Does QuickBooks Frustrate You? If You Answered "Yes" You Are Not Alone!
99.99% of all QuickBooks Issues can be traced back to two root causes:
- How QuickBooks setup was done originally
- How transactions are put into QuickBooks
QuickBooks Makes Construction Accounting
Look Easy As Microwave Popcorn
How many advertisements have you seen by Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks that makes it appear like accounting is so simple a five year old can do it. The truth is Intuit is a sales and marketing firm that sells and markets software. And QuickBooks is one of the big winners for them because it has removed a lot of the pain associated with accounting; but it is still accounting and certain principles still apply. For example "Debits" are on the left and when they are not we give them "Credit".
When you write a check in QuickBooks you can impact up to 27 different tables and hundreds of reports which means in the end there are thousands of things that can go wrong. Even those of us with a deep background in accounting have known for years there are several things QuickBooks allows users to do which can lead them down harmful paths. One of the worst ideas ever in the history of QuickBooks is putting your bank and credit card account numbers inside QuickBooks. I suspect this was done in response to users asking for it.
Don’t assume that QuickBooks will keep an uninformed bookkeeper or user for making mistakes and don't assume it will stop your from doing something that will cause financial harm to your construction company because it WON'T! Understand that QuickBooks is just a tool like a hammer is a tool and hammers do not know which nail to drive into which piece of wood.
The problem is that bookkeeper not trained in construction accounting don’t know which nails to drive where inside QuickBooks so they just start “hammering” and causing untold damage. What happens too often is they open the box, load the program, and start using it without help or guidance. This works fine for small phone apps, games and programs, like Publisher because if you make a mistake in Publisher the damage is limited to only one file. You can see and immediately correct your mistake and it doesn't impact your taxes, job costing reports, obtaining a loan, or running your construction company!
But if you or your contractors bookkeeper makes mistakes in your QuickBooks for Contractors file it might be months or years before anyone finds it and only then if they know what to look for in the financial and job costing reports to know if they are seriously wrong.
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