August 27, 2024 • 59 mins
Matthew Fulton joins us for what looks to be shaping up as a series on Bank Feeds, but we will begin at the end - Reconciliation and look at Best practices when reconciling Bank and Credit Card accounts and discuss some tools that will help make this critical process much smoother.
QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Michelle Long, CPA and Dan DeLong who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.
Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dan DeLong (00:06):
You are listening to the audio portion of the QB
Power Hour webinar series.
The QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for
accounting professionalspresented by Michelle Long and
Dan DeLong, who are verypassionate about the industry,
QuickBooks, and apps thatintegrate with QuickBooks.
You can find out all the detailsabout the webinar series at
(00:27):
qbpowerhour.
com.
So without further ado, here'sMichelle and Dan.
Welcome, everybody, to anotherQB Power Hour.
We are talking today about bankreconciliations in QuickBooks
Online.
Very exciting stuff, right?
Because that is, that's whatwe're here for, right?
that is like the, Michelle, whatwould you equate bank
(00:51):
reconciliations or justreconciling accounts to in a
hierarchy of things?
Michelle Long (00:59):
It's like the core of our business a lot of
times.
It's One of the central thingsthat we do to make sure we've
got all the transactions andthat things are in there and
it's one Of the starting pointsto getting everything in there.
So
Dan DeLong (01:16):
yeah, I mean it's if you're you know the old saying
of Counting beans, right?
That's what that's where therubber hits the road
Michelle Long (01:28):
carolyn says it's like washing the dishes,
something you have to do all thetime.
Matthew Fulton (01:35):
I remember when I first got started in working
with QuickBooks Online,reconciliations were the
absolute bane of my existence.
I hated, them, especially in theold, system.
It just took forever and just,it was a nightmare.
And we're going to show todaylike how it's so much easier.
It's going to be pretty cool.
Dan DeLong (01:56):
As, the elder statesman in the, on the panel,
Michelle what, was that like?
Michelle Long (02:03):
Now I don't like this elder business experience,
maybe.
It is amazing.
It is amazing how far bankruptcyhas come.
I talking about bankruptcy, itjust reminded me, speaking of
elder or experience in my veryfirst internship that I had with
Hallmark cards, which I'mtalking about Hallmark
(02:26):
corporate, the private company.
It would be a fortune 500company if they were public.
But anyway, so my first job Iwas reconciling a bank account
This was back in the manualdays, you know his mainframe
system manual days Anyway, I wasoff like ten thousand dollars on
this account and I couldn't forthe life of me find it You know,
(02:46):
I had checked everything andthis was old days where you got
your ruler and your cash Vyingthrough things and checking them
off to the bank statement theold fashioned way that we had to
do it the hard way I couldn'tfind it.
I was off like ten thousanddollars.
So I went and asked my manager,Hey, can you help me with this?
He was like, ah, it's goodmaterial.
(03:06):
We'll look for it next month Myfirst lesson in immateriality
was 10, 000 on a 2 million bankaccount was immaterial.
It was like, no big deal, we'lljust look for it next month.
I was like, oh my gosh! But lookhow far bank records have come
to where we are today, whereit's at.
(03:27):
Pulling in the statements ispulling in this whole bank feed
automating this transaction.
And now it's pulling in bankbalances in the month for us and
doing the reconciliation for us.
Wow.
Yeah, literally.
Dan DeLong (03:40):
I was telling Matt when we were preparing for, this
this, webinar is that, Iliterally reconciled six months
of a, of an account.
In less than a minute, with thetools that are now available,
it's amazing how far it's come,there's Casey.
Michelle Long (04:07):
Sorry.
Casey said it took 10
Dan DeLong (04:10):
minutes.
He's
Michelle Long (04:11):
shocked, too.
I can't believe it.
Dan DeLong (04:16):
Alright, let's go ahead and kick us off here.
Go ahead, Michelle.
Michelle Long (04:21):
Hi, everybody.
I'm Michelle Long, CPA.
Frequently, or formerly, newlyretired.
Figuring out what I am thesedays.
Former owner of Wands forSuccess.
I actually, I still own it.
Actually, my whole career, I'vewanted a jewelry client.
I finally got a jewelry client.
(04:43):
I couldn't say no.
I'm going to wind up paying himmore than he ever pays me.
Anyway, I've got all kinds ofprojects lined up with my new
plan and I am getting him set upand going You know, that's the
great thing about being retired.
You can decide what you want tosay.
Yes or no Anyway, i'll get himgoing and then i'll turn him
(05:03):
over to my son.
For the ongoing work, butanyhow, that's enough about me.
Dan, go ahead.
Dan DeLong (05:11):
Dan DeLong, owner of Danwith and School of
Bookkeeping, working worked at,not working worked at Intuit for
nearly 18 years and co hostingtoday as well as the Workshop
Wednesdays over atschoolbookkeeping.
com and doing some tech editingfor some of the QBO book and
QuickBooks books that are outthere and joining us today
(05:35):
Friend of the show.
Matthew Fulton (05:37):
I need a haircut.
Otherwise, I'd look like that,but I'm still Matthew Fulton My
friends call me Spot, founderand owner of Parkway Business
Solutions You know, we focusprimarily on workflow design
still do a bunch of accounting,but highly, specialized and I
helped click the light switch onfor QB community, like the
Facebook group, but they're theones that keep it going.
(05:59):
Of course also, which kind ofties into some of the stuff
today is I am a workflowconsultant for ledger sync.
It's an application thatactually helps you grab all your
transactions, your statements,and your images.
So you can have everything onone single dashboard for all
your clients and very, happy tobe here and be a guest co host.
Thank you guys for asking.
Dan DeLong (06:20):
Appreciate you joining us here today and the,
sweetening that you did on thepresentation slides is forever.
I'll forever be in your debtbecause I'll be leveraging the
the consistencies that you'vedone here.
So appreciate that.
(06:40):
A little bit the QB Power Hour.
It's every other Tuesday at 12noon Eastern.
This one is not eligible for CPECredit but the first one of the
month will be with our friendsat Baker's Hub will be our CPE
sponsor, but this one is, not.
So we just wanna make sure thateverybody's aware that even
(07:02):
though it's a great topic and,and should be we just wanna try
to make it a, an easier.
Act option of just that firstone of the month, whatever that
happens to be, would be eligiblefor CPE credit.
And if the links there, and Ithink put them in the chat for
today's, for today's slides the,landing page that we have set up
(07:27):
for, today has the the handoutsand we'll have the replay and
the podcast and whatnot.
But if you go to qbpowerhour.
com slash resources, there'sPDFs and recordings of all of
the of the prior QB Power Hourwebinars.
so much.
A little bit of housekeeping ifyou have specific questions
about something that we'retalking about here today, please
(07:49):
put them in the Q& A, and but ifyou just have general general
things about what is, what doyou equate bank reconciliation
to, put them in the comments inthe chat, right?
And we are simulcasting, whichagain, it reminds me that I
didn't Do this.
I'm okay.
I've got to do that.
(08:10):
Once we transitioned over forour first poll question, but on
the Facebook group into the QBpower user group, if you're
watching there, whenever I doput it in there, you'll want to
make sure that the streamingplatform that we're using has
access to your profile.
So we know who you are when youif you happen to say something
(08:33):
in the group there while we'restreaming.
And thank you, Matt, for puttingthe, putting me in a pink hat
because.
We do have a QB Power Hour storewith some swag and I, do look
pretty good in pink there, Ithink.
Matthew Fulton (08:50):
Bringing sexy back, for sure.
Loving it.
It's
Michelle Long (08:54):
a great color on you, Dan.
I think it looks awesome.
Dan DeLong (09:00):
Check it out if you want, and you can, you too can
have your own pink hat.
Alright, so our agenda todaywe're going to be talking about
just reconciling in QuickBooksOnline.
Alright.
In general, some commonchallenges some specialized
workloads.
Mark Matt, Matthew, excuse me.
I was thinking maker is Mark andnot wanting to say maker is
(09:24):
Mark.
And then I threw in Mark forMatt.
Oh my goodness.
One of those days.
But we have some Matthew hassome specific workflows to help
out with with reconciliation,and we have some helpful tools
and hopefully if time, permits,we have some QA time.
I'm going to stop sharingbecause we have our, first poll
(09:46):
question.
How frequently are you much timeare you spending, average in a
month, reconciling accounts forclients?
And I'm looking for the pollquestion.
There we go.
Launching.
Okay, and I'll launch that and Iwill stop sharing so Spot can
pick up.
Matthew Fulton (10:06):
Doing as we speak.
And Michelle was telling usearlier that it's her fault,
actually, that you were That'sright.
Everything is Michelle.
Dan DeLong (10:21):
She is the, she is more than the goat.
She is the goat.
Not just the goat only counting,she is the goat for all the
goats around
Michelle Long (10:31):
today.
No, it's funny though.
You know the Taylor Swift song,Me, I'm the Problem?
That's me today.
No, I don't.
You obviously aren't a cheesefan then, because if you're a
cheese fan, you have to be aTaylor Swift fan too.
I wasn't a big Taylor Swift fanuntil she was Kelsey's
(10:52):
girlfriend, and now I am a bigTaylor Swift fan, too.
And I can't wait for the teaseason to start, which, by the
way, Dan, we gotta get some betsgoing again.
Dan DeLong (11:01):
Yeah, exactly.
Michelle Long (11:03):
But we don't play your team this year, I don't
think.
Dan DeLong (11:07):
It sounds like you're scared.
Michelle Long (11:10):
No, I just don't remember.
I'm just trying to remember, butI don't think we do.
Anyway, sorry.
Back to reconciling.
Yeah,
Matthew Fulton (11:20):
and so to answer the questions in the chat I,
made these polls in my, head.
I was wondering like I saidbefore, the reconciliations used
to take me so much time and Iwas wondering how much time it
takes, on average for you to,reconcile your accounts for all
(11:40):
the accounts for one client.
Hey, you can have two accounts.
You could have 10 accounts.
It just depends on the amount oftime spent.
Dan DeLong (11:47):
yeah and there's, definitely other things other
than financial institutions thatyou could want to reconcile
yourself, like clearing accountand those types of things.
So it could certainly could, addup more so than than financial
institutions.
So, let me go ahead and end thepoll here and I'll share the
(12:08):
results.
It looks like, Majority is 15 to30 minutes per client.
If you have a pretty, if youhave a lot of clients, then that
could certainly certainly add upas a lot of time, of the day.
Michelle Long (12:24):
I would venture to guess too, a lot of that time
is spent going and getting thebank statement.
Now that we have the statementthere, or the balance there, I
think the time spent reconcilingis going to go down in a vast
number of clients.
Not every client.
There's always the exception tothe rule.
But I think a lot of that timeis going to be reduced.
Matthew Fulton (12:45):
What do you guys think?
I definitely agree.
Having worked with anapplication that's been fetching
statements for so many years,trying to get this to be a
consistent process of automatingthat fetching is extremely
difficult because the differentinstitutions change how it's
done all the time.
So we we actually touch base onthat through some of this.
(13:08):
And I will give the fulldisclaimer to everybody that's
here.
If you know me I love to try toshare as much information as
possible.
So this is definitely a decade.
That's worth downloading becausethere will be additional
information.
I've got some workflow tipthings are added in that we can
go through somewhat quick toalways make sure we have enough
time for your questions to Q anda at the end, but definitely
(13:29):
take the time to download it.
Michelle, you brought this upreal quickly earlier.
There's so much more that youneed to reconcile than just your
basic checking and savingsaccount.
The credit cards as well.
So financial institutions, I sayit that way because it's, all of
that.
It could be loan accounts aswell.
Clearing accounts, of course,especially when you're using
(13:50):
third party apps.
I'm a firm believer, when indoubt, wreck the account.
