QuickBooks Tips and Tricks for Nonprofits

Full Transcript:

Steven Shattuck: Okay Carolyn, my clock says 1:00. Do you want to get

started?

Carolyn Sechler: Yep.

Steven: Okay, great. Well, good afternoon for those of you out on the

East Coast and good morning if you're out on the West Coast. Thanks for

joining us for today's webinar, QuickBooks Best Practices for Nonprofits.

And, my name is Steven Shattuck, and I'm the VP of Marketing here at

Bloomerang, and I'll be moderating today's presentation. And today I'm

joined by our guest. She's accounting expert Carolyn Sechler. Hey there,

Carolyn.

Carolyn: Hello.

Steven: Thanks for being here. For those of you -- yeah, this is going

to be a lot of fun. And, for those of you who don't know Carolyn, CEO and

founder of Sechler CPA, P.C., they're a certified B corporation, they're

out in Phoenix, Arizona. Carolyn brings over 30 years of experience to her

work in tax and strategic planning, financial reporting, management

consulting, and executive coaching, primarily, two nonprofits. And

actually, Accounting Today magazine selected Carolyn as one of the top 100

most influential people in the profession, and she works with over 400

domestic and international nonprofit clients. So, Carolyn, it's just a

treat to have you here today to share all your knowledge with us, so thanks

again.

Carolyn: Sure. [Inaudible 00:01:28].

Steven: So, what's going to happen today is, I'm going to hand things

off to Carolyn, and she's actually going to do a dive right into QuickBooks

right here on the screen. She's actually going to be broadcasting right

out of QuickBooks for the whole presentation rather than using slides. So,

this is going to be a really neat, kind of an interactive, unique

presentation and we hope you all enjoy it. And, when she's done running

through things she wants to show, we'll jump right into a Q&A session. So,

as she's talking, feel free to send any questions our way. I'll see them,

and she'll see them as well, and we'll try to answer just as many as

possible before the 2:00 Eastern hour. So, don't be shy about sending any

questions our way. And, just for everyone's reference, I will be recording

the presentation and sending out a link to the video a little later this

afternoon, so if you have to duck out early, you'll be able to see

everything in its entirety or review the presentation a little later on.

So, I'm not to take up any more time, I'm going to hand things off to

Carolyn. So, Carolyn, take it away for us.

Carolyn: All right, thank you. And, I'm going to be doing all of this

on QuickBooks Online because that's my primary go-to piece of software.

QuickBooks has, obviously, a lot of versions -- desktop, non-profit

version, et cetera. Most of what I'm showing, you can do on all of those

versions. I'll let you know if there's something that you can only do it

online. And, what I'm going to do is just take you through the kind of do

the basics I show people when I am giving a training, and let you use some

of the tools you might not realize are available to you, or just remind you

again about it. I see I have a couple of ringers on my list, here, of

people that I worked with that I know know how to do some of this stuff,

so, I'm looking forward to your and questions for [laughs] me. All right,

so you're looking at just a login screen on the older version of it. They

do have a new face that they're rolling out called Harmony. I think you're

going to start to see that if you're on QuickBooks Online. And, it's to

give you more of a dashboard look that gives you some reports upfront.

But, otherwise, functionality is the same. And, if you are on Harmony and

need some help with that later on, you're welcome to email me and I can

help you through translating what we're talking about into that.

Basically, we're going to jump into reports on this exercise and talk about

some of the things that you might want to do in order to make sure your

reports provide better information to you when you're trying to report out

to your board or do some management decision-making, things like that.

If I speak too fast or too softly, please let us know, and I'll be sure to

change my pace or my volume. Just, very simply using the tabs at the top,

using Reports and profit and loss -- if you want to just see how you're

doing in this period, presumably you, at least, know how to do this and

maybe you're not quite sure how to use these customized features. So,

whenever you go into a screen there's a button that says customize on it

that you can press. And, you've got some choices in here besides your date

range. You can always change your date range. So, I can select last year,

for instance, and I can say whether I want it to be cash or accrual, which

is outside the scope, really, of this conversation. Expand or Collapse

means, "Do I want to show all of the subaccounts or just the primary

accounts," so we'll leave it expanded for the moment. And then, what I like

to do is, at the very minimum, I like to remove the Non-Zero accounts, so I

don't have that stuff bothering me what I want to look at things. And,

then on Columns, I recommend that at the minimum, you use Classes. If you

haven't set up classes before, you can go into your Company preferences,

and you can turn on the Class feature in here. But, let's just go back to

that because I don't want to take up your time with that part of it.

And again, you'll have my email address, so if we go over things and you

say, "Could you do that one time for me," I will be happy to review with

you. The one thing we like about QuickBooks Online is that I can be in

there with you, so we can share the screen, wander around together. So,

let's go ahead and look at Report by Class. Let me take out my Non-Zeroes

again. All right, so here's a report that shows all of my departments, so

think of classes as departments. And, one of the pitfalls we'll see

occurring in a set of books we work with as an organization, is some

confusion about the difference between a Class and an Account. When you're

deciding what your format is going to be, try to think about -- oh,

somebody's not seeing anything on their window. I'm guessing you're going

to work on that?

