Episode Transcript
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Matthew Fulton (00:33):
The way I look at it, okay, so if you're here
today, you either survived St.
Patrick's day or the first roundof tax day.
So in the comments, tell uswhich one did you survive?
You can say both.
How you doing so far or that onthe 18th, are
Dan DeLong (2) (00:48):
you making it?
And that's why we wanted to keepthis one a little light, this
this, power hour.
So we're just going to betalking about things that you
really don't get yourself intoin the accounting profession is
really troubleshootingQuickBooks, because, you just
want to be.
(01:08):
The accounting professional inthis, relationship, but
sometimes it turns into you'rean it person or you're, you're
doing all sorts of things thatyou never imagined doing.
So I wanted to share some of thethings that I picked up while I
was working at Intuit that, thatmight help you maybe be able to
(01:33):
answer the question that comesright to you from with with your
client or.
When, dealing, if you do have tomake the call.
To, to Intuit.
So today we're going to betalking about bugs, glitches,
and you, or user error bestpractices in troubleshooting
QuickBooks.
It's
Matthew Fulton (01:51):
never user error.
Would you ever know?
Dan DeLong (2) (01:55):
My name is Dan DeLong owner at Danwith and
School of Bookkeeping worked atIntuit for nearly 18 years.
Talking to some, if not all ofyou at some point in time co
hosting today, also at theworkshop Wednesdays over at
schoolbookkeeping.
com spot.
Matthew Fulton (02:14):
Hello, everybody.
Matthew Spott Fulton here ofParkway Business Solutions and
the Facebook group, QB CommunityLive.
I'm also a survivor of Tax Dayand St.
Patty's Day, but I didn't, mydog doesn't pinch me, so I'm
fine, so I survived there.
Yeah, it's been a, it's a goodstart for the week.
Nice and energetic, happy to behere guys.
(02:35):
A
Dan DeLong (2) (02:36):
little bit about the QB power hour.
It's every other Tuesday at noonEastern.
Our upcoming episodes and topicsare on the qb power hour.
com website.
We are eligible for CPE, butthrough, earmark, as you may
have heard Blake talking aboutthat before we went live here.
(02:58):
They, we do have our own channelon on earmark, typically five
business days after the livewebinar, they'll post the replay
up there so that you can thentake those quizzes there and get
your CPE credit.
We will have some pollquestions, but they won't count
for the live CPE because wedon't do that with with the
(03:21):
power hour.
A little bit about thehousekeeping.
If you have specific questionsabout the things that we're
talking about today, please putthem in the Q and a if you have
general comments, put those inthe chat.
And then of course, I think we.
Did put the landing page that wehave the handouts.
(03:41):
If you're watching on YouTube orin the Facebook group, there is
a QR code there as well.
One thing we did want to mentionbefore we get too much too far
into the content here today iswe don't want this to be a
griping session about aboutIntuit or their service or lack
(04:02):
thereof.
This is, we, work with them and,they are there.
And we want to use them if, atthe best of our ability, but
everybody has some goodexperiences and not so great
experiences.
And we don't want to just doinga dog pile of, oh, yeah, I had
(04:27):
this bad experience.
Matthew, do you have anythoughts about that?
Matthew Fulton (04:31):
Let me tell you about some of my bad experiences
for last week first, but yeahultimately you guys get it.
We're here to, help educate andgive some, knowledge and ideas
of the things we're going to betalking about today of how to
troubleshoot these things.
It actually translates acrossall the different apps that are
out there.
So it's, a logical process.
It's things to think about whenyou're starting to have issues.
(04:53):
So you don't have to go downthat road of, let me call
support.
And I hope.
Before you even do that, you'regoing to one of the two groups
to ask your peers for assistanceon things first.
So
Dan DeLong (2) (05:07):
we also do have the the Kibbe Power Hour store.
So if you need a temperaturechanging mug or a pink hat,
Matthew Fulton (05:16):
beautiful hats.
Amazing.
I love your hat.
Dan DeLong (2) (05:18):
Thank you for photoshopping it on my head.
So let's talk about what we aregoing to talk about today.
We'll talk about thetroubleshooting flow, and using
an IDEAL workflow as an acronym,that, Intuit instilled upon my
(05:39):
folks like myself that did workthere.
As far as MO breakdown, whatthat actually stands for.
And then as you're workingthrough these things, various
issues narrowing it down is veryimportant.
Because if you ever tried tocatch a spider you don't want it
to get behind you.