The account, and I don't meanwreck it as in w I mean wreck it
as in reconcile.
No wrecking it,
Dan DeLong (14:01):
Ralph.
Matthew Fulton (14:02):
Yes, exactly right.
And some of the tips and thingsin here have to do with our
accountant tools just in casethere are those who are just
being introduced to those reportoptions.
In there you can see when allyour last reconciliations were
done very quickly and easily.
And at the top you can evenchange your dating of all your
common reports.
(14:22):
Super important to know as well.
But this is where the real funcomes into play, right?
It's the automatic statementfetching.
So this new functionality.
They could
Dan DeLong (14:32):
have used a dog for this icon,
Matthew Fulton (14:38):
You want
Dan DeLong (14:38):
to play fetch or
Matthew Fulton (14:40):
dog names would have been great.
I would have actually beenhonored that way.
So, one of the key things.
Not all financial institutionsare supportive for the fetching.
That's one challenge.
It's, evolving and it's growing,but if they don't support it,
you still have to go get thisstuff.
(15:01):
And then also keep in mind, thelogging credentials have to be
good.
So in the chat if you have aclient that is so wonderful and
they love to change theirBanking passwords every two
weeks because they can'tremember their password say
yeah, that's me i'm sure we'veall got those which cost us tons
of extra time and energy Now thecool thing with this though is
(15:23):
If you've cleared the bank feedand you've done your last
reconciliation These bottomwindows here statement ending
date and ending balance willauto fill in You All right.
So I decided to make this in twominutes, so that you can see
what you should be doing.
So both parties want to ensurethat your families or loved ones
(15:46):
are done.
I can do more on mental healthclaims, one of the things is
when you get a look at all ofthe documents, I would like you
to go over the document thatyou're going to be checking in
so that you can see exactly howthey're divided.
Thanks.
(16:10):
The balance of the depositsyou're checking the dollar
amount you're checking thedollar amount of the money in
the money out each and Thenumber of transactions because
remember I could do a plus 10,000 here and a plus 10, 000 here
and it would still reconcile andnow you have two extra
transactions that shouldn't evenexist there.
So you've got to really look atthat part.
(16:31):
Shortcuts lead to long year endcloses.
So be very careful.
Michelle, Dan, before I go alittle further, what other kind
of like common challenges do youthink will are that you've seen
the most out there as well asthe chat?
What are the common challengesyou all have seen?
Dan DeLong (16:49):
The biggest thing and when I was in my 18 years
talking to small business ownersand accountants added to it was
that opening balance not beingwhat it was when they,
reconciled it last month thatwas just a large call driver,
(17:09):
right?
Because you reconcile it onemonth, you would expect the
ending balance to be the openingbalance the next month that you
go and.
Do that.
It was, a, reasonableexpectation what that, that
happened, the, thing is thatopening balance is one of those
fundamental truths of,QuickBooks that I would call,
(17:33):
tell people is that it's justthe sum of the reconciled
transactions in that account,when you go to reconcile, it is
not pulling from history, right?
It is just.
It is one of those things thatis recalculated when you go to
record stock If and one of mycoworkers said something to a
(17:55):
customer and it's always stuckwith me.
That opening balance, especiallyin QuickBooks Online opening
balance is like a pirate shit.
There's ours in there.
right?
and that's all it's doing.
Is is adding up all of thetransactions that are ours that
are in the register and puttingthat in there and if it doesn't
(18:19):
add up.
Matthew Fulton (18:23):
That's my quote of the day.
That's a
Michelle Long (18:25):
good way to remember it.
Yeah, I
Dan DeLong (18:28):
like it.
And it was easy for me toremember that way.
And it's always stuck with me.
And that's
Michelle Long (18:34):
the
Dan DeLong (18:34):
fundamental truth about that is that Regardless of
what you expect it to be rightbecause you reconcile the last
month that opening balance isjust a recalculation when you go
into this of everything in thatregister at that moment in time
that has an R on it in andthat's what it's going to be.
(18:57):
You can do the same thing, butrun a report outside of it.
you for transactions that arereconciled and that should match
what's showing up in youropening balance, right?
So that is, that was the biggestchallenge.
I think when it didn't match isnow, hunting down what changed
(19:18):
and that screen that says, Hey,it's not ready because it's
different.
And it gives you a little bitof.
Breadcrumb trails to go down.
It's really part of it.
It's a challenge because there'sa variety of things that change.
And that's what I would tellpeople is that something changed
(19:39):
from the time that you recognizehow that today.
That there's no longer an R inthere that was there before or
there's an R in there thatshouldn't be there That wasn't
there before
Michelle Long (19:51):
and that's one of the things I would like to give
into it kudos for giving us thatwhere it says Stop, wait a
minute.
Your beginning balance haschanged and here's the
transactions that have changedIt allows you to go in and find
them because that saves us somuch time that we're looking for
Or the way we had to in thepast, one of the other common
(20:12):
challenges Matt, that screenshotwe had, there was brighter or
Dan, whoever put it in there, itshowed a couple of zeros at the
very beginning of it.
And as Matt was saying a whileago you want to also reconcile
clearing account, have clearingaccounts.
So when you have a transactionwhere.
You know you're doing a zerodollar expense or a zero dollar
(20:34):
check or a sales receipt This iszero dollar sales receipt or
whatever the situation is andi'm not sure what those were
from People will just leave themthere forever They forget that
you're supposed to clear thosethings off and that's one reason
why we use a clearing account Wedon't want them in our main
checking account.
So clearing up those kind ofthings out of here as well as
(20:55):
old outstanding checks that Whoknows what happened to them?
Were they duplicates?
Were they voided?
Were they You know, somebodylost them and never cashed them
researching and finding out whathappened to them.
And what do we need to do?
Clearing out that old stuffthat's there.
I've gone in sometimes where youhave to scroll down like 50 of
(21:17):
those before you even get to anyof the real stuff so cleaning up
some of those things before youeven get started is some of the
main challenges too.
So anyway the point about theclearing account is good when to
keep that out of the mainchecking account too.
Matthew Fulton (21:34):
So I asked that question on purpose because I
figured you guys would land on awhole bunch of these without
necessarily even seeing whatwe'd already put in here because
it's more fun to have theconversation about it than you
guys all just staring at slides.
So missing there's the things Ihave in here right off the bat.
If you've got missingtransactions.
Guess what?
You really have nothing, noother choice, but to first do a
(21:56):
search through your magnifyingglass.
And I have QuickBooks pulled upback behind.
I can go to that in a moment toshow things, but there's so many
nuances here to try to have themall prepared.
It's difficult.
So if you've got the missingtransactions, do a search, try
to make sure it didn't get intothe wrong account, because it's
easy to be done.
And if it is, if you can't findit anywhere, Double check.
(22:18):
Also that it wasn't multipletransactions combined together
into one larger amount or, theother way around as well, maybe
the bank has multipletransactions, smaller amounts,
and you can bind them into 1.
these are the little pieces thatDan likes to call bread crumbs.
I like to call horrific rabbitholes that have you ending up in
(22:41):
nowhere frustrated on a zoomwith your client saying, you
promised me this would be easy.
You told me.
Oh, this shouldn't be should bereally easy for you.
Famous last words.
Right?
Michelle, you nailed the clear,the clearing the uncleared
transactions in my mind when I'mdoing a reconciliation, every
(23:02):
single transaction, it all,every one of them has a story.
So their story is either beentold or it's still pending
there.
But if there are 0 items.
Still take a peek.
Make sure there's a reason ifyou're the only one doing the
books in there and you're coolthat you can clear them out.
If you're getting in fresh andbrand new, I will usually leave
(23:24):
them for the first time to seeif I'm missing something else
and need to tie it back and thememo notes or something help me
better understand it But youwant to get those cleared out so
there's less junk in your waytwo little tips if you still
have people writing checks getthem to have the bank put on
(23:45):
their void after 60 days Becauseit's going to make it to where,
legally, you don't have to honorit after 60 days.
You should always go longer thanthat, of course.
But it gives you the ability ifit's been an extra 3 4 months,
you can void those.
Do the the proper work around toshow it's still owed.
But you can void it and get thatarea cleared out.
And then the last one is righttool.
(24:07):
He Hector made a really cool, weworked together and created this
unclear transactionreconciliation lookup, where if
there are certain ones in there,you can click on, and it will
pull up a different tab for eachone.
It's help you search them to tryto find it faster.
Dan DeLong (24:22):
Nice saving precious seconds
Matthew Fulton (24:26):
as Hector would say.
Dealer duplicates, this is a bigone and there's so many
different ways this could go,but I wanted to try to highlight
the green box and guys sent somecolor blind and that is green,
right?
Dan DeLong (24:44):
That is green.
Yes.
Matthew Fulton (24:46):
Okay.
So the green box means it camethrough either a bank, basically
through the banking center.
You either imported transactionsin or a bank.
Bank feed was connectionconnected and it used it to pull
the transaction directly.
That's how you get the link totransaction towards the top left
on the transaction itself.
And the ones where they don'thave it is where something was
(25:07):
manually entered.
So if you're doing this and youhave you've got to do your
research, check it out.
What I would actually do in thisscenario is I'd go back to this
specific one with the green box.
I would go to edit, and then Iwould delete it, to where,
(25:27):
because it's linked, it goesback to the bank feed area.
I want to slow down and stress,if you delete the manual one,
it's gone.
If you delete a piece that'sbeen connected through a bank
feed, it goes back to the bankfeed.
Because then you can match it,And you get the green box on the
one you manually put in.
Dan DeLong (25:48):
Tidying it up with a bow.
Putting a bow on it.
Matthew Fulton (25:51):
A nice green bow.
Dan DeLong (25:52):
Yes.
That you can't see if it's greenor not.
Matthew Fulton (25:56):
And then, To do, exactly, To do and undo, or
whether you should or not undoreconciliations.
This
Dan DeLong (26:05):
is some Shakespeare going on here
Matthew Fulton (26:08):
to undo.
That is the reconciliation,something like that.
I cannot stand when I have theseextra little things back behind
here.
Even though it's, completelyfine.
You'll notice on this one here1130 with the minus 2, 500, Dan,
you talked earlier, Michelle,you were talking about the fact
(26:30):
like your beginning balance isoff, right?
And you need to fix it or bankfeed broke.
You need to reconnect it andbeing a helpful, they decided
that they would actually putanother opening balance in there
for you and that automaticallyreconciled.
So some reason your tolls areoff when you have these, if you
put, I, every time I'm jumpingto something new to do
(26:54):
reconciliation, I will put thesame ending date as the last
reconciliation and the sameending reconciliation balance,
the proper one, pull it rightback up and first see if there's
anything just sitting insidethere.
Okay.
And you can do that same trick,click off anything that is
pending there that should havestill been reconciled, and very
quickly click the button andmake it to where it gets to the
(27:16):
right balance, and now you getyour zero.
Only thing is, you do it a wholebunch of times, it starts
looking ugly.
So as accountants, we have thatbatch undo to get back to those.
Just be sure if you don't havethese statements as attachments,
take a screenshot of it first,because it's telling you the
ending balance and the balance,I'm sorry, the ending date and
(27:38):
balance.
For each of the months so youcan go back and do those wrecks
really quickly becausetheoretically, you know that the
transaction stuff should bethere.
Dan DeLong (27:46):
Yeah, the one one thing about undoing that I want
to caution people about Is thefact that?
undo Just undo Undoes what wasdone during the reconciliation,
right?
So if you do something outsideof the reconciliation, it will
(28:07):
not get undone.
So if you, do go reconcile atransaction in the register, or
if you added something to makeit work, that especially after
the fact, undoing doesn't makeit work.
Undo that, right?
So when you connect the bankfeed, for example, and it pulls
in a balance that's reconciledand it puts a transaction in the
(28:31):
register, that transaction isnot going to be touched by an
undone, undue process.
