New Business Direction LLC
Custom fields in your accounting software are data fields that you can define yourself. They are typically associated with customers, vendors, employees, and items, and they can help you store and categorize additional information about these stakeholders and your products and services in your business.
Custom Fields in QuickBooks Desktop
An example custom field that can be associated with customers is their anniversary date with you. You could also decide to store their birthday, their spouse’s name, their favorite color, or their shoe size.
Custom fields add functionality to your accounting system. Here are a few examples of practical uses for custom fields:
- Contact for customer – if customers are assigned a particular team member, you can add their name in a custom field
- Frequency of service – daily, weekly, monthly
- Warehouse location
- Type of customer; for example, non-profit, construction, retail, restaurant
- Referral Source
- Preferred method of contact: email, phone, fax, text, chat
- License number
Our customer custom fields track which version of QuickBooks you use, what payroll service is active, who your tax preparer is, etc. Then we can sort on any one of these fields.
Some software allows you to choose the type of custom field you want to add. In some cases, this allows for cleaner data as the data can be limited to a certain type or certain values upon entry. Here are the most common types:
- Free form text – this is the default type; it can come as a single line or paragraph
- Check box – choose one or more values from a limited number of choices
- Radio button – choose only one value from a limited number of choices
- Drop down – choose a value from a dropdown list
- File upload – add an attachment
- Image upload – upload an image that will be displayed
- Date/time – enter a date or time
- Number – enter a number; it can be currency, integer, or another mathematical type of number
Custom fields allow you to meet your company’s unique needs over and above what the software provides by default. It’s a great way to make your data more meaningful. If you have some ideas for custom fields in your accounting software and want help setting them up, feel free to give us a call anytime.
Nobody likes, them, but sometimes it happens. This is how you record it in QuickBooks if this happens to you.
Learn How to Record a Bounced Check From a Customer in QuickBooks® with Rhonda Rosand, CPA and QuickBooks® ProAdvisor from New Business Directions, LLC
As we welcome in a new year (and maybe a new decade depending on how you count them), it’s a perfect time to reflect on the trends that will impact us and our businesses. Here’s a list for your consideration and reflection.
Trend #1: Sustainability
Concern for the environment has made the list of many companies’ core values. The way 
businesses are run can have a huge impact on the environment. While we hear a lot of stories about large companies impacting sustainability, we can also do our part as small businesses. In the accounting profession, many firms have gone paperless, transitioning from staplers, paper clips, and filing cabinets to digital storage which greatly reduces their footprint.
Trend #2: The Gig Economy
Young workers often have multiple jobs instead of the 9 to 5 jobs of their parents. This means there is more flexibility than ever before when it comes to hiring and retaining young workers. They can be employees, contractors, outsourced solutions, remote, local, part-time, full time, temporary, or permanent. Sub-trends in this area include more virtual workers and many more opportunities for veterans.
Trend #3: AI – Automated Intelligence
This trend is impacting the accounting profession in a big way via smart data entry, smart document fetching, and even smart bookkeeping. Marketing has also been impacted in a big way through online ads, customer service solutions, and marketing technology. In email, Google is finishing our sentences for us, and chat and other technologies are having fairly effective conversations via bots.
Trend #4: Stories
Storytelling is huge everywhere. People want to know:
- The story behind your business and why you do what you do
- The stories about your customers and the experience they have with you and your services
- The stories from your employees and how it is to work at your organization
Digital communication has moved from text to graphics to video as bandwidth improves. Video makes stories even easier to share. Smart companies will leverage both stories and video to get their message out.
Trend #5: Diversity Expanded
The conversation is no longer about race, gender, and even sexual preference. It’s now about authenticity and being the same person at work and at home. No one is “normal.” But it takes courage to reveal our differences, especially if they are outside the “standard.” Your courage is more likely to be honored in 2020 than it has in prior years.
Trend #6: A WOW Customer Experience
We’ve moved way past the time of “infotainment,” yet the concept is parallel. As businesses, the challenge is how we can deliver an entertaining, positive, and memorable experience while producing the outcomes the client desires.
Trends #7: Drones
So far, drones have made appearances in photography, special effects at conferences, as toys, in movies, and of course, in war. I see them in use for safety reasons, going where people shouldn’t or can’t. They will become more pervasive in 2020 and there will be more rules, protocols, and court cases on their use.
Trend #8: User Interface
The move from desktop to mobile is nearly complete, with only the laggard portion of the population remaining. The move to voice is still a work in progress, and it will steadily continue to gain traction in 2020.
Trend #9: Actionable Analytics
Capturing information digitally gives businesses a huge amount of data to utilize but small businesses have barely scratched the surface of this profitable information. It’s time they started catching up, and that’s something our firm can help you with.
Trend #10: Pace of Transformation
New business models in companies like Tesla, Uber, Google, and Facebook will continue to show up at a rapid rate. The business that’s most nimble will be the one that changes the game or at least stays in it without folding.
Which trends impact your business the most? Which ones speak to you? Feel free to reach out to discuss any of these ideas with us.
If you want to swap services with a vendor or customer, great! But did you know barter transactions are taxable, and they need to be recorded on your books. Here’s a video from Rhonda on exactly how to record barter transactions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOAaOrojGhI
Learn How to Use the Same Name on Different Lists in QuickBooks with Rhonda Rosand, CPA of New Business Directions, LLC.
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