(06:02):
So that's that's the whole ideaof narrowing down the root cause
of the issue.
We have some more acronyms tounpack about what those what
those might be.
And then we'll talk about somereal world examples.
And if time permits, we may justtalk a little bit about the
tags.
Update here, but let's start offwith our first poll question
(06:23):
just to get a good idea of whatversion of QuickBooks you
support for your clients becauseas we start to unpack some of
these things, we will find that,where you begin in the narrowing
down process might differ fromQuickBooks online versus
(06:44):
desktop.
We'll talk a little bit aboutthat.
Now, Matthew, are you solely?
QuickBooks Online.
When was the last time youtouched a desktop?
Matthew Fulton (06:52):
Just a couple days ago.
So actually I've been doing alot of migrations from desktop
to online.
I have one client left that'sstill desktop centric and,
motivating them to make thechange.
But I just had an interestingidea.
Have you ever gone back to thesedifferent polls over time to
capture the answers and see likea chart from your viewers of
(07:13):
like the transition of change?
Here's a big fat homeworkassignment for you, but yeah,
that'd be interesting, right?
Dan DeLong (2) (07:20):
Yeah I should do that.
I don't know how long Zoomactually holds the The reports
in there, whether I've actuallydownloaded them but I do look at
them.
Matthew Fulton (07:34):
We're seeing, we've got a majority of people
there that have answered here.
So it's still
Dan DeLong (2) (07:42):
typically in the past.
I have seen about 11 percent ofour, active viewers are about
solely QuickBooks desktop.
So seeing that at 4 percenttoday is, definitely a.
Trend on the downside, but maybethe topic was bug glitch user
(08:04):
error is what brought all theQuickBooks onlines.
And there's, no such thing as abug or glitch in desktop.
So I don't need to show up.
We're
Matthew Fulton (08:11):
not going to go this way, buddy.
Okay.
Dan DeLong (2) (08:15):
All right.
So let's go ahead and end thatif you want to share the results
there, Noah.
Let's first go unpack this wholeidea of an ideal workflow.
And, when I was going throughthe troubleshooting training,
working at add into it what Irealized is that every call, and
(08:39):
this could be like Matthew wassaying, this could be for any.
Technical application or,anything like that they, all
boil down into three mainbuckets.
How do I do something, I, wantto do something, but I don't
know how to navigate to do that.
(09:00):
They would refer to it as abusiness.
Business acumen, but businessusage, those were the, how do I
types of questions, people thatjust didn't understand how to do
one thing or the other, I didsomething and then there was an
error doing it, where there's abig pop up or.
(09:24):
QuickBooks closes or you can'tlog into QuickBooks.
Those are, errors where there'ssomething that that QuickBooks
is saying to you that couldultimately be used as a way to
find a, find an answer to that.
And then this thing called anunexpected result.
(09:48):
Like I did something and.
Something happened that I,didn't expect to happen.
That could be an error, right?
And an error could be anunexpected result because you
would not expect that to happen.
But it could be, I did somethingand I now can't find said
(10:08):
transaction or somethingunexpected happened to that.
And the unexpected part iswhere.
Troubleshooting really comes inbecause how do I, you, should be
able to use the end producthelp, resources should be
available for figuring out howto do these things, errors same
(10:31):
thing, right there, there shouldbe now.
As, we'll unpack and spot us,put some screenshots in there.
There's, some pretty poorerrors.
The what was it?
The, sideways melted ice cream.
Matthew Fulton (10:48):
No, it was the shoelace untied was my favorite
forever.
Of course, that's not an
Dan DeLong (2) (10:52):
error, that's just a screenshot of an
unexpected result, right?
Matthew Fulton (10:58):
Now, real quickly, before you go on from
this, there's one other part ofthe, how do I.
And I think most peopleunderstand this, but when we're
supports responsibilities tohelp you figure out issues with
the software, not to teach youhow to do bookkeeping or
accounting.
That's a key fundamental withany kind of a software.
(11:19):
It's like their job is tosupport you on the, in how the
software is supposed to work,not the legal ramifications of,
if you do something a certainway or
Dan DeLong (2) (11:29):
yes there are two keywords when, it comes to
how do, you do something that Ialways stressed to people it's I
can tell you what you can do,not what you should do.