Steven: Yeah, I'll work on that, Carolyn. I'll work on that.

Carolyn: Sorry. I didn't notice that. Sorry. Okay, so I'll try to be

verbally clear for those who aren't yet seeing the image. It's important to

think about the distinction between Class and Account. An account should be

something that is a type of expenditure or a type of revenue, but not the

name of an event. Like, I'm not that crazy about Membership being a

department, but in this case, the Membership's a department.

Training Events - they might have several types of training events. And

so, you would have training events as a department, and let those training

events would have different kinds of expenditures related to them. Let me

show you, okay, so, let me see, we'll look at a class list so I can show

you that. Reports, if you don't use this, this is a simple way to get to

reports in here - I know other ways, but I'll use this one to show you how

to get to a list. And, here's the class listing. So, here's a list of all

the classes for this test organization. Fundraising, Management, and

Programs are the primaries. And, then under Programs, we've got Annual

Meeting, Community Service, Membership, Training -- because for this

particular entity, all right, and I'm thinking maybe I'll go back just

little bit further for those who aren't that comfortable with the

functional areas in non-profits.

The three functional areas of a nonprofit are, fundraising -- I only spend

this money to raise money. Management, in general - it's what any business

would spend money on. And, Programs, directly, or in some way, related to

my mission. So, that's broken out, so I want to be able to report out how

I'm doing in those areas by creating classes or departments, to show me how

I'm doing in those areas. If I want to see just how is my community service

area doing -- there's not very much activity in here - let's put some more

activity in here by using All Dates. Okay. So, here's my Community

Service, which still doesn't have much.

Let's use Training Events. So, here's training events; it's got Revenues,

Expenses - and, let's say I want to see everything that's happened in here.

I can always press that bottom total number and look at all of the

activities that are happening in just that department. As an alternative

for a report, I can customize reports that are in classes, and down in this

list section under Lists, I can say, "I'm want to specify one class." I

have to do this twice, interestingly, then go down to Training Events, and

say, "I just want to have just the training events and nothing else." It

takes a couple steps to do this, but I'll show you what the real cool thing

is. Once you've done that special report for the one particular department

you want to look at, then you go back in, change the columns to Total only,

and run the report. And now, all you have is that particular department,

and because that still may not be clear to you what that is, since we've

just customized this to Training Events -- then I would also Customize the

title to include that, and then you can do one more step if you want to and

you can say, "Show it to me by Years."

So, I want to see everything that's going on in my training events year-by-

year. And, let's say, though, --and, I've set this at All Dates; I could've

set it for specific date range - if I had, it would've identified the date

range. But if I set this up for All Dates -- Sherry, you was talking about,

I saw your note about class and departments. We're going to talk about

department in a minute. First, this is just classes, then I'll go into

departments after that. And I'm sorry, I'm probably not supposed be looking

at the chat screen, but I am because I want to make sure I'm not missing

things you guys want to talk about. So, this, presently, is a report by

class specified to a particular class, and within that class, showing you

what happened year-by-year.

So it's for analytical purposes. You're thinking about whether you should

repeat something, or you're wondering who gave you money, so I could go

back and look at who gave me sponsorships in 2010 by clicking on that. And,

let's say I might want to look at this every single month, but I don't want

to try to remember all the steps I went through, you can press the Memorize

button. And then, I'm going to memorize the report, Profit and Loss

Training Events. I can add this to a set of my, let's say, management

reports, maybe.

All right, so I'm going to create a group of reports called Management

Reports, and I'm going to share with anybody else who's a user so that they

can also look at it if they want to. So now I've got that report sitting

there, and I can go to my balance sheet and then say, oh, shoot -- if I

want to look at Report again. I go to Memorize Reports, and I'm going to

find my Management Reports, there it is, Training Events, and there's my

report again. And, because I set it at All Dates, it's going to show all

the way up to today - so if I ran this tomorrow, it'll be through March

19th, 2014.

In addition, if I -- well, let's go back through the classes a little

further. So, when I'm working on my profit and loss by class -- let's do

that again - my report. So, we're going back to the full Profit and Loss,

by Class. And let's say I've looked at this $5,000 and I said, "That does

not belong in the particular one. In fact, we've set up a new class." I

can do that new class on the fly." I can say, "It's going to be the XYZ

Special Event." And I can hit Enter, and it'll say, "What do you want to

do?" And I can say, "I want to add that as a class." So that's now a class.

And now I could move this - I could see that that's going to be there, and

I run my Report. My Reports, Profit and Loss by Class -- now I've got my

[inaudible 00:12:54] even sitting over there, so that's a new piece of my

programs and it's got expenditures in here.

All right, and as I showed you before, if I want to see what my total

expenses of the revenue for particular area is, I only need to hit that

bottom, those totals. Anything that turns blue and underlines, you can get

details on. So, if I wanted to say, "I want to see all what's going on in --

no, they only have one expense in it, let's see if we can get some more

data again. Because this is my test company, I don't always have tons.

There, there's something. There's some more data in there. Okay, so let's

say I want to see what's going on in Registration Fees; I can look at each

individual one, or I could say, "Overall, I want to see what's going on in

Registration Fees."

