Is QuickBooks Better Than An Accountant?
Today I want to talk about one of the major tools that I use to serve my clients and that is QuickBooks. QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. First introduced in 1983, its products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer accounting applications that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions. A lot of business owners use QuickBooks and the real question may be: is using QuickBooks better than having an actual accountant? The truth is, you need both. Here’s why.
Most businesses need to have a crew of people who can serve and advise that business. For instance, you start your business, you set up your QuickBooks and you get going, that's great. You may be recording things, somewhat consistently or somewhat not, and those are wonderful and useful pieces of information. At the end of the year, you have a big pile of data and you probably need to take it to an accountant. I know I certainly do. I take my data to an accountant for my tax return. But that's not the main goal of QuickBooks. And it's not the main goal of having healthy financial knowledge to run your business. That's where I step in.
As an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, I am very capable, which is probably an understatement, of getting good data into QuickBooks. But it is the next step that really makes a difference and you've got a lot of choices on who may be able to help you with that next step. And that is, how do we understand all this data? What is it telling us? What are our financial statements telling us about the functionality of our business? And how can we use them as a tool to make better management decisions going forward?
Now, not every set of financials is ready to give you useful information. That's where my VIP Accounting Overhaul in a Day really comes in. I take the time to sit down side-by-side with you, the owners of the business, and we really talk about what are the key data points that would be helpful for you. What do you need that would be useful to analyze your success and build toward your business’ future? And then we find a way to record those data points most effectively. Then when we've got the historical data, now we understand it better, we create a financial statement that doesn't just blurt out data at you. It tells you a story about your business and how well it's working. We use this story to help make better business decisions and help you take next steps going forward.
And that's the difference between getting a capable bookkeeper or just having QuickBooks: instead of just trying to manage your books you can have me help you identify what that important data is, find a process to record it, and maintain that process in the future. And now we can shift into an analysis mode, which is really the most important phase before you ever get to the point of a tax return. Understanding what your financial documents say and understanding how you can use them to be more successful is the key going forward. If you're ready to take that step, give me a call.