Yes,
Matthew Fulton (28:43):
I'm going to pull up the poll as I do that.
Lisa is the audio better by theway.
Hopefully that will help get ita little bit louder for you to
standardize it.
So our next poll we're ready forright?
Dan?
Dan DeLong (28:54):
Yes, which one is what percent?
Let's see, gotta find it now.
All right.
What percent of your accountsare you able to do by automatic
statement fetching?
Oh
Michelle Long (29:06):
this
Dan DeLong (29:06):
is such a great thing.
Michelle Long (29:09):
One of the things in that reconciliation history
that you were showing, one ofthe things that I like about
that is, I think it was therewhere it will it was in the
reconciliation history I'm,sorry I wasn't there in the
reconciliation history where youcan see where you previously
reconciled and it shows that Thestatement date and like when you
(29:30):
reconcile it will also show ifsomebody forced the bank
reconciliation and so it willshow like the statement date The
ending balance, and if youforced it to reconcile, it'll
show the amount that went tomiscellaneous discrepancy or
reconciliation discrepancy.
Anyhow, I had a client that keptdoing that, but he also knew.
(29:54):
That if I saw something inreconciliation discrepancies on
the P& L that he was in troublebecause that he forced the bank
reconciliation because I toldhim he's got to reconcile every
month, right?
So he would click reconcile nowand let it go to recognition
discrepancy and then I'd callhim up and yell at him, undo it,
make you fix it.
And redo it correctly and stuff.
(30:14):
One month he decided he wasgoing to get smart, he thought.
He went in and foundedReconciliation with Prophecies
and moved it to office supplies.
And I called him up, and I waslike, David you did it again.
You forced that bankreconciliation.
He says, how did you know?
I said I told you I knoweverything Because that report
(30:37):
or that screen where it says thereconciliation history Will
still show you When they forcedit, even though the little
booger went in and changed itfrom reconciliation
Discrepancies and moved it tooffice supplies.
I still could see in that Youarea when he forced the bank
reconciliation.
(30:58):
So even though your client triesto pull one on you, QuickBooks
helps you stay one step ahead ofthem.
Dan DeLong (31:06):
You're like Lord Morris.
You have little birds in, in, inQuickBooks that tells you.
Tells on people.
Michelle Long (31:15):
So there are these little tools that we take
for granted that are veryhelpful when you have sneaky
clients.
Matthew Fulton (31:24):
Okay, and it looks like we've got 100 percent
there.
Dan DeLong (31:27):
All right.
And yeah, it's, the biggest oneis 55 percent of zero to 19%.
And I think I saw in thecomments that it's unreliable.
Some of the, things about aboutstatement fetching in general.
And we'll talk a little bitabout maybe some of the tech
(31:50):
behind that.
But, but yeah, it's when itworked.
It's great.
Matthew Fulton (31:56):
It's a good point.
Yeah.
so let me go back to our sharehere and so the next area I
really want to share about isspecialized workflows and One of
the things that drive me nuts inthe program are the transfers
and the credit card paymentoptions Transfers are always the
(32:20):
problem Always the problem youneed to make every time you have
it and because it's trying tolink to two different pieces
I've seen where somebody'smanaged to match four transfers
In one account to one transferon one other side somehow And
(32:41):
things and balances getcompletely knocked off and it's
just very difficult to findthose unless you undo them And
really like it becomes fasterjust to get rid of them and put
it back in But i'll show yousome tricks that I have on that
Additionally, deposit detailreporting.
I've got the way we do deposits.
I feel it's a little bit of anextra step, but it saves a lot
(33:02):
of time.
It helps you capture anysituation where an owner is
investing money in the businessor taking it out.
And then of course, you've gotyour merchant processing.
If you're using externalmerchant processing, are they
batching transactions together?
Are they taking the fee out atthe same time, or is it a
separate fee?
Your third party applicationsthe order in which you do all of
(33:25):
anything with the third partyapps becomes super important So
for the this is one that i'vebeen talking about this forever,
especially with bank rules Itmakes the most sense to do this
Why the way we do every transferis we will create a vendor every
(33:47):
time we create a clearingaccount first And then we create
a vendor that will be YouTransfer to one, two, three,
four transfer from five, six,seven, eight, where the last
four digits of the last fourdigits of the account that gives
me the ability to create moneyin money out rules and you set
it up where you've got multipleparts of bank text.
(34:09):
It's always bank text containstransfer to.
The next one, the numbers, andby doing this, it goes from one
into a clearing, out of theclearing, to the other, and
because of the rules, it's justas efficient as the transfers,
but you get names on all yourtransactions, and you get to see
(34:30):
the in and out very easily.
So you can go back and reconcilethis stuff very fast.
I can't
Dan DeLong (34:36):
see that easily at all
Matthew Fulton (34:38):
But
Dan DeLong (34:44):
I think that I want to talk a little bit about you
know The challenge right of whatyou're talking about Because
this is a unique situation whereyou have potentially both sides
of the transfer connected inyour bank feed and those rules
Thank you it really gets And,it, really who, acts on it
(35:08):
first, right?
So if it's a savings accountthat automatically puts it in
through the, to the checkingaccount, because you've set up a
bank rule to do or the checkingaccount, the savings account or
credit card to the checkingaccount it's whoever gets to it
first.
And then it causes otherchallenges if it's not a
(35:29):
transfer what am I doing seeinga deposit with a negative
amount.
In my checking account, right?
Because it's, money coming in orout and it gets recorded as a
deposit or an expense that isadding money to a, register.
It can just look reallyconfusing, especially if you're
(35:50):
not expecting it to be that way.
So I really like what you're,talking about here with setting
something up in between, as a gobetween.
So that.
You can take advantage of thoserules, and then it really
doesn't matter what kind oftransfer what kind of
transaction it is.
It could be a transfer, it couldbe a deposit, it could be an
expense, it could be a check, orwhatever, right?
(36:12):
And then it's fine to, from thataccount perspective.
Matthew Fulton (36:17):
Yeah.
The worst part about this, Icannot tell you how many times
I've caught new accounts we werenever told about because of
doing it this way.
That's the best and the worst.
It's the best because you caughtit.
It's worse because now you havehistorical stuff you have to put
in.
You have to have theconversation like you, what do
you mean you ordered, opened upthree new credit card accounts.
You didn't tell me about it yet.
So it, again, if you're doing itit's, going to zero itself out
(36:40):
every time.
So at the end of the month, youhave to reconcile that account
back down.
If there's anything left, eithersomebody invested money in the
business, or they took it out toa non business account or an
account is missing.
So my logic to that partmichelle, what are your thoughts
there?
Michelle Long (37:03):
I think that's a great process to follow and
that's the most important thingis to have a process And do it
one way all the timeconsistently because that helps
eliminate duplicates Otherwiseyou're doing it from this
account and from that accountand then you're getting
duplicates and all that So Ithink that's
Matthew Fulton (37:20):
a great tip though.
Thank you for sharing
Michelle Long (37:21):
that
Matthew Fulton (37:22):
put all the problems in a bucket,
Michelle Long (37:23):
right?
Matthew Fulton (37:24):
so Love it.
So I already talked about thispiece that by doing it, it gives
you the different Having it.
I always do all thetransferables as a vendor and
having names on it Everytransaction should have a name
every single transaction Becauseif you have problems or
challenges, you have to do theresearch you have more tools to
do stuff The next one I wantedto go into is dealing with
(37:48):
deposits.
And this is, again, this is aunique one.
The ultimate goal here is wehave to be able to do the
reconciliations.
And a lot of the timesduplicates, as we mentioned
before, can come into play.
Because if you have multiplepayments by customers combined
into one deposit, your bank, ifyou accept the bank feed piece
(38:11):
that will match that comes in,but then you have your
undeposited funds and startsgrowing, right?
Everything else.
Or if you're creating multipledeposits, one for each person,
they're never going to matcheasily.
And it drives me nuts when youhave.
Three different individualdeposits that are selected
because you remember that thosematched to the one single
(38:32):
number.
But if I ever have to come backlater and I'm doing it, I'm not
going to know it.
So we create an account I callrevenue query.
It's just because you can'tcreate rules for uncategorized
income unless that changedrecently.
And what it allows me to do isbasically take all of my
deposits quickly and toss themright into a revenue query
(38:54):
account.
Then, with all this stuff putinto the bucket, I can come
through, and as part of my endof the month close process, I
pull up a deposit detail report,and I can then have pull up all
the different images, if there'smultiple checks, and go and
actually check off the correctpieces that tie into it, and spe
(39:17):
you like, spend down thatrevenue query.
Dan DeLong (39:21):
And what type of account is is, Revenue Query?
Matthew Fulton (39:25):
It's a different income account, so it still sits
up in the, basically it sits upin your income area.
Because when you, when it's inthere, you know that's always
supposed to be knocked down tozero, is the, whole point.
As you start to spend thesedown, it should equal the same
amount when you put it toRevenue Query in the bottom.
(39:46):
So you've got revenue query.
When you do a, you go pull upyour deposit detail.
If it's not broken down with thenames in here is so vendors, if
it's a refund would have a nameas well.
You click on the top line.
You would then come in, find thepieces, check them off.
And then come down here clickoff the trash can get rid of it
(40:07):
doesn't break the reconciliationSo you can actually go through
clear out your bank feedsreconcile And still go back and
clear this out before you finishyour month end all the way
Dan DeLong (40:21):
You're getting some kudos in the chat there.
That's nice
Matthew Fulton (40:25):
It's such a big It just helps save so much time
because the other part of thisalso is This is the same kind of
a concept that if you're using astripe or something else and you
have a customer sales receiptfor 350, but the amount that
(40:45):
came through the deposit was345, you can actually do check
off the 350 merchant fee at thebottom minus five.
Now it pops it right back in,didn't break the reconciliation,
saves you a bunch of time.
It's all about getting thesedifferent problems in a
controlled bucket.
Dan DeLong (41:07):
And, somebody mentioned in the chat and don't
peek at the P and L becauseyour, revenue will be
overstated.
How do you coach your clientabout that?
Because then you can look at itand you, at least you know what
you're looking for, but how doyou avoid questions from the
client?
Wait a minute, what's thisrevenue query?
And do you Just frame that upupfront.
Matthew Fulton (41:31):
Yeah because usually when I'm having to do
more of this, it's becausethey're not getting sales
receipts or invoices in on timeto be able to match things right
away.
And we always try to, we trainthem and let them know what
we're doing.
So it's a don't stress on thisuntil.
This is the other option wheremost people would do this is
they put this into ask myaccountant or ask client name
(41:53):
and now you have deposits in anexpense and It's weird.
Do your financial still work thesame?
Yeah, but it's wonky.
So I Like it up at the topbecause it's a spend down if
it's a cruel based and youhaven't created any of the sales
receipts or invoices It's stillright if it's cash basis and
(42:18):
this stuff isn't in there.
It's still right.
It's only when you're actuallyhaving both the invoice in there
and On a cash basis, right?
And then you've also got therevenue query That would double
your income until you spend itaway to match the payments.
(42:38):
That's it.
I think I said all thatMichelle?
Michelle Long (42:45):
Yes, that's right, sorry, I was looking for
the mute button.
Yes, that's right, but I wasn'tlistening closely because I was
also talking about sheet laws inthe chat, or on the Q& A, but
yes, that sounded correct.
Matthew Fulton (43:01):
So we're pretty close.
I think we're doing okay.
Time wise on all this stuffhere.
Let's see here.
So then the last part again,syncing with third party apps,
we could be here for the rest ofthe day and talk about a lot of
these different things.
What it all comes down to istruly understanding what the
(43:21):
workflow is.
This is why I like doingworkflow design is figuring out,
okay, The beautiful thing aboutQuickBooks Online and cloud
based accounting is, it's adatabase in the sky.