So, I could both go to my far right column and pick totals to see what is

in that activity area, or I could look at individual ones and only look at

the $1,500. And, if you haven't used QuickBooks for a while or you don't

know this, you can always click all the way through to the main activity.

Alright, so, those are what I can do with my classes. Now, let's say, under

Training Events, I've got three different events. I don't want this to run

all the way across the page, 5 columns, is, you know, have this thing run

20 columns. So I can [in support] our [called] departments. Or, you can use

their names for it. Let's see what their name alternatives - I think

Locations. Greg uses Businesses. Let me find the list, that's a name of

donors. Here, so we can use Business, Department, Division, Location,

Property, Store, and Territory.

In this particular one, we're going to use Location. So, consider that,

like a subclass, and rather than creating a huge class, we create a

department or a location list. And it's, again, just to keep the clutter

down. So I can run a Profit and Loss by Locations. And, that's only going

to give me those subprograms, and not all of the huge detail. So these are

segments of those items you saw on the Profit and Loss per class. Oh, and I

will slow down. I see notes. I'm sorry about that. So, let me go back and

show you again how I just did that. I'm going to customize a Profit and

Loss, and I'm going to use the customized - the identity will be Locations,

in this case. It would be whatever identity you chose on that list.

So here's the locations. Alright? So I can see what's going on just in

Training Track One versus the general training. So, I'm going to show you

how you actually make the entries to make this happen, but I wanted you to

see the reports first. Do All Dates. For those of you who are having

trouble seeing, I'm going to try to talk more about what I'm doing. I can

choose All Dates to look at the entire operation and what has happened from

the beginning of time that I've used this software, and I can see how I've

performed.

The value of that is, when you're doing some planning and you're trying to

do some work on what events to run and what programs to run, it may be

helpful to look back at other programs that you've run in the past or what

your successes have been, perhaps, in a program.

For instance, in this Senior Center maybe I want to look and see who my

donors have been over the years, and maybe I'll find out that there's a

person who hasn't been called in a while - so that's an advantage in

looking back to these older donors.

Okay. And [inaudible 00:16:54] this report, or I can further customize this

and say, "I only want to look at specific locations." Maybe I have a

committee who has responsibility for a couple of things; they're

responsible for the training events and for the annual meeting. Go on, go

over there. We have to add them one at a time, let's see. Alright, so

we've got a couple of different training events in here, and then I can

say, once again, I want to memorize this report so I don't forget how to

find it again, and I would give it a title. Excuse me, I would go down and

give it a title farther than Non-Zero, and a title.

Alright, so I've created some memorized reports. Now, this is only a one

hour presentation, so I know we're not going in depth on classes and

departments as you might like. I am available by email afterwards, so that

if there's more questions, feel free to let me know.

Let's just say for now that we've identified these Profit and Loss by Class

Reports, and these Profit And Loss by Location Reports, and we're thinking

about wanting some of our individual groups -- our committees, to be able

to get some of these reports from time to time. I don't know how many of

you have used Memorized Reports, but one of the really nice features on the

online version is when I have a set of reports, like business balance

sheets and Profits and Losses, for instance, or the Audit Committee,

perhaps, I could set my reports up, highlight the group of reports that I

want to send out, use the edit feature to select an email for this group

and a timing.

So, let's say I want this to go out every week; maybe we're working on

event that's coming up right away and I want it to be every Friday. I want

it to appear after, and I want it to go on for five weeks. And, after five

occurrences - okay -- and lucky for everyone, this'll be recorded, so you

can go back and review it later. And, so I'm going to say, "I'll send this

to myself so that we don't have this going all over the place." And, then

I can put whatever notes I want to. And, then I can say, "I'd like it

attached as an Excel schedule as supposed to just having it a PDF," so,

they've something to work with. I save it and now I don't need to do

anything at midnight each of those weeks. They will come down and it'll

show up in people's mailboxes whatever addresses I've created on there.

I find this to be really handy when you're working with committees. And

also, we'll set board reports up that way for organizations so that every

Friday, perhaps, the Executive Director has a set of reports. They don't

even have to login. It shows up on their screen. It can be anything,

though. You might have a report that you want to see of how you're doing in

receivables or something -- vendors. Maybe you want to see your Accounts

Payable Aging report and you want to see it -- there may not be any real

data. There's not real great data in here. But, if this had wonderful data

in here you could add this to a report of Management Reports, like that.

And, then you could be included in the timing of the reports you were

sending out on a regular basis, or you could set up special timing.

So, I'm hoping that you will think about classes again, as departments --

as classes, excuse me -- as segments of your operation - primary, the

higher level of your operation and departments, locations, whatever word

you want to use for that, as the sub level. And, the beauty of it, again,

is to take the clutter out of the management level report that your board

has to look at or the executive summary type report, and be able to have it

at a secondary level with much more robust detail.

We've talked little bit about memorizing and send. One of the pitfalls we

see occurring often with organizations is knowing the distinction between

vendors and donors. So, when you're writing a check, you should be writing

a check to a vendor. Let me go write a check, here.

