March 2019 Meeting Notes

ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC.

Vice President Melissa Barton opened the March meeting.  Participants introduced themselves and gave shout outs.

·        Today’s topic: QuickBooks and e-Commerce.  Speakers: Alicia Katz Pollock of RoyalWise Solutions and Melissa Barton of SimpleBooks.  One of the hallmarks of e-commerce is the use of electronic payments via website shopping carts.  Amazon and Etsy were mentioned as two retail marketplaces.  The use of third-party merchant processing allows connection to payment processing.  Options for third party processing include Stripe/Authorize and PayPal. 

·        There are pros and cons of integrating electronic payment processing with QuickBooks.  Advantages include reporting and data hub.  Disadvantages include setup, maintenance and redundancy.

·        In discussing sales tax features, shopping carts generally work better than QuickBooks due to the setup work involved. 

·        QuickBooks and clients with inventory-  drop shipment inventory sales, like that used with Amazon, come into QuickBooks monthly.  Third party inventory solutions, such as SOS Inventory or Locate were brought up as better alternatives than QuickBooks.

·        Recording sales into QuickBooks can occur in various ways.

A.      Import actual sales.  This works well for repeat customers because customer names are in QuickBooks.

B.     Import generic sales

C.     Manage as clearing accounts:  Zapier- links any 2 apps; Webgility – maps e-commerce to QuickBooks

D.     Manually enter totals via adjusting journal entries or monthly sales receipts

·        Lightspeed is a point of sale system that connects to QuickBooks.  It is a good value and can map sales.  Ship Station allows customer tracking and creates barcodes.  A core question is what level of mapping is available.  The web designer should be interviewed as to the level of mapping that is available before they provide services. ShareARefund.com tracks shipments and automates shipping refunds if an item has not shipped timely.

·        Software solutions for sales activity include Shopify, Cloud Cart Connector and Webgility.  Zapier can create sales receipts for many e-commerce websites.  Another choice is to not use software but to import from the bank and use the banking rule to automate transaction entries.

·        Roadblocks and problems: 

1.      Returns or credits can be tracked in up to three places – in the shopping cart, at the merchant processor level or in QuickBooks. 

2.      Reconciliations – clearing accounts may not have statements – Shopify doesn’t have a statement.  Also inventory likely needs adjusting with returns.

·        Many business owners like using Stripe but it is harder on bookkeepers. 

·        The next meeting will be April 4, 2019.  The meeting topic will be “Tax Season – What worked and what didn’t work”.

July 6th 2017 Meeting Minutes - The Cloud Ecosystem

ALL STAR ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS, INC. Meeting Minutes

July 6, 2017

The June 6 meeting was held at the Meals on Wheels building located at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue in Portland.  President Kim Boaz opened the meeting by having guests introduce themselves.  Regular members then introduced themselves, giving shout outs to fellow members and mentioning any needs.

Renee Trump, membership & promotions coordinator of All Star Accounting Professionals, Inc. was the speaker for today’s meeting on the topic of The Cloud Accounting Ecosystem.  Renee is an owner with the firm of Pasaban Accounting Solutions and has a number of years of experience with accounting including experience at a law firm and in the hospitality industry.  Renee stated that collaboration allows us to do more than we can do ourselves.  Per research, 65% of users use the cloud for bookkeeping; 43% use smartphones to help run their business and 65% use the cloud for invoicing and payments.  The benefits include real time information for decision making and the ability to provide advisory services for clients.  Renee next discussed Defining the Workflow Adoption Curve which can be found at https://content.hubdoc.com/hubdoc-blog/defining-the-workflow-adoption-curve.  This site shows the six stages of the workflow adoption curve, including awareness, research, trial period, initial adoption, client migration and workflow mastery.  In the “Get Visual” portion of her presentation, Renee explained the main software her firm, Pasaban Accounting Solutions, uses to capture and report information.  Pasaban uses Bill.com which allows invoices to be entered quickly and easily, permits approval of the bill and scheduling of the payment, including the method of payment.  Hubdoc automatically pulls bills and statements into one secure hub so you don’t need to log onto multiple sites each month to gather recurring bills.  QuickBooks Online is used as the main accounting software and Futrli allows clients to visualize their financials with graphs and easy to use reports that are more business owner friendly. The final portion of the presentation discussed documenting and refining your processes.  Melissa Barton stated that there is an app called Transaction Pro Deleter which costs about $200 and can quickly and easily remove unwanted transactions from QBO and QuickBooks desktop. Kim was interested in an online ability to store and securely share files for multiple clients in one location.  Box.com was offered as a solution.

To wrap up the topic, we broke down into smaller groups to discuss one of more related questions that Renee included on the overhead screen.

Kim closed the meeting by mentioning our website which can be found either at ASAPPDX.com or AllStarAccountingProfessionals.com.  Meeting notes can be found on the blog tab of the website.  Meetings are the first Thursday of each month from 11:30 – 1:00.  The location is currently at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue in Portland but we are looking for an Eastside location as well.  If anyone is aware of a potential Eastside location to hold meetings, please email Kim Boaz at Kim@backtobasicsbookkeeping.com.  We currently pay $50 for a 2- hour timeslot at the Meals on Wheels location.  We also host quarterly social events with the most recent events including seeing the movie The Accountant and an after-hours social at The Punch Bowl Social in downtown Portland.  September 21 is our next quarterly event date so please hold that date open.  Terrie Marsh is working on this event.  We are interested in growing our membership so please remember to promote ASAP on social media.  We are also starting to offer short promotions to those who bring in a gift card or similar item of value for a business card drawing.

The next All-Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on August 3 at the Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue, Portland 97219.  We hope to see you there!