And they can allow differentapps that specialize in
different areas to connect andhandle the hard parts of the
workflow.
You just need to make sure whichdata gets accepted first through
(43:44):
the banking area so it can matchcorrectly.
So again, like a A2X for ecommerce, a bookkeep's going to
create journal entries.
When you do your mapping, youwant to make sure whatever is
hitting through the journalentry, Always try to make it
match exactly what's the bankthe actual bank feed.
It just makes you a lot happierthat's pretty much the same for
(44:05):
all of these different type ofprograms Just keep that in mind
and will help save you a lot oftime.
Dan DeLong (44:11):
Yeah, and when you've added more More, apps let
me launch the poll and I'll talkabout that.
Which one do you use transfer?
There we go.
Noom changed something againlove when technology changes.
And now I have more pollquestions than I actually
(44:33):
created poll questions for thewebinar, but now I got to find
more than one.
Yes, it's Michelle and I forgotwhat I was talking about before
I launched a poll.
What was what were we?
(44:53):
Oh, when you have multiple apps.
And, knowing exactly like youwere saying, what, where that is
going to take place and if thereis a shortfall in, in that
integration like I'm, workingwith, you mentioned bookkeep
(45:16):
there, right?
And, understanding.
That, that's going to only bringin journal entries, right?
And how, is that, automationpotentially limiting some of the
workflows that you would bedoing inside of QuickBooks, or
is there a, like some of thesender or, some of the sales
(45:40):
connectors, they're, mostlyconcerned with just getting the
sale into QuickBooks, but thenthat passing the baton of taking
it to the payout, picking up thefees and those types of things
they're not too concerned with.
So really understanding what,that integration will actually
look like when you see it in,in, inside of QuickBooks so that
(46:03):
you can take it to the goal lineof I want to reconcile, right?
Matthew Fulton (46:09):
This made me also think about 0 sales
receipts.
But first, I actually would liketo, there's a good question that
was asking about talking aboutreconciliations for QuickBooks
checking.
And I have to be honest.
I don't really use it.
And the clients I have are notusing it.
So I'm not as familiar with thatpiece.
I wish I could give answers toit.
(46:29):
But Dan, Michelle, might youhave some guidance on it?
Dan DeLong (46:34):
The way it started, right?
The whole idea when it wasQuickBooks Cash, right?
And then it turned into QBchecking.
Accountants got the where theafterthought, of that problems
and they're a little, bit offoreshadowing
Michelle Long (46:57):
there.
Maybe,
Dan DeLong (47:00):
But like the accountants couldn't access the
account at all, right?
Like it was initially set up asa business owner or primary
admin only could have access tothat.
And then through feedback thankyou for submitting all the
feedback, accountants can haveaccess to it, but there's still
things in that, that you can'taccess.
(47:24):
But yes, you can get.
The statements now and you can,view the statements from as, an
accountant.
I use it myself, it's mybusiness.
So I I'm, one in the same onboth sides of that.
I don't have clients or peoplethat where I'm just the, the
(47:46):
accounting professional in thatposition to know some of the
subtle nuances with regards tothat, but that history.
Make sense as to what where youmight be finding that finding
the shortfall.
But you should have access tothe statements as an, accountant
and be so that you can get them,but you gotta get to them
(48:08):
through the, banking side.
It's not in the.
They don't necessarily show upas statements that are fetched,
but you should be able to accessthem through your client
quickly.
Matthew Fulton (48:20):
Stay tuned for our last poll and you're going
to understand why based on aquestion like that.
So I think we're pretty close onthat one poll.
Do you want to share the lastpiece?
We're down towards the lastlittle bit of the slides where
we wanted to somewhat quicklytalk about some.
Other technology, I think thisstarts to become more of open
(48:41):
conversation and then if thereare other things we want to pull
up QuickBooks online to show, wecan do that.
Of course, as well.
So thank you guys for all theinteraction today and the
questions.
Honestly, it makes it more funfor all of us when everybody's
having a good time.
Different tools and again, wecould do a whole series on just
(49:02):
something like this.
LedgerSync and of tools forcollecting and working with the
data.
Full disclosure, I like toalways do that at the beginning.
I've been working with, I'vebeen using LedgerSync since
2015, 2016.
I'm very proud to say I'm now aconsultant, a paid consultant
with them.
I'm not here in that role today,but I've been working with them
to help them build out their ownglobal rules engine, which is
(49:25):
designed to help us basicallycreate rules that can live
across all your clients at onceinstead of having to go in and
out of every single company fileand work in process
transactions.
Now what ledger sync really itscore functionality for the
longest time has been isfetching your transactions, your
statements, and your images,checking deposit images.
There were other apps like thisin the past.
(49:47):
Hubdoc, everybody was a big, fanof that, right?
Hubdoc still exists, but theydon't really do the fetching
part.
FileThis, is gone.
Most every company that's outthere.
They've all gotten out of thegame because it is so difficult
through all these differentfinancial institutions to stay
connected.
We even partner with MasterCardto connect with over 10, 000
(50:08):
institutions to grab statements,and I got some bad news for
everybody.
They're making it tougher andtougher to keep getting the
statements.
I will not be surprised if wesee a dip in statement
availability in QuickBooksonline as well.
We'll not be surprised.
Is that
Dan DeLong (50:24):
a.
Is that a financial institutionsdecision or is that more of a
distant, security or both?
Like it's trying to make it moredifficult for.
Bad actors to get into thisinformation
Matthew Fulton (50:42):
So what it has to do with primarily is back in
the day With all the statementfetching everything else That's
because everybody was going inthrough the front door screen
scraping and grabbing thisinformation pulling it back to
you As more institutions moveover to an api an approved
handshake behind the scenes Thatis providing the transactional
data but they are still scrapingthe statements is what's been
(51:06):
happening through all this.
So Fiserv Finicity MasterCardPlaid, I know more about this
stuff than any human evershould.
Thanks to Maurice and LedgerSyncand how it works back in the
day.
For example, you guys mightremember Wells Fargo a long time
ago for the bank feeds when theystarted putting in the pre
approved authorization onXXDateXX.
(51:28):
Do you know they did that justto stuff the bank memo so you'd
have to go to the bank todownload it and have It be
useful.
Thank you I won't hound on that.
Yeah.
Thank You know true authenticitywells fargo.
Thank you.
Okay So There's a lot ofdifferent tools out there that
will actually help and grab someof this stuff dan, you've been
(51:51):
testing out bot keeper and someof their bosses, right?
so i'd love to let you talkabout that because You Yeah.
Dan DeLong (51:59):
I talked to the folks at Botkeeper and really
tried to understand what theheck Botkeeper actually is, and
and they, invited me to be abeta tester for them and they
are rolling out a functioncalled auto bank rec, where they
will actually.
(52:20):
Fetch the statement if it'ssupported, right?
That's all the, caveat if it's,if the statement is, supported,
it also can be uploaded intotheir, portal, but what it will
allow you to ultimately do issee that.
The general ledger or their bankfeed side by side with the,
(52:41):
statement.
And then you can just eitherconfirm it, it'll either try to
match it'll match thetransaction or tell you, okay,
there's some discrepancies withthe statement.
You can bring up the statementand see see for yourself, if,
it's there the, really coolerpart of it is that, If it
(53:01):
doesn't support statementfetching or if it doesn't even
support, connecting to to a bankfeed and you have access to the
statement, you can upload thestatement and still use that
auto bank rec option.
It'll just look at what's in QBOat the time and allow you to
compare, and.
(53:24):
It's in beta.
So let me preface that it'sbeing a beta tested.
So there are some beta things toit.
And some of the challenges with,you mentioned paying down credit
cards, like it can't see thattype of transaction, but they're
working on fixing that.
So when you know, when it rollsout it might be a really cool ad
(53:50):
to be able to do that.
And BotKeeper does other thingstoo in that portal.
And that's not its only thing.
Matthew Fulton (53:59):
So you're basically saying sometimes these
apps can neither confirm nordeny if they're getting it,
right?
Dan DeLong (54:05):
exactly But it was cool.
It was cool because I'm testingit out with Corpay is a
MasterCard.
They don't connect to QuickBooksonline for bank feeds and their
statement That they give you isoriented in two different
orientations horizontal portraitand landscape.
(54:27):
And and it's able to actuallyread that.
It is?
And, yes.
Surprisingly, I didn't think youwere going that way.
Matthew Fulton (54:37):
Okay.
Yeah.
That's impressive.
Dan DeLong (54:39):
Okay.
I'm like here's a fun one foryou.
And I uploaded the statementand, lo and behold, it's got
transactions from the statementside for me to match and it's
got the information in it.
That's actually, sideways if youactually looked at the PDF.
Matthew Fulton (54:58):
They need to turn that thing upside down or
whatever they say.
Relay, other online banking theyof course give you the access to
the images and statements asthey, for their specific
accounts.
I could spend, I could have madea whole bunch of other tools on
here as well.
The ones I wanted to share rightoff the bat is Money Thumb.
(55:21):
Hands down, the best I've everused for their OCR technology,
PDF OCR technology.
And what I mean by that veryspecifically.
You've got paper statements, youscan them in, and they're not a
first edition digital line item,nice and clean.
This will do a better job onstatements than anything else
(55:43):
I've seen.
The only other thing that'sprobably close, but it's not
really for statements, has beenmakers up.
Their ocr large language modelis pretty dang impressive so
really like it They can convertto csv files or dot qbo files
And there's a lot of toolsinside of that of how you
manipulate and use it.
(56:03):
I've got videos on my youtubechannel I'm sure There's a
couple other ones hector's doneas well proper soft I would
recommend Buy their suite.
This is one of those things.
I think it's right now 200 bucksfor their whole lifetime version
of all of their differentconverters Just have it ready to
go You never know if you'regoing to need to go to a csv to
(56:24):
a qbo to an ofx to a blah blahblah Really great tool dext is
another one that does thestatement ocr parsing I believe
they're still doing that insideof the program, right if anybody
knows so those are three justquickies to to share as well And
last one, which was 74 percentsaid yes for using transfers in
(56:48):
another, I think
Dan DeLong (56:50):
I, I did share for a little bit.
Matthew Fulton (56:55):
All right.
Dan DeLong (56:56):
And this was, part of the challenge when, Matt and
I were talking about, what arewe going to talk about here is
that there is definitely arabbit hole.
That we could go down as far asthe nuances of the bank feeds,
and it's been a while sinceMichelle and I had done ruling
the rules in, in, in QuickBooksonline, and really just talking
(57:20):
about some of the technologybehind the rules that you can
and the bank feeds that when youtake Advantage of that tool,
it's either going to make createsome efficiencies for you, or
it's going to make your life aliving hell.
If you, do it improperly.
(57:41):
And so we were thinking maybethis is a series that we have
Matthew come on and do this sortof thing.
And would you be interested inthat?
Yeah.
Do we talk about, Talk aboutthat.
Do we do we go into some ofthese apps a little bit deeper?
What, would be, what do youwant, right?
Matthew Fulton (58:04):
I, yep.
And as I'm going to, we're goingto finish the poll there.
I'll finish the last couple ofslides.
Cause I know I always like totry to keep us right on the time
as best possible foreverybody's, schedule the day.
So back to you, Dan.
Dan DeLong (58:20):
Yeah.
Always check us out at the QBpower hour.
com website.
But there is something rightthere on the, homepage where you
can put in, suggestions forthings that you want us to talk
about or unpack.
Matthew, I really appreciate youjoining us here today and all
(58:41):
the hard work that you put intotoday's lesson.
And hopefully there's some, ifthe chat is any indication
there, there is some definite,nuggets, that, people took away
from from today and Shel, alwaysgreat to see you as well.
Michelle Long (59:01):
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good to see you, Dan.
And thank you, Matt, for joiningus.
