Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/874259
18 SEPTEMBER 2017 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com SPONSORED CONTENT Accounting Done in One Place In an effort to streamline simple tasks like this and other processes, Intuit has worked hard to transform QuickBooks Online Accountant into the "one place" accounting professionals can go to com- plete all their work. It has added a number of enhancements and functionalities, all free of charge, so that accounting profes- sionals can spend more time being trusted advisors to their clients, and less time toggling between solutions. "Accounting professionals are oftentimes juggling multiple solutions to manage their clients. On top of that, they have many deadlines that they have to keep track of because missing a deadline often means incurring fines or losing a cli- ent. There is a constant fear of something falling through the cracks," said Patti Newcomer, vice president of marketing and analytics, ProConnect Group, Intuit. "QuickBooks Online Accountant allows accountants to manage their work and their clients in one place with one login, increasing productivity and reducing complexity." The most important features that allow accountants to get more done in one place are Practice Management and the ProConnect Tax Online integration within QuickBooks Online Accountant. Accounting professionals usually work from multiple apps, which all have separate logins, and this can increase the risk for error and the chances that a task is missed. Now, with just one login, accounting professionals can access Practice Management capabilities, man- age their workflow, communicate with clients and even create a tax return, all within QuickBooks Online Accountant. Most compliance work, including tax, consists of managing due dates and multiple recurring engagements effi- ciently. For example, during tax season, accounting professionals spend approxi- mately five hours per client analyzing and "cleaning up" their books to prepare them for a tax return. The Practice Man- agement capabilities within QuickBooks Online Accountant are designed to help multi-service firms manage all of their services and workflows in a way that saves them time and automates many of the processes that they previously tracked separately in multiple applications. The automation of processes is designed to simplify the workflow and significantly save accountants time by creating one place that provides a seamless, end-to- end experience. A great example of this process automation is the integration between QuickBooks Online Accountant and ProConnect Tax Online, which allows accountants to translate a client's QuickBooks Online books into a tax return and then e-file that return without leaving QuickBooks Online Accountant. Intuit also realized that accountant- client communication within solutions was disconnected as there was no efficient or easy way for accounting professionals to communicate with clients or collect documents right from their tax software. Intuit worked with their developers to cre- ate Intuit Link, a way for professionals to collect documents digitally from within QuickBooks Online Accountant, helping to truly make it "one place to do it all." In addition, Intuit has also integrated QuickBooks Self-Employed into Quick- Books Online Accountant to help account- ing professionals with their scheduled fee clients. Research shows that one in five employees are becoming self-employed each year. Integrating QuickBooks Self-Employed into QuickBooks Online Accountant helps bring new opportuni- ties to accountants to grow their practice and their clientele. Through QuickBooks Online Accountant, accountants can also leverage the wholesale billing option for QuickBooks Self-Employed, saving up to 50 percent on the retail price of the prod- uct for the lifetime of the subscription. "Self-employed individuals that use QuickBooks Self-Employed report getting more than $4,300 in potential tax savings and more than $18,000 in potential deductions annually. These tools help accountants give better tax advice to help clients make better decisions and see monetary benefits," said Newcomer. Moving forward, accountants and small businesses can expect Intuit to continue to add functionality to the Practice Management capabilities within QuickBooks Online Accountant, including the ability to manage and create client tasks across an entire firm and receiving and managing documents. Customers can visit https:// quickbooks.intuit.com/accountants/ quickbooks-accountant/ for more infor- mation on how to use QuickBooks Online Accountant to do more in one place. ■ ACCOUNTANTS ARE A vital part of any business, especially small businesses. Many times, they do more than just "accounting." They are accountants, bookkeepers, advisors, business partners, tax preparers, data entry personnel and so much more – all for many clients. This means they're often working in numerous programs. Something as simple as a change in contact informa- tion could easily become very tedious when they have to spend time changing the same information in multiple solutions. The ProAdvisor Spotlight is sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks. Intuit ProConnect Group's Customer QuickBooks Online Accountant Use Cases: Michelle Hammond CPA, MBA, CGMA President Premier Accounting & Business Administration Fredericksburg, VA One of our ProSeries customers, Michelle, purchased another firm and was hiring new staff. Michelle decided to move to Quick- Books Online Accountant and ProConnect Tax Online so she could go completely online and leverage remote staff. When she updated her processes, and started using Intuit Link to electronically collect the documents that she needed to complete her clients' tax returns instead of the old-school "drop them off at the office in an unorganized shoe box or envelope," she was able to grow her business by 50 percent in one year. Her growth was the result of her ability to man- age her work, her clients and her firm easily in a single cloud solution. Andrea M. Parness, CPA A. Parness Company CPA Belle Harbor, NY, 11694 Tax professional Andrea adopted much of the Intuit online suite. First, she moved 80 percent of her business clients to Quick- Books Online. Andrea now closes those cloud-based clients' books on the 10th of the month because she has immediate access to all of the information that she needs from within QuickBooks Online Accountant. This previously would take up to 50 days. She is using QuickBooks Online as the foundation for her integrated cloud-based accounting system to help her clients more accurately categorize their transactions. Instead of spending time doing data entry, her team is working real-time and doing more advisory services for their clients, which is a much higher value than the manual data entry and bookkeeping services that she used to focus on. And, where they used to put 40 percent of their business clients' tax returns on extension, she had 95 percent of them done and filed by the deadline this year because the data flowed from QuickBooks Online all the way through to her tax software. So much more efficient and so many more happy clients!