Discover (and Get!) What You Want from Your QuickBooks Accounting System (1010/Level 2)

Discover (and Get!) What You Want from Your QuickBooks Accounting System (1010/Level 2)

Welcome to ‘What Do You Want from Your QuickBooks System?’ looking at 'Today’s Needs & Future Plans'.

I couldn’t bury it all in the title, but we’re also going to be looking at what’s happened in the past because that’s going to be a big indicator of the kinds of information you need to look at - and think about - for the future.

So we’re going to cover today, generally, ‘What do you want from your QuickBooks system?’.

• I’m going to just briefly talk about the role that we think that the people who are signed up for the silver sessions should be taking in their company.
• Gathering information: we’re going to spend quite a bit of time in this area. Where you are is going to help determine where you want to go. So where you are, where you’ve been, we’ll go out and do some extensive information gathering in that area. And I’ll share some of the techniques that we use to get that information.
• We’re also going to look at 'What are some of the changes you’re looking at for the near future?' as well as changes that are longer-term so that you can position yourself the right way.

So, hopefully, you can see what we’re covering [on the screen] - and this will be a little bit like a PowerPoint but just in a format that you can use better in the future.

So, the people who are signed up for training, we’re viewing you as folks who have been around for a while and/or are acting in the role of assisting and advising the owner on financial matters and systems. You’re almost moved up into a consultant-type role as someone who really knows what’s going on in the accounting systems - or you’re in the process of knowing that - so we want to deal with issues that you’ve run into at that level.

Your role will typically be to research and recommend. We find that a lot of company owners are not all excited about going out and looking at all of the different available options and all of the underlying details. They have a tendency to be more 'top-down'. "Is this product going to do what we want it to? Okay, great, go for it!" The problem is that some of those snap decisions may not serve you best in the long run, so we’re viewing your role as one of recommending and providing some guidance, raising the tough questions, and doing the footwork in the background.

We want to talk about how designing your financial system isn’t just about today or this year. It is a long-term type of circumstance. Of course, you want to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for the buck and that the system that you’re going to be putting together is going to meet the needs of the company and also the individual people who are going to be using it. So, that test of time is important.

I am also thinking about trying to get into something that’s going to be scalable as your company grows or gets smaller. We want to be able to fit [into] varying scenarios in the future as well as analyze some long-term trends. In order to do a good analysis of longer-term trends, you need to have a file that can look at a number of years in a row - so that's something to keep in mind as well.

So, to understand where you are and where you’ve been is important.

When I first started as an auditor, back in my public accounting days, I had some really good guides. One of the things that my mentors taught me was that before you jump in and start trying to fix things or come up with smart recommendations and so on for people, you really had to go out there and find out what was going on and what had happened in the past. So, a good way, I think, to help put yourself into the proper mindset is not maybe so much as an auditor but more like a banker.

So if you were a banker and someone came to you, for instance for a loan, what are the kinds of questions that you might want to ask to get a good understanding of the company that you’re dealing with?

So, I’ve got this list. It’s going to seem pretty extensive, I’m sure, but [there are] things that are important for you to know - just like it would be for the banker - before you start making any major decisions about the accounting system. And, lots of times, people come in, and they don’t [yet] have the history with the company. There may be a lot of things here, but if you have quite a bit of history with the company, you’ll know the answer already. But I think it’s good to at least touch on the questions and think about "What does it mean to your accounting system?".

So the first thing is, is what is your industry? Of course, people who are in construction need to think about the following: What branch of construction are you in? Are you in development? Are you a remodeler? Are you a trade contractor? Are you a spec home builder? Are you commercial? Each one of those has some unique needs and can impact how you choose to go forward. If you're in manufacturing, you're going to want to think about inventory systems. Job-costing if you're a job-shop manufacturer...