Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool
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@dashrender said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@mike-davis said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@scottalanmiller said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
Accounting, like IT, has no advantage to being local to you. But getting accounting right, just like getting IT right, is critical for your business.
I disagree with this. I have a great business going because I focus on a geographic area. Most of my clients are with 5 minutes of each other. I offer no per trip charges or mileage charges. My business is growing at the rate I want it to. I can charge what the guys from cities an hour away charge and clients still choose me because it costs less for them when they don't have to pay for mileage. It's also very easy to socially network a geographic area and pick up new clients that way.
Why are you driving at all? Unless a device is offline.
Why drive? While remote support is a awesome tool, and 99% of it all can be done that way.. sometimes you need to see a person. There is so much that can be done when you build a strong relationship - one in person - that will generally build a stronger remote presense.
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@gjacobse said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@dashrender said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@mike-davis said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@scottalanmiller said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
Accounting, like IT, has no advantage to being local to you. But getting accounting right, just like getting IT right, is critical for your business.
I disagree with this. I have a great business going because I focus on a geographic area. Most of my clients are with 5 minutes of each other. I offer no per trip charges or mileage charges. My business is growing at the rate I want it to. I can charge what the guys from cities an hour away charge and clients still choose me because it costs less for them when they don't have to pay for mileage. It's also very easy to socially network a geographic area and pick up new clients that way.
Why are you driving at all? Unless a device is offline.
Why drive? While remote support is a awesome tool, and 99% of it all can be done that way.. sometimes you need to see a person. There is so much that can be done when you build a strong relationship - one in person - that will generally build a stronger remote presense.
Yes, as a salesman this makes sense. As a customer, it wastes your time and raises your costs. So from the customer perspective, this is a bad thing. He would not want this from his accountant.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
This is the same challenge that companies have finding you. How do they find you? (Are you in the yellow pages?) How do they vet you to see if you are good at IT?
So far almost every single one of my clients have come through a referral. When they interview me, I run some of my current clients until I find someone they know. I make sure their reference is on the proposal when it goes out.
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@mike-davis said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@scottalanmiller said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
This is the same challenge that companies have finding you. How do they find you? (Are you in the yellow pages?) How do they vet you to see if you are good at IT?
So far almost every single one of my clients have come through a referral. When they interview me, I run some of my current clients until I find someone they know. I make sure their reference is on the proposal when it goes out.
Yes, but none of that tells you anything. You did that with accountants and all it does is tell someone that they use them, you know it doesn't tell them if the accountant is even minimally qualified. Word of mouth is actually very bad for business unless you really know that the thing you are asking about is a competency of the person you are asking. In the cases of IT or accounting, that is not the case. So you finding an accountant or someone finding you is discovering a relationship, but not determining anything about the service.
You just ran through earlier why this didn't work for you finding an accountant. In fact, it reinforced using one most of us wouldn't even consider talking to. So if anything, it seems to have lowered the bar for you and made you more likely to accept a bad accountant rather than to help you find a good one.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
Yes, but none of that tells you anything. You did that with accountants and all it does is tell someone that they use them, you know it doesn't tell them if the accountant is even minimally qualified.
You lost me here. So would you go to Xero's advisor directory and try to find on in Texas because if they are using Xero they must be competent and if they are in Texas they must be more accountant for my money? Then what do I do? Ask them questions about accounting, of which I know little?
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@mike-davis said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@scottalanmiller said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
Yes, but none of that tells you anything. You did that with accountants and all it does is tell someone that they use them, you know it doesn't tell them if the accountant is even minimally qualified.
You lost me here. So would you go to Xero's advisor directory and try to find on in Texas because if they are using Xero they must be competent and if they are in Texas they must be more accountant for my money? Then what do I do? Ask them questions about accounting, of which I know little?
Knowing Xero doesn't make them competent. But not Only using QB gives them the possibility of being competent. So you are starting from a dramatically better position.
What did you do with your current situation? You went with someone that the ONLY thing you knew about them was that they were not competent, yet you used them anyway. So .... given that you are currently okay with zero vetting or actually negative vetting, why not go to the Xero (or the right tool for you) listing and see who is recommended in a low cost area?
Things that you would know...
- Potential for being good, instead of knowing that they are not.
- Using the tool you want them to use, instead of one that you know you don't.
- Is in a low cost area instead of a high cost area.
- Doesn't have the stigma of being recommended by people known to give bad advice.
Every aspect is more likely to turn out well than the current process. If the question is "is this a good process", the answer is "not really". If the question is "does this dramatically improve the worst possible process" the answer is "absolutely." So, start by improving.
Don't look at it as "how could this work" look at it from the "what I'm doing now is completely broken, I need to improve things." You can't find an accountant that you trust without starting with one you might be able to trust. So take the first step.
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Plus, accountants are federally certified and bound by a lot of laws. So there is some negatives there industry wide, but some advantages for looking for one without personal references.
Or talk to NTG's, as you know that they are a reference, use the tool you want, handle your type of firm, and work in a low cost area.
