Laura Madeira's book, "QuickBooks 2010 Solutions Guide", is a must read for all CPAs!

This book—QuickBooks 2010 Solutions Guide—contains a wealth of information for certified public accountants who receive QuickBooks files from their clients.  As CPAs we receive files in various states of condition; however, since we are billing out our time to clients who carefully watch our hours, we need to find and fix the errors in our clients' QuickBooks files quickly. Laura Madeira provides a book full of tools to help the CPA and other users of QuickBooks to not only set up QuickBooks correctly for a company, but also to find the errors in the company's data and to correct them tout de suite.

The CPA's QuickBooks tools are nicely organized in chapters easily retrievable by subject area and accounts of interest. In chapter 2, the book reviews methods to troubleshoot and correct chart of account issues, the origin of many QuickBooks problems found in client files and thus a great place to begin your overhaul of your clients' QuickBooks files. In chapter 3, finding and fixing "item" errors (one of the most important items to understand in QuickBooks) is discussed in detail. Chapter 5 is packed with information for the auditor, or anyone reviewing the integrity of the QuickBooks data in a company file, including troubleshooting account balances, tracking changes to closed accounting periods (a customary requirement of the CPA since clients are notorious for retroactively contaminating prior periods), using the audit trail and the voided/deleted transactions reports, documenting changes made to a data file, etc. Chapter 6 focuses on reviewing bank reconciliations, with a section devoted to troubleshooting an incorrectly reconciled bank account. In similar fashion, chapters 7 through 14 devote sections on troubleshooting and correcting errors involving accounts receivable, undeposited funds, other current asset accounts, inventory, accounts payable, sales taxes, opening balance equity, and payroll, respectively.

Although this is a great book for any serious user of QuickBooks, it is "the" reference book for the certified public accountant reviewing clients' files in QuickBooks. Whenever I travel out to a client who uses QuickBooks, I always bring along a copy of QuickBooks 2010 Solutions Guide just in case I need to refer to it. It's a "must" book to own: so go buy, read, and reread!  It is available on Amazon.

Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website, Accountants CPA Hartford, and our blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified.  All comments are welcomed here and there:  2010 QuickBooks Solution Guide.

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