There are numerous ways to do this, but you might consider adopting the concept of best practices (if you haven’t already). Most industries have them, primarily larger businesses. Best practices are a set of operational guidelines that are expected to produce a favorable outcome. Run your business using these techniques or methods, and you’re likely to be more successful.

Accounting has best practices. While they’re not carved in stone, sticking with some tried-and-true, common-sense procedures will likely lead to increased efficiency. Perhaps adopting some or all of them will make a difference in your business. QuickBooks can help.

The Three I’s

Let’s look at the three stages you’ll encounter when you decide to apply best practices to your company.

Identify

What problems are you trying to solve? Where are your bottlenecks? Are collections a problem? Cash flow? Timely, accurate payroll? Have you seen a reduction in your customer base? Are your bills being paid late? Having trouble keeping up with inventory?

Bring your employees in on this process. They’re on the front lines, and will have insight into where your systems are breaking down. They’ll be pleased to be asked, and they may have ideas that will evolve into best practices.

Figure 1. When you’re formulating ideas that could evolve into best practices, use your best resource: your employees.

Implement

Turn your ideas into policies, and formalize them. Make a big deal out of introducing them to all staff related to accounting, and explain the rationale behind them. They’re intended to improve your company’s financial bottom line, which should translate into a positive outcome for everyone. Don’t turn your presentation into a critique of past performance; emphasize the constructive nature of the changes. Put it in writing, too.

Here are some examples of best practices that other businesses have implemented.

• Invoice at the time of service/shipment, instead of once or twice monthly.
• Set a specific time interval to deal with collections, like once a week. If you’re running QuickBooks 2011, you can use the Collections Center. Previous versions have numerous helpful reports, like A/R Aging Detail, Open Invoices, and Collections Report.

Figure 2. QuickBooks 2011 features the automated Collections Center.

• Estimate your income tax obligation monthly, not just quarterly. When payments come due, there won’t be any major surprises.
• Make sure everyone who works with accounting has a backup person who can fill in. Consider having us do the training.
• If you don’t have a merchant account – which QuickBooks supports – get one, and encourage customers to pay in this fashion. Pay your bills the same way wherever possible. Use all of the technology that makes sense for you.
• When it’s logistically possible, have employees who incur billable time use a timer. A few minutes lost here and there adds up. QuickBooks has a built-in timer; remote employees can use Time Tracker.

Figure 3. Have employees time billable activities whenever possible.

• When was the last time you looked at your pricing structure? Are you building in enough profit? Evaluate your selling ratios on a schedule. Run inventory reports regularly.

See? It’s not rocket science. It’s a matter of emulating the practices of the most successful businesses. You might network with other companies to see how they handle this formalizing of processes. Talk to us, too.

Insure

Don’t leave it at that. Evaluate the effectiveness of the new best practices by scheduling follow-up meetings with employees. What’s working, and what isn’t? Do you need to tweak your methods?

This step is absolutely critical. You might want to appoint a compliance officer who follows up with individual employees and departments. If your business is small and informal, you could bring in lunch one day a month for follow-up – and for the development of new best practices.

Not just for mega-companies

You may already know something about best practices, but have always assumed that the concept was designed for big business. While it may be more of an imperative for large companies, even a sole proprietor with a bookkeeper can benefit. It’s really just a matter of putting the most effective work processes into place and maintaining them. Implementing best practices can be a good first step towards a more successful 2011. Call us if you have any questions.

 

Tip: QuickBooks integrates with Microsoft Internet Explorer for some of its work. We’ll discuss some of its safety tools, but you may want to check with us to see if your larger system is well-protected against malware, viruses, etc.

Set-Up Preferences

Fortunately, QuickBooks is open for integration with many outside applications that complement QuickBooks’s native capabilities and extend its usefulness. But you should make sure that your system is set up to accommodate the features you want to use.

To do this, click Edit | Preferences | Integrated Applications. Then click on the tab labeled Company Preferences. Here you’ll be able to indicate that:

• no applications should be allowed access, and
• you should be notified if an application’s certificate has expired.

This window also displays a list of applications that are currently integrated with QuickBooks. Highlight one, then click Remove if you want to break the link. Click Properties, and you’ll see the window shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: QuickBooks lets you specify who gets in, and what they can do.

Check the top box if this outside application should be allowed in, and make decisions about the other options here. If you have any questions, give us a call and we’ll make sure your choices suit your business.

Broaden Your Horizons

QuickBooks relies on the Internet for many of its functions, which makes the program much more versatile. You can use this Web connection to update your copy of QuickBooks, receive payroll updates, download financial institution transactions, and access myriad business resources.

If your copy of QuickBooks is not yet integrated with Internet Explorer, click on the Help menu, then Internet Connection Setup. Work through the wizard to specify the correct connection to use, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: To make sure your QuickBooks/Internet Explorer integration is working securely, specify the correct Internet connection.

Click on Edit | Preferences again, then click Service Connection. Under the My Preferences tab, you’ll be asked to decide whether:

• data downloaded from your financial institution – or information previously downloaded – should be processed immediately or saved to a file, or
• Internet Explorer should remain open after you’ve completed a Web-based task (only applicable if QuickBooks has opened IE).

Check or uncheck the appropriate boxes.

Click the Company Preferences tab. Here, you’ll tell QuickBooks whether it should automatically connect to Web services (other than Payroll or Online Banking; these have their own passwords) or if a password will be required. You’ll also specify whether service updates from Intuit should be automatically downloaded, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: In the window, you can specify your preferences for password requirements and background downloading of service updates.

To ensure that you’ll be able to see all QuickBooks-related content on the Web, open Internet Explorer. Click the Tools menu, then Internet Options. Click the Security tab, and make sure the level is set to Medium, as suggested by Intuit.

Internal Security

Of course, QuickBooks offers internal tools to prevent unauthorized employees from reaching sensitive information. To access these, click Company | Set Up Users and Passwords | Set Up Users. You must be the Administrator to enter this are.

The window that opens gives you several options. You can add, edit, delete, or view a user. Click the Add User button, and assign a user name and password on the next screen. Click Next, and in the next window, choose whether to give the individual access to all areas of QuickBooks, or just a subset (the External Accountant option lets your accounting professional enter most areas of the program).

Choose Selective Access and click Next in the window shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: QuickBooks lets you specify which areas and functions individual users can access.

On each page in this wizard, you can assign no, full, or selective access to tasks for each employee. Other functional areas include Payroll and Employees, Time Tracking, and Sensitive Accounting Activities. When you’re done, click Finish.

Keep It Safe

Remember, too, that Intuit employs high-level encryption that secures your sensitive financial information. And it of course recommends that you back up frequently to further protect your data.

If this all seems like too much poking around in QuickBooks, give us a call and we’ll help you make the right security choices.

 

Bill.com users can receive, route and pay invoices electronically — they never have to touch a paper bill again — resulting in time and cost savings to finance personnel of over 50% versus manual accounts payable and check writing processes. 

Invoices are emailed, scanned or faxed into the Bill.com solution.  Digital images of invoices are then routed electronically for approval, ensuring a complete audit trail and eliminating lost or mishandled paper.  Users can access digitized supporting documents such as current and past bill images, cleared check images and contracts, at every step in the process, from anywhere, at any time, over the Internet. Bill.com handles check printing and mailing as well as electronic payments, and uses enterprise-class fraud protections that are impractical for small and midsized businesses to implement on their own.  Bill.com integrates with popular desktop and on-demand accounting packages, ensuring consistency of financial data and streamlined financial planning, reporting and audit activities.