were new to it, I would opt to use all the bells and whistles. I would, I'd be like, oh, this is great.
And then I wouldn't even look at elsewhere for it.
Dan DeLong: So all of these features like and not new to the franchise, new to QuickBooks people. Who are like, okay, I need to pay bills, so I use the QuickBooks bill pay service. Because they don't, that there's not, that there's other options out there.
Right.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, that's a really good point because there's so many things that I thought when I first started that I thought I had to do because I just had to, and it takes a while. So figure out that You don't have to but I get that initial thinking. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: So the on one side of the picture [00:22:00] there's new, accountants.
New virtual bookkeepers, new practitioners who are going into QuickBooks Online accountant for the first time, and now it's price. Sweet. And they're given this choice of which flavor is it core or is Excel? Ate. Okay, here's what I get for Core or Accelerate. I need to do some books.
Close stuff. Oh, books Close option. I'll see what that's on. And they don't know anything about Double or Keeper or Yeah. Or Financial Sense or any of the other practice management that are out there that you know do and doing these things. For, quite some time.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah,
Dan DeLong: let's first talk.
Let's first talk about the same. So let me, yeah, I was
Rachel Dauchy: just gonna ask, tell me the pricing
Dan DeLong: right? Show me the money, is my [00:23:00] option. Okay. This thing, this studio, sometimes we're All right. So let's make this a little bigger so we can see. Move this over here.
Core vs Accelerate Plans
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Dan DeLong: Okay, so we talked about that there are two two options, core and accelerate, right?
And one says free, the other says $0 a month, which to free to me, but there's a, there's an asterisk there. It's free right now for Intuit Accountant Suite, accelerate until May 1st of 26, which. Then it's going to be starting at one four, so
Rachel Dauchy: okay,
Dan DeLong: new QBA existing Quizzers who ultimately at some point before December need to opt in and choose one of these [00:24:00] choices.
If you are coming from quick line accountant and. All of the things that you are current doing that are free. The, your books, the online payroll Elite, the QuickBooks Time Elite and Elite be Bill Pay Service. They are still free
Accountant Suite, regardless, right? So you're not gonna be paying for now your, for firm books. You're not gonna be paying for. The, any of those er and they have not made any statements to say that those fees or those service now have a cost to them. Yeah. But
intuit-accountant-suite-is-the-new-qboa_-pt: for
Dan DeLong: now, to your point, they could change that position at any time.
And in, and back to the genesis of advisor [00:25:00] program, there always was a fee. ProAdvisor program until QBOA into the picture. And then there's this whole idea, there's all the stuff that you get for free. Yeah. So now we're coming they're kind needing to backpedal some of that and they are introducing fees on the things.
The new things that they're adding, the existing things that people are already enjoying, right? So we may find years from now that they're charging for the yearbooks or whatever, but that is not today, and that's not in the near future. So everything of core is free. And you get the, as we mentioned, navigation [00:26:00] workshop last week.
You've got the customizable home widgets. This Intuit intelligence chat. Which, one of those ask anything. Chat, GBT types of search boxes inside of your, book, the Intuit ai, the channel chart of accounts, templates, role-based access and controls which if you ever see Reebok or Arbok, that's what they're talking about.
I've seen like the acronym. What is RBAC? It's role-based. You've got the, my menu, the customer hub, which is, incorporations and integrations with mail, the CRM, and those types of things. You the platform.
Did [00:27:00] I lose? Am I lost?
Rachel Dauchy: No, you're still there, but you're cutting out a little bit.
Dan DeLong: Okay. Yeah, because it just said, oops, you're reconnecting. And then that training manager dashboard we talked about, last time. So all of those features, including the payroll, the QB time, and service are still free.
So there's no, no charge for doing that. The only potential fee that is gonna be within is books close because you can add or opt in into books close. You have the Intuit Accountants platform, which as we can now see is at $149. For the platform fee.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, that's a lot. I was gonna [00:28:00] say, I like the fact that you can a la carte books close.
Yeah. If you need, what about books review? Is that still a thing?
Dan DeLong: Yes. Yes. And, we'll talk about the difference between what the heck, is the difference between books Close and books Review. Get into the books close. But then so with accelerate then you have your, your. core features plus client insights, which we'll talk about next week.
Team groups, being able to group your team. And then this AI powered anomaly detection. And some of the things that they teased up the following week is things for capacity planning, right? So here we are in the throes three days away from the end of, tag nine season, right?
Where things need to be out for [00:29:00] out, out, of sent for filing, right? And maybe you need some extra help in order to do that. For your clients, right? So this will or somebody takes in the middle of a busy season or a spike in to plan a accordingly for that. That's some of, the features that are gonna be in the accelerate side of things.
