My AHA moment!
I was sitting on my couch and scrolling through Facebook. I don’t do it often, but I am responsible for the Bonners Ferry Chamber of Commerce FB page and for making sure the members get their specials and offerings out into our community. I came across a Quickbooks expert’s post. I am familiar with who she is. She holds workshops and offers courses on how Quickbooks works and how to use the program. She has some excellent tips! And she is pretty much known as the guru in her field.
And this post was titled. “The four things you need to do in QuickBooks.monthly.”
OOOOH!
Shortcut! I thought, great! I am going to learn something fantastic! It was short, so I pressed play.
After I watched, all I could think of was, “You have got to be kidding me!” Her four tips, in order, were done in almost the opposite order that I teach my clients. AND, one of them is not even necessary! AHA…I knew my concepts, mission, and product offerings BY FAR exceeded all others just because of this AHA moment.
Her four tips:
Reconcile line by line, by checking off each line in QB Reconciliations with each line in your statement for each account. STEP ONE
Categorize line by line, by checking each line in Bank Transactions and then putting it to the correct category. STEP TWO.
Review your Balance Sheet to make sure all amounts are correct, line by line. And then your P & L. STEP THREE.
I am not even going to address step four in this blog. STEP FOUR.
The whole Procedure? LOOK for all the items that are CORRECT.
My four tips: I mean ONLY three!
Categorize ALL transactions QUICKLY in BULK - NOT line by line.
Reconcile. When you open this up, 95% of the time, ALL the lines are ALREADY checked off for you!!!!!!
Review your P & L statement by looking for Errors.
The whole procedure? Look for all of the items that are INCORRECT.
If you took one bank account (almost everyone has multiples and other credit card accounts), that had 500 transactions in it, through her way, can you imagine going line by line in comparison to the statement , how long that would take you? Oh wait, now you have to go through the same 500 transactions AGAIN line by line in the Categorize step. And then reviewing the P & L report (the balance sheet tip needs a blog of its own!), looking for what is right? 500 transactions again? That’s 1500 transactions total - LINE BY LINE.
I am guessing, two, maybe three hours of your time?
If you took that same bank account that still had 500 transactions in it, through my way, you just do a massive dump of the transactions. Remember - QB is a learning program, You teach it where things go, AND YOU GOT A PROGRAM TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE! So let the program do it for you! Now go to your P & L report. Look for nothing that is correct (again, this is why you got a computer program and not a family member to do the books). 95% of it will be correct already. All you have to do is look for the very few things that are wrong (and I have found 4 super simple very quick tricks that work magic!) and correct those. Next, and instead of her way being first, this is last - reconcile. 95% of the time, like I said, all of those 500 transactions she said check off line by line, THEY ARE NOW ALREADY CHECKED FOR YOU! All you have to do is see if it is off OR if there are any unchecked!
I am not guessing. I am confidently saying, this process if set up correctly and used correctly, 95% of the time will take you less than 30 minutes!!!!!!!
Two or three hours OR - 30 minutes? Is or is not TIME, your most valuable resource?!?!?!
Did I already mention this was a huge AHA moment for me? Not that I suddenly learned something new as far as how to use QuickBooks, but the AHA moment that people are being taught the extremely hard way! No wonder people don’t like QuickBooks!
I love it - but that’s because I KNOW the merely 4 or 5 things and tricks to do - to actually GIVE me more time.
That’s what computer programs were created for - to save and give us more of our most valuable resource!
How much time are you fortunate to get because you know how to use QuickBooks my way? If its not a lot, let me know - I can teach you step by step…and remember - there are only three!
By the way, if you only do this monthly because it takes so long, how is Quickbooks helping you make business decisions if the numbers and reports are not updated weekly? I share more about the importance of doing your books (30 minutes maybe!) every week - click here!