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Category: QuickBooks Online

  • Thoughtful Design: The Secret to Tech That Actually Works

    “Just tell me what to use.” Sound familiar? When time is tight, it’s tempting to skip the strategy and jump straight to solutions.

    But here’s the truth: the fastest path to the right tool starts with slowing down—just enough to ask the right questions. This article shows why thoughtful design isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity for sustainable growth.

    It explains how tools like Microsoft 365, Power Automate, and QuickBooks can either streamline your business or create chaos depending on how well they’re configured. One client described their business as “a five-star restaurant with a kitchen in chaos” a polished customer experience hiding broken internal processes.

    If your systems feel like they’re held together with sticky notes and whiteboards, it’s time to rethink how you’re building. Click to learn how thoughtful design can save you time, money, and frustration.

     

    TechHouse

    Innovative Solutions. Practical Software. Friendly Support.

    Schedule a call  |  View Upcoming Events  |  Access our TechHouse Library of Articles

     

  • AI Inside: Are Your Business Systems Smarter Than You Think?

    You may already be using AI—and not even realize it. Tools like QuickBooks, Business Central, and Dynamics 365 now have embedded intelligence that can forecast cash flow, automate workflows, and even draft emails or summarize meetings.

    But here’s the catch: these features only shine when aligned with your business goals. Our newest article on this topic evaluates AI-embedded systems by their features and how well they solve your problems. It includes a practical checklist covering data integration, customization, and compliance.

    For example, QuickBooks uses AI to categorize expenses and predict cash flow, while Dynamics 365 can automate sales orders and detect errors. But if you’re not using these features—or don’t know they exist—you’re leaving value on the table.

    Before investing in something new, ensure you’re getting the most out of what you already have. Read more to find out how.

    TechHouse

    Innovative Solutions. Practical Software. Friendly Support.

    Schedule a call  |  View Upcoming Events  |  Access our TechHouse Library of Articles

  • Take Your Business to the Next Level with 5 New Features from QuickBooks Online

    Take Your Business to the Next Level with 5 New Features from QuickBooks Online

    In the fast-paced business world, efficiency and productivity are key to success. As a small business leader, you understand the importance of leveraging technology to streamline operations and maximize resources. 

    Five New Features in QuickBooks Online for Growing Businesses

    QuickBooks Online Advanced is one such tool that has proven to be a game-changer for many businesses. 

    Here are five new features in QuickBooks Online Advanced that can help take your business to the next level:

    1. Multi-company and multi-currency
    2. Customizable roles
    3. Fixed assets management
    4. Approvals/automation/workflow
    5. Custom dashboard

    Multi-Company or Multi-Currency

    Whether through acquisition or global reach, growing just got a lot easier.

    With QBO Advanced, you can easily switch back and forth between companies using the settings gear. Even better, you can combine data from multiple companies in one report.

    For businesses that operate internationally, QBO now supports multiple currencies. You can easily manage transactions in different currencies without worrying about conversion rates or exchange fees.

    Customizable Roles

    QBO now offers more built-in roles and allows for custom roles when the existing ones don’t meet your needs. Some new built-in roles include HR Manager for running payroll and Assistant Bookkeeper for handling AR and AP transaction entry. 

    You can also limit which reports someone can view, ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to those who need it.

    Fixed Assets Management

    QBO has introduced several features that now allow you to track fixed assets and their depreciation schedule within the app, eliminating the need for a separate spreadsheet.

    Key capabilities include adding fixed assets to the register directly from transactions, support for non-depreciable and fully depreciated assets, asset disposal support, CSV import, and report export. 

    You no longer have to waste time with manual entry. QBO Advanced creates automatic monthly depreciation and comprehensive reports. When you look at the asset online, you can see the depreciation schedule for that asset.

    Approvals/Automation/Workflow

    QBO now supports multi-user sequencing approvals, from clerk to financial lead to CFO to owner. Posting to the General Ledger happens on approval, not while waiting for approval. Printing and emailing are blocked until the approver approves the transaction. 

    There’s also a detailed audit log, run history, and the ability to comment on rejections. Approval workflows enforce compliance with organizational policy, systemize internal stakeholder sign-offs, prevent user error, reduce the time spent back and forth to gain approval, and mitigate fraud risks.

    Custom Dashboard

    With QBO, you can create your custom dashboard with up to 25 charts. 

    Custom dashboards allow you to visualize your data in a way that makes sense for your business and helps you make informed decisions.

    In Conclusion

    QuickBooks Online Advanced is more than just an accounting tool. 

    It’s a comprehensive business solution to streamline operations, improve financial management, and drive growth. With features like multi-company reporting, multi-currency support, customizable roles, fixed assets management, approvals automation, and custom dashboards, it’s equipped to handle the complexities of a growing business.

