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.