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QuickBooks is the worst. If you've ever had to run around in a company with like five users on QB and deal with connection issues, shared drive issues, file corruption... it doesn't take much before QB becomes the main thing you are supporting.
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I agree QuickBooks sucks to support. Getting people to switch is even harder...
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@mike-davis said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
I agree QuickBooks sucks to support. Getting people to switch is even harder...
I've actually had decent luck with that. QBs problems are such that it's often possible to make a business case for switching that makes sense. Relatively clear cost and risk issues that owners can understand.
Cost of software, lack of support, high maintenance costs, no hope of improvements, high risk of financial data loss.... mostly things you can assign dollar values to and compare against something else.
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We are a tiny shop with only one bookkeeper, the (obviously bad) accountant pushes him to use QB... Sounds like this is about the only semi-acceptable scenario. If the bookkeeper doesn't mind QB is it really that much of an issue?
I have zero knowledge of bookkeeping whatsoever, so if he likes it, I guess who am I to tell him otherwise anyway. I could say "hey, you should check out Xero one day. You might like it better than QB, it's supposed to be far superior."
To top things off I'm pretty sure his old fraternity bro is the accountant. Same reason we were paying $400/mo. for our POTs lines 3 years ago; a different fraternity brother was totally exploiting his "friend"
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@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
We are a tiny shop with only one bookkeeper, the (obviously bad) accountant pushes him to use QB... Sounds like this is about the only semi-acceptable scenario. If the bookkeeper doesn't mind QB is it really that much of an issue?
I have zero knowledge of bookkeeping whatsoever, so if he likes it, I guess who am I to tell him otherwise anyway. I could say "hey, you should check out Xero one day. You might like it better than QB, it's supposed to be far superior."
To top things off I'm pretty sure his old fraternity bro is the accountant. Same reason we were paying $400/mo. for our POTs lines 3 years ago; a different fraternity brother was totally exploiting his "friend"
If they are printing checks today in QB, that will be the sole fail of Xero that will kill them from looking at it!
I know it's a free product and all, but this just really seems like a huge miss to me. I know Minion Queen said it's coming, but really, this just seems weird to be missing day one, unless it's still in beta. -
@dashrender I basically just threw the Xero name in as a place holder, it could be anything. He does print checks so, yeah, Xero is definitely out.
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@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@dashrender I basically just threw the Xero name in as a place holder, it could be anything. He does print checks so, yeah, Xero is definitely out.
Xero does do printing checks. It's WAVEapps that doesn't but again free invoicing program.
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@minion-queen said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@dashrender I basically just threw the Xero name in as a place holder, it could be anything. He does print checks so, yeah, Xero is definitely out.
Xero does do printing checks. It's WAVEapps that doesn't but again free invoicing program.
Aww - thanks for the correction.
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A lot of accountants are on a referral scheme for QuickBooks/Sage/Xero and other tools, so recommendations are often skewed.
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@minion-queen said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
@dashrender I basically just threw the Xero name in as a place holder, it could be anything. He does print checks so, yeah, Xero is definitely out.
Xero does do printing checks. It's WAVEapps that doesn't but again free invoicing program.
Also Xero and QB are full on accounting systems. Waveapps is an invoicing and financial tracking program (very limited in what it offers).
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@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
We are a tiny shop with only one bookkeeper, the (obviously bad) accountant pushes him to use QB... Sounds like this is about the only semi-acceptable scenario. If the bookkeeper doesn't mind QB is it really that much of an issue?
With only one user, it's still not a good tool, but it's not nearly so bad.
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@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
I have zero knowledge of bookkeeping whatsoever, so if he likes it, I guess who am I to tell him otherwise anyway.
Because you know IT and what healthy business software looks like. Try reversing that statement... he knows nothing about IT or software, who is he to dictate what software the business depends on?
IT should not be the sole decider of what software a company uses. But NO software should ever be chosen without IT's involvement and "okay". Basically, the accountant has been elevated to CIO in this case and is getting sweeping powers to determine core financial software for the company without oversight. Put it in a business perspective and it sounds crazy.
Why would an accountant be in a position to make such a decision? How could they have the necessary IT, software and business knowledge to do so properly? Easy answer - they can't, not reasonably.
It doesn't require accounting knowledge to get good accounting software. Just like you don't have to be a good novelist to know what a good word processor is like. And you don't have to be a stock trader to know a good spreadsheet application. Yes, some accounting software is better than others, and the bookkeepers should be involved in that decision, or really the CFO should. But involved is nothing like being the IT decision maker without oversight.
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@bnrstnr said in Why QuickBooks Is Not a Business Tool:
I could say "hey, you should check out Xero one day. You might like it better than QB, it's supposed to be far superior."
Keep in mind that "they might like it" is not the top concern. That it is "right for your business" is a much higher priority. The bookkeeper works for the company, not the company for them. And IT is there to represent the business' interests in regards to security, data protection, support, cost, etc.
Yes, the accountant needs to be efficient on whatever you choose. But they don't have to "like" it. That's not how business works. If it was, everyone would stay home and get paid to play video games all day.
