In this episode of the CFO project podcast, we discuss QuickBooks.

Welcome to the CFO project podcast. Today we're talking all about QuickBooks and why you should and why you shouldn't suggest it for client work. Set to help me with the discussion, I've invited Alicia Katz Pollak. She's the founder and CEO of Royal Y solutions, which is a training company trying to. She trains accountants and bookkeepers on how to leverage QuickBooks.

She also is the host of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. Alicia, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks very much for having me, Adam. Yeah. So I'm excited to talk about this because, you know, there's QuickBooks. There's a love and hate relationship, love and or hate relationship with QuickBooks. And it seems like you asked 100 different people, you'll get 100 different responses to whether or not they like it or don't like it, or they should offer it for clients.

So let's talk about QuickBooks A but before we do that, you know, you're a trainer, you train accountants and bookkeepers. Why did you get into this profession and why did you start royal wise? Well, I have a master's in teaching and I started as a seventh grade English teacher. But I quickly discovered that the kids didn't want to be there.

And so teaching them was like, you know, luck. And so actually, seventh graders. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so I started teaching at business colleges instead, at community colleges and then freelancing to actually just teach business owners how to use originally Microsoft products like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and Excel. And then it veered into Apple training. And then my clients started asking me, well, can you help me with my QuickBooks?

And at that point, I didn't even have a bookkeeping background. I'm like, well, I'm not. So sure I should, but I learned everything that I needed to learn. And when I ran by the ran, the work that I was doing by other bookkeepers and accounts, they were like, Alicia, this is bomb proof. You've got a knack for this.

And as my company evolved originally, it's my husband is my business partner and as well. And originally it was just whoever got the first phone call would go help the client. But as soon as I started doing QuickBooks training, that part of the business just absolutely took off. And so he's now the Apple trainer, and I'm now the QuickBooks trainer.

Got it okay. And so when you started with QuickBooks training, was it when QuickBooks was 100% desktop? I start when I started using it when it was 100% desktop, and I was actually on QuickBooks for Mac from the beginning, but I started using online back in 2011 for one of my companies, and I absolutely got hooked. I saw how much easier it was to use and how much more it did than the desktop version.

So I was an early convert. Yeah, the total I remember in college I was the I was going I was getting a major in an accounting, a degree in accounting, and I was working for somebody. And the owner, she knew I was majoring in accounting and she says, hey, I just didn't start QuickBooks and we need some help.

Can you do this? And I just dug in and figured it out. And actually, I liked it. It was a QuickBooks. QuickBooks desktop. This is back in 2001. I think, it made sense, and I think it also made sense because I was majoring in accounting. But, but then once I switched to online QuickBooks online, I thought it was phenomenal.

But then I started talking to other people and they thought, this is terrible. I can't use online. And then, you know, over the years it got better and better. But I'm curious to to talk with you about this. So let's dive in. So let me ask you, Alicia, there seems to be this love hate relationship with QuickBooks. Let's start off there.

Why do you think that is? Well, there's a couple reasons for it. And one of them is that people developed their expertise in QuickBooks desktop, and even though they both have the name QuickBooks in the name, they're two completely different pieces of software. And so somebody from desktop goes over to QuickBooks online expecting it to work the same way.

And it's completely different. And they're lost and you know, when you're learning something brand new, especially when you didn't expect to have to, that's a frustrating experience. So they associate that frustration with the product, even though the product is excellent. It's the lack of training that is their issue. And so they kind of get stuck in in that.

And now would you say that is true for the business owners, the end users, or would you say that's true for the accountants and bookkeepers, the ones that are in there every day or or both? Yeah, that that's the experience of the bookkeepers. For the business owners, most of the time this is their first experience just going straight into Qvo.

And so they don't know any different. But Intuit back in the day used to advertise that it's so easy that anybody can do it. And we all know that that is absolutely not true. And so there's that element as well that if you don't have a bookkeeping brain, using QuickBooks is not a no brainer. And so training is always the missing piece to your enjoyment of the software.

Okay. So let me ask you this, sort of two questions I want to ask. The first one is if somebody is if a if somebody is new to QuickBooks. What is the hardest piece that they need to sort of get their head around to make it easier. The bank feed is the number one thing because if you use the bank feed well it's your best friend.

And if you use it incorrectly it's your worst nightmare for that. If you look at it and you're like, oh, the software must know better than me, let me just go add all these transactions. Your books are going to be absolute gibberish. And what people don't realize is that you're in charge, that it's making suggestions for what it thinks might be helpful to you, but it's completely up to you to use that that big brain of yours and actually look at each transaction and either say verified.

Yes, this is what you think it is, or no, this is how it this is what it really is. And the bank feed learns. And so when somebody starts off with Kubeflow and they're looking at the bank feed going, oh my God, this is gibberish. This is a horrible product. Well, no, you have to actually teach it how your business works and how you categorize things.

