New Business Direction LLC
Rhonda Rosand, CPA has successfully completed the QuickBooks® Online 2013 Certification Exam. The course is available only to QuickBooks® ProAdvisors and is designed for accounting professionals and consultants who have a solid understanding of accounting principles.
The Online certification ensures the highest level of knowledge and support for QuickBooks® Online clients. The training allows Rhonda to provide further assistance to businesses setting up, navigating and troubleshooting their QuickBooks® online software.
Rhonda Rosand, CPA is the owner of New Business Directions. She specializes in QuickBooks® consulting and training services, coaching small business owners and providing innovative business solutions.
Using QuickBooks Mobile, you’ll improve business relations, put out fires before they start and unchain yourself from your office computer.
There are only a few reasons why you wouldn’t be using QuickBooks Mobile on your smartphone. Maybe you don’t have a smartphone. Or when you’re out of the office, you don’t want to be available for accounting work. Or you might not think that it has enough features to make it worth using.
While the first two reasons are matters of personal preference, the third just isn’t true. QuickBooks Mobile automatically – and almost instantly – synchronizes the data from your desktop or laptop computer copy of QuickBooks. While it’s only focused on sales, not payables or payroll, you can manage receivables quite nicely whether you’re in a customer’s office or at a trade show or community event – or sitting on the couch at home.
Figure 1: You can see this screen no matter where you and your smartphone are (the-recently-upgraded Android version is pictured here).
Countless Scenarios
There are numerous situations where you might want to access, add or edit customers, estimates, invoices, sales receipts or payments when you’re not near the PC where QuickBooks is installed, like these:
- You’re a mobile service provider (i.e. appliance repair, locksmith, tow truck operator, pizza delivery) and you want to accept payment on site.
- You do a half day of onsite training and your client wants to pay you cash right then. You can record the payment and email a sales receipt.
- You’re on the road and you want to see how well your bookkeeper is managing receivables. QuickBooks Mobile displays three views: recent activity, today and upcoming.
- You’re with a client who would like to give you a check to get current, but he or she can’t find the invoice. Rather than calling your office and sitting on hold until someone has time to look, you can pull up the form on your smartphone to discuss it.
Figure 2: You can record sales receipts and payments on your smartphone – even schedule appointments that move to your Google calendar.
The Perils of Payroll
QuickBooks Mobile doesn’t support payroll, but Intuit Online Payroll does. Like QuickBooks Mobile, the app itself free (of course, you have to pay for the service itself). You can view the most recent payroll run and employee information, as well as preparing, previewing and approving the current payroll.
Neither app is available yet for the iPad, though QuickBooks Online is.
Figure 3: Missed your flight and afraid you’ll miss the current payroll run, too? Intuit Online Payroll gives you access from your Android or iPhone.
Paper or Plastic?
If you’ve been in business for very long and still don’t accept credit cards, you have an idea of how many sales you’ve lost. You’ll need to get a merchant account from Intuit Merchant Service for QuickBooks (fees apply). A merchant account allows you to accept plastic through QuickBooks itself, your web browser, your web storefront – and on your smartphone or iPad.
You can also download Intuit’s free GoPayment app. You can either swipe cards on the free mobile reader or type numbers in. Your customers sign their names on the surface of your mobile device, and you can print, text or email a receipt. There are no monthly fees, no long-term contracts, and you pay as you go. 
Figure 4: You’ll need to get acquainted with the Intuit Merchant Service Center to work with credit card payments.
It would be nice if those credit card payments were just instantly zapped into the right places in QuickBooks, but alas, it isn’t so. You’ll need to do some setup and processing both within QuickBooks and in the online Intuit Merchant Service Center. We can help you with setup and your initial transactions to make sure all of your payments get through and are deposited and/or credited correctly.
We think you’ll find that once you start using all of the mobile payment services that Intuit offers, you’ll wonder what took you so long.
