QuickBooks Online for Accountants

Your clients might use QBO, and you might use QBOA. Here's "undo bank rec" from by Stacy Kildal, QBO expert and Boot Camp Trainer at the Seattle Accounting Technology Boot Camp 

June 13, 2013

Is an Intuit ® OS on it’s way?

In a May 20, 2013 press release Intuit's President and CEO Brad Smith said he is reorganizing to meet two goals, and #1 is “being the world’s small business operating system”. Microsoft lost the accounting technology battle against Intuit’s QuickBooks® 2years ago,
finally giving up support for Money in 2011. Intuit® has enjoyed hands-down market dominance since then.

But at the 2nd Annual Seattle Accounting Technology Boot Camp former Intuit employees, and international upstart Xero, are squaring off against Intuit in an attempt to succeed where Microsoft failed. The event pits Outright, started by 2 former Intuit employees, against QuickBooks Online, represented by RadioFreeQuickBooks co-host Stacy Kildal, and Xero, staffed by one of Intuit’s former product managers.  Even the funding for Special Guest Michelle L Long, the author of some of Intuit’s most advanced training programs for accountants, is paid for by Xero.

Can a software giant like Intuit® be nimble enough to stay in the fast-paced race from desktop-to-web-to-mobile? Can Intuit® satisfy it’s top talent and keep them in place, or will it hope to ride its name-brand recognition with its customers while its engineers frantically catch up?  Acquiring talent and keeping it requires responsiveness to the company’s employees who deliver new products, and to the entrepreneurs the products serve. Put together, the 100+ accounting professionals convening at the 2nd Annual Accounting Technology Boot Camp serve hundreds of entrepreneurs, many of whom are adopting new accounting technologies faster than their accountants can memorize the icons and acronyms. Accounting systems are pieced together after the industrious entrepreneur starts using a new technology, for better or for worse, and rarely is there a system that controls the information coming together from several sources.

That’s why visionaries like Doug Sleeter, the event’s Keynote, provide critical support to accounting professionals in a way that no-one else can.  Doug Sleeter is nationally-recognized as one of the accounting profession's “Top 25 Thought Leaders”, involved in the development of several innovative accounting technologies. Doug’s vision for the next big trend: “solutions that aggregate data from several other parts of the system and manage the data connection with backend accounting, as well as with the other parts of the system”.

What is Intuit’s President and CEO Brad Smith’s vision? In May 20, 2013 press release Smith said he is reorganizing at Intuit®:  “The new structure comes as the company increases its focus on two strategic outcomes: being the world’s small business operating system, and providing winning solutions to do the nations’ taxes in the U.S. and Canada.”  The “world’s small business operating system”? Is an Intuit® OS on it’s way? Will there be a best-practice tablet? Only one thing is certain: The “I’ve been doing it this way for 20 years” mentality won’t last for long in the “app-a-day” accounting technology marketplace.

Note: Event has ended. It was June 13, 2013. Info: 2013 Seattle Accounting Technology Boot Camp

#techsavvymoney

What's the Difference between Xero and QuickBooks Online?

I wasn't sure why everyone is so excited about Xero, so I asked my friend Ian and this is what he said:

-Xero is a truly collaborative platform-contact your accounting professional directly from help, leave comments while performing bank reconciliation, add comments to reports and more.
-Xero was built starting in 2006 while QuickBooks Online was built in 1999 and retrofitted to meet the demands of today. QuickBooks Online is an online emulation of its desktop past. Xero was built from the ground up on the modern web and with collaboration at its heart. It is therefore faster (accelerated via Akamei), more secure (our infrastructure is in Rackspace), easier to use (beautiful accounting).
-QuickBooks Online for Accountants provides a dashboard-only view of a single QuickBooks Online file. For Xero, we provide the Xero Partner Edition which is a lightweight practice management tool to see all your clients at a glance, what activity has happened in their organization, management tools for staff and for clients, plus marketing resources. QuickBooks Online does not offer that and the marketing resources would require a $599 additional charge for a QuickBooks ProAdvisor membership.
-QuickBooks Online charges for additional users while Xero is unlimited users for all including users in the small businesses and their accounting professionals
-WorkflowMax is a powerful practice management solution for Accounting Professionals. It is free with 25 clients or more as a Xero Partner (and at a cost for those with less than 25 clients). There is no offering from Intuit that exists and competitive products from other major vendors are much more expensive.
-On features, Xero has some that QuickBooks Online does not like Expense Claims, Fixed Assets, both IFRS and GAAP reporting to name a few. QuickBooks Online has some that --Xero does not, like Purchase Orders and lightweight inventory. However, Xero is built around the cloud and has over 115 add-ons that fill the holes and provide superior capabilities across a whole spectrum of workflows and vertical solutions. If Xero does not have it, one of our add-on partners does (we add a new partner about every week or two). For something like inventory, check out Unleashed for example. In contrast, QuickBooks Online only has 31 add-ons.

Xero is giving away a Google Nexus 7 Tablet at our next event, so take a break and enjoy a free meal
When: Tues February 5 btwn 4:30 and 6:00
Where: Razzis' in Greenwood
RSVP HERE

Cost: FREE