And as you do that, it learns. Yeah. No, I agree. And that that's one of the things when they introduce the bank feed automatic, connection API connection with the with most major banks. I thought this was a game changer because before you had to like, you had to, like, import or manually key in the transaction. And and that was just a it it was so much grunt work that was being taken away.

And now you can focus on the things. Okay. So in, in terms of the one of the biggest complaints I hear about QuickBooks is that they are trying to make it easier for business owners who don't have an accounting or bookkeeping background. And because of that, they're dumbing down. This is what I this is not my opinion, but this is just what people are saying.

They're dumbing down the functionality of QuickBooks, and they're, in essence, trying to compete with the bookkeepers and accountants. What would you say? What is your thoughts on that? Well, they went through this phase for a couple of years where they they were like, well, let's help people out by giving them two interfaces. Let's make a bookkeeper interface and a and the business owner interface.

And that was not a well thought out decision. And then we had that whole element of, well, what interface are you looking at? Oh wait, switch back over to the accountant view so that it we can actually talk the same language. And so that was one of their attempts at solving the problem. But they actually just made it worse really.

So do you I mean do you believe that business owners have business being in QuickBooks. Or should it be left up to the bookkeeper and accountant. Well that depends on the type of business and the person themselves that if the business is super simple and straightforward, then I have a lot of my clients who are DIY in the books, and then so they're doing their bookkeeping through the month or through the quarter, and then I come in and verify their work and use the reclassify tool and reconcile for them.

And for those people, it works great. But there's other people who are not tech savvy, who are not comfortable and don't really understand the business behind their business. They're excellent at providing their services. They went into business because they're something they're passionate about and good at. And if bookkeeping was that thing, they would become a bookkeeper. And so those people should not be in QuickBooks.

Those people should have somebody doing the books for them, full service, in full charge. Everybody listening. If you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape the accountants trap, go to the CFO project.com/newsletter. So is there a compared to the other software out there? Why? Why would you suggest QuickBooks for an accounting or bookkeeper to suggest their clients to use?

Why would you? The the two biggest reasons are the the fact that they've got the biggest market share and the biggest set of app integrations, that it's easier to go with QuickBooks as a default because just it's so establish and there's so many opportunities that you can pick, which are workflows best for you, in which app workflow is best for you?

Because QuickBooks is just designed to be that central hub, and then you pick the app integrations around it that create a custom environment for your app for each individual business. Yeah. And the other part is that it really is best in class software. You know, even with the the constant changes in the constant testing that they're doing to improve the product, it's still, you know, there's other platforms and other general ledgers out there, but they don't hold a candle to all the things that QuickBooks online does.

So why is that that why why is why has the marketplace let QuickBooks or let into it take the lion's share? Why is there not a like a Pepsi to the Coca-Cola? You know what I mean? Because there's other players we know zero and there's other players out there, but they're not as big. Why is that? Well, I think it was you know, QuickBooks was the first to market they in the beginning back, you know, 30 years ago when I started doing this, you only had really two choice or three choices.

You had quicken. But that was personal. You had QuickBooks and you had mind your own business or MYOB. And I'm not even sure if my Obi is still around or not. And so because they were first to market and Intuit poured all of their resources into developing this entire ecosystem, they had a distinct advantage in, in timing that they went cloud based back in, I think it was 2010, and I had that pretty early self in 2011.

So early adopter and lots of money poured into development. So they had an ecosystem before other people even decided to really start developing. When as an accountant or bookkeeper who's advising their clients or it's taking on a new client that maybe has books that are not organized or they need to switch to a different software or whatnot, or they're on a proprietary software, like I had a client one time that was that was using a proprietary software that wasn't being, updated anymore.

And it's just clear that it was a good another client that they didn't even have bookkeeping. They used Excel, and it was sort of a it was crazy, but they were successful business. It was just blew my mind. Hey there, Adam Lane with the CFO project podcast. Are you an employed accountant or bookkeeper that would like to start an advisory service on the side?

Well, we have a free training for you called Side Hustle CFO. We will show you how to start a business on the side, offering CFO and advisory services to small business owners. We conduct this training every Friday at 3:00 pm eastern and 12:00 pm Pacific. Go to the CFO project. Com and click on Free trainings to register. When should you suggest to a client not to use QuickBooks to use something else?

Is there a particular use case for not using QuickBooks? Well, at this point Intuit has put out so many different products, that there's literally six different versions of QuickBooks online. And so if you had asked me that question two years ago, it would be a different answer than now that they just came out with QuickBooks ledger, which is like a quick and dirty dump.

The receipts in the categories solution and QuickBooks Online Advanced is now what the position is mid-market. But it's like, you know, kind of slightly under that robust enterprise level mid-market meeting like know. Yeah, like I think 5 million to $10 million in revenue is what they're trying to position it for. Okay. And with QuickBooks online advanced. So they've been pouring all of their resources into developing more tools that larger accrual based businesses need.

And so if you had asked me two years ago, I would say, well, hey, if your business is mid-market, then you need to go to Net suite or one of those other solutions. But they've done so much development that now they can capture kind of 90% of industries. So I would say that the times when you don't want to use QuickBooks online would be, heavy construction and heavy, manufacturing.

