Here we are - 2009 already half over. To us in the accounting world that is six months of data a business has accumulated. What if your client decides they want to switch to QuickBooks® now instead of waiting for the new version to come out in the Fall? To top it off, you get dizzy from all the data that’s kept on an Excel spreadsheet separate from their accounting system. How do you merge it so it will make sense in QuickBooks and all of your financial information will be in one place? First off, decide how much of this data is important to your client. If it’s an absolute necessity to bring the over the history, there are tools that can help you merge data from Excel to QuickBooks. Log onto http://marketplace.intuit.com/v2/f-data-synchronization/software-solutions.aspx and look at your choices to bring over mass data into QuickBooks from another QuickBooks file, Microsoft Excel and or other applications that data may be kept in.

As a side note, here is a brief checklist of items to remind your clients throughout the year, once the new QuickBooks file is set up or financial records are being maintained.

• Bank Reconciliations every month
• Sales Tax Returns, if applicable, every month or quarter. Make sure if you file sales tax returns, no one affects a prior transaction that has already been filed. If there is a change to a prior month invoice, it should be dealt with in the current month as a credit memo or additional invoice so Sales Tax reporting still ties
• Physical Inventory each month, if applicable
• Make sure Undeposited Funds has been properly grouped to a deposit. Many errors or found when invoices are recorded, payments are received against the invoices, but the payments are never grouped to a deposit. Instead, a manual deposit is entered to an income account so a Bank Reconciliation can be completed.
• Ending balance given to the tax accountant was changed throughout the year.
• Make sure to set a Closing Date and Password in QuickBooks so that you can protect these balances from being affected after a year is closed out.
• Open Bills were not paid with a manual check instead of a Bill Payment Check in QuickBooks
• Make sure Sales Tax was paid with a Sales Tax Payment Check and not a manual check in QuickBooks
• Make sure that Payroll Taxes - if using Intuit Payroll - is paid with Payroll Liability Check and not a manual check

In my next blog I’ve got some thoughts on exporting data from Quicken to QuickBooks.