So, I'm going to look at my list, I'm going to write a check to somebody

and I'm going to make sure that it says Vendor next to their name. If I try

to write a check to Donor, it'll write to the donor, but it won't show up

properly when I try to run other reports about -- how did I spend money in

different ways? It will show there's an expense, but if I try to analyze

my vendors, it's not going to show up because I've used my donors. And,

one of the tricks we use is we might put a hyphen D next to a donor, so we

don't make that mistake, or a hyphen V next to a vendor so we don't make

that mistake. But, you might want to come up with some kind of a technique

because the thing about QuickBooks, at least, as a tool, is if I tried to

type in something, like, my name, it's going to default to Vendor, and if

you don't take the time to make sure that you're thinking about, "Is that

really a donor? Is that really an employee," it will make something a

vendor.

Now, when you're writing a check, that's fine, but if you're making a

deposit, let's make a deposit -- If you're making a deposit, you want to

make a deposit. Make sure it's from a donor. So, make that distinction.

Donors, deposits, vendors, payments - whatever that you need to do to make

sure that happens that way. We talked about locations and classes. Here's

the implementation of locations and classes. So, let's say, Good Works

Foundation, which is a donor, has given us money. So, let's say they've

given us some registration fees, and I'm going to think about,

specifically, what are they participating in that happens to be one of my

program areas? So, I'm going to say they're going to be in Track Two. So,

now this donation -- this deposit will be going to Track Two, and I'm going

to say that it's a training event. So, within Training Events, I have

Track Two.

So, I'm going to have, on one set of reports, the amount that they paid me.

It's going to show up as - and, I'll show you it's showing up. Just run a

report -- profit and Loss, customized by Class. So, there's that amount

showing up in my department of training events. And, now if I switch to my

Locations, I'm going to distinct reference within Track Two. So, I hope it

gives you some kind of an example of how we make that distinction between

classes and locations. Okay. So, this gives me my primary look, and I

could change my mind later and make XYZ Special Event a location instead of

a class. I have that kind of flexibility. All right. So let's go to

another reports and that kind of flexibility.

Alright, so let's go to another report. Another go-to report I like to

use when I'm looking at Profit and Loss for analysis purposes -- since this

is a little tips and tricks thing, is -- I will change my Transaction Date

to All Dates, customize by Year on report. And, I'm going to look all my

activity year-to-year. Now, I can always hit this Collapse button. And,

Greg, yes, the default, report attachment is a PDF. You have to mark a box

when you want to do a Memorized Report as next. So, that was the question

that was just asked.

Okay, so, I'm looking at a collapsed version of my Profit and Loss year-to-

year. Now, granted, there's not a lot of activity in this particular

sample company. But, in your sample company, when you look at four or five

years, and you can start to see some trends, and you keep your expense and

your revenue section nice and condensed -- even when this is expanded, it's

still pretty condensed. It doesn't have a lot of 5 ways to say office

expense, 35 ways to say printing. Try to really be succinct in your list of

accounts of income and expense. And, then take a look at it from a

collapsed version.

This is a nice report to send your treasurer, your president, maybe. Maybe

as they start, or partway through the year, see how you're doing, "This is

how we're performing." You look at this and you say, "Wow, what was going

on? What events were we having in that year?" And, start to look back at

what was going on -- maybe up to an event we want to repeat. You know, "Why

is this going down? Why is this going up," -- that kind of stuff. So, I

like looking at it from that standpoint. If you haven't reviewed Company

Snapshot -- that's not a nice way to look at things if you're more visual.

So, that is just a button next to Report List. It's also listed on the

Report List. Every one of these segments is drillable, so you can look at

that and say, Total Event Revenue, click. And, now you've got all the

details, and you can say, instead of This Year to Date, it can be Last

Year.

There's your picture of income for last year, there's your picture of

expenses through last year. Not all that fascinating 'cause everything was

just in a couple of categories, but, see if it -- nope, nothing Last month.

So, we'll see This Year to Date. Okay, so, again, I can look into this,

click in it, get the training, look at this again and say, "Oops, that's

Training Track One. That should've been Training Track Two. Let me fix

that right now." Save. Okay. Now you may wonder, what happens if somebody's

fixing these things? How could that mess up your records, maybe? There's a

nice thing that I really like that's on the online version, it's called the

Activity Log. That lets me see who is messing around in here. So, I can

see Dawn was in here at some point. I can see that something that I was

doing, let's say, here's where I edited that transaction. I can go out and

look at the history of that edit, and I can see exactly what was going on

with that edit. Okay, so there's no hiding - you can't secretly wander

around. But, it goes to the issue of making sure that each person who uses

- if you're in QuickBooks Online -- making sure that each person who uses

QuickBooks Online, has their very own login because you want their identity

to be the way that you find out how something happens, because, "How did a

check get voided?" You want to be able to look at that check - let's look

at Reports, Balance Sheet. Just going to look at a bank transaction - all

Dates. This is the major overview of this software. But, let's say we're

going to look at this and we want to see who put that in. I can scroll down

to Related [inaudible 00:29:15], and I can look at history of changes this

and see who worked on it. If somebody had voided it, I'd be able to see

that.