That QuickBooks online itself doesn't have those tools, but there are excellent apps out there that take on that capability. But I hear from the people in those industries that a QuickBooks desktop enterprise still has more reports and better workflows. So I leave those people on desktop. There is is Intuit still supporting the desktop version for the enterprise? They're in the process of sunsetting, desktop, but so they've gotten rid of Pro and Premiere actually, by the end of September, you're not going to be able to start a new subscription in those levels.

But QuickBooks enterprise is still alive and well and being supported and developed. Interesting. Okay. What are some little known features of QuickBooks that most accountants and bookkeepers aren't leveraging? That if they did, it may make their lives easier? Yeah, my my biggest game changer features are some of the little known features inside the banking feed that if you click the little tiny gear just above the bank feeds grid, there's a whole set of options in there that allow you to customize the experience.

So, for example, you can take the bank detail that comes in from the bank and put it in the memo line, which then makes it available absolutely everywhere in all of your reports. So like that one feature for me is a huge game changer. The fact that you can snap a receipt with your phone, it doesn't even sit on your camera roll, it just goes straight into your QuickBooks.

Or you can email it in so that way you can attach all your receipts to your transactions is a game changer. You have to have do you have to have the app on your phone to do that? So you download the app to. Okay. Yeah. And if you're a it's designed for registered users. So you have to have a user account to log into the app.

But users of QuickBooks Online Advanced can actually connect to their employees and give their employees receipts only logins in their expense manager feature. So if you have, you know, if you have a sales team on the road, for example, if you have a client who has sales teams on the right, you advise your client to have them download.

They can upload receipts that way. Things interesting. And and there's one other feature that is really crucial. And it's in the accountants version it's the reclassify tool. And so for all of you accountants out there who when you do your year end reviews and you're making journal entries because the business owner put their food in meals and entertainment that you know, it's owner draw don't just make journal entry to owner draw.

There's a reclassify tool that will allow you to just click on the ten transactions in one shot and move them all and the reason why that's important is because your business owners always look back at what they did before. And if you just had a plug at the end of the year, they think they're still supposed to put it in meals and entertainment.

And so by doing them, that service of going through the reclassify and putting everything where it really belongs, you're doing everybody a service. So if you're you offer training for accountable keepers to to understand QuickBooks more, what is the number one or top? I say top 1 or 2 reasons why an account or a bookkeeper will seek out training.

What are they trying to accomplish? The learning curve is the biggest thing that you can sit there and you can self teach yourself on the software, but taking an hour or 3 hours or 6 hours to actually get a guided tour of what everything is, why it is, and the best practices of using it, absolutely saves you hours and hours of time of doing it the hard way, or never noticing that there's a workflow that you didn't know was there.

And so all of my trainings are guaranteed ROI and I also am CPA eligible through Nazare as well. So since you have to get your CPA anyway, why not make your life easier by spending it on the technical training on QuickBooks? Wow. Okay. Very interesting. And you offer trainings you mentioned, you know, Apple and then you say Microsoft products as well.

Yeah. Trainings all around that. Yeah, very cool. Well tell us a little bit about your your training business then roll wise. Sure. So because I'm a teacher training is the heart of what I do. And so we started with training my business owner clients. And then I just kept making more videos and more courses for every little piece of QuickBooks online, to the point that the QuickBooks part of our library has over 50 different classes in it, from a six hour bootcamp class up to just three hours just on the bank feed and an hour and a half, not just on reconciling, but what are all those other transactions in my ledger that aren't supposed

to be there? How do I know what to do with them and fix them to sales tax, payroll, custom forms, styles? And literally every component of QuickBooks has its own course, and so you can take any one of them ala carte and just buy that one class or you can join as a member and get access to what we call the knowledge base, or the everything that we do is owls.

That's our mascot is owl. So it's the knowledge base with the all capitalized. And so our members get full access to the library. They get, two monthly meetings, they get access to class forums where they can ask questions, and then I pop in and answer the questions. And the gold members also get an hour with me every single month to answer their questions and do hands on work in their books.

Very cool. All right, so where does somebody go to learn more? So it's at learn dot Royal wise.com is the learning management system. And we also have a program for accounting firms that they can white label our portal and turn it into their own custom portal where they can leverage our classes as the backbone and then add their own classes in.

So for example, you can take every one of your customers and record your workflows and videos of your workflows or your SOP documents, and use our platform as the organizational system for it. And then invite your clients in and invite the bookkeepers in that engagement into it. And then everybody has one collaborative resource to keep track of all of the instructions for that client.

That's awesome. All right. Very cool. Excuse me. So learn dot royal wise royal like a queen and wise like an owl. Perfect. Learn dot Royal wise.com. Excellent. Alicia, thank you so much for being on the show. Well, thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to be here and everyone listening or watching. If you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape the accountants trap, just go to the CFO project.com/newsletter.

See you next time on the CFO project podcast.