Thank you both for everything.
I've got to run.
Thanks everybody.
See you soon.
Dan DeLong (59:10):
All right.
Have a great day, everyone.
We'll see you next time on theQB power.
You are listening to the audio portion of the QB
Power Hour webinar series.
The QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for
accounting professionalspresented by Michelle Long and
Dan DeLong, who are verypassionate about the industry,
QuickBooks, and apps thatintegrate with QuickBooks.
You can find out all the detailsabout the webinar series at
(00:27):
qbpowerhour.
com.
So without further ado, here'sMichelle and Dan.
Welcome, everybody, to anotherQB Power Hour.
We are talking today about bankreconciliations in QuickBooks
Online.
Very exciting stuff, right?
Because that is, that's whatwe're here for, right?
that is like the, Michelle, whatwould you equate bank
(00:51):
reconciliations or justreconciling accounts to in a
hierarchy of things?
Michelle Long (00:59):
It's like the core of our business a lot of
times.
It's One of the central thingsthat we do to make sure we've
got all the transactions andthat things are in there and
it's one Of the starting pointsto getting everything in there.
So
Dan DeLong (01:16):
yeah, I mean it's if you're you know the old saying
of Counting beans, right?
That's what that's where therubber hits the road
Michelle Long (01:28):
carolyn says it's like washing the dishes,
something you have to do all thetime.
Matthew Fulton (01:35):
I remember when I first got started in working
with QuickBooks Online,reconciliations were the
absolute bane of my existence.
I hated, them, especially in theold, system.
It just took forever and just,it was a nightmare.
And we're going to show todaylike how it's so much easier.
It's going to be pretty cool.
Dan DeLong (01:56):
As, the elder statesman in the, on the panel,
Michelle what, was that like?
Michelle Long (02:03):
Now I don't like this elder business experience,
maybe.
It is amazing.
It is amazing how far bankruptcyhas come.
I talking about bankruptcy, itjust reminded me, speaking of
elder or experience in my veryfirst internship that I had with
Hallmark cards, which I'mtalking about Hallmark
(02:26):
corporate, the private company.
It would be a fortune 500company if they were public.
But anyway, so my first job Iwas reconciling a bank account
This was back in the manualdays, you know his mainframe
system manual days Anyway, I wasoff like ten thousand dollars on
this account and I couldn't forthe life of me find it You know,
(02:46):
I had checked everything andthis was old days where you got
your ruler and your cash Vyingthrough things and checking them
off to the bank statement theold fashioned way that we had to
do it the hard way I couldn'tfind it.
I was off like ten thousanddollars.
So I went and asked my manager,Hey, can you help me with this?
He was like, ah, it's goodmaterial.
(03:06):
We'll look for it next month Myfirst lesson in immateriality
was 10, 000 on a 2 million bankaccount was immaterial.
It was like, no big deal, we'lljust look for it next month.
I was like, oh my gosh! But lookhow far bank records have come
to where we are today, whereit's at.
(03:27):
Pulling in the statements ispulling in this whole bank feed
automating this transaction.
And now it's pulling in bankbalances in the month for us and
doing the reconciliation for us.
Wow.
Yeah, literally.
Dan DeLong (03:40):
I was telling Matt when we were preparing for, this
this, webinar is that, Iliterally reconciled six months
of a, of an account.
In less than a minute, with thetools that are now available,
it's amazing how far it's come,there's Casey.
Michelle Long (04:07):
Sorry.
Casey said it took 10
Dan DeLong (04:10):
minutes.
He's
Michelle Long (04:11):
shocked, too.
I can't believe it.
Dan DeLong (04:16):
Alright, let's go ahead and kick us off here.
Go ahead, Michelle.
Michelle Long (04:21):
Hi, everybody.
I'm Michelle Long, CPA.
Frequently, or formerly, newlyretired.
Figuring out what I am thesedays.
Former owner of Wands forSuccess.
I actually, I still own it.
Actually, my whole career, I'vewanted a jewelry client.
I finally got a jewelry client.
(04:43):
I couldn't say no.
I'm going to wind up paying himmore than he ever pays me.
Anyway, I've got all kinds ofprojects lined up with my new
plan and I am getting him set upand going You know, that's the
great thing about being retired.
You can decide what you want tosay.
Yes or no Anyway, i'll get himgoing and then i'll turn him
(05:03):
over to my son.
For the ongoing work, butanyhow, that's enough about me.
Dan, go ahead.
Dan DeLong (05:11):
Dan DeLong, owner of Danwith and School of
Bookkeeping, working worked at,not working worked at Intuit for
nearly 18 years and co hostingtoday as well as the Workshop
Wednesdays over atschoolbookkeeping.
com and doing some tech editingfor some of the QBO book and
QuickBooks books that are outthere and joining us today
(05:35):
Friend of the show.
Matthew Fulton (05:37):
I need a haircut.
Otherwise, I'd look like that,but I'm still Matthew Fulton My
friends call me Spot, founderand owner of Parkway Business
Solutions You know, we focusprimarily on workflow design
still do a bunch of accounting,but highly, specialized and I
helped click the light switch onfor QB community, like the
Facebook group, but they're theones that keep it going.
(05:59):
Of course also, which kind ofties into some of the stuff
today is I am a workflowconsultant for ledger sync.
It's an application thatactually helps you grab all your
transactions, your statements,and your images.
So you can have everything onone single dashboard for all
your clients and very, happy tobe here and be a guest co host.
Thank you guys for asking.
Dan DeLong (06:20):
Appreciate you joining us here today and the,
sweetening that you did on thepresentation slides is forever.
I'll forever be in your debtbecause I'll be leveraging the
the consistencies that you'vedone here.
So appreciate that.
(06:40):
A little bit the QB Power Hour.
It's every other Tuesday at 12noon Eastern.
This one is not eligible for CPECredit but the first one of the
month will be with our friendsat Baker's Hub will be our CPE
sponsor, but this one is, not.
So we just wanna make sure thateverybody's aware that even
(07:02):
though it's a great topic and,and should be we just wanna try
to make it a, an easier.
Act option of just that firstone of the month, whatever that
happens to be, would be eligiblefor CPE credit.
And if the links there, and Ithink put them in the chat for
today's, for today's slides the,landing page that we have set up
(07:27):
for, today has the the handoutsand we'll have the replay and
the podcast and whatnot.
But if you go to qbpowerhour.
com slash resources, there'sPDFs and recordings of all of
the of the prior QB Power Hourwebinars.
so much.
A little bit of housekeeping ifyou have specific questions
about something that we'retalking about here today, please
(07:49):
put them in the Q& A, and but ifyou just have general general
things about what is, what doyou equate bank reconciliation
to, put them in the comments inthe chat, right?
And we are simulcasting, whichagain, it reminds me that I
didn't Do this.
I'm okay.
I've got to do that.
(08:10):
Once we transitioned over forour first poll question, but on
the Facebook group into the QBpower user group, if you're
watching there, whenever I doput it in there, you'll want to
make sure that the streamingplatform that we're using has
access to your profile.
So we know who you are when youif you happen to say something
(08:33):
in the group there while we'restreaming.
And thank you, Matt, for puttingthe, putting me in a pink hat
because.
We do have a QB Power Hour storewith some swag and I, do look
pretty good in pink there, Ithink.
Matthew Fulton (08:50):
Bringing sexy back, for sure.
Loving it.
It's
Michelle Long (08:54):
a great color on you, Dan.
I think it looks awesome.
Dan DeLong (09:00):
Check it out if you want, and you can, you too can
have your own pink hat.
Alright, so our agenda todaywe're going to be talking about
just reconciling in QuickBooksOnline.
Alright.
In general, some commonchallenges some specialized
workloads.
Mark Matt, Matthew, excuse me.
I was thinking maker is Mark andnot wanting to say maker is
(09:24):
Mark.
And then I threw in Mark forMatt.
Oh my goodness.
One of those days.
But we have some Matthew hassome specific workflows to help
out with with reconciliation,and we have some helpful tools
and hopefully if time, permits,we have some QA time.
I'm going to stop sharingbecause we have our, first poll
(09:46):
question.
How frequently are you much timeare you spending, average in a
month, reconciling accounts forclients?
And I'm looking for the pollquestion.
There we go.
Launching.
Okay, and I'll launch that and Iwill stop sharing so Spot can
pick up.
Matthew Fulton (10:06):
Doing as we speak.
And Michelle was telling usearlier that it's her fault,
actually, that you were That'sright.
Everything is Michelle.
Dan DeLong (10:21):
She is the, she is more than the goat.
She is the goat.
Not just the goat only counting,she is the goat for all the
goats around
Michelle Long (10:31):
today.
No, it's funny though.
You know the Taylor Swift song,Me, I'm the Problem?
That's me today.
No, I don't.
You obviously aren't a cheesefan then, because if you're a
cheese fan, you have to be aTaylor Swift fan too.
I wasn't a big Taylor Swift fanuntil she was Kelsey's
(10:52):
girlfriend, and now I am a bigTaylor Swift fan, too.
And I can't wait for the teaseason to start, which, by the
way, Dan, we gotta get some betsgoing again.
Dan DeLong (11:01):
Yeah, exactly.
Michelle Long (11:03):
But we don't play your team this year, I don't
think.
Dan DeLong (11:07):
It sounds like you're scared.
Michelle Long (11:10):
No, I just don't remember.
I'm just trying to remember, butI don't think we do.
Anyway, sorry.
Back to reconciling.
Yeah,
Matthew Fulton (11:20):
and so to answer the questions in the chat I,
made these polls in my, head.
I was wondering like I saidbefore, the reconciliations used
to take me so much time and Iwas wondering how much time it
takes, on average for you to,reconcile your accounts for all
(11:40):
the accounts for one client.
Hey, you can have two accounts.
You could have 10 accounts.
It just depends on the amount oftime spent.
Dan DeLong (11:47):
yeah and there's, definitely other things other
than financial institutions thatyou could want to reconcile
yourself, like clearing accountand those types of things.
So it could certainly could, addup more so than than financial
institutions.
So, let me go ahead and end thepoll here and I'll share the
(12:08):
results.
It looks like, Majority is 15 to30 minutes per client.
If you have a pretty, if youhave a lot of clients, then that
could certainly certainly add upas a lot of time, of the day.
Michelle Long (12:24):
I would venture to guess too, a lot of that time
is spent going and getting thebank statement.
Now that we have the statementthere, or the balance there, I
think the time spent reconcilingis going to go down in a vast
number of clients.
Not every client.
There's always the exception tothe rule.
But I think a lot of that timeis going to be reduced.
Matthew Fulton (12:45):
What do you guys think?
I definitely agree.
Having worked with anapplication that's been fetching
statements for so many years,trying to get this to be a
consistent process of automatingthat fetching is extremely
difficult because the differentinstitutions change how it's
done all the time.
So we we actually touch base onthat through some of this.
(13:08):
And I will give the fulldisclaimer to everybody that's
here.
If you know me I love to try toshare as much information as
possible.
So this is definitely a decade.
That's worth downloading becausethere will be additional
information.
I've got some workflow tipthings are added in that we can
go through somewhat quick toalways make sure we have enough
time for your questions to Q anda at the end, but definitely
(13:29):
take the time to download it.
Michelle, you brought this upreal quickly earlier.
There's so much more that youneed to reconcile than just your
basic checking and savingsaccount.
The credit cards as well.
So financial institutions, I sayit that way because it's, all of
that.
It could be loan accounts aswell.
Clearing accounts, of course,especially when you're using
(13:50):
third party apps.
I'm a firm believer, when indoubt, wreck the account.
The account, and I don't meanwreck it as in w I mean wreck it
as in reconcile.
No wrecking it,
Dan DeLong (14:01):
Ralph.
Matthew Fulton (14:02):
Yes, exactly right.