If you have a should question,then I would refer.
refer you to contact youraccounting professional and you
(11:50):
could do either right like youcan put your all of your
purchases to cost of goods soldquickbooks is not going to say
hey that's a problem that's aproblem it will allow you to do
that but whether you should ornot then that's where that's
where we get into a little bitmore of a you know that gray
(12:11):
area of that sort of thing.
Now, if the accountant says,Hey, I need, I should track this
as inventory.
Then I can tell you howQuickBooks allows you to track
the inventory, set up inventoryitems so that it should get
tracked appropriately.
So here's an example of thosethree kinds of buckets, right?
(12:34):
I'm going to use a deposit.
I want to receive a payment andhave it go record directly into
the bank, right?
That would be an example of howdo I do this sort of thing,
right?
So I can show you how to dothat.
I can tell you how to do that.
Or In the error, I recorded adeposit and I got a message at
the top that said something wentwrong.
(12:54):
That's a, that's an error, whichis also an unexpected result.
But, the other example of theunexpected result bucket, I made
a deposit and I don't see it inthe register, right?
So now there's some kind oftroubleshooting that we, need to
do to, find out what happened.
And to your point Matthew,here's some of those.
(13:16):
Oh, so useful error messages,right?
Matthew Fulton (13:20):
Yeah.
These were just over the weekendas we were prepping for this and
I was going through some stuff.
These, I'm like these are timelylittle screenshots I can pull up
and put there.
But I will also say to prove thepoint, sometimes it's user
error.
I was trying to figure outearlier where a certain journal
entry went to that I put in.
I'm like, who deleted my journalentry?
And I was getting all flusteredabout it.
(13:41):
Then I went and looked at theother company and saw I put it
in that one.
Dan DeLong (2) (13:47):
He's admitting to user error.
Wow.
Matthew Fulton (13:50):
Yeah, actually I did the right thing in the right
company.
I just look for it in the wrongcompany.
So again there's, great examplesof that.
But like these were situationswhere, trying to make edits on
multiple, having multiplemonitors, you can be going
through and trying to go toofast at times.
(14:11):
So another example, potentiallyof user error, if you have too
many tabs open in.
In the software and you'retrying to do too many things at
once in one area, you may getsome of these things, but there
are also times where you're justfocused on one thing and it's
not refreshing correctly.
It's not writing back to thedatabase fast enough.
(14:33):
It can be the challenge, Ithink.
Let's one of the
Dan DeLong (2) (14:37):
one of the errors like this that's in
desktop is an unrecoverableerror.
You typically you'll see thiswhen you're doing something in
QuickBooks and then you get thisscreen that says we're sorry we
had an unrecoverable error andit has all this detail about
what would what you would thinkyou would be able to maybe
(14:58):
search on or do things like,find your answer.
There's codes and, things likethat, but an unrecoverable error
is, QuickBooks is way of saying,I can't do that.
And I'm going to
Matthew Fulton (15:14):
break the rule real quickly here for the people
watching in the comments, butmake it funny.
What's the funniest or like bestquick story you've had of an
error or glitch or something putin the chat.
I'd love to see what peoplewould say, but we're doing it
for fun and humor.
Not to.
Dan DeLong (2) (15:31):
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Good idea.
All right.
What we want to have when, we'retalking technical issues is
having an ideal conversation andstands for five sections of this
conversation.
And, when I started doingtraining there and into it, a
(15:53):
lot of people had some, Qualmsor questions about the
difference between the two.
So there's identify, which isidentifying the problem which is
typically what the person willsay when, they first, start to
reach out to you, but definingis where you would define the
(16:14):
desired outcome.
What is it they actually arewanting to do?
And then exploring is where youexplore those solutions to
accomplish that goal.
And you've probably had manyexamples of that, and I'm not
sure if there's any showing upin the, comments now, but where
your client or someone has,called you or said, and what
(16:39):
they've said is not what they'retrying to do.
And you just have to unpack,what the hardest part, what they
were actually solving for.
So that.
Maybe what they started withwhat what they thought the
problem was is not really whatthe problem is, you just have
to, take that layer back.
(16:59):
And I think I talk about alittle later, but it's turning
what they say.
Into what they mean,
Matthew Fulton (17:06):
That's true in all of our practices always,
right?
So I have a little saying thatkind of goes along with this
It's really easy to forget whatyou had to learn and what I mean
by that right now is Sometimeswhen the client is coming to you
and they're having an issue Theyare free like we know and we
take for granted step one twoand three of how to get
(17:27):
something done a certain way Andthey're just trying to jump
straight to three Instead ofdoing the other pieces first, so
identifying the challenge isreally the key part of it
because you can't solve anythingor help if you don't get to the
real crux of the issue, right?