Either leverage maybe antu it. To be able to bring on some temporary staff, let them go after that this is, over. Or at least to plan for those types of things. 'cause you have those other things on the elite time and those types of things that are already baked in to your platform.
So
Rachel Dauchy: yeah, it's mean. It's like they're going from just providing accounting software [00:30:00] to accounting firm software.
Dan DeLong: Exactly. And so to your point, you were using QBOA up until this point for several years and. These features, like books Close would've been a twinkle in Satan's eye at that point, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Books Close has been there. No, no Books Close, wasn't there? Books Review had been there for quite some time and I did use it,
Dan DeLong: yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: When I was still by myself.
Dan DeLong: Right.
Rachel Dauchy: It's hard because like out there in the app landscape, there's some stuff that. Works a lot better when you're dealing with a team.
And so I think it's great that Intuit is adding all of these features and they're essentially competing. And I'm, excited to see like, where it eventually ends up going. It seems like they're adding on this cost to be able to use it. So it's [00:31:00] gonna be, that's gonna be, for me, a hard sell.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And and just keep in mind that there are there are two demographics, there are new users to QBOA. Yeah. Intuit Accountant Suite. People like you or existing
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Understanding Books Close and Its Features
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Dan DeLong: Existing users that, that are coming from.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, they understand that me, yeah. They understand that me and my ilk are a hard nut to crack,
Dan DeLong: right?
Rachel Dauchy: We're not gonna get those ones.
Dan DeLong: So books close, which is as they speak to it, like on the, in the, in the know webinars that they do or monthly. When they talk about books closed, they, they referenced Books Review. So it's got some features and then we'll, [00:32:00] some similarities with Books Review which is accountant feature inside of a client, but Books Close is an accountant.
Firm, right? So again, it's one of. Of those things that we were talking about, which are, if you don't know that you're using books, clothes, you wouldn't know that you're using books. Because it's, you're inside of the, you're not needing to go into your client in order to see that utility.
And that's the, that was, oh, this book's review tool is cool, but. I gotta go into each client and I don't have any visibility into how how that book's closed or books review you process is going unless I go if you're a firm owner, which you are, [00:33:00] and. You have books, close tasks, then you can't tell who's working on what unless you go into each client and check up on it or yourself.
So that is, yeah, that is what they're driving for here. To be able to have a, more of a bird's eye view of the books. Books, closed books, but also do a lot of the tasks. Within Intuit Accountant Suite. With each individual.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Which is great. That's what you want,
Dan DeLong: right?
Rachel Dauchy: So
Dan DeLong: yeah,
Rachel Dauchy: that's, they're doing what
Dan DeLong: the book
Rachel Dauchy: is appropriate.
I feel if I could put a list together of things I would need to have, that's the way I would want it.
Dan DeLong: All right, so the book Lows is the only thing that can be in core or. Into Accelerate, right? So [00:34:00] that's, one of, that's one of the, features that could be Yes. In either one. You get a little complicated when you see the account suite core free, and then you end up having a cost associated with that because you are opting into the books.
Books Close Pricing and Beta Program Details
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Dan DeLong: Closed a fee now, what's that fee? Books closed is available at no additional cost through the beta program, up until May 1st, 2020 sixth you'll be billed $8 client per month up to two 50 clients, or $6 for over 50 clients now
Rachel Dauchy: I would That sounds about
Dan DeLong: right. Assume. Yeah. Then it's
Rachel Dauchy: not all that different than what some of the apps are charging.
It seems. Around that.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So you coming from the QBOA or keeper, [00:35:00] right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Old, that pretty much is in alignment with what you're paying today, for per client, because that's, doubles business model, right? Just to pay for each client that you have connected to.
Rachel Dauchy: Each client that you have connected exactly.
Per month.
Dan DeLong: Right.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, so that sounds about right. I like, again, my question would be like, can I do all the same things and if actually if I can that's, less than what Double charges
Dan DeLong: Exactly though.
Navigating the Books Close Function
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Dan DeLong: Now let's go into and take a look at the, books close function, right? So that is gonna be under the service delivery section inside of Intuit Accountant Suite.
You'll see the books close area, the overview. So looking at the, overview, you've [00:36:00] opened the upper closed settings. Creating a close is a button here, and then onboarding a close client. The fee is gonna be based off of the number of onboarded closed clients using clients that that, you want to have as part of this.
