Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/76159
SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTING balances and sales tax reporting required by the accountant who prepares the sales tax returns. And because of constraints in the Quick- Books APIs, the only way to send correct sales tax information to QuickBooks is by populating sales tax items on line items in the body of the sales receipt/invoice. If the integration lets QuickBooks calculate the sales tax at the botom of the sales form, you'll run into round-off errors, and problems with bank reconciliations. Another big consideration is to consider how the integration assigns sales tax codes and items to a new customer who purchases on the store. As you can see, these are hard problems, and require lots of work for developers to get it right. 90% right just doesn't cut it. Can it handle sub items? Are the items in the shopping cart able to be mapped to a QuickBooks sub item? How does it deal with product variants (i.e. size, color)? Does it add new customers to QuickBooks? If so, how does it format the customer name? Can it be custom- ized in how it creates the new customer record? For example, can I ask it to create a new customer with the customer name formated with "Last, First, Company", or "email, Zip, City", or whatever I want? Does it handle orders from "Jobs" or just "Customers"? How does it avoid creating duplicate Customer records? Does it allow me to specify the fields it should use to match a new customer in the store with an existing customer in QuickBooks so it doesn't add duplicate customers? Does it have a way to merge customer records? How flexible is the customer maintenance section of the shopping cart? Ideally, it should have something similar to Add/Edit Multiple List entries, similar to how QuickBooks Accountant Edition does. Does the product connect in real time, or does it post transactions on a schedule? Can you change the update frequency? How reliable is the Sync engine it uses to communicate between the shopping cart database and QuickBooks, or other back end systems? How does it deal with transaction handling? Does it keep a transaction log of the data sync? Can it work if QuickBooks is in multiuser mode? How does it deal with errors in data (products that don't exist in QB, invalid sales tax codes, etc.)? Can you re-run transactions once data issues have been corrected? Does the shopping cart have a read/ write API for developers who want to create custom applications to pull and push data including customer lists, sales transactions, back order status, shipping information, package tracking informa- tion, etc.? Tis might be important for clients who have an outsourced shipping department who does the pick/pack/ ship process, and then needs to send shipper tracking codes back to the shopping cart so customers can view their order history, including shipment tracking. Jim Savage and I have not yet seen an integration that gets this right. We would love to be proven wrong, but after researching many products, and trading notes among other Sleeter Group associates, we have yet to find a system that we feel fully integrates QuickBooks and satisfies our criteria. But we sure will tell the world when we find a product that gets this right, so stay tuned. Shopping carts are something you don't want to switch very oſten, so it will pay you big dividends if you think through the whole integration issue before you start. I hope these criteria will help you as you go about picking the best solution for your clients. 20 MOST POWERFUL WOMEN IN PUBLIC ACCOUNTING The ideal candidates for CPA Practice Advisor's 20 Most Powerful Women in Help CPA Practice Advisor recognize the women who are having the greatest impact on the tax and accounting field. Professionals who are emerging as the next generation of firm leaders, whether through new technologies, practices, workflow or dynamic work environments. Who is eligible for nomination? Public Accounting honors will share the following traits: 1. She has been the driving force to create a culture of innovation or excellence within a practice, or if a vendor, has helped to develop the technologies that will empower firms to b e more productive and profitable. 2. The candidate should be at a management level within a firm or technology vendor (not necessarily partner or executive level), where her leadership has had a demonstrable effect upon the practices and success of the organization. All nominees must be women who currently work in or in roles that promote the tax and accounting profession, including firm operations staff, marketing professionals and technology vendors that serve the profession. How will the nominations be evaluated? + 50% of the evaluation process will recognize the nominee's contributions to the accounting profession + 25% of the evaluation process will consider notable contributions the nominee has made to her company. Such contributions need not have been made from an executive level position - but rather initiatives and actions that have made a difference within the organization. + 25% of the evaluation process will recognize the nominee's actions in personal leadership, community involvement, and mentoring of future women leaders. Who will select the winner? An independent panel of judges comprised of professionals with backgrounds in accounting will select Most Powerful Women in the Profession. When can I submit my nomination? Award nominations can be submitted now through Oct. 12, 2012 at www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/wia. The winner will be announced in the November issue of CPA Practice Advisor.