Dan DeLong (2) (17:45):
And then acting is when you actually take steps
to correct.
The issue, if you're correctingwhat they initially said for
gospel as the issue, you mightbe barking up the wrong tree.
And then the last step, whichnobody ever does, looking back
(18:06):
and making sure that issue wasresolved, a lot of times.
And I've seen this on the, on,on both of our Facebook groups,
man, is Somebody will post aquestion.
It's pretty vaguely worded, orthere's a typo or something like
(18:26):
that.
And the first comment orresponse is a solution.
Wait I, don't know if that'sactually what we're trying to,
what we're trying to solve forhere.
And then you'll see somebodyelse offer a different solution
and then it, just ends up beingthis wall of possible actions to
(18:50):
take when we don't even knowwhat it is that they're trying
to do.
So that's really where where wewant to look before we leave,
right?
Because we often think we knowthe answer before the question
is even finished.
And then acting before youunderstand what the goal is or
that desired outcome as thiswoman, we can see what she's
(19:14):
going to, what's going to happenhere.
But we've all it's, a it's,human nature, right?
We, What looks and sounds andsmells like a duck, I can't, can
you remember all the things, allthe sensory, right?
You hear this thing over andover again.
(19:36):
And then you're just by, bymuscle memory, you say okay you
just got to clear your cash andcookies or whatever it is.
And then of course that doesn'tthat doesn't help.
I love dog bird and this was acommon thing, right?
Where's dog boards, techsupport.
Hello.
(19:56):
I shut up and reboot, right?
Like that.
That was his his answer for mostthings.
And there's a reason thatrebooting your machine will take
care of a lot of things.
But as, he's saying there at theend, it's like my call time is
improving because he didn't evenlisten, but this is where you
(20:18):
move from what they say to whatthey mean, right?
This particular post was apotential client has 26 QT 2019
files.
What is the best way to put themonline?
So there's a, lot of vaguenesshere.
One, there's a typo, right?
(20:38):
And I assume we're going to haveto assume that QT means QB and
that it's 2019 files, but reallywhat is the best?
That's a very subjective wordin.
If you go and find this post,you'll see a lot of people
answering the question withoutunderstanding what it is that
(21:01):
they are looking for, right?
And in the best situation, theyare talking about the best price
to put 26 files online.
All right.
So that's really what they meantby best in that particular post,
not necessarily.
You could, bring it up to 2023or 2024 and has account in
(21:26):
addition, and it has the batchimport or batch migration tool.
That would be the best way toget it.
I'll get them all intoQuickBooks online, but that
doesn't solve what they're,asking for.
Matthew Fulton (21:40):
One of the most important questions that wasn't
even clarified there, PC versusMac.
Dan DeLong (2) (21:45):
Yeah.
Cause that changes
Matthew Fulton (21:47):
the world dramatically on that.
Dan DeLong (2) (21:49):
So let's go with with our second poll question is
where do you go for help withQuickBooks?
And you alluded to it, right?
Go to the Facebook groups, askin your, community, where do you
go?
Thanks for answering.
Dan DeLong (22:03):
No, just kidding.
Okay.
Dan DeLong (2) (22:07):
Where do you go for help now that you just took
a drink of
Matthew Fulton (22:10):
Oh, where do I go?
It really goes back to communitybecause it's going to be all the
different people I've beenfortunate to connect with.
And there's certain people weknow are powerful in different
areas.
So I really lean into mycommunity on things.
I'm, over.
I'm not wasting time trying tofigure certain things out
(22:30):
myself.
I'd rather connect with somebodywho maybe knows a little bit
better.
So we'll pay it forward.
Like we help each other out asmuch as we can and go back to
it.
And then YouTube.
Dan DeLong (2) (22:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, people are mentioning, yes,this should be a multiple choice
question.
I guess what I was asking iswhere do you go for first, like,
where's your, what is your go toto area, obviously you could do
all of these things, at the sametime, for some.
But what's your go to place for
Matthew Fulton (23:03):
good answer.
I like that one.
Dan DeLong (2) (23:09):
Nice.
Yeah.
And it's funny because sometimesI'll get stumped and I'll go ask
a post in the Facebook group andit seems like people are afraid
to answer.
Because I, honestly need helpsometimes
Matthew Fulton (23:25):
same here, guys.
I'm just as stupid as everybodyelse.