So I may have a hundred list on. I'm only gonna get a charge for the ones that I have put here, right? For the, our two clients on my on my books close overview. So if I wait and do nothing, which I potentially could have the, I could do I, if I may forget that I have these two for just, display purposes.
If I wait until May, I'm gonna get charged $16. A month just because these two are sitting on [00:37:00] page. So I'm gonna have to get them off, which is gonna bet under my action, don't, oh wait, I don't have the option to get rid of them. Where, oh my gosh, really my options are open. Create the open, go to QuickBooks or not, like I'm gonna have, that's gonna be another thing. How am I gonna. Is this a maybe
Rachel Dauchy: their policy
Dan DeLong: is once
Rachel Dauchy: you add them, that's it.
Dan DeLong: Because you're
Rachel Dauchy: stuck.
Dan DeLong: It's like the, tire track at the garage right? Can go over them real easy, but coming back your tire damage. Yeah. So let's first go into, where'd you go?
The books closed. Settings, right?
Templates and Preferences in Books Close
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Dan DeLong: So you have some options here. First is two, there's tabs. There's the templates and preferences. First the [00:38:00] templates is your default book. Your options there are either to view it, or to make. So if I view it. Here are the part of that book's close.
And we've got several sections here just to collapse them to show. There we go. So we've got pre, close is gonna have in this particular case is closing of your client's books. You wanna make sure transactions on the bank feed are coded, right? It makes sense.
Gather all the relevant documents and statements, right? So you all the, prep work that you would do before you activate. You can define the date of your close to be due but then you've got other tasks that you can, add as well. [00:39:00] And then account, reconciliation.
There's not much that you can do in there because once you create a close, you can remove client accounts as far as what you're reconciling this about books close because when you're reconciling your client's account, go into their QuickBooks in order to do that. Then one of those things that you're gonna be able to do inside of Intuit Accountant Suite without going into your client being able to reconcile their.
Their accounts and they continue to enhance this, you'll continue to have more things that you can do without going the claim. Wait
Rachel Dauchy: a wait a minute.
Dan DeLong: You be
Rachel Dauchy: in this widget here. I can go in and reconcile them or I can just mark them reconciled.
Dan DeLong: I can go in and do bank reconciliation right here without leaving and going into my client's books.[00:40:00]
Rachel Dauchy: Really? Wow.
Dan DeLong: Cool. So then
Rachel Dauchy: transaction it brings the, sub-ledger and the reconciliation thing?
Dan DeLong: It it's basically just the, screen that you see inside the reconciliation screen inside of the client, you'll see it into account suite.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh,
Dan DeLong: interesting. Without going into the client.
Okay. As if you're inside of your client, but you're inside of firm. You account. Yeah. Two accounts with, okay.
Transaction Review and Reconciliation
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Dan DeLong: So then you've got transact which these are, general areas. You've got uncategorized actions, transactions without payee, transactions, coded expenses and bills without attachments over a certain dollar amount, transactions greater than a certain dollar amount transactions added by bank rule.
Huge one, right? Because if you've [00:41:00] got. Transactions that were automatically added, those were set up right. And that they're COVID properly. Yeah. Transactions auto posted by AI coming soon. So that's another things that you, those two kinds of transactions or transactions that you don't have insight because they automatically got added into the books, to do funds, unapplied payment. It's big thing there. Yeah. Under transactions over a certain amount of days expense in
consistencies, those are, that's a fe a feature coming soon. So there's some things to keep in mind and doing, consistency that's a coming soon feature. But if you've got transactions. To the same payee and same account that are different [00:42:00] classes. Yeah, you might wanna review that, customer or project, transactions manually.
So these are the 15 of transaction review. That will be good. Two before closing the books.
Rachel Dauchy: Those are the key ones. That's very comprehensive. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Payee entity review. Okay. This is things, new vendors, right? So anything that's a new vendor Yeah. You might wanna review W 9 10 99 management.
This is poor timing of this coming soon. Yeah.
On the 28th.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. That would've been
Dan DeLong: nice
Rachel Dauchy: to have that
Dan DeLong: before. Probably should. It would've been nice to have that January 1st, yeah. I digress. New customers and then [00:43:00] newly added accounts. So customers, the vendors, and accounts that, because you might want to get notified somebody does any of those three things, right?
Like we're you're, encroaching on my jam here, right? As a, as your accountant. All right.
Final Review and Client Management
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Dan DeLong: And then final review, your profit and loss statement, your balance sheet your a AP and AR reports, and then there are additional items of review. And clean up the bank rules because heck, you bunch that were added by the bank rules from your transaction review and then close the book.
