As an Advanced QuickBooks Expert I often talk to accountants who have very strong opinions about QuickBooks. They either love it or hate it. What I have found is that many times, accountants love and hate QuickBooks for the same reasons. I thought I’d share the top five reasons why accountants love/hate QuickBooks and some tips to help you love QuickBooks just a little more.
Tip No. 1: It’s easy to change transactions in QuickBooks
This is the No. 1 reason why accountants have a love/hate relationship with QuickBooks: it's so easy to change transactions. You love QuickBooks because you can make changes easily without making lots of journal entries. You hate QuickBooks because clients can make changes so easily.
To keep clients from making changes in QuickBooks, I recommend setting up Date Warnings in QuickBooks and also password protecting closed periods. This is done from the Edit Menu and selecting Accounting and Company Preferences as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Date warnings and closing date.
Tip No. 2: The infamous 'Undeposited Funds' account
The second reason why accountants love/hate QuickBooks is the Undeposited Funds account. As a former auditor, I can tell you that the Undeposited Funds account used to make me very nervous because I didn’t understand its purpose. After all, Undeposited Funds was not a topic in any of my college accounting courses.
Accountants hate it because they don’t understand it. Let me give you a short explanation: the Undeposited Funds account is used to track moneys collected until a deposit is entered in QuickBooks. I happen to love the Undeposited Funds account because, when used correctly, the amount of the deposit entered in QuickBooks should match up to the deposit amount on the bank statement. This makes the monthly bank reconciliation process super easy. If the Undeposited Funds account is not used, deposits in QuickBooks must be added together manually to reconcile them to deposits on the bank statement.
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