Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of stories about the weirdest ways some of today's leading ProAdvisors have used QuickBooks. In "Wacky Story Wednesdays," we will recant some of the more outlandish—and creative—stories both personally and professionally? If you have a tale you'd like to share, drop us a note in the comment box.
Over the years, I’ve made QuickBooks work for my clients in some pretty wacky ways. And bear in mind that for much of that time, I didn’t have the benefit of apps to smooth out or automate my workflow. One of the craziest ways I used QuickBooks was for my own personal use—managing my son’s Bar Mitzvah.
Let me set the scene: It was Toronto, 2004. I was using QuickBooks Desktop, which at the time was known simply as “QuickBooks.” With my son Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah fast approaching, I had to send out the invitations. That’s right: Printed, addressed, snail-mailed invitations (remember those?).
I wasn’t interested in addressing the envelopes myself or paying someone else to do it. As for printed address labels, I never liked that function in Microsoft Word. The labels always seemed to cut off at the bottom or top. In addition, I couldn’t make full use of partial sheets of labels. Word was just not my strong suit.
What was a ProAdvisor mother to do?
I went with my strengths. I created a new QuickBooks company file called "Bar Mitzvah." And then I made copious use of the software’s functions:
- I exported all my contacts from my Palm Pilot (remember those?) into a spreadsheet, extracting just the people I wanted to invite. Next, I reformatted the remaining list and imported it into QuickBooks as my Customer List.
- I created custom fields for the number of people invited at each address and the number actually RSVP’ing “yes.”I also created Customer Types, e.g., “Our friends,” “My family,” “Daniel’s friends,” and so on.
- Then, I used the QuickBooks mailing labels function, printing on clear address labels to apply to the envelopes.Next, I used the information from the RSVP’s we received to input the custom field data for how many were expected.
- Using the customers with “yes” in the RSVP custom field and the number attending in the other custom field, I created a list report filtered for these parameters.
- I exported that list to Excel and created a seating plan (seating customers of the same “type” together), place cards, a list of gifts received, and a “Thank you” record list.
However, if I’d wanted to make use of the actual accounting functions in the software, I could have gone the distance and done the following:
- Create a chart of accounts for the bank and credit card accounts for payments, as well as expenses (food, entertainment, postage, stationery and printing, etc.) that would be paid.
- Create a budget for the event, and as expenses materialized, produce Actuals vs. Budget reports.
- Use the purchase order function to track contracts or agreements made with the caterer, the DJ, etc., so that I could keep track of what the expected expenses were and run an Open Purchase Orders report to see what was outstanding, vendor by vendor.
Clearly this could have been used for any event planning scenario.
Nowadays, there are many options in the event planning or project management space, and a number of them integrate with other software, either directly or via Zapier. I can imagine an invitation created in Calendly sent out via Typeform to a customer list kept in Google Sheets, and so on. People who RSVP “yes” can land up on a Monday.com project board for the event. The possibilities are endless.
But back in 2004, this was kind of cutting edge.
Esther Friedberg Karp is an internationally-renowned trainer, writer and speaker from Toronto, where she runs her QuickBooks consulting practice, EFK CompuBooks Inc. Consistently in Insightful Accountant's Top 100 ProAdvisors, she has been named to the Top 10 twice.
A ProAdvisor in three countries, she has traveled the world with Intuit, spoken at QuickBooks Connect in San Jose and Toronto, among other places, and has written countless articles for Intuit Global.
Esther has been named one of the “Top 50 Women in Accounting,” a “Top 10 Influencer” in the Canadian Bookkeeping World, and is a repeat nominee for the “RBC Canadian Women’s Entrepreneur Awards.” She counts among her clients many international companies, as well as accounting professionals seeking her out on behalf of their own clients for her expertise in multi-currency and various countries’ editions of QuickBooks Desktop and Online.
She can be reached at esther@e-compubooks.com or 416-410-0750.
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