We wish you a joyous holiday season and a happy, healthy new year!
Jill, Kristen & Rhonda
New Business Directions
QuickBooks® 2013 has a number of new features as well as improvements to existing ones. It also has a few problems as evidenced by the fact that they have already issued Release 3 to fix the bugs and it only just hit the retail store shelves in October.
Changes in the User Interface
There are major changes in the visual design of the program and how you navigate each of the screens. Fonts, spacing and colors have changed in just about every area of the program. This was done to try to standardize the look and feel throughout QuickBooks®. Change is not always welcomed by people who are used to things the way they were and it will take a little bit of getting used to in order to find where they put your favorite things.
Left Icon Bar
Instead of the top icon bar that we have been using since 2006, the navigation bar is now on the left hand side of the screen much like it used to be back in 2005. If you have a low resolution monitor, this icon bar takes up a great deal of real estate on your screen. You do have the option of moving this back to the top, but it’s not as pretty as it used to be and harder to read with gray on black.
More White Space, Smaller Labels and Scroll Bars
The Home Page and other screens have more white space which makes things less busy but it also shows less information – about 30% less information is displayed in the same size window. Some of the Labels are really small and the light gray color is too faint to actually see. The Scroll Bars are so small it can be difficult to get your mouse cursor on them.
Ribbons on Transaction Windows
The most commonly used transaction windows will have a new “ribbon” interface at the top similar to the ones in Microsoft Word 2010. This combines the features that relate to these transaction windows into one easy to use place. The content of the ribbon will change from form to form, but the general layout is the same.
Improved Centers
This is the most improved area as far as additional features for small business owners who use the software for their bookkeeping needs. In the Customer, Vendor and Employee Centers, Tabs have been added to quickly access Transactions, Contacts, To-Do’s and Notes. You can now have multiple Notes per record, instead of just one. There are now 24 contact-related field labels and you can choose which eight (8) to show on your screen. The To-Do list is much more convenient and can be filtered by Customer, Vendor or Employee.
Color Scheme Preference
In QuickBooks® 2012 we could set each QuickBooks® file to have a different color scheme in the Desktop View preferences. This was helpful when working in multiple company files. This has been removed in QuickBooks® 2013. If you don’t like the color settings in the new program, you can’t change it. You do still have control of some of the colors used in some individual windows and the colors are less intrusive.
QuickBooks® Accountant
There are a number of changes in the QuickBooks® Accountant version of the software. Send general journal entries to clients via email is a simple way to send the year end journal entries back to clients, batch enter transactions allows you to quickly enter (or import) large numbers of checks, credit card charges or deposits, Starter Copy is easier to find and work with, toggle to the Bookkeeper edition is available and the QuickBooks Statement Writer is now supposed to be compatible with 64 bit versions of Microsoft Excel. Client Data Review received a few improvements in converting the Other Names and Writing Off Invoices.
QuickBooks® Enterprise
There are a few improvements that are only available in the QuickBooks® Enterprise version of the software. We now have Automatic Purchase Orders, Default Classes and Larger List Limits. In the Advanced Inventory add on feature to Enterprise, we now have Barcode Scanning, Bin Location Tracking and FIFO Cost Lot History by item Reporting.
Conclusion
Look before you leap. If you don’t have to upgrade right now, don’t – It’s buggy at best and for the regular small business owner using the software for everyday bookkeeping needs, it has no real improvements over the prior year. QuickBooks® will be sun-setting the 2010 version of the software in May of 2013 and hopefully by then they will have resolved most of the issues and we can help you make a smooth transition to the latest version.
Jill Flint earned her designation as a Certified Bookkeeper from the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers in October of 2012.
Founded in 1987 and with a current membership of 30,000, the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers (AIPB) certifies bookkeepers who meet high, national standards.
In order to become certified, she was required to have 3,000 hours of experience in performing bookkeeping services, to pass a four-part national examination which included testing in the areas of depreciation, payroll, inventory, internal controls, error correction and adjusting entries and to sign a Code of Professional Ethics.