And some of the tips and thingsin here have to do with our
accountant tools just in casethere are those who are just
being introduced to those reportoptions.
In there you can see when allyour last reconciliations were
done very quickly and easily.
And at the top you can evenchange your dating of all your
common reports.
(14:22):
Super important to know as well.
But this is where the real funcomes into play, right?
It's the automatic statementfetching.
So this new functionality.
They could
Dan DeLong (14:32):
have used a dog for this icon,
Matthew Fulton (14:38):
You want
Dan DeLong (14:38):
to play fetch or
Matthew Fulton (14:40):
dog names would have been great.
I would have actually beenhonored that way.
So, one of the key things.
Not all financial institutionsare supportive for the fetching.
That's one challenge.
It's, evolving and it's growing,but if they don't support it,
you still have to go get thisstuff.
(15:01):
And then also keep in mind, thelogging credentials have to be
good.
So in the chat if you have aclient that is so wonderful and
they love to change theirBanking passwords every two
weeks because they can'tremember their password say
yeah, that's me i'm sure we'veall got those which cost us tons
of extra time and energy Now thecool thing with this though is
(15:23):
If you've cleared the bank feedand you've done your last
reconciliation These bottomwindows here statement ending
date and ending balance willauto fill in You All right.
So I decided to make this in twominutes, so that you can see
what you should be doing.
So both parties want to ensurethat your families or loved ones
(15:46):
are done.
I can do more on mental healthclaims, one of the things is
when you get a look at all ofthe documents, I would like you
to go over the document thatyou're going to be checking in
so that you can see exactly howthey're divided.
Thanks.
(16:10):
The balance of the depositsyou're checking the dollar
amount you're checking thedollar amount of the money in
the money out each and Thenumber of transactions because
remember I could do a plus 10,000 here and a plus 10, 000 here
and it would still reconcile andnow you have two extra
transactions that shouldn't evenexist there.
So you've got to really look atthat part.
(16:31):
Shortcuts lead to long year endcloses.
So be very careful.
Michelle, Dan, before I go alittle further, what other kind
of like common challenges do youthink will are that you've seen
the most out there as well asthe chat?
What are the common challengesyou all have seen?
Dan DeLong (16:49):
The biggest thing and when I was in my 18 years
talking to small business ownersand accountants added to it was
that opening balance not beingwhat it was when they,
reconciled it last month thatwas just a large call driver,
(17:09):
right?
Because you reconcile it onemonth, you would expect the
ending balance to be the openingbalance the next month that you
go and.
Do that.
It was, a, reasonableexpectation what that, that
happened, the, thing is thatopening balance is one of those
fundamental truths of,QuickBooks that I would call,
(17:33):
tell people is that it's justthe sum of the reconciled
transactions in that account,when you go to reconcile, it is
not pulling from history, right?
It is just.
It is one of those things thatis recalculated when you go to
record stock If and one of mycoworkers said something to a
(17:55):
customer and it's always stuckwith me.
That opening balance, especiallyin QuickBooks Online opening
balance is like a pirate shit.
There's ours in there.
right?
and that's all it's doing.
Is is adding up all of thetransactions that are ours that
are in the register and puttingthat in there and if it doesn't
(18:19):
add up.
Matthew Fulton (18:23):
That's my quote of the day.
That's a
Michelle Long (18:25):
good way to remember it.
Yeah, I
Dan DeLong (18:28):
like it.
And it was easy for me toremember that way.
And it's always stuck with me.
And that's
Michelle Long (18:34):
the
Dan DeLong (18:34):
fundamental truth about that is that Regardless of
what you expect it to be rightbecause you reconcile the last
month that opening balance isjust a recalculation when you go
into this of everything in thatregister at that moment in time
that has an R on it in andthat's what it's going to be.
(18:57):
You can do the same thing, butrun a report outside of it.
you for transactions that arereconciled and that should match
what's showing up in youropening balance, right?
So that is, that was the biggestchallenge.
I think when it didn't match isnow, hunting down what changed
(19:18):
and that screen that says, Hey,it's not ready because it's
different.
And it gives you a little bitof.
Breadcrumb trails to go down.
It's really part of it.
It's a challenge because there'sa variety of things that change.
And that's what I would tellpeople is that something changed
(19:39):
from the time that you recognizehow that today.
That there's no longer an R inthere that was there before or
there's an R in there thatshouldn't be there That wasn't
there before
Michelle Long (19:51):
and that's one of the things I would like to give
into it kudos for giving us thatwhere it says Stop, wait a
minute.
Your beginning balance haschanged and here's the
transactions that have changedIt allows you to go in and find
them because that saves us somuch time that we're looking for
Or the way we had to in thepast, one of the other common
(20:12):
challenges Matt, that screenshotwe had, there was brighter or
Dan, whoever put it in there, itshowed a couple of zeros at the
very beginning of it.
And as Matt was saying a whileago you want to also reconcile
clearing account, have clearingaccounts.
So when you have a transactionwhere.
You know you're doing a zerodollar expense or a zero dollar
(20:34):
check or a sales receipt This iszero dollar sales receipt or
whatever the situation is andi'm not sure what those were
from People will just leave themthere forever They forget that
you're supposed to clear thosethings off and that's one reason
why we use a clearing account Wedon't want them in our main
checking account.
So clearing up those kind ofthings out of here as well as
(20:55):
old outstanding checks that Whoknows what happened to them?
Were they duplicates?
Were they voided?
Were they You know, somebodylost them and never cashed them
researching and finding out whathappened to them.
And what do we need to do?
Clearing out that old stuffthat's there.
I've gone in sometimes where youhave to scroll down like 50 of
(21:17):
those before you even get to anyof the real stuff so cleaning up
some of those things before youeven get started is some of the
main challenges too.
So anyway the point about theclearing account is good when to
keep that out of the mainchecking account too.
Matthew Fulton (21:34):
So I asked that question on purpose because I
figured you guys would land on awhole bunch of these without
necessarily even seeing whatwe'd already put in here because
it's more fun to have theconversation about it than you
guys all just staring at slides.
So missing there's the things Ihave in here right off the bat.
If you've got missingtransactions.
Guess what?
You really have nothing, noother choice, but to first do a
(21:56):
search through your magnifyingglass.
And I have QuickBooks pulled upback behind.
I can go to that in a moment toshow things, but there's so many
nuances here to try to have themall prepared.
It's difficult.
So if you've got the missingtransactions, do a search, try
to make sure it didn't get intothe wrong account, because it's
easy to be done.
And if it is, if you can't findit anywhere, Double check.
(22:18):
Also that it wasn't multipletransactions combined together
into one larger amount or, theother way around as well, maybe
the bank has multipletransactions, smaller amounts,
and you can bind them into 1.
these are the little pieces thatDan likes to call bread crumbs.
I like to call horrific rabbitholes that have you ending up in
(22:41):
nowhere frustrated on a zoomwith your client saying, you
promised me this would be easy.
You told me.
Oh, this shouldn't be should bereally easy for you.
Famous last words.
Right?
Michelle, you nailed the clear,the clearing the uncleared
transactions in my mind when I'mdoing a reconciliation, every
(23:02):
single transaction, it all,every one of them has a story.
So their story is either beentold or it's still pending
there.
But if there are 0 items.
Still take a peek.
Make sure there's a reason ifyou're the only one doing the
books in there and you're coolthat you can clear them out.
If you're getting in fresh andbrand new, I will usually leave
(23:24):
them for the first time to seeif I'm missing something else
and need to tie it back and thememo notes or something help me
better understand it But youwant to get those cleared out so
there's less junk in your waytwo little tips if you still
have people writing checks getthem to have the bank put on
(23:45):
their void after 60 days Becauseit's going to make it to where,
legally, you don't have to honorit after 60 days.
You should always go longer thanthat, of course.
But it gives you the ability ifit's been an extra 3 4 months,
you can void those.
Do the the proper work around toshow it's still owed.
But you can void it and get thatarea cleared out.
And then the last one is righttool.
(24:07):
He Hector made a really cool, weworked together and created this
unclear transactionreconciliation lookup, where if
there are certain ones in there,you can click on, and it will
pull up a different tab for eachone.
It's help you search them to tryto find it faster.
Dan DeLong (24:22):
Nice saving precious seconds
Matthew Fulton (24:26):
as Hector would say.
Dealer duplicates, this is a bigone and there's so many
different ways this could go,but I wanted to try to highlight
the green box and guys sent somecolor blind and that is green,
right?
Dan DeLong (24:44):
That is green.
Yes.
Matthew Fulton (24:46):
Okay.
So the green box means it camethrough either a bank, basically
through the banking center.
You either imported transactionsin or a bank.
Bank feed was connectionconnected and it used it to pull
the transaction directly.
That's how you get the link totransaction towards the top left
on the transaction itself.
And the ones where they don'thave it is where something was
(25:07):
manually entered.
So if you're doing this and youhave you've got to do your
research, check it out.
What I would actually do in thisscenario is I'd go back to this
specific one with the green box.
I would go to edit, and then Iwould delete it, to where,
(25:27):
because it's linked, it goesback to the bank feed area.
I want to slow down and stress,if you delete the manual one,
it's gone.
If you delete a piece that'sbeen connected through a bank
feed, it goes back to the bankfeed.
Because then you can match it,And you get the green box on the
one you manually put in.
Dan DeLong (25:48):
Tidying it up with a bow.
Putting a bow on it.
Matthew Fulton (25:51):
A nice green bow.
Dan DeLong (25:52):
Yes.
That you can't see if it's greenor not.
Matthew Fulton (25:56):
And then, To do, exactly, To do and undo, or
whether you should or not undoreconciliations.
This
Dan DeLong (26:05):
is some Shakespeare going on here
Matthew Fulton (26:08):
to undo.
That is the reconciliation,something like that.
I cannot stand when I have theseextra little things back behind
here.
Even though it's, completelyfine.
You'll notice on this one here1130 with the minus 2, 500, Dan,
you talked earlier, Michelle,you were talking about the fact
(26:30):
like your beginning balance isoff, right?
And you need to fix it or bankfeed broke.
You need to reconnect it andbeing a helpful, they decided
that they would actually putanother opening balance in there
for you and that automaticallyreconciled.
So some reason your tolls areoff when you have these, if you
put, I, every time I'm jumpingto something new to do
(26:54):
reconciliation, I will put thesame ending date as the last
reconciliation and the sameending reconciliation balance,
the proper one, pull it rightback up and first see if there's
anything just sitting insidethere.
Okay.
And you can do that same trick,click off anything that is
pending there that should havestill been reconciled, and very
quickly click the button andmake it to where it gets to the
(27:16):
right balance, and now you getyour zero.
Only thing is, you do it a wholebunch of times, it starts
looking ugly.
So as accountants, we have thatbatch undo to get back to those.
Just be sure if you don't havethese statements as attachments,
take a screenshot of it first,because it's telling you the
ending balance and the balance,I'm sorry, the ending date and
(27:38):
balance.
For each of the months so youcan go back and do those wrecks
really quickly becausetheoretically, you know that the
transaction stuff should bethere.
Dan DeLong (27:46):
Yeah, the one one thing about undoing that I want
to caution people about Is thefact that?
undo Just undo Undoes what wasdone during the reconciliation,
right?
So if you do something outsideof the reconciliation, it will
(28:07):
not get undone.
So if you, do go reconcile atransaction in the register, or
if you added something to makeit work, that especially after
the fact, undoing doesn't makeit work.
Undo that, right?
So when you connect the bankfeed, for example, and it pulls
in a balance that's reconciledand it puts a transaction in the
(28:31):
register, that transaction isnot going to be touched by an
undone, undue process.
Yes,
Matthew Fulton (28:43):
I'm going to pull up the poll as I do that.
Lisa is the audio better by theway.