So again, I don't have stocking into it, and I don't make any commissions

off of convincing you to do this, but we found them to be a great tool for

things like that and I particularly like online because of the fact it's

got this tool that lets me see who's been using the software and who make

that transaction. There's also a Find tool that you may or may not have

used. When someone calls up and says, "Did you get my check for so-and-so

for this thing?" You can type in a check, Payee, Ben Franklin, find

anything. Okay, here's the transaction that we've got with Ben Franklin. If

it was, "Did you mean this check, or did you mean this check?" And I can

look at the checks and I can say, "Yes I got it, or I didn't get it." Or,

you can be as vague as - you can be exact, you can be vague, you can say,

"Okay, I think it was," "I want to see a journal entry that had Ben

Franklin in it," and I'll say, "Nope, there weren't any."

Payment from a donor -- Did I get a payment from a donor for some reason?

No, I didn't. But this is a great little tool that when I'm trying to find

something in a hurry, I can look by using this little identity, here,

that's a magnifying glass.

Alright, I don't know if you've used Scorecard yet. But, Scorecard is a

tool that lets you see how you measure up against other similar

organizations. There's a technique for identifying the kind of industry

you want to overhear. You can say that, "My income is less than $100,000."

Or, "$100,000 to $250,000." This is how you measure up net profit margin

against other groups, and what your score is against your peers, and I can

look at just income against the peers, or expenses.

So, you or your board might have a desire to see things in different kind

of details. So, I find some of these Scorecard tools are nice to be able

to share with people. Okay, and let's see if they're clickable, I never

checked before. Nope, they're not clickable. But, they do have something

that comes over and says, "Earned 98% of my income from Uncategorized. My

peers are at 65% of an income from uncategorized." So, that's said because

in this sub-industry that I've chosen, people aren't categorizing their

income. So, we're not able to actually see the types, but it, depending on

what you were to choose as the type of industry you were in, then you'd get

a different result. Alright, so that's that exciting tool.

Budgets - probably some of you like that little tool. I don't know if

you're using them or not. But, to do company budgets - pretty simple to

set up. You can do your budgets by classes. You can do your budgets by -

see here, by accounts or by classes. So, you can just do a class budget if

you want to - a profit and loss by class. That will take a longer session,

but I'll just kind of show you that this is available to you. Let's see if

we've got a budget set up in here. Reports - budgets -okay, so we do.

So, here's a budget versus actual for 2011. This is showing it by months.

I can show it accounts versus total so I don't have to look at all those

months. Take out my inactive accounts - run report. So, there we are.

Here's how we are against actual. I can further customize it and say, "I

don't really want to see the percentage. And, these are also clickable so

I can say, "Wait a minute. Why is this in operating expenses? Let's put

this into a specific line item."

So, I can hit the back button in QuickBooks online and then I'll just

refresh my - oh, it should be okay. Let's see if it is. Nope, it's not

okay. I'll run the report again.

Budgets vs. Actual. I could've memorized that and run the report instead.

Here's where I'm doing it. Take that out. No, zero - so, that's what I

want you to remember - that while I'm going through and doing all this

customizing, you probably want to just memorize your tool when you come up

with the one you want. See, look at this and say, "Wow, I'm over, I'm

under," -whatever it is that's going on. Make your decisions. You can

always email it to somebody. Press the email button. I believe the

desktop lets you do that, now. Press the Excel button. I know that you

can do that in desktop. So, I can open up Excel and suddenly it pops up in

an Excel screen and can make my comments in there if I want to. And, my

alternatives within this is, Accounts vs. Classes. Let's see if there was

enough data in there to do that. Yep. So now you could see how you were

doing in the individual class areas. Some items weren't specified to a

class. So this is where I want to fix things, if I see some things that

aren't specified. It's the budget that's not specified. I want to go back

and fix my budget, maybe, and see what department that belongs in. If I saw

something that's in here and I think, "Oh, I don't think that's a program

expense," I can move it. I think we can customize this to specifics, let's

see. Class, yes we can, so we can say Specified. I just want to see

Programs only on Report, and now I'm just looking at my programs. I could

say, "That's all I want to see." Memorize. It's real finicky about colons

and hyphens and stuff, so you say Budget vs. Actual programs only, would be

our title. Add this report to my Management Reports, maybe.

Ta-da. Come down to my Management Reports. Here's my Management Reports.

Now it's among my Management Reports, and if I schedule this, go to that

one more time about the scheduling. Here are my Management Reports, I'm

going to send it to myself again. I'm going to have it sent out monthly,

I'll have it sent out the 10th of every month. And I'll have it end after

one occurrence this time, but I could have it have a No End Date have it

stop after a certain date if I want to. Do one occurrence. Blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah. Leave attach as an Excel spreadsheet. Say, I go back and

look at it again, I'll see that the next one that's going on is going to be

April 10th. Okay. So those are the Memorized Reports.

We've talked about budgets and help and scorecard.

Let's look at the Donor Reports a little bit. This is really not supposed

to be a donor management tool, but if you are using it for donor

information, you can look at income by donor summary, so you can see all of

the income that your donors to recorded. You can show all in common here.

