Advanced QuickBooks Certification

Now Intuit is offering Advanced QuickBooks Certification to set more experienced ProAdvisors apart from the newer people. You need to be certified in QuickBooks 2005-2007, take some free webinars and attend an on-site 2-day workshop. I decided to do it despite the costs of the on-site. Intuit's fee of $236 (half price for both days) I considered very reasonable, but since I live in the middle of nowhere, I had to pay travel, hotel and food costs as well. It was a significant expenditure. I just returned from the on-site and here are my thoughts.
Most of the attendees were CPA's which was disappointing. The teacher was also a CPA so the seminars had a slant which did not suit my business. The seminars were not held solely for advanced ProAdvisors but were open to anyone who wanted to take the classes, so there were basic discussions which put me to sleep. Intuit really needs to have these classes open ONLY to ProAdvisors. Even though most people were certified, they were relatively new to ProAdvisorship while I'd been doing this for 10 years. So I didn't learn much, but many people did. In short, there was nothing in those seminars that couldn't have been done on webinars, thereby saving me time and money. On the other hand, the trip probably weeded out the ProAdvisors not serious enough to make the commitment. I kept in mind that I was fulfilling the requirement to get the Advanced Certification tag on the QuickBooks referral database, and I hope it's worth it in the end. I'll let you know.

Payroll in QuickBooks 2007

Have you tried the new payroll center in QuickBooks 2007? Not my idea of an improvement! 99% of my clients split payroll by jobs and/or classes. Now to look at the payroll detail you have to click on each employee's name one at a time. Not to mention double-checking 401K and health insurance deductions. And adding vacation or sick time. I don't think I have a single client whose payroll is as simple as QuickBooks 2007 assumes it will be.
Having said that, I do like the new liability section. Let me know your thoughts and maybe we can make some changes.

NSF for Direct Deposit Payroll

Challenge for the Week
A client processed and sent direct deposit payroll via QuickBooks Do-It-Yourself payroll service last month. When QuickBooks tried to withdrawal the funds from the bank account, there were insufficient funds to cover the payroll. In response, QuickBooks voided the sent paychecks in the check register and added the memo “VOID: Funds Not Available”. Apparently, QuickBooks then attempted, successfully, to withdrawal the funds paycheck by paycheck. QuickBooks then re-entered the paychecks (since the originally sent ones were voided). This all happened without the bookkeeper’s knowledge.
The problem was that the paychecks re-created by QuickBooks were actually never “sent” (although they were processed), had no lightning bolt mark and so were waiting in the queue to send. When attempting to send the current payroll, a message appeared saying that QuickBooks was unable to process direct deposit paychecks before a given date, and sending of the current payroll was automatically aborted.

The Fix?
The only solution I could figure was to “unvoid” the paychecks marked as “sent” by re-entering the payroll data that was originally sent within each paycheck. That was fun. Then the duplicate, unsent paychecks which QuickBooks entered when funds became sufficient were deleted. This allowed the YTD payroll, the Direct Deposit Payroll and Payroll Tax liability accounts to be correct.

If there is a more efficient way to correct this QuickBooks payroll fiasco, I’d love to hear it!

Back to Blogging about QuickBooks

Okay, the busy season never ended for my business this year. It's nice to have some stability, but the anticipated slow time to catch up on things like business strategy, blogs, etc. never happened. And, no, I didn't even take a vacation. But I'm getting psyched about the new QuickBooks season with QuickBooks 2007 already available. So this blog is once again happening and I will be posting regularly - I promise!

On Hold

One thing every QuickBooks ProAdvisor must be aware of is that the busy season for QuickBooks consulting starts in November and runs non-stop through April or May. Be prepared to work 12-hour days and Saturdays to help all of your clients with QuickBooks upgrades, payroll tax forms, end-of-year cleanup, etc.

Having said that, this blog will be on hold for awhile while I spend most of my time with clients. Enjoy the QuickBooks season!