QuickBooks at tax time: Cleaning up your client's QuickBooks data

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By Joe Woodard, for the Intuit Academy

Though QuickBooks is very easy to use, our clients often create numerous setup and data entry errors that we have to troubleshoot. We have to do most of this troubleshooting at the end of the client’s fiscal year, but if the client needs mid-year financial statements (e.g., to secure a loan), you may need to clean up the client’s data file at any time during the fiscal year.

The analyses in this book walk you through the most common types of setup and data entry errors, based on my over 10 years of experience working with clients who use QuickBooks. The analyses in this text focus mostly on cleaning up the General Ledger, to present financial statements and/or to prepare the client’s annual business income tax return. Consequently, the steps are not designed to comprehensively troubleshoot the data file. Examples of QuickBooks data outside the scope of this text include, but are not limited to: Price Levels, Billing Rates, Terms (correct AR/AP aging), correct auto-entry of memorized transactions, correct formatting of custom (memorized) reports created by the client, correct setup of loans in the Loan Manager, or timesheet entries/time reporting.

In this whitepaper you'll learn 10 easy steps to help you with that once-a-year cleanup of your client's records. Everything you need to know to help solve the most commonly encountered QuickBooks problems is described in "10 Steps to Cleaning Up Your Client's QuickBooks Data." Download the whitepaper today [2].

About the author
Joe Woodard is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and Intuit Solution Provider who has taught over 20,000 QuickBooks consultants across the country. Joe works with Intuit, state CPA societies, and Atlanta-area CPA firms to present advanced QuickBooks instruction to accounting professionals and software consultants. Joe has earned a unique relationship with Intuit as a trainer, consultant and author. Joe has built two successful accounting software consulting practices: the first in New Orleans, Louisiana and the second in Atlanta, Georgia – Creative Financial Software (CFS). In addition to consulting with small businesses, CFS provides advisory services to CPA firms and other QuickBooks ProAdvisors/Intuit Solution Providers across the country -- helping them to better service their clients who use Intuit products. Joe recently hosted the first annual Scaling New Heights [3] QuickBooks conference in Atlanta.

See all articles by Joe Woodard. [4]

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Reprinted with permission from Intuit