    As a small business leader, leveraging these features can help you focus on what you do best: growing your business. Business efficiency is not just about doing things right; it’s about doing the right things. And QuickBooks Online Advanced helps do just that.

  • Implicit Errors in Your Books: A Guide for Small Business Leaders

    Implicit Errors in Your Books: A Guide for Small Business Leaders

    In the realm of software development, an implicit error is an error that is occurring, but you don’t know it. You think everything is fine and make decisions based on the reports, but they are not telling the real story. 

    This issue can be catastrophic when applied to the financial statements of a small business. Implicit errors in your books can cause you to make decisions based on inaccurate information.

    What Is an Implicit Error?

    As a small business owner, you make any number of important decisions daily, and most of them are at least partially dependent on your business’s current financial standing.

    Your financial statements must be as accurate as possible, and you should audit your books regularly for implicit errors. 

    There are two types of implicit errors: logical and semantic.

    Logical Errors

    Logical errors occur when the code runs, and no error messages occur. However, the output is not what you expected. 

    When you translate this to business leadership, you read reports showing everything is okay. You look at the Profit and Loss (P&L) statement, and the net income looks great. You look at expenses, and they are lower than expected. All seems good, right?

    But first, you have to check your balance sheet. Do you have any assets on the books that don’t exist? Perhaps inventory isn’t in the warehouse, or worse yet, you don’t have a warehouse, but you have been booking some of your purchases to inventory without consuming them as expenses on your P&L.

    Semantic Errors

    Semantic errors occur when you are syntactically correct – using the right grammar, but the meaning is off. In the case of accounting, this may mean that you booked a transaction, but not to the correct account.

    For example, a customer overpays and then you book a credit memo even though the overpayment is already represented in the books. Or you create an adjusting entry but reverse the credit and debit. Or you book the payment of sales tax or insurance to an expense account even though the liability is sitting on the balance sheet to be paid.

    Identifying Implicit Errors in Your Books

    What can you check for to identify these errors that could be causing you to fly blind? 

    Here are three steps you can take to identify implicit errors in your accounting:

    1. Gut check 
    2. Bank check
    3. Financial check

    Gut Check

    The first step to identifying an implicit error in your accounting is to look for any anomalies in your Profit and Loss (P&L) and Balance Sheet:

    • Run the P&L for a series of periods (such as 13 months). Are there any unexpected variations from month to month along any of the line items? Some accounts to pay extra close attention to accounts that are relatively consistent month to month, like payroll and utilities.
    • Run the Balance Sheet. Are there any unexpected values? If the Inventory account has a value, does that match the amount of inventory you own? Do your sales tax, insurance, and other monthly accruals approximate the monthly value of those expenses?

    Bank Check

    The next step is to ensure that the transactions in your bank accounts match those on your bank statements:

    • Match transactions – Do the transactions in your accounting software match the transactions on your bank statements?
    • Check each bank account reconciliation – Are there any unreconciled transactions from prior periods?

    Financial check

    Finally, compare your P&L and Balance Sheet, looking for discrepancies between the two.

    In conclusion

    By taking these steps, you can identify any implicit errors in your books and ensure you have the information you need to make informed decisions and guide your business toward success.

    Don’t let implicit errors in your books keep you from achieving your business goals. We specialize in workflow optimization and can provide the professional services you need to streamline your processes and improve your bottom line. 

    Contact us today to learn how we can help you prepare for year-end and set your business up for success in the coming year. Let’s make your business the best it can be, together!

  • Accounting Made Easy with QuickBooks Online and More

    Accounting Made Easy with QuickBooks Online and More

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    While an influx of vendors move to the Cloud, will you stay with older tech tools they are no longer updating? How does your budget or mindset affect how you update systems and processes?

    Time spent manually navigating invoices, payments, and payroll can strain any team member. If you are using Excel, migrating to QuickBooks Desktop can get your organization into an accurate accounting system and introduce accounting automation.

    Automation can also help your organization capture, store, and communicate critical business information effortlessly. If you already have QuickBooks Desktop to track and send invoices and pay off your vendors, moving to QuickBooks Online will give you the benefits of Intuit’s security without the additional cost of implementing that security yourself.

    While QuickBooks Online may be outside your budget plan, it can become an investment that helps you easily manage what you may now do manually.

    In other words, aside from easy automation and visibility, QuickBooks Online can offer your organization more security at any time or place.

    Cyber threats increase on what seems to be a daily basis. What systems will you have in place? Bad actors improve their infiltration of small and medium-sized businesses mainly because SMBs do not increase and refresh their security. Cyber threats plaguing SMBs are outside your control, but you can decide what defenses to implement.