June 1 2017 Meeting Minutes - Bulleted Points

• Summer Hiett, the owner of All Seasons Bookkeeping, was today’s speaker, discussing various apps of interest to bookkeepers and accountants. Summer received her Bachelors of Science in 2013 from PSU’s School of Business and started her full charge bookkeeping business in March of 2016.  Her office is located at the border of Beaverton and Hillsboro.
• Mileage apps discussed included Mile IQ, Triplog and Everlance. Mile IQ can track each trip and category and runs $5.99 per month.  Triplog is less expensive at $1.50 per month.  The first 40 trips of Triplog are free.  Everlance drains the cell phone battery quickly.
• Time tracking apps. Tsheets is free for one person though you need to look hard in the settings for this free feature.  There is a base charge of $15 and an additional charge of $5 per employee.   Tsheets works well with QuickBooks Online.  Shift to Work, another time tracking app, has amazing customer service, runs $1 per employee and offers integration with Heartland payroll.  Renee mentioned another app, which has “Shark” in the name and was user friendly.
• Expense apps. An app called “Expense” utilized taking pictures and integrated with QuickBooks Online.  It ran $10 per month.  Expensify works for expenses outside the normal accounting process, such as when employees use their own credit cards.  Hubdoc software allows you to take a picture of the receipt, upload and works with QuickBooks Online.  The user can identify separate locations if needed.
• Finance apps. FreshBooks runs $15, $25 or $50 a month but does not feature use of balance sheets.  ProAdvisor can use the app for free.  QuickBooks Self-Employed is $10 per month but is not able to be converted to QuickBooks Online.  QBox is cloud based and works on desktops.  You can lock files and share with clients.
• There is an upcoming All-Star Accounting Professionals social on June 8 from 5 - 8 PM at the Punch Bowl Social located at 340 SW Morrison Street in Portland.
• The next All-Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on July 6, 2017 at the Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue, Portland 97219.

June 1 2017 Meeting Minutes - Apps of Interest

  The June 1 meeting was held at the Meals on Wheels location in SW Portland.  Diana Chung facilitated the meeting.  Guests introduced themselves and then regular members.  Summer Hiett, the owner of All Seasons Bookkeeping, was today’s speaker, discussing various apps of interest to bookkeepers and accountants.  Summer received her Bachelors of Science in 2013 from Portland State University School of Business and started her business in March of 2016.  She was a corporate accountant for nearly 6 years and has experience with full cycle bookkeeping in many different industries. Her office is located at the border of Beaverton and Hillsboro.

Summer first discussed various mileage apps, including Mile IQ, Triplog and Everlance.  Mile IQ can track each trip and category and runs $5.99 per month.  Triplog is less expensive at $1.50 per month and has been used by Summer and Renee.  Both liked this app.  The first 40 trips of Triplog are free.  Everlance drains the cell phone battery quickly.

Next, we moved to time tracking apps.  Tsheets is free for one person though you need to look hard in the settings for this free feature.  There is a base charge of $15 and an additional charge of $5 per employee.  Summer noted that it could end up costing more with this app than using a payroll company in some circumstances.  Tsheets works well with QuickBooks Online.  Shift to Work, another time tracking app, has amazing customer service and runs $1 per employee.  It offers integration with Heartland payroll.  Renee mentioned another app, which has “Shark” in the name and was user friendly.

The discussion then moved to expense apps.  An app called “Expense” utilized taking pictures and integrated with QuickBooks Online.  It ran $10 per month.  Expensify works for expenses outside the normal accounting process, such as when employees use their own credit cards.  Hubdoc software allows you to take a picture of the receipt, upload and works with QuickBooks Online.  The user can identify separate locations if needed.  You can get into Hubdoc to reclassify expenses as well.

The last type of app mentioned were finance apps.  FreshBooks runs $15, $25 or $50 a month but does not feature use of balance sheets.  ProAdvisor can use the app for free.  QuickBooks Self-Employed is $10 per month but is not able to be converted to QuickBooks Online.  QBox is cloud based and works on desktops.  You can lock files and share with clients.

There is an upcoming All-Star Accounting Professionals social on June 8 from 5 - 8 PM at the Punch Bowl Social located at 340 SW Morrison Street in Portland.

The next All-Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on July 6, 2017 at the Meals on Wheels location at 7710 SW 31^st Avenue, Portland 97219.

Meeting Minutes May 5, 2016

The meeting this month was held at the WeWork Offices in downtown Portland.  Kim introduced our group.  Renee Trump facilitated the meeting.  Renee’s first question for the group was “What has been your strategy to keep up with apps and technology?” Melissa mentioned that she reads “Leader Report”.  Other sources included Charlie Russell, Linked-In Groups, QBO Power Hour and Sleeter Group.  Kevin Minkoff reads the Technology Today Magazine.  Renee uses HubDoc – a bank feed version.  HubDoc doesn’t work with On Point but integrates with QuickBooks online. Receipt bank software was discussed.  The client helps describe the transaction and take a picture of the receipt with their phone.  Alicia stated that she uses T-Sheets.  It is an app that can assist classifying timesheets including employee’s time and phone calls.  It integrates with your desktop computer. Next Renee mentioned a quote from Mike Michalowicz’s book “Profit First”.  The theme of the quote related to the fact that software is changing so quickly that to survive, the accounting industry will need to be more consultative and less transactional.  Although it is true that software enables consumers more tools to do things previously relegated only to bookkeepers and accountants, proper use of the software requires skills and understanding not held by many consumers.

The next All Star Accounting Professional meeting will be held on June 2, 2016 at Kevin Minkoff’s office on the Eastside of Portland.  Diana Chung will facilitate the meeting.