I, there are many times I needhelp out there on certain
things.
Like over the weekend, you may,some people may have seen my
post about PayPal being acluster, something.
And.
It's just nice to be able to dotwo things.
One, give validation that it'snot just you.
(23:45):
Two, to get somebody aftervalidating, it's not just you to
help you have you thought aboutlooking at this way?
Because just one little questioncan help you really understand
how to, just fix it, get pastit.
Dan DeLong (2) (24:02):
It looks from the the poll, it looks like
Google is the It's the top topanswer.
Hopefully it leads back to thoseFacebook community groups, but I
guess you can't
Matthew Fulton (24:16):
feel right.
Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2) (24:17):
Yeah.
All right.
Now let's talk about narrowing,it down.
Once you've defined that goal asto what it is that the that,
they want to what, they want,what they're looking to actually
do and especially when it's anunexpected result, is narrowing
(24:37):
it down to find the root cause.
And the best way that I canexplain this is picking a card,
right?
The magician, tells you pick acard, any card, right?
That there is a finite number ofcards in the deck, right?
There are potentially 52.
(25:00):
Answers to what card did youpick?
And you could just start going.
Is it the ace of spades?
Is it the two of spades?
Is it the three of spades?
So on and so forth.
But that is going to take anexorbitant amount of time.
Just to finalize and get to thatanswer.
You might get lucky.
And yes, it was the ace ofspades that was picked up.
(25:24):
But There are ways to actuallyeliminate a lot of the issues or
a lot of the possibilitiesbefore even starting, right?
And so the example here is thecard red or black, right?
So if the answer to that isblack you've eliminated, 26
(25:45):
possibilities, right?
So now that you know that thesuit is black, you can ask these
binary questions of, is the suitspades?
Yes or no.
Gives you the same amount of,possibilities.
Because if they say no, then youknow, it's,
Matthew Fulton (26:08):
So you're saying it's like the game, guess who?
It's do they wear glasses?
Exactly.
And the hat on.
It's Dan.
Okay.
Dan DeLong (2) (26:19):
Yeah.
And then if this the spades ifit's not a spades and it's a
club, and if ace this questionnow that now, when you start to
get.
Really close to the potentialsolution, you start have to
asking questions, especiallywhen they're binary questions of
yes, no close ended questions oftests, right?
(26:43):
If, ace is high, so I had to putthat as a, as a qualifier in the
question because if you justsay, is the card higher than
seven.
If they are assuming that ace islow, ace is a one, the ace could
be the answer, but you've let itOut of the box, so to speak by
(27:07):
not putting in that specific,qualifier in the question,
right?
So those three tests or thosethree questions now have reduced
the possibility of 52 down to 6,right?
And then it's a matter of then,you can just do is it this is it
that So you've only got six morethings to, to really
Matthew Fulton (27:29):
find.
So I think where the challengecomes into play when it comes to
working with support teams onthis is They forget to explain
to us at the beginning What, whythey're doing this, right?
Just if you're, you've got anemployee, you're asking them to
do a certain task, if you givethem the bigger picture of what
they're trying to do, we'reprobably willing to pull more
(27:50):
cards a little longer.
If they say, look, I'm going toask you some questions that may
seem a little obvious.
But I need to help whittle thisdown and narrow it down because
I've got this big decision treein my brain of pro of things
that it could be So we're gonnago through some of the stuff to
get it down and fine tune it toget you really the help you
need.
And I think that gets forgottentoo often.
Dan DeLong (2) (28:10):
It does.
It does.
And that's, again backing uppart of that that ideal workflow
where you've got the def thedefine, it's a shared
expectation that part of theconversation is definitely
important.
So here's some, methodologiesthat we would use at add into
(28:31):
it.
They came from so spud was aquicken terminology.
So dating ourselves definitely,or UDOS is what I was trained
on.
But they are the areas ofpotential.
Problems, right?
And the idea of these of theseacronyms or terminologies was to
(28:57):
help us, eliminate most of theproblems with, by, by, narrowing
these, things down and, wherethat root cause could actually
be and spud stood for systemprogram user or data.
(29:18):
So those are potential potentialwhere the root cause could
actually lie.
And then UDOS was, that's thesame thing, but in a different
order.
The idea was that the firstthing would be where the largest
potential root cause could be.
So user, not, blaming anythingon, the users, but, maybe not
(29:45):
missing a step doing things,maybe not understanding where
to, go to do all these thingsand then data.