And the fact that there's expenses in here tells me that somebody reported

something through a donor instead of to a vendor, so I can look at this and

say, "What the heck is this?" Here is in a hotel, it says it's a vendor.

Interesting. Okay, I found a quirk - I would have to go back and see but

that is, and I'm not going to waste your time with that. But I would be

curious why those are there. The other donor tools that are in here that

are cool, and Donor's the word we're using right now. I have customer -

there's other words you're able to use under Preferences.

Let's see if it shows us that. Yeah, Clients, Customers, Donors, Guests,

Members; so, maybe want to call them clients, maybe want to call them

guests, whatever term you like to use. In this particular case we're using

donors. Now, from my Donor Reports, I can have a donor balance detail. If

you use the report list, you haven't checked out this, you can always see,

in advance, what these reports are going to look like by hovering over the

magnifying glass, and it'll show you so that you can see if that's really

what you're after. So if I want Transaction List by Donor, I could say,

"Yeah, that's the one I want." Let's see if there's stuff in here for that.

Okay, so here's my transition with my donor. So, I can see everything

that's going on with these individual donors so they - and, I can probably

further customize it and they'd show it to me - sort by type, if there was

a type, maybe? Yep, so the second might have come into my invoices and

things like that. So, maybe I want to analyze my donor transactions here

before I'm switching into a donor management system.

Alright, I've got to get rid of my sales spreadsheet. There we go. Oaky,

so let's go back to the reports for a moment. On the vendor side, excuse

me. When you set up a new vendor - you're just getting everything under

the sun from me that I normally provide. When you set up a new vendor, and

[inaudible 00:39:59] last things until we start going into questions -

Somebody gives you some money. You set them up as a new vendor. Let's do

a new vendor. Vendor list - new vendor XSSS corp. And, let's say you know

you're going to pay them some money and you're going to have to issue a

1099 to them. So, 123 Park Lane. Make sure you fill in this vendor card.

It will pop up when you try to create a vendor and make sure you don't say,

"Click add." Go ahead and take the time. Put that information in. You'll

be glad you did. If they're going to be needed to be tracked for 1099's,

check this tab. Get their number. If that means get a W9 from them, so

that you've got a number for them saved. At the end of the year when you

go to do your 1099's, go down on your vendor list. Hit the prepare 1099

Miscellaneous form. And, now I've got my list of vendors that qualify.

And, I can see if I've missed anybody by looking at where my non-1099

vendors, see if somebody's showing up that I think should have been on

there, correct them by checking the box, getting the rest of the data in.

So, that was just a quickie.

Alright, I'm going to stop. I'm going to answer questions. The session's

one hour long and we've got 20 minutes left to answer questions. So, I'm

going to pause at this point.

STEVEN: Yeah, great, Carolyn. That was great. Yeah, Carolyn is going to

be on the line here for the next 20 minutes, so the Quick Bookspert, here,

ready to take your questions. It looks like we had a couple in the chat

that I know you were taking them as you went along, Carolyn.

CAROLYN: A couple of them, yeah. I didn't quite catch them all.

STEVEN: Yeah. Well, Jan, here, had a question. She's wondering if

starting a new class assignments, do they have to go back to the start of

the data to make it all fall into the class columns or do they do it

automatically?

CAROLYN: Okay, they won't do it automatically, but what you can do - if

you're starting a new class - so, let's do an all dates run report. We're

going to do it by class. You'll need to go into your items that are, let's

say, you've created this new XYZ Special Event class. You're going to have

to go to your non-specified or the items you want to move to that and now

you're going to classify it to that. You're going to go fix those

transactions so that now you've got a complete report. Somebody set up a -

I'm not going to put my code in right now. Anyhow, that's the idea,

though. You need to go back and enter the transactions you want to move

into that department - into that class and code it.

STEVEN: Okay, it looks like a couple of people are typing in now - and, did

you answer Greg's question about the PDF format?

Carolyn: PDF is the default format. You have to click the box to say, "I

want Excel."

Steven: Okay, so you have a choice between PDF and Excel, there.

Carolyn: Yeah. And, if you're looking at the screen right now, you're

seeing that what I can do is close the books as of a particular period.

So, if you finished off the tax return for a year, I really recommend that

you hit the close the box and at least have a warning, but preferably have

a password so that no body accidentally deletes or changes something from a

prior year. Right now, I've got un-closed books so I can made changes in

case you guys need changes made on something.

Steven: Okay, well, Rick's got a question, here. Actually, he read my

mind. I was about to ask this, myself. Rick's been using QuickBooks Pro

for a while without classes and he's thinking of moving to QuickBooks

online. The question is - do you lose any functionality to moving to

online? What does he need to know?

Carolyn: Yeah, there's no functionality that we see lost moving to online.

What happens, though is, you may lose - if you've got some memorized

reports, they're not going to move over. If you've got some reoccurring

transactions, you'll have to key your reoccurring transactions back in. I

think all of our lists in the come over sign - your budgets. You'll have

to key your budgets back in. If you didn't have classes, then there's

nothing to lose. But, if you did, that would come over with it.

