Many small businesses are choosing to leave their QuickBooks Desktop (QBD) accounting software for the accessibility of QuickBooks Online (QBO). As a bookkeeper for a small business, I was part of a conversion recently. Below are some of the tips I can offer.
Before the Conversion
Clean up Vendors: Take time to weed through your vendors for duplicates and update contact information. Merge like vendors and make vendors not used in several years inactive. This process is much simpler with QBD.
To make inactive:
- Go to Vendor Center.
- Make sure the list includes all vendors.
- Click each vendor you want to make inactive (there will be an X in front of the vendor name when inactive).
To merge:
- Go to a vendor with two names on the list (usually there is a typo).
- Choose the vendor you want to merge (usually the one with the least amount of information).
- Change the vendor name to agree with the preferred vendor name.
- A pop-up box will ask you if you want to merge, say yes.
Customers/Clients: Look at your customers, can you inactive or delete any? Often, a customer account is opened to provide an estimate and never goes further, yet the customer remains open. Alternately, your business may not have repeat customer business. It’s a good time to inactivate or delete those stagnant customers.
Accounts Receivable: As unpleasant as it is, you probably have debt that you are never going to collect. This is a good time to write off bad debt and clean up your A/R Aging report.
Accounts Payable: Run your accounts payable report to see if there are any invoices that can be paid.
Chart of Accounts: Take a deep dive into your Chart of Accounts. Are there like expense accounts that can be merged (such as “Auto Expenses” and “Car Expenses”)? Run a P&L or Statement of Income (if you are a nonprofit). Any accounts that have less than $500 can be merged into another account to make your financial reports more informative. Consider new accounts or sub-accounts for larger balances so your financial statements have more detail.
Complete Outstanding Tasks: Ensure bank accounts are reconciled, inventory adjustments are made, and your payroll is processed and journalized.
Run a Trial Balance and Balance Sheet: Find errors that need to be corrected before converting.
Backup Your Data: Do this before you convert.
At this point, you have done the hardest part of the conversion. Spending time now cleaning your file will save you headaches and time later.
Now the fun part, exporting your file. BudgetEase has a package to move your QBD to QBO.
The package moves the QBD file, connects the bank accounts, sets up your preferences, invoices, and checks as well as provides initial training. To learn more about this service, contact us at 216-333-1303.
Find out more about which QBO subscription is right for you.