Hopefully that will help get ita little bit louder for you to
standardize it.
So our next poll we're ready forright?
Dan?
Dan DeLong (28:54):
Yes, which one is what percent?
Let's see, gotta find it now.
All right.
What percent of your accountsare you able to do by automatic
statement fetching?
Oh
Michelle Long (29:06):
this
Dan DeLong (29:06):
is such a great thing.
Michelle Long (29:09):
One of the things in that reconciliation history
that you were showing, one ofthe things that I like about
that is, I think it was therewhere it will it was in the
reconciliation history I'm,sorry I wasn't there in the
reconciliation history where youcan see where you previously
reconciled and it shows that Thestatement date and like when you
(29:30):
reconcile it will also show ifsomebody forced the bank
reconciliation and so it willshow like the statement date The
ending balance, and if youforced it to reconcile, it'll
show the amount that went tomiscellaneous discrepancy or
reconciliation discrepancy.
Anyhow, I had a client that keptdoing that, but he also knew.
(29:54):
That if I saw something inreconciliation discrepancies on
the P& L that he was in troublebecause that he forced the bank
reconciliation because I toldhim he's got to reconcile every
month, right?
So he would click reconcile nowand let it go to recognition
discrepancy and then I'd callhim up and yell at him, undo it,
make you fix it.
And redo it correctly and stuff.
(30:14):
One month he decided he wasgoing to get smart, he thought.
He went in and foundedReconciliation with Prophecies
and moved it to office supplies.
And I called him up, and I waslike, David you did it again.
You forced that bankreconciliation.
He says, how did you know?
I said I told you I knoweverything Because that report
(30:37):
or that screen where it says thereconciliation history Will
still show you When they forcedit, even though the little
booger went in and changed itfrom reconciliation
Discrepancies and moved it tooffice supplies.
I still could see in that Youarea when he forced the bank
reconciliation.
(30:58):
So even though your client triesto pull one on you, QuickBooks
helps you stay one step ahead ofthem.
Dan DeLong (31:06):
You're like Lord Morris.
You have little birds in, in, inQuickBooks that tells you.
Tells on people.
Michelle Long (31:15):
So there are these little tools that we take
for granted that are veryhelpful when you have sneaky
clients.
Matthew Fulton (31:24):
Okay, and it looks like we've got 100 percent
there.
Dan DeLong (31:27):
All right.
And yeah, it's, the biggest oneis 55 percent of zero to 19%.
And I think I saw in thecomments that it's unreliable.
Some of the, things about aboutstatement fetching in general.
And we'll talk a little bitabout maybe some of the tech
(31:50):
behind that.
But, but yeah, it's when itworked.
It's great.
Matthew Fulton (31:56):
It's a good point.
Yeah.
so let me go back to our sharehere and so the next area I
really want to share about isspecialized workflows and One of
the things that drive me nuts inthe program are the transfers
and the credit card paymentoptions Transfers are always the
(32:20):
problem Always the problem youneed to make every time you have
it and because it's trying tolink to two different pieces
I've seen where somebody'smanaged to match four transfers
In one account to one transferon one other side somehow And
(32:41):
things and balances getcompletely knocked off and it's
just very difficult to findthose unless you undo them And
really like it becomes fasterjust to get rid of them and put
it back in But i'll show yousome tricks that I have on that
Additionally, deposit detailreporting.
I've got the way we do deposits.
I feel it's a little bit of anextra step, but it saves a lot
(33:02):
of time.
It helps you capture anysituation where an owner is
investing money in the businessor taking it out.
And then of course, you've gotyour merchant processing.
If you're using externalmerchant processing, are they
batching transactions together?
Are they taking the fee out atthe same time, or is it a
separate fee?
Your third party applicationsthe order in which you do all of
(33:25):
anything with the third partyapps becomes super important So
for the this is one that i'vebeen talking about this forever,
especially with bank rules Itmakes the most sense to do this
Why the way we do every transferis we will create a vendor every
(33:47):
time we create a clearingaccount first And then we create
a vendor that will be YouTransfer to one, two, three,
four transfer from five, six,seven, eight, where the last
four digits of the last fourdigits of the account that gives
me the ability to create moneyin money out rules and you set
it up where you've got multipleparts of bank text.
(34:09):
It's always bank text containstransfer to.
The next one, the numbers, andby doing this, it goes from one
into a clearing, out of theclearing, to the other, and
because of the rules, it's justas efficient as the transfers,
but you get names on all yourtransactions, and you get to see
(34:30):
the in and out very easily.
So you can go back and reconcilethis stuff very fast.
I can't
Dan DeLong (34:36):
see that easily at all
Matthew Fulton (34:38):
But
Dan DeLong (34:44):
I think that I want to talk a little bit about you
know The challenge right of whatyou're talking about Because
this is a unique situation whereyou have potentially both sides
of the transfer connected inyour bank feed and those rules
Thank you it really gets And,it, really who, acts on it
(35:08):
first, right?
So if it's a savings accountthat automatically puts it in
through the, to the checkingaccount, because you've set up a
bank rule to do or the checkingaccount, the savings account or
credit card to the checkingaccount it's whoever gets to it
first.
And then it causes otherchallenges if it's not a
(35:29):
transfer what am I doing seeinga deposit with a negative
amount.
In my checking account, right?
Because it's, money coming in orout and it gets recorded as a
deposit or an expense that isadding money to a, register.
It can just look reallyconfusing, especially if you're
(35:50):
not expecting it to be that way.
So I really like what you're,talking about here with setting
something up in between, as a gobetween.
So that.
You can take advantage of thoserules, and then it really
doesn't matter what kind oftransfer what kind of
transaction it is.
It could be a transfer, it couldbe a deposit, it could be an
expense, it could be a check, orwhatever, right?
(36:12):
And then it's fine to, from thataccount perspective.
Matthew Fulton (36:17):
Yeah.
The worst part about this, Icannot tell you how many times
I've caught new accounts we werenever told about because of
doing it this way.
That's the best and the worst.
It's the best because you caughtit.
It's worse because now you havehistorical stuff you have to put
in.
You have to have theconversation like you, what do
you mean you ordered, opened upthree new credit card accounts.
You didn't tell me about it yet.
So it, again, if you're doing itit's, going to zero itself out
(36:40):
every time.
So at the end of the month, youhave to reconcile that account
back down.
If there's anything left, eithersomebody invested money in the
business, or they took it out toa non business account or an
account is missing.
So my logic to that partmichelle, what are your thoughts
there?
Michelle Long (37:03):
I think that's a great process to follow and
that's the most important thingis to have a process And do it
one way all the timeconsistently because that helps
eliminate duplicates Otherwiseyou're doing it from this
account and from that accountand then you're getting
duplicates and all that So Ithink that's
Matthew Fulton (37:20):
a great tip though.
Thank you for sharing
Michelle Long (37:21):
that
Matthew Fulton (37:22):
put all the problems in a bucket,
Michelle Long (37:23):
right?
Matthew Fulton (37:24):
so Love it.
So I already talked about thispiece that by doing it, it gives
you the different Having it.
I always do all thetransferables as a vendor and
having names on it Everytransaction should have a name
every single transaction Becauseif you have problems or
challenges, you have to do theresearch you have more tools to
do stuff The next one I wantedto go into is dealing with
(37:48):
deposits.
And this is, again, this is aunique one.
The ultimate goal here is wehave to be able to do the
reconciliations.
And a lot of the timesduplicates, as we mentioned
before, can come into play.
Because if you have multiplepayments by customers combined
into one deposit, your bank, ifyou accept the bank feed piece
(38:11):
that will match that comes in,but then you have your
undeposited funds and startsgrowing, right?
Everything else.
Or if you're creating multipledeposits, one for each person,
they're never going to matcheasily.
And it drives me nuts when youhave.
Three different individualdeposits that are selected
because you remember that thosematched to the one single
(38:32):
number.
But if I ever have to come backlater and I'm doing it, I'm not
going to know it.
So we create an account I callrevenue query.
It's just because you can'tcreate rules for uncategorized
income unless that changedrecently.
And what it allows me to do isbasically take all of my
deposits quickly and toss themright into a revenue query
(38:54):
account.
Then, with all this stuff putinto the bucket, I can come
through, and as part of my endof the month close process, I
pull up a deposit detail report,and I can then have pull up all
the different images, if there'smultiple checks, and go and
actually check off the correctpieces that tie into it, and spe
(39:17):
you like, spend down thatrevenue query.
Dan DeLong (39:21):
And what type of account is is, Revenue Query?
Matthew Fulton (39:25):
It's a different income account, so it still sits
up in the, basically it sits upin your income area.
Because when you, when it's inthere, you know that's always
supposed to be knocked down tozero, is the, whole point.
As you start to spend thesedown, it should equal the same
amount when you put it toRevenue Query in the bottom.
(39:46):
So you've got revenue query.
When you do a, you go pull upyour deposit detail.
If it's not broken down with thenames in here is so vendors, if
it's a refund would have a nameas well.
You click on the top line.
You would then come in, find thepieces, check them off.
And then come down here clickoff the trash can get rid of it
(40:07):
doesn't break the reconciliationSo you can actually go through
clear out your bank feedsreconcile And still go back and
clear this out before you finishyour month end all the way
Dan DeLong (40:21):
You're getting some kudos in the chat there.
That's nice
Matthew Fulton (40:25):
It's such a big It just helps save so much time
because the other part of thisalso is This is the same kind of
a concept that if you're using astripe or something else and you
have a customer sales receiptfor 350, but the amount that
(40:45):
came through the deposit was345, you can actually do check
off the 350 merchant fee at thebottom minus five.
Now it pops it right back in,didn't break the reconciliation,
saves you a bunch of time.
It's all about getting thesedifferent problems in a
controlled bucket.
Dan DeLong (41:07):
And, somebody mentioned in the chat and don't
peek at the P and L becauseyour, revenue will be
overstated.
How do you coach your clientabout that?
Because then you can look at itand you, at least you know what
you're looking for, but how doyou avoid questions from the
client?
Wait a minute, what's thisrevenue query?
And do you Just frame that upupfront.
Matthew Fulton (41:31):
Yeah because usually when I'm having to do
more of this, it's becausethey're not getting sales
receipts or invoices in on timeto be able to match things right
away.
And we always try to, we trainthem and let them know what
we're doing.
So it's a don't stress on thisuntil.
This is the other option wheremost people would do this is
they put this into ask myaccountant or ask client name
(41:53):
and now you have deposits in anexpense and It's weird.
Do your financial still work thesame?
Yeah, but it's wonky.
So I Like it up at the topbecause it's a spend down if
it's a cruel based and youhaven't created any of the sales
receipts or invoices It's stillright if it's cash basis and
(42:18):
this stuff isn't in there.
It's still right.
It's only when you're actuallyhaving both the invoice in there
and On a cash basis, right?
And then you've also got therevenue query That would double
your income until you spend itaway to match the payments.
(42:38):
That's it.
I think I said all thatMichelle?
Michelle Long (42:45):
Yes, that's right, sorry, I was looking for
the mute button.
Yes, that's right, but I wasn'tlistening closely because I was
also talking about sheet laws inthe chat, or on the Q& A, but
yes, that sounded correct.
Matthew Fulton (43:01):
So we're pretty close.
I think we're doing okay.
Time wise on all this stuffhere.
Let's see here.
So then the last part again,syncing with third party apps,
we could be here for the rest ofthe day and talk about a lot of
these different things.
What it all comes down to istruly understanding what the
(43:21):
workflow is.
This is why I like doingworkflow design is figuring out,
okay, The beautiful thing aboutQuickBooks Online and cloud
based accounting is, it's adatabase in the sky.
And they can allow differentapps that specialize in
different areas to connect andhandle the hard parts of the
workflow.
You just need to make sure whichdata gets accepted first through
(43:44):
the banking area so it can matchcorrectly.