Steven: So, budgets is a big thing?

[Crosstalk]

Carolyn: Those are the primary things. Rick, do you have any other

questions about that or does that answer your question?

Steven: We'll let Rick chime in. But, Amanda was also asking if there

was anything they need to know for moving to a non-profit version to a

regular version or moving online. Is there anything else people need to

know before they switch to online?

Carolyn: Well, let's see - you need to have a decent connection. It used

to be a big issue years ago. It doesn't seem to be as much anymore. It

rarely goes down so it's always there. I'm a big proponent of - from the

standpoint of - if it constantly backs up, it constantly updates. And,

more than one of us can be in there at the same time. Your accountant can

come in free. If you're having an audit performed, we give the auditor a

special view only access, so if I've got an auditor working on this, rather

than create a whole bunch of reports for my auditor, I invite them in as a

view only user. So, that tends to help a little bit because they can poke

around a bit and get the stuff they need.

Steven: Are there any major functionality differences between the two?

Carolyn: Well, to me there's more that I can do online than I can do on

desktop. I particularly love this [inaudible 00:45:46] and send - I think

this is just the boom. This is the best reason to go besides constant back

up and constant updates, because remember - when you have desktop it's

licensed to that particular piece of hardware and maybe you've got one that

can be licensed to two more on your network. This one is online. I can

work with it on my iPad. I can work with it on my phone. I can pull up

reports in case I'm really bizarre and I want to pull up a report on my

phone, I can. That functionality was improved just in the last year or so,

so you can do that. So, I've found that to be really handy when I'm in the

field.

Steven: And, are there other versions of the online version? Is there a

non-profit online?

Carolyn: No, this is non-profit. As an accountant that's got - I've got

some biases. Because, to me the non-profit version was just somebody going

in and customizing the basic version and selling it for something more,

which is something you could have always done in the basic version. I'm

not a big fan of it unless you are a hospital or a university or have a

really big set of things that you're managing or an audit type person.

Even with our A133 Audit type clients, we'll still set up departments and

divisions for those things and track and to keep in compliance with A133

through QuickBooks online.

So, it's just if you're willing to imagine how you can do it in here, you

probably can. One of the challenges, I would say, with any QuickBooks,

whether it's online or desktop when you're in departments is that you have

to - you can only record a deposit to one department at a time. It only

has one location for a deposit. So, you'll have to break your deposits up

by location if you're going to use that. But, that's only the real weirdo

thing that I have to remember to do on it.

Steven: Greg here, was wondering, "Is it possible to customize that pie

chart category under the company snapshot?"

Carolyn: Only by virtue of what kind of expense categories you already

have. That's how you're customizing it because it breaks it up by the

expense or the revenue categories you're currently using. These are what

specifically has activity in it. And, if you look below, there are charts

and other stuff. So, if you said, "I want to have different kinds of

income," then create other income as a type of account and put your revenue

activity in there and then it will break it out that way for you.

And, they're going to have more. I guess on the new Harmony version,

they're going to have more and more of these pie chart options for you.

So, you're going to have other opportunities to do further break outs

because there's another product on the market called Zero who has even more

robust reports, so there's another way for you to do it as well.

You can see down below when I'm using the bar chart, you can do more stuff

too. I'm sorry. I'll shut up.

Steven: That's great. It seems like most of the questions remaining

pertain to switching from an installed version to the online version. It

sounds like a lot of our attendees, here, do have either the enterprise

version or some other installed version and they're thinking about moving

to the online version. I know we've talked about that a lot, but anything

else that you might warn people about?

Carolyn: It's not a one way street. That's a nice part. So, if you said,

"I'm going to go to QuickBooks Online," and you would ask about versions.

The only thing there is in the way of versions - there's something that's

like an essentials version which is, "I don't need a lot of crazy reports.

I just want to record my income and my expenses and my balance sheet."

And, online and in online plus. So, there's some slight pricing

differences between those things. And, the online is running like $39. a

month - something like that. It's 10% less if you pay for a year. And, if

you're working with your accountant, your accountant may get an even - we

get a further discount that we pass onto our clients and you may be working

with somebody to go there - you really just - when you're in QuickBooks,

your desktop, and you're building a file and a backup, one of your options

is the utility line and it says, "Back it up at the QuickBooks online

version." And, will create a file that ends in .oe. That .oe file is the

file that gets uploaded into QuickBooks online. You put your data in

there. So, if you open up a shell on QuickBooks online and you import that

data, in 20 minutes they say, "It's there. It's ready for you to use."

So, you just start using it.

Steven: Cool, and I just sent a link over to the chat that shows the three

online versions. It looks like they go the simple that you said and then

essentials and then plus. It looks like there's three versions, there.

Carolyn: And, it looks like someone's asking me - where are you? You

talked about Amanda, Enterprise - yeah.

Steven: Amanda and [inaudible 00:50:43].

Carolyn: Yeah. This question about reports - actual versus budget - yeah.

There are actual versus budget. Let's see - [inaudible 00:51:00] report.