    QuickBooks Online can help your organization optimize accounting and automation. You can easily view QuickBooks Online and all your systems within a single dashboard. As a QuickBooks partner, we can tighten your security and create clear visibility of your various systems to enhance your organization’s productivity.

    Accounting: Easy as 1,2,3 and Do-Re-Mi

    Stop running off computers from a data center; we can help you transition from QuickBooks Desktop into the Cloud.

    If your accounting software is not from an accounting vendor, for example, your organization uses Access or Excel, moving you to QuickBooks Online is still possible.

    The initial move to the Cloud requires us to create a standard location for you to handle receivables and payables and get your financial reporting out. Then you can move similar things into the suite, such as taking care of electronic payments.

    As you consolidate, things become a bit more helpful. Instead of files, or piles of paper reports, enjoy a quick and easy view of your invoices in one place and a record of when payments are made.

    When you move accounting to the Cloud, you can put your tracked receipts into the QuickBooks Online platform, or you may make it part of your overall M365 document management, where you currently keep receipts.

    Both have pros and cons, so speak to a TechHouse advisor about the right strategy for where you want to keep your supporting documentation, such as Excel spreadsheets that show the backup for any adjustments made in your accounting software.

    You need to keep your documentation somewhere, so how do you structure it, and how do you amplify safety in your Cloud files? Your email and files should be in the Cloud. After this foundation, you can add payroll, handle security payments, automate invoices, and track expenses.

    QuickBooks Online offers easy and friction-free tools that will automate sending your sales team a spreadsheet that shows all the sales from the prior week or all the sales from the preceding month. If you have a team member responsible for collections, you can send them an outstanding balance spreadsheet at the end of every day, so they can see what invoices have and have not been paid.

    Most banks can be connected to the environment, and you can set up rules. Rules such as a transaction from your utility provider can automatically get booked to your utility account. QuickBooks Online matches it and sends it right through.

    Say goodbye to manual recording, automation helps take care of transactions.

    Ramp Up Your Security before Cyber Threats Rock You

    QuickBooks Online offers security within its platform.

    A helpful feature allows your organization to assign custom rules. For example, with multiple people in your accounting software, sales won’t have to deal with vendors and vice versa. You can decide who has access — helping you segment responsibility and visibility to specific roles.

    However, it behooves you to implement additional security to mitigate risk over your entire environment. Unfortunately, many SMBs understand the severity of cyber threats but aren’t proactive in what they know. Responding too late has already resulted in 60% of small businesses going out of business after they’ve experienced cyber-attacks.

    We help organizations mitigate risk with various solutions, one being Safety Plus. When you move to the Cloud, Safety Plus implements robust security, which allows us to restrict insider risk, reduce OPEX, and substantially minimize traditional hardware failures and downtime. Know that sometimes your computer isn’t moving slowly “just because.”

    Safety Plus Cybersecurity includes monitoring, hardening, Cloud alerts, and training. Your team may know about cybersecurity, but our training helps your organization reduce security threats. Our hands-on training programs help your organization maintain a consistent security posture.

    Phishing attacks can be clever. Using our Phishing Net software, we send phishing simulations to your team, and they are asked to complete training if they fall for the attack – a real-world scenario without real-world consequences.

    Bad actors are like viruses: they adapt to what’s used to decimate them and respond in a new, hopefully undetectable, form.

    In other words, implementing security is not enough. You must manage what you secure:

    • SafetyPlus™ Hardening gets our tech experts into your system monthly to tighten up your security – closing any cracks bad actors may wiggle through.
    • SafetyPlus™ Cybersecurity Awareness sends monthly training to your team, keeping your organization familiar with rising threats.
    • SafetyPlus™ Remote Monitoring and Management pays close attention to your system and alerts our team when it detects something unusual, especially invasions you may not see. Our tech experts promptly respond to alerts to ensure your organization hasn’t been breached.

    Files sent through email, documents stored in SharePoint or OneDrive, and your QuickBooks environment will have around-the-clock watchdogs. Your environment safely captures data, but how do you understand how the business is going?

    Better Visibility and KPI Tracking Using Apps and Analytics

    Imagine the possibilities of KPI tracking and decision-making when you don’t have to connect information from scattered systems manually. Now that your critical business information, such as your financials, is in the Cloud, what other opportunities can reveal themselves?

    Automating accounting and moving to the Cloud helps various systems communicate. Our Data Toolkit then aggregates data across multiple systems to represent all your systems within a single dashboard for easy understanding.

    Invoices that help you understand customer revenue, products sold, expenses to vendors, and payroll can now be accepted and connected to your CRM system, the system you use for operational tracking, products you assemble, or what’s in inventory.