So again, like a A2X for ecommerce, a bookkeep's going to
create journal entries.
When you do your mapping, youwant to make sure whatever is
hitting through the journalentry, Always try to make it
match exactly what's the bankthe actual bank feed.
It just makes you a lot happierthat's pretty much the same for
(44:05):
all of these different type ofprograms Just keep that in mind
and will help save you a lot oftime.
Dan DeLong (44:11):
Yeah, and when you've added more More, apps let
me launch the poll and I'll talkabout that.
Which one do you use transfer?
There we go.
Noom changed something againlove when technology changes.
And now I have more pollquestions than I actually
(44:33):
created poll questions for thewebinar, but now I got to find
more than one.
Yes, it's Michelle and I forgotwhat I was talking about before
I launched a poll.
What was what were we?
(44:53):
Oh, when you have multiple apps.
And, knowing exactly like youwere saying, what, where that is
going to take place and if thereis a shortfall in, in that
integration like I'm, workingwith, you mentioned bookkeep
(45:16):
there, right?
And, understanding.
That, that's going to only bringin journal entries, right?
And how, is that, automationpotentially limiting some of the
workflows that you would bedoing inside of QuickBooks, or
is there a, like some of thesender or, some of the sales
(45:40):
connectors, they're, mostlyconcerned with just getting the
sale into QuickBooks, but thenthat passing the baton of taking
it to the payout, picking up thefees and those types of things
they're not too concerned with.
So really understanding what,that integration will actually
look like when you see it in,in, inside of QuickBooks so that
(46:03):
you can take it to the goal lineof I want to reconcile, right?
Matthew Fulton (46:09):
This made me also think about 0 sales
receipts.
But first, I actually would liketo, there's a good question that
was asking about talking aboutreconciliations for QuickBooks
checking.
And I have to be honest.
I don't really use it.
And the clients I have are notusing it.
So I'm not as familiar with thatpiece.
I wish I could give answers toit.
(46:29):
But Dan, Michelle, might youhave some guidance on it?
Dan DeLong (46:34):
The way it started, right?
The whole idea when it wasQuickBooks Cash, right?
And then it turned into QBchecking.
Accountants got the where theafterthought, of that problems
and they're a little, bit offoreshadowing
Michelle Long (46:57):
there.
Maybe,
Dan DeLong (47:00):
But like the accountants couldn't access the
account at all, right?
Like it was initially set up asa business owner or primary
admin only could have access tothat.
And then through feedback thankyou for submitting all the
feedback, accountants can haveaccess to it, but there's still
things in that, that you can'taccess.
(47:24):
But yes, you can get.
The statements now and you can,view the statements from as, an
accountant.
I use it myself, it's mybusiness.
So I I'm, one in the same onboth sides of that.
I don't have clients or peoplethat where I'm just the, the
(47:46):
accounting professional in thatposition to know some of the
subtle nuances with regards tothat, but that history.
Make sense as to what where youmight be finding that finding
the shortfall.
But you should have access tothe statements as an, accountant
and be so that you can get them,but you gotta get to them
(48:08):
through the, banking side.
It's not in the.
They don't necessarily show upas statements that are fetched,
but you should be able to accessthem through your client
quickly.
Matthew Fulton (48:20):
Stay tuned for our last poll and you're going
to understand why based on aquestion like that.
So I think we're pretty close onthat one poll.
Do you want to share the lastpiece?
We're down towards the lastlittle bit of the slides where
we wanted to somewhat quicklytalk about some.
Other technology, I think thisstarts to become more of open
(48:41):
conversation and then if thereare other things we want to pull
up QuickBooks online to show, wecan do that.
Of course, as well.
So thank you guys for all theinteraction today and the
questions.
Honestly, it makes it more funfor all of us when everybody's
having a good time.
Different tools and again, wecould do a whole series on just
(49:02):
something like this.
LedgerSync and of tools forcollecting and working with the
data.
Full disclosure, I like toalways do that at the beginning.
I've been working with, I'vebeen using LedgerSync since
2015, 2016.
I'm very proud to say I'm now aconsultant, a paid consultant
with them.
I'm not here in that role today,but I've been working with them
to help them build out their ownglobal rules engine, which is
(49:25):
designed to help us basicallycreate rules that can live
across all your clients at onceinstead of having to go in and
out of every single company fileand work in process
transactions.
Now what ledger sync really itscore functionality for the
longest time has been isfetching your transactions, your
statements, and your images,checking deposit images.
There were other apps like thisin the past.
(49:47):
Hubdoc, everybody was a big, fanof that, right?
Hubdoc still exists, but theydon't really do the fetching
part.
FileThis, is gone.
Most every company that's outthere.
They've all gotten out of thegame because it is so difficult
through all these differentfinancial institutions to stay
connected.
We even partner with MasterCardto connect with over 10, 000
(50:08):
institutions to grab statements,and I got some bad news for
everybody.
They're making it tougher andtougher to keep getting the
statements.
I will not be surprised if wesee a dip in statement
availability in QuickBooksonline as well.
We'll not be surprised.
Is that
Dan DeLong (50:24):
a.
Is that a financial institutionsdecision or is that more of a
distant, security or both?
Like it's trying to make it moredifficult for.
Bad actors to get into thisinformation
Matthew Fulton (50:42):
So what it has to do with primarily is back in
the day With all the statementfetching everything else That's
because everybody was going inthrough the front door screen
scraping and grabbing thisinformation pulling it back to
you As more institutions moveover to an api an approved
handshake behind the scenes Thatis providing the transactional
data but they are still scrapingthe statements is what's been
(51:06):
happening through all this.
So Fiserv Finicity MasterCardPlaid, I know more about this
stuff than any human evershould.
Thanks to Maurice and LedgerSyncand how it works back in the
day.
For example, you guys mightremember Wells Fargo a long time
ago for the bank feeds when theystarted putting in the pre
approved authorization onXXDateXX.
(51:28):
Do you know they did that justto stuff the bank memo so you'd
have to go to the bank todownload it and have It be
useful.
Thank you I won't hound on that.
Yeah.
Thank You know true authenticitywells fargo.
Thank you.
Okay So There's a lot ofdifferent tools out there that
will actually help and grab someof this stuff dan, you've been
(51:51):
testing out bot keeper and someof their bosses, right?
so i'd love to let you talkabout that because You Yeah.
Dan DeLong (51:59):
I talked to the folks at Botkeeper and really
tried to understand what theheck Botkeeper actually is, and
and they, invited me to be abeta tester for them and they
are rolling out a functioncalled auto bank rec, where they
will actually.
(52:20):
Fetch the statement if it'ssupported, right?
That's all the, caveat if it's,if the statement is, supported,
it also can be uploaded intotheir, portal, but what it will
allow you to ultimately do issee that.
The general ledger or their bankfeed side by side with the,
(52:41):
statement.
And then you can just eitherconfirm it, it'll either try to
match it'll match thetransaction or tell you, okay,
there's some discrepancies withthe statement.
You can bring up the statementand see see for yourself, if,
it's there the, really coolerpart of it is that, If it
(53:01):
doesn't support statementfetching or if it doesn't even
support, connecting to to a bankfeed and you have access to the
statement, you can upload thestatement and still use that
auto bank rec option.
It'll just look at what's in QBOat the time and allow you to
compare, and.
(53:24):
It's in beta.
So let me preface that it'sbeing a beta tested.
So there are some beta things toit.
And some of the challenges with,you mentioned paying down credit
cards, like it can't see thattype of transaction, but they're
working on fixing that.
So when you know, when it rollsout it might be a really cool ad
(53:50):
to be able to do that.
And BotKeeper does other thingstoo in that portal.
And that's not its only thing.
Matthew Fulton (53:59):
So you're basically saying sometimes these
apps can neither confirm nordeny if they're getting it,
right?
Dan DeLong (54:05):
exactly But it was cool.
It was cool because I'm testingit out with Corpay is a
MasterCard.
They don't connect to QuickBooksonline for bank feeds and their
statement That they give you isoriented in two different
orientations horizontal portraitand landscape.
(54:27):
And and it's able to actuallyread that.
It is?
And, yes.
Surprisingly, I didn't think youwere going that way.
Matthew Fulton (54:37):
Okay.
Yeah.
That's impressive.
Dan DeLong (54:39):
Okay.
I'm like here's a fun one foryou.
And I uploaded the statementand, lo and behold, it's got
transactions from the statementside for me to match and it's
got the information in it.
That's actually, sideways if youactually looked at the PDF.
Matthew Fulton (54:58):
They need to turn that thing upside down or
whatever they say.
Relay, other online banking theyof course give you the access to
the images and statements asthey, for their specific
accounts.
I could spend, I could have madea whole bunch of other tools on
here as well.
The ones I wanted to share rightoff the bat is Money Thumb.
(55:21):
Hands down, the best I've everused for their OCR technology,
PDF OCR technology.
And what I mean by that veryspecifically.
You've got paper statements, youscan them in, and they're not a
first edition digital line item,nice and clean.
This will do a better job onstatements than anything else
(55:43):
I've seen.
The only other thing that'sprobably close, but it's not
really for statements, has beenmakers up.
Their ocr large language modelis pretty dang impressive so
really like it They can convertto csv files or dot qbo files
And there's a lot of toolsinside of that of how you
manipulate and use it.
(56:03):
I've got videos on my youtubechannel I'm sure There's a
couple other ones hector's doneas well proper soft I would
recommend Buy their suite.
This is one of those things.
I think it's right now 200 bucksfor their whole lifetime version
of all of their differentconverters Just have it ready to
go You never know if you'regoing to need to go to a csv to
(56:24):
a qbo to an ofx to a blah blahblah Really great tool dext is
another one that does thestatement ocr parsing I believe
they're still doing that insideof the program, right if anybody
knows so those are three justquickies to to share as well And
last one, which was 74 percentsaid yes for using transfers in
(56:48):
another, I think
Dan DeLong (56:50):
I, I did share for a little bit.
Matthew Fulton (56:55):
All right.
Dan DeLong (56:56):
And this was, part of the challenge when, Matt and
I were talking about, what arewe going to talk about here is
that there is definitely arabbit hole.
That we could go down as far asthe nuances of the bank feeds,
and it's been a while sinceMichelle and I had done ruling
the rules in, in, in QuickBooksonline, and really just talking
(57:20):
about some of the technologybehind the rules that you can
and the bank feeds that when youtake Advantage of that tool,
it's either going to make createsome efficiencies for you, or
it's going to make your life aliving hell.
If you, do it improperly.
(57:41):
And so we were thinking maybethis is a series that we have
Matthew come on and do this sortof thing.
And would you be interested inthat?
Yeah.
Do we talk about, Talk aboutthat.
Do we do we go into some ofthese apps a little bit deeper?
What, would be, what do youwant, right?
Matthew Fulton (58:04):
I, yep.
And as I'm going to, we're goingto finish the poll there.
I'll finish the last couple ofslides.
Cause I know I always like totry to keep us right on the time
as best possible foreverybody's, schedule the day.
So back to you, Dan.
Dan DeLong (58:20):
Yeah.
Always check us out at the QBpower hour.
com website.
But there is something rightthere on the, homepage where you
can put in, suggestions forthings that you want us to talk
about or unpack.
Matthew, I really appreciate youjoining us here today and all
(58:41):
the hard work that you put intotoday's lesson.
And hopefully there's some, ifthe chat is any indication
there, there is some definite,nuggets, that, people took away
from from today and Shel, alwaysgreat to see you as well.
Michelle Long (59:01):
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good to see you, Dan.
And thank you, Matt, for joiningus.
Thank you both for everything.
I've got to run.
Thanks everybody.
See you soon.
Dan DeLong (59:10):
All right.
Have a great day, everyone.
We'll see you next time on theQB power.
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