It's a budget report. Let's do report list. It is the same. You're

asking, basically, "Is it the same?" It's the same kind of report you were

doing before, actual versus budget. I can do the customizing. I can say

versus month, versus quarters, versus total - classes versus total if I

want to. I can say dollars remaining, if I want to do that. So, I've got

all sorts of little customizes. But, it seems to me that they're the same

ones I saw when I was on desktop. But, the difference again is, I can

memorize this and save it for later because that's come up in some wacky

way that I sorted it and I don't want to forget how I did it.

So, whenever you're creating reports, you're thinking about, "Who's your

audience?" So, I've got a management side that's an audience. I've got

board that's an audience. I might have a grantor that's an audience. I

might have a lender that's an audience. So, how do I make a report that I

can keep twisting around to get it in all these different ways? So, if you

think for the end, "Where am I going?" And, then try to work backwards to,

"How do I get there?" That's my method. And, as I say, I'll be an email

away from you guys if you need more clarification on part of this stuff.

And, payroll does work for the online versions. The payroll does link in -

so does merchant's accounts - links in and, banking links in. All those

things can be added in. I see those kinds of questions. You've got online

banking. Set up all your connections. Bring them all in.

Grant reporting - I do grant reporting either as departments or as classes.

So, it really depends on how many things you're trying to track. If you

were just one column for admin, one column for fundraising and several

columns for your grantors, you could create your grantors as your classes.

If you have way more things going on, then I would use your grantors as

departments. Then, you can run a report by department and see how your

department is doing.

The one nice thing about QuickBooks versus many other software packages is

that you're not limited on the period that you cover, so if you're running

a profit and loss by class and you want to see how I was doing just in one

particular class - let's say you had training events - let's just say that

was your grantor. I know we're running low on time, but I'm going to do it

really fast. Training events, run report, customize, total only - I can

say, "Show me all dates for this particular grantor," and then I can

customize it for years if I want to - whatever I want to do. And, now I've

got everything I've done with this grantor from the beginning. So, if I've

got a grant that comes in the middle of this year, but it's a two year

grant, I can see all of the activity for the entire grant. So, [inaudible

00:54:26].

I'm looking at Amanda's questions. For example, "Do you recommend setting

up to mirror, the audited statements that you," yeah. Well, that's what

I'm trying to do when I'm doing my classes is management in general,

fundraising program, unrestricted, restricted - you can do that. But, if

it works for you it's fine. If that's a good way to deliver it to the

auditor - you want to look at time savers. "How do I get it out to people

and save my time on this stuff?" It could be restricted and unrestricted

becomes departments instead and it doesn't muck up the P and L for other

readers who don't understand what you mean. You just have to know who your

audience is.

So, let's see - so contributions would be the account. Programs would be

the class. Various funds would be the departments. That would work.

That's right, Lorie. That would work. Now, what you just did - the

heading doesn't tell you what you chose or did I miss something? Oh - the

report that I just ran, I was doing all dates. I can customize that. I

can change the dates to this year, last year - let's do last year because I

think there was more activity in that report. There's the period. This is

just the profit and loss. Oh, it doesn't say what specific class because I

forgot to put the name in. So, you have to take the time to do the

header/footer and write in this with training too.

So yeah, when you're making these custom reports, you do want to take time

and write that.

Steven: Great. Well cool, I know we're running out of time here. Carolyn,

I wanted to give you a chance to let people know where they can find out

more about you if they have any additional questions or maybe you want to -

Carolyn: Sure. Our website is azcpa.com - Arizona C.P.A. and I can be

reached at carolyn@azcpa.com. And, I welcome your emails. It's no problem

at all. That's my name, there - Carolyn Sechler.

Steven: And, you're on Twitter for people who use twitter?

Carolyn: I am on twitter @carolinguini and we have a Facebook page. We're

everywhere. We've got a pinterest site, a Facebook page. We've got a

newsletter. We update - we put all sorts of stuff on here on the

newsletter all the time. So, if you want to get on our newsletter, let us

know, please. We'll add you to that.

Steven: That's a really nice newsletter. I would recommend people do sign

up for that. There's some good resources.

Carolyn: Thank you. We really love when - I'm bragging on my daughter

because she's the one who manages all our social media. She maintains a

curated list of webinars every week that are coming up that are free or

cheap. Oh Greg, thank you. I love the messages that I'm getting. Great

to have fans on this. I hope that you guys have found some value. I know

I whizzed through this stuff, but Don and I and Polly do this every day for

people. If you need any help at all, you just let us know. It's one of

the tools that we really like and it's been really reliable for us on the

things that we need to do.

Steven: Yeah, well this was fun, Carolyn. This is going to be a great

resource, this video recording. So, I will be sending that out to everyone

a little later this afternoon. But, do check out Carolyn online. Do sign

up for that newsletter and feel free to reach out to her. Carolyn, thanks

a lot for this. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Carolyn: Yeah, and if anybody wants to do this again, let me know or have

some special area they want to talk about, let me or these guys know.

We'll do another one.

Steven: Cool, well thanks to everyone who attended. Do look for an email

from me a little later this afternoon. But, other than that have a great

rest of your day.

Carolyn: Thank you.