So changing your. Your closing date on the company files. Sending the financial statement sending that package. All of these are, this is the right, if I wanna make a copy I can, do that. It'll [00:44:00] create the copy of that, and now I've got the ability to own custom tasks. Oh wow. That's pretty cool.
I can add something to the pre-close. I can. You can't do anything in the account reconciliation what it is, but I've got add or remove for the transaction review. Wow. So if you're not needing to do certain tasks, not in your scope,
Rachel Dauchy: I like how a
Dan DeLong: lot you just remove some of those tasks. Yep.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Can't do anything here.
The final review. Review, but then you've got your additional items where you can handle tasks in there.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Because
Dan DeLong: that, that's the
intuit-accountant-suite-is-the-new-qboa_-pt: clients
Rachel Dauchy: have other things you need to review.
Dan DeLong: Exactly. And then you've got your two templates, and then in your preferences you have the, close assignee, right?
So this is three, options with assignee. And that can be [00:45:00] reviewer or approver. And so when you're creating this rating or onboarding your books close clients, that's where you're going to assign who needs to do what, right? And so you've, got a, teammate who just do the transaction review piece of it, and then you have other people go in and actually do the financial report reports before, you send it.
Them. So you're, you've, you're gonna be able to at least up to three assignee for the books review. Then you have close status, which right now you have five stat high. Is it statuses? What is the plural of status, to do in progress waiting on client blocked or completed, right? And you can go in and, change.
Change the terms that are in here to [00:46:00] do and complete it. And can resource.
And add new, add your own if you wanna. So those are the, that's
intuit-accountant-suite-is-the-new-qboa_-pt: just,
Rachel Dauchy: that is pretty cool. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: The settings, once you have, on the client. Then you have your, client filter. So if you have a huge list of books, closed clients, you can search for specific clients if you wanted to, the period who it's assigned to.
And then status might be, but you can see that are just listed here that the is listed of when that book's closed, what, when it's due. Who is the preparer? Who's the reviewer, and who's the approver? And that status of where in the status and how many of the tasks are [00:47:00] completed, right?
So what we have found is that we can't remove. Books review. So that I need to double check after, the workshop here, because we're on this screen to be able to do that.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Let's go in and maybe you're locked into it forever and ever. Yeah. You know what I was gonna say is the, one thing that I really like about this is, sometimes I forget that.
I am, been doing this for a while now and I have a team and I get wrapped up in what the team is doing and I don't wanna change anything because of that 'cause that becomes a thing. It's really hard to change things once, people have things in motion. But when I first started even though I had an accounting background.
I didn't exactly know all the things that I needed to be doing as part of the [00:48:00] monthly close as a bookkeeper, because when I worked as a staff accountant, I was only assigned to like part of the close, right? I wasn't doing everything on the financial statement. So in the beginning I was, sometimes I would think to myself, wait, am I doing everything?
And I wish there was like a comprehensive list that I could find to make sure that. I was checking every little thing. So for folks that might be newer coming into bookkeeping and maybe they've had some training, but they still, or even some formal accounting and bookkeeping education, but they still aren't entirely sure maybe as a solopreneur or maybe getting started with the business.
This is really actually a great resource for them to make sure they're doing it all right.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And then keep also keeping in mind that, not you who have been doing this for a while I [00:49:00] space new to being an acc, a virtual accountant coming in here and seeing this. Yeah. Oh, someone has created this.
Because to your point, yeah, it's really nice. Books review. Books review didn't, if you don't know where to find it. Yeah. In your client as an accountant, right? There's a lot of things, discovery of that feature. And more importantly, knowing option for review and setup to be, yeah, a drop on the books review is, a challenge, right?
May
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah I'm glad that. I'm glad that they have this now side by this now, because I, sorry, go ahead.
Dan DeLong: That's, good. So now I've gone into a book's close, right? And some information in here based off of that particular template and that client, [00:50:00] right? So my account reconciliation zero out of 22.
Here's all of his the accounts. And it will have a column for how only it's been reconciled through, right? With all of your clearing accounts that you, have to reconcile and line of credits and those types of things, you can see all of them in place and, okay let's, just see here, right?
So here's this. If I hit you view reconcile.
I have not left QuickBooks. Oh, yeah, you're
Rachel Dauchy: You're right,
Dan DeLong: Dan. I've not left in into it.
Rachel Dauchy: I
Dan DeLong: didn't
Rachel Dauchy: think that you were lying.
Dan DeLong: No, I didn't. I didn't think you thought I was lying. [00:51:00] Here you are Inside. Inside of. Intuit Enterprise Suite. It's not on its other tab. It didn't take me into their books.