Jill has been employed by New Business Directions since December of 2006. She completed the QuickBooks® Certified User program in May of 2008 and has been helping small businesses with their bookkeeping needs since 1980. Over these many years she has worked with many area CPA’s and is presently an active Board Member and former Treasurer of the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust and now serves as Treasurer of the Pequawket Foundation.
“Most bookkeepers learn on the job” says Rhonda Rosand, CPA and owner of New Business Directions. “They are self-taught and have no formal training. This certification demonstrates a proven knowledge of accounting concepts and a higher level of competence. We are proud to have Jill as part of our team.”
At New Business Directions we help small business owners streamline the process of making money. If you would like to create order out of chaos and improve your bottom line, call us at 603-356-2914 or visit our website at www.newbusinessdirections.com
Kristen has joined the team at New Business Directions. She has been with the company since December of 2011 and has undergone an extensive in-house training program on QuickBooks.
Kristen is a 2006 graduate of Colby-Sawyer College with a BFA in Fine Arts and has experience in graphic and web design, managing administrative functions and payroll processing. She has a successful track record of providing administrative support for businesses and individuals alike.
She has been instrumental in implementing our online marketing promotion and ensures our company branding is consistent across each platform.
In addition to marketing, she will be responsible for administration, client services and general recordkeeping tasks.
“We are excited to have Kristen as part of our team!” says Rhonda Rosand, owner of New Business Directions. “Her attention to detail is what makes her a great asset and a really good fit for the company and our clients!”
At New Business Directions we help small business owners streamline the process of making money. If you would like to create order out of chaos and improve your bottom line, call us at 603-356-2914 or visit our website at www.newbusinessdirections.com.
Did you know that there are at least 40 different file extensions in QuickBooks®? Those are just the ones that I found when researching this article – I am sure there are many more!
There are extensions for everything from Loan Manager and Financial Statement Designs to Online Banking and Images. There is even one called LGB which stands for Little Green Box. This file contains encrypted information on user names and passwords.
Here is just a sampling of the file types and extensions in QuickBooks.
It is important for accounting professionals to understand the different file types and file extensions involved with QuickBooks®.
There are five (5) main file extensions used for holding transactions and data for a QuickBooks® company file. The table below describes these file extensions.
| Extension |
File Type |
Description |
| .QBW
|
QuickBooks® for Windows company file |
This is the main file type for a QuickBooks® company file. All of your data is entered into this file. |
| .QBB | QuickBooks® backup file
|
A backup file is a compressed file containing everything you need to recreate your company file and QuickBooks® environment. Use a backup file to safeguard your QuickBooks® files against accidental data loss. When you create a backup, QuickBooks® starts a log of transactions (.TLG) that you have entered since the last time you backed up. To open a .QBB file, go to the File menu and click Restore. Double-clicking the file and choosing Open from the File menu will NOT restore or open a backup file. |
| .QBM
|
QuickBooks® Portable company file | This is a compressed file that contains all of the data of a QuickBooks® company file, but not the database indexing, so it is much smaller than the .QBW or .QBB files. It is useful for transferring data through the Internet because the data file size is much smaller than any of the other file types and it can be restored to the full .QBW on the receiving end. |
| .QBX
|
Accountant’s Copy (Export File) |
This is also a compressed file format and it is used specifically for transferring a file from an end user (client) to an accountant for review. This includes a Dividing Date which prevents the client from creating transactions on or before this date. |
| .QBA
|
Accountant’s Copy (Working Copy) |
When the accountant opens a .QBX file they must restore and convert it to a .QBA file in order to enter transactions and run reports. |
It is important to assess the client’s needs and determine which file type is appropriate for the situation. It will depend on the type of work to be performed, the condition of the client’s current data file, the nature of their operations and a number of other factors. If you have a solid
understanding of the different file types and options available, then you can make a more informed decision on how to best serve the needs of your client.
