As a ProAdvisor, you have probably noticed the types of mistakes that your clients make and have spent a lot of your time fixing those mistakes. Have you noticed that trying to fix them can make things worse, sometimes? According to Gregg Bossen, “There are very specific ways that changes need to be made (in QuickBooks) and just trying to fix things can mess up your client’s books, which will lead to a very unhappy client.” To help you better manage the errors clients make in their books and to help you create better relationships with your clients, Gregg will be teaching three sessions at QuickBooks Connect for accounting professionals: “QuickBooks at Tax Time” (to help you with your small business clients), “QuickBooks for Contractors” (to help you with your constructions contractor clients), and “QuickBooks for Non Profits” (to help you with your nonprofit clients).
Nationally recognized as a QuickBooks expert, Gregg Bossen is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and a practicing CPA for his own accounting firm where he files tax returns and handles book keeping for small businesses, and performs audits specifically for
nonprofit organizations. He is an experienced QuickBooks trainer and (according to his LinkedIn profile) “has taught over 400 seminars to around 15,000 people.” When asked how he got started in teaching QuickBooks and how he became such a well-known trainer, he said:
“I always wanted to speak in front of people, but I wasn’t sure how to do that as an accountant. Then a while back, when I was practicing at my accounting firm, I noticed that people were starting to use QuickBooks and that my clients were using it so I decided to take a QuickBooks class. And while I was sitting in the class and listening to the speaker, I felt like this type of speaking was what I had been looking for. So I contacted the people putting on a class and told them I wanted to train for them. Well in response, I got back this very short email that basically explained how difficult it would be and how millions of people wanted to do this type of work, and how if I was still interested to send them a video of my presentation. The shot of getting the job was very small, but the next day I was called by someone to give a presentation and I recorded it and I sent it to them because I really wanted that job, and they called me back and said they loved it and that I was a natural. I’ve been training ever since.”
After training for Real World Training for a few years, Gregg decided to create his own product and training company and that was how he founded QuickBooksMadeEasy. Well-known for this second company and the products that have made using QuickBooks easier for end-users, Gregg said that QuickBooksMadeEasy is a training company, which is currently focused on contractors and nonprofit organizations, where he and his team train people on how to use QuickBooks through seminars, webinars, training products, and technical support. He said, “I have this theory that if you're new to QuickBooks and you want to get training in it, then its one thing to learn how to use QuickBooks, and it's another thing to learn how to use it in your industry. So I give people something that will a) teach them how to use QuickBooks and b) teach them how to use it in their industry. Wwith my company’s training they learn everything they need to know in the way that they need to learn it." This same statement can then be said for Gregg’s three upcoming sessions because he’ll be teaching you, the accounting professional, everything you need to know as well.
QuickBooks at Tax Time
To explain his first session, Gregg said, “Sometimes you get a client and they go ‘Oh my books won’t be hard because I’m using my stuff in QuickBooks and you won’t have to charge me much,’ but you get the books and there are a lot of mistakes. So this class is to teach you how to quickly identify the problems that exist within a data file and how to make the right changes so that you don’t mess it up for the client.” To explain some of the mistakes accounting professionals can make and what they need to learn, Gregg provided two examples:
He said, “Say we want to know what the receivables/payables total is, and if I figure out the client’s total is wrong and needs to be adjusted. If I make this lump adjustment, then that's going to mess up the books for the client. When you do an adjustment in the receivables/payables in QuickBooks, you need to understand how to do it for the individual receivable accounts. Inventory is another example. You say, ‘I just want the number,’ but with tracking in QuickBooks there's individual items, and you need to make adjustments by item. So you need to know how to do that efficiently and effectively.”
So some of the things you’ll be learning how to do are:
- how to best make changes to client data files (through on-site, remotely, accountants copy and the send journal entry feature)
- how to set the closing date and points to consider
- how to effectively use the file manager
- how to use the audit trail
- how to use the client data review to correct you client’s data file
- how to send changes back to your client
Gregg also hopes that this class will help you learn more about QuickBooks so that you’ll be able to give QuickBooks tips and tricks to your client with QuickBooks. Gregg said, “This is important because it’s going to a) result in less errors in the following year and b) result in a happier client because the best thing you can do for your client (other than save them money) is show them a better way to do something that they were already doing in QuickBooks.”
The main takeaway of this session will then be:
- an understanding of how to effectively and efficiently fix your clients data files (tools in the form of tips and tricks that will prove invaluable to both you and your client)
Gregg also said that this will be a valuable class for accounting professionals “because it's going to make their year-end so much easier. It's addressing problems that occur all the time for accountants but that they don't how to deal with it so it'll be an eye-opening experience.”
QuickBooks for Contractors
To explain why this second session is important for accounting professionals with contractor clients, Gregg provided some information about the specifics of contractor reports:
He said, “Contractors have specific needs in terms of reporting that no other industry has. They need to analyze their specific jobs/projects; they need to understand the true costs of what a job/project is; they need to estimate for the job and then use that estimate to compare to the actual costs to see how well they estimated it because that determines their ultimate profitability; and they need to know which specific parts of the project are profitable. So for those reasons it's very important when you set up your books that you set them up correctly if your contractor.”
So what this class seeks to do is teach you how to set up a contractor’s books specifically so that contractors can get the most effective job reports they need. Gregg said, “QuickBooks has the tools that are designed specifically for constructing contractors, yet so few in the industry actually know how to use them. So what I'm really trying to teach accounting professionals is all the features that QuickBooks has that are designed for construction contractors.”
Some of these QuickBooks tools that you’ll be learning are:
- how to set up jobs appropriately
- how to estimate fixed cost jobs
- how to accumulate costs and invoice for time and material
- how to track change orders and committed costs
The main takeaway will then be:
- how to give your clients the ability to get the reports that they’ve always wanted
Gregg also said that learning these things and showing your clients how to set up their reports will also help you maintain the integrity of the balance sheet so that there are less errors to fix at years end.
QuickBooks for Non Profits
Gregg’s third session is similar to his second session in that it’s recognizing that these types of clients have specific needs for their reports. Gregg said, “The nonprofit industry has many reporting requirements that lots of other businesses don't have, and the reason why is because they have a lot of stakeholders. So QuickBooks isn’t really designed for nonprofits, but if you know how to use it then there are a number of tools that you can use as workarounds, and that’s what I’ll be teaching.”
Therefore, the main learning objective for this class is to:
- learn how to appropriately set up accounts, classes, customers, and items to track all the things that nonprofits need to track
And the main takeaway will be to:
- be able to give your clients the kind of tracking that they need for their specific reports to keep them from cluttering up the charter accounts
While you’ll be getting a lot of useful information that will really help you with your clients and your year-end process, Gregg said that attendees should really come because “they’re going to have a lot of fun.” He said, “They’re going to learn a lot and they’re going to laugh their way through the class.” When asked what he meant, Gregg said that they’ll have fun “because people feel very comfortable in my classes and I feel very comfortable in my classes.” He said:
“I love being in front of people, I love explaining things to them, I love making hard things easy-to-understand, and I love making people laugh. And when you're speaking or teaching in front of someone, my theory is ‘the more you are yourself the better you are’ so I speak and teach just like how I talk normally. So my teaching style is very conversational. I also ask a lot of questions and tell stories so it's a very participatory class.”
With Gregg’s sessions you’ll get the information you need to help your clients with QuickBooks and have fun time learning how to do it. You can still register for QuickBooks Connect by clicking here.