Rachel Dauchy: That's a really, that's a really nice thing because at. Even if maybe somebody that's newer, maybe you've, if even if you have more than one client and you've probably already learned that you can't tab back and forth between different clients and so that can get very old very quickly. It's a lot of clicking around and it's aggravating.
So this is very good. It's a good thing.
Dan DeLong: Alright, so there's transactions without class or location, there's too. And 66 and these I can select multiple ones. I can them right from here. Oops. And this, that journal entry bill, payment check, and [00:52:00] transactions aren't by bulk edit. So all of these being done, not gonna.
Not gonna be helpful, right? One. I can, edit it. I can add my request more information from my client right here into the transaction. To ask that question. I can attach a file, and add. More information in here. Put something in add, to add to the list for for more information.
That's gonna be up here at the top where you have requests, right here on at the top of the books closed. And you're not needing to go anywhere to find the information, whatever it is that. You have to find yourself navigating around inside, outside of QuickBooks or inside of the client, right?
So [00:53:00] it's all in one place, or at least that is the intention is that you don't have to go bouncing around. In different applic, different windows, you're all in, in one place. Place. And, as, we see though, right? If, we're gonna run up against, butting heads, right?
We may have a, it's a place to put into these these tools, you're getting the most out of it. Be, we're in the, we're in the point where they have just kicked, the kicked bill com out of QuickBooks online, to get to that ideal state of all of those things.[00:54:00]
Provide the feedback let 'em know Hey this didn't work as, as, we had hoped. Or if you come across those things. But that is the intention and the goal of the book's close is to ultimately have a one place to be able to go in. And then you as a firm owner can go in and see the, and see how on track you are for those deliverables established with your clients.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. It's,
Dan DeLong: you'll be able to see working on what,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah. I mean it's really the most important part of what we do. I'm very curious to know how, I am very curious to know if right tool is going to update some of the stuff to see and work in this view.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. I'm sure that [00:55:00] they are busily trying to figure out how yeah, how to. 'cause that's all the things or that, that's their intention is to be able to save precious seconds of, yeah. Of extra clip, extra clicking. And they may, yeah. They may be augmenting, those short, those shortfalls of what they see in the Intuit Accountant suite until adds them to Yeah. Intuit accountant. So their in in their regard Keeper or double or some other books closed, tool Zenit is another one to work with your clients Zenit tool isn't gonna help, isn't gonna help with that because they're not gonna create extensions for all of those.
Utilities. So they're, so I'm sure they are enhancing their [00:56:00] whole version of Right tool with. With some of these, featuring them for the shallow end of the pool.
Comparing Books Close with Other Tools
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Dan DeLong: These terminologies and feature features with that, so that is books close in a nutshell, right?
Into books review. But if you go into book, books review you can you. You can compare and I think that's, a good blog article view. Yeah. And books close that, that I might be working on, between now and next week when we talk about client feature. But that's on the Accelerate platform.
Rachel Dauchy: Cool.
Conclusion and Next Steps
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Dan DeLong: Initial thoughts Rachel, 'cause you, this is a. Reaction, to you too?
Rachel Dauchy: I think that as far as getting all the things needed for books closed, they definitely [00:57:00] nailed it. I, they did a very good job. And I, it, if I didn't have, if I wasn't using something else, I would instantly use that.
Yeah. And I think for new people coming in, coming from I think it's. Great. And I think the price is right too. So I think that I, encourage people to use it
Dan DeLong: now coming from who uses something else and stacking this up against that. And we we just glossed over some of these feature, the details.
But yeah. Where what do you, see as like a, a. A an advantage of using something like double over something like this at this point in your firm.
Rachel Dauchy: Something like double You can, and then I have to go 'cause we're right at the hour. But something like double is great 'cause you can batch change.[00:58:00]
Anything you want large amounts all and change it right in the Excel. Like it looks like Excel and you can just change it and updates QuickBooks, IME immediately. So I don't know if you can update the transaction from that or even maybe do that like in bulk, but that's where something like double can really come in handy.
Dan DeLong: Yeah I think that's what we'll do is we'll. Double versus books close and see Yeah. See if it does well or doesn't
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Doesn't stack up. So
Rachel Dauchy: we can have Jamie
Dan DeLong: maybe appreciate you joining.
Rachel Dauchy: I was just gonna say maybe we can have Jamie join in and put her 2 cents.
'cause she's the expert user.
Dan DeLong: She's the double user. Yeah. We'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday and, next time we're gonna be talking about the C CLTs in, the Accelerate version of ia. Have a great [00:59:00] week everyone. [01:00:00]