QuickBooks® also uses many other file extensions to access or store other types of data associated with QuickBooks®. The table below describes a few of these file extensions. It is not an all-inclusive list.
|
Extension |
File Type |
Description |
|
.QBW.TLG
|
Transaction Log File for QuickBooks® company file
|
When you backup a company file, QuickBooks® starts a log of transaction that you have entered since the last backup. In case of accidental loss of data, Intuit Technical Support can use your most recent backup in conjunction with the transaction log file to recover your data. This log file is also used if you sync your QuickBooks® data with certain online services using Intuit Sync Manager. This allows ongoing syncs to happen much more quickly than the initial full upload of QuickBooks® data into your online service. Note: A manual backup (not an automatic backup) is required to ‘reset’ the .TLG file. If the .TLG file is too large, create a manual backup. |
| .QBA.TLG
|
Transaction Log File for Accountant’s Copy
|
When you backup an Accountant’s review copy, QuickBooks® starts a log of transaction that you have entered since the last backup. In case of accidental loss of data, Intuit Technical Support can use your most recent backup in conjunction with the transaction log file to recover your data. Note: This file is created during backup provided that you have set a verification level. |
| .QBY
|
Accountant’s Copy (Import File)
|
When you (the Accountant/Consultant) are finished making changes in an Accountant’s Copy, you provide the client with a .QBY file to be imported into their company file. Note: This file only includes the changes made by the Accountant and not all of the transactions of the company. |
| .IIF
|
Intuit Interchange Format file
|
You can import and export lists and/or transactions using text files with an .IIF extension. |
| .ND
|
QuickBooks® Network Data file
|
A configuration file that allows access to the QuickBooks® company file. Note: DO NOT DELETE this configuration file. |
| .DES |
Form Design Template file |
This file type is created when you export a form design from the templates list. |
For a printable list of file types and extensions, click here.
This article of QuickBooks Tips and Tricks was based on the 2012 version of QuickBooks.
Rhonda Rosand, CPA received her designation as an Advanced QuickBooks® ProAdvisor from Intuit, the makers of QuickBooks®, in June of 2012.
In order to be eligible for Advanced Certification, she was required to complete the three (3) most recent, consecutive QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification exams and to pass a rigorous examination testing both accounting and technical expertise.
The QuickBooks Advanced Certification Course is designed to deepen the expertise of ProAdvisors who are already knowledgeable in QuickBooks and distinguish these “QuickBooks experts” as highly proficient in this field.
The Advanced Certification is the highest designation that Intuit offers QuickBooks® experts. Only 11% of Certified QuickBooks® ProAdvisors within a 500 mile radius of the Mount Washington Valley are Advanced Certified.
Advanced Certification entitles her and her clients to increased discounts on QuickBooks software and supplies as well as access to unlimited U.S. – based Diamond level VIP technical support.
Rhonda Rosand, CPA is the owner of New Business Directions. She specializes in QuickBooks consulting and training services, coaching small business owners and providing innovative business solutions.
For more information or to sign up for our Free monthly QuickBooks® Tips and Tricks newsletter, please visit www.newbusinessdirections.com.
Rhonda Rosand, CPA completed her certification in QuickBooks® Point of Sale Version 10.0 in May of 2012. This is her second official recognition in Point of Sale as she was previously accredited in Version 8.0.
In order to become a Certified QuickBooks® Point of Sale ProAdvisor, Rhonda was required to be certified in QuickBooks® financial software.
QuickBooks® Point of Sale certification provides training and tools to accounting and technical professionals in order to offer a higher level of expertise and to help retailers set up their software, ensure a smooth transition and run a more successful retail business.
Rhonda Rosand, CPA is the owner of New Business Directions. She specializes in serving small business clients and 
provides personal service and innovative business solutions.
For more information please visit our website.