    Sales, accounting, and operational data reflect as one view, helping you visualize how your organization is performing.

    If you have these other systems, big pictures won’t only help you, but you will have better visibility on how different leavers affect each other. We want to bring in information from all those systems for you.

    No one should discourage you from having over 20 operations to run your business – especially when you can capture information from all of them. We create dashboards that confine data from many locations because once an organization reaches about 10 or 20 people, one system typically doesn’t meet all the organization’s needs. We want to make your process of doing things your way easy. Supporting who you are as an organization, how your organization operates, and configuring what your organization needs matters to our team.

    Our experts and solutions can handle more than one application.

    In addition, by leveraging the dashboard technology, we can have artificial intelligence help you predict or understand anomalies, things that look off, and trends going in the wrong direction – ways to help guide us even more.

    Embrace data as your ally. Financials from QuickBooks are excellent, but they won’t give a complete view of your entire organization. Smart reporting helps you understand what’s going on broadly in your organization. We combine all this data from all these sources. And again, you want to make sure your systems are secure.

    Not Tech Savvy? We Make It Easy

    Your accounting team won’t need to spend countless hours doing the best they can with little hope of making progress. QuickBooks Online, hardening your security and clear visibility, makes accounting less intimidating. As a QuickBooks and Microsoft partner, we are happy to provide all the one-on-one support you and your organization may need.

    Would you feel safe saying you’re going to lock your front door even though you never actually lock it? Tightening up your organization’s security and monitoring your environment can reduce how often you may be currently looking over your shoulder.

    Jumping from one system to the next may cause you and your team to misstep. A complete view of your organization’s ins and outs will help you see and think clearly about past, current, and next steps.

    You don’t have to be tech-savvy to optimize work minutes. We are here to put solutions in place, so your team can put their skills to exceptional use.

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  • Six New Features in QuickBooks Online for Growing Businesses ( Cloned )

    Six New Features in QuickBooks Online for Growing Businesses

    In the fast-paced business world, efficiency and productivity are key to success. As a small business leader, you understand the importance of leveraging technology to streamline operations and maximize resources. QuickBooks Online Advanced is one such tool that has proven to be a game-changer for many businesses. In this blog post, we’ll explore six new features in QuickBooks Online Advanced that can help take your business to the next level.

    1. Multi-Company and Multi-Currency

    Whether through acquisition or global reach, growing just got a lot easier.

    With QBO Advanced, you can easily switch back and forth between companies using the settings gear. Even better, you can combine data from multiple companies in one report.

    For businesses that operate internationally, QBO now supports multiple currencies. You can easily manage transactions in different currencies without worrying about conversion rates or exchange fees.

    1. Customizable Roles

    QBO now offers more built-in roles and allows for custom roles when the existing ones don’t meet your needs. Some new built-in roles include HR Manager for running payroll and Assistant Bookkeeper for handling AR and AP transaction entry. You can also limit which reports someone can view, ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to those who need it.

    1. Fixed Assets Management

    QBO has introduced several features to eliminate the need to track fixed assets and their depreciation schedule in a separate Excel spreadsheet. Key capabilities include adding fixed assets to the register directly from transactions, support for non-depreciable and fully depreciated assets, asset disposal support, CSV import, and report export. No longer waste time with manual entry. QBO Advanced creates automatic monthly depreciation and comprehensive reports. When you look at the asset online, you can see the depreciation schedule for that asset.

    1. Approvals/Automation/Workflow

    QBO now supports multi-user sequencing approvals, from clerk to financial lead to CFO to owner. Posting to the GL happens on approval, not while waiting for approval. Printing and emailing are blocked until the approver approves the transaction. There’s also a detailed audit log, run history, and the ability to comment on rejections. Approval workflows enforces compliance with organizational policy, systemize internal stakeholder sign-offs, prevent user error, reduce the time spent back and forth to gain approval, and mitigate fraud risks.

    1. Custom Dashboard

    With QBO, you can create your custom dashboard with up to 25 charts. Custom dashboards allow you to visualize your data in a way that makes sense for your business and helps you make informed decisions.

    In conclusion, QuickBooks Online Advanced is more than just an accounting tool. It’s a comprehensive business solution to streamline operations, improve financial management, and drive growth. With features like multi-company reporting, multi-currency support, customizable roles, fixed assets management, approvals automation, and custom dashboards, it’s equipped to handle the complexities of a growing business. As a small business leader, leveraging these features can help you focus on what you do best: growing your business. In business, efficiency is not just about doing things right; it’s about doing the right things. And QuickBooks Online Advanced helps do just that.