“A tool is only as good as the hands that wield it.” This adage was true when ancient civilizations started using stone tools, and it’s still true now when most of our tools are digital in nature. But there is one significant distinction. We don’t need to learn and improve by trial and error. Most of our digital tools come with guides and training resources that can help you master them, and QuickBooks is no exception. With proper training and guidance from well-trained bookkeeping and accounting QuickBooks ProAdvisors who have honed their skills to perfection, anyone can leverage the full power of QuickBooks.
As a business owner, understanding how ProAdvisors can help your accountant and bookkeepers unleash the full power of QuickBooks will help you make informed training decisions.
How To Uncover The Full Power of QuickBooks
People in the accounting business know who QuickBooks ProAdvisors are, or at least they think they do. Many believe ProAdvisors are mere “QuickBooks Consultants.” They can help you with specific problems like choosing the right QuickBooks version, creating industry-specific templates, or setting up a simple payroll that the business owner or their accountant can take over. And they can do these things for you, but that’s barely scratching the surface of how they can help your business grow and become more profitable.
Quickbooks accounting software has over 80% market share, due in part to their diverse product offerings for companies both small and large. But using QuickBooks for your accounting and fully leveraging QuickBooks for your business is not the same thing. When you fully understand QuickBooks capacity, which version is right for you, when a new version is needed, or how to leverage the software’s full functionality, you’ll truly unlock the key to your financial success.
One way to tap into everything the accounting software has to offer is to hire QuickBooks ProAdvisors. They can also help train your in-house resources, i.e., your bookkeeper(s) and accountant(s), and help them understand and utilize the full power of QuickBooks, which can be transformative for your business. With your in-house resources adequately trained, you’d be able to tackle complex accounting problems without the need for outside consultation.
There are several ways your bookkeeper(s) and accountant(s) can unleash the full power of QuickBooks after receiving training. Listed below are just a few.
Understanding Industry-Specific QuickBooks Usage
QuickBooks is a comprehensive accounting software that covers many fundamentals and can virtually cater to every industry’s needs. QuickBooks Enterprise, designed for larger growing companies, has different industry-specific editions (contractor, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.), each of which comes with some special features specific to that industry. But you (or your accountant) will need to run a cost-benefit analysis and determine whether the QuickBooks Enterprise is the right choice in the first place, something a ProAdvisor can also help you do.
Businesses in various industries have different accounting needs. Your accountant will likely be able to meet them even without the industry-specific edition if they’ve been adequately trained. Understanding the difference between the inventory-management for a pure e-commerce business and a brick-and-mortar transitioning to e-commerce can be vital for business growth and smart accounting decisions. If your bookkeepers and accountants can develop expertise relevant to your specific industry, they can become your growth drivers. On the flip side, if they are limited to rudimentary QuickBooks accounting, they might become detrimental to your business growth.
Learning The Best Practices
Experience without proper training is not always beneficial. Learning by trial and error is still learning, but if an accountant is used to doing things just to “get the job done,” they won’t perform optimally. But if your accountant(s) and bookkeeper(s) are trained by ProAdvisors in the best QuickBooks practices and the best accounting practices of your industry, they’ll waste less time, make fewer (if any) costly mistakes, and will contribute to your business growth in various ways.
Proper accounting is crucial to a business’s finances, and if your accountant is underutilizing the primary accounting tool, it won’t lead to “proper accounting.”
By adopting the best QuickBooks practices, your accounting can become significantly more efficient, including:
- Spotting unusual financial patterns
- Identifying where your business is losing money
- Determining your most profitable avenues
- Helping your accountants “paint” a detailed and more accurate picture of your business’s finances
In contrast, suboptimal use of the software can bury financial problems in a mess of data until they become too large.
Understanding How to Use Advanced Features and Which are Right For Your Business
What would you say about a person who buys a Ferrari and never drives it over 70 mph?
That person is severely underutilizing a powerful tool.
It’s the same thing as an accountant never going beyond the basic functions and features of QuickBooks. But with proper guidance and training, they can capitalize on the full power of QuickBooks. They would learn which advanced features they can use to automate certain processes, which leads to better productivity (with less effort spent) and fewer errors.
QuickBooks ProAdvisors can also keep your team up to date on new advanced features in QuickBooks when they are released.
It also pays to leverage the power of utilization and learning how to integrate and use QuickBooks with other business software (like your CRM) or 3rd party apps. It’s also important to note that not every new and advanced feature or customization might be productive for your business, and your accountant should understand that if they are to get the best out of QuickBooks.
Problem Solving
Most seasoned ProAdvisors become problem solvers because they are usually called in to deal with very specific issues like, for example, a contractor who is looking to optimize job costing using QuickBooks or segregate profitability by account. Or a store chain that’s transitioning to e-commerce and has to reconcile their retail, wholesale, and online business across multiple channels.
With proper training and leveraging their experience of industry-specific problems, they can teach your accountant the right problem-solving approach. If your in-house or outsourced accountant(s) can tackle the complex issues unique to your industry, your business can perform well against competition because you will be able to respond to the changing needs of your industry relatively faster.
A major part of becoming a problem solver is understanding the full potential of the “tool” you have to use against the problem. So it’s beneficial for your business if your bookkeeper(s) or accountant(s) are trained as fairly advanced users of QuickBooks.
Related: Top Challenges E-commerce Businesses Have with QuickBooks
Why QuickBooks Training is an Important Business Investment
Training, practice, and breaking old habits: That’s about the gist of how your internal team (or even outsourced team of accountants and bookkeepers) can unleash the full power of QuickBooks and help your business grow.
Admittedly, Intuit has published training videos, user guides, and articles to help QuickBooks users learn and understand how to set up and use their accounting software correctly. In a perfect world, these online and free tools would be enough for your internal or outsourced team to properly set up and use the tool to its fullest capacity. But that wouldn’t acknowledge what many of us already know, especially if you’re using and underutilizing QuickBooks now or know your books are incomplete or “a mess,” which is that many people learn better with one-on-one training that walks them through the process step by step.
While we are living in an era of outsourcing and it’s the pragmatic way of harnessing the best talent available, training and grooming your team and in-house talent is one of the fundamentals of long-term business growth.
No one knows and understands your business like you and your team do, and few are as motivated or emotionally invested in your business’s growth. Investing in their knowledge and understanding of how to leverage this powerful tool is a surefire way to build a strong financial core of your business, upon which it will grow.
How MISSION Accounting Can Help
MISSION Accounting cultivates team members who don’t just “know their stuff”; they’re good at explaining what they know. We look for in-depth knowledge of the QuickBooks software and teaching ability when we bring on new QuickBooks trainers. This has been key to our success in maintaining long-term relationships with clients who leverage our knowledge and expertise to help train their staff to unleash the full power of QuickBooks.
At the helm is Bernard Roesch, MISSION Accounting’s founder, who not only is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor certified expert in QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop (ADVANCED), QuickBooks Enterprise, and QuickBooks Point of Sale. He also has an MBA from Harvard and over 20 years of business consulting experience.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help your business learn to use QuickBooks fully. Need to buy Quickbooks software? Buy yours through MISSION Accounting!