Application and system.
Now this is where desktop waswas king in my world learning
all this stuff.
I don't know where QuickBooksonline organizes the
(30:08):
possibilities of the hierarchyof solutions.
I would imagine.
System would be and then systemis environment, right?
So your windows operatingsystem, what browser you're
using, what whether you're Macor windows those types of
things.
I, would imagine that system isprobably the higher of the two,
(30:31):
because the immediate answer is,did you clear your cache and
cookies,
Matthew Fulton (30:36):
but so I'm, going to kick back there for a
second.
Because if you think about it, Iactually feel like system should
be one of the last ones.
Dan DeLong (30:46):
Yeah.
Matthew Fulton (30:46):
If you're building a cloud based
application that is supposed tobe accessible by all these
different platforms, the systemportion of it should be a little
bit lower, further down.
User in front, guaranteed.
Application, then data, thensystem, I think would be my
(31:07):
order of them.
Dan DeLong (2) (31:09):
Utes.
Matthew Fulton (31:11):
Yeah, it's not a very yeah
Dan DeLong (2) (31:13):
it doesn't, have a catchy spud or and the thing
that they would tell us is thatif you don't use UDOS, U D S,
and that's what would happen ifcause you would end up getting
that spider behind you becauseyou wouldn't narrow it down in
that particular fashion.
So we've used some, there's sometests that would help to
(31:37):
determine the area, does ithappen in a different browser or
incognito or on a differentcomputer, right?
If you have the same thinghappen in, in a different
browser slash incognito mode on,a different computer, then yes
or no, right?
(31:57):
These are, closed endedquestions and closed ended tests
to help you narrow it down,right?
Asking open ended questions.
That, elicit more of more than aone word answer.
It's certainly a way to notnarrow it down.
That was I'm sorry, that washorribly worded.
(32:21):
You can definitely let it getout of the box if you ask.
Open ended questions.
So these are close endedquestions to help, test binary.
Matthew Fulton (32:34):
Yes.
I have a quick close endedquestion for everybody here.
Be honest, how many times you'vecalled support and you knew, you
forgot to actually try to clearyour caching cookies first, but
then you got on a call forsupport and you're like, yes, I
tried it.
I've done it too.
So be honest, did you do it ornot?
Dan DeLong (2) (32:50):
All been burnt.
Matthew Fulton (32:53):
Maybe.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Keep going.
Dan DeLong (2) (32:55):
Program application, right?
Does it happen in a differentversion?
This is more for a desktopsolution.
In a different because youreally don't have that option
in, in, in with QuickBooksOnline.
Dan DeLong (33:11):
Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2) (33:12):
Is it a widespread problem?
Is there a known issue, which Iknow we hear that more than we
should, right?
If they knew all these issues,why aren't they fixing them?
This is the next response, butwe'll talk a little bit about
the product investigationslater.
(33:33):
User, what steps are they doing?
Does it happen with me?
And this is very important toget the steps to duplicate
because you can't fix what youcan't duplicate.
So if you don't see the problem.
That doesn't mean that it'sstill not a problem.
It just means that those stepsto duplicate aren't duplicating
the problem for you, right?
(33:54):
So if somebody says I'm,creating a deposit, where do you
go to do that deposit?
Cause where I may go to take adeposit might be using the right
tool, shortcuts.
That I have bookmarked and theymay actually be clicking on the
plus new button going todeposits, right?
(34:14):
Understanding the exact stepsthat they're taking to be able
to duplicate it to see if it'ssomething that the user might be
doing and then data.
Does it happen in anotherclient?
Maybe in the test drive file?
Or in desktop, if you use asample file or some other demo
file, you want to talk a littlebit about tossing your cookies,
(34:37):
man.
Matthew Fulton (34:38):
Yeah.
Cause one of the things we werejust mentioning, the whole idea
of clearing your cookies,clearing your cache.
I don't always want to have togo through and clear all of my
cookies in my browser history,because it means I'm going to
log out of.
Everything I'm gonna have to relog into everything again, but
there are ways that you can gowhen you're logged into
QuickBooks online.
(34:59):
You click on the little buttontowards the left side of the URL
and clear the cookies just forthe site.
You're on in comparison to goingto your settings and I'm.
Talking Google Chrome here.
So if you're Safari or somebodyelse, sorry, you have to find it
on your own there You can go anddelete all of your browsing
history and get everythingcleared out and on a recent
(35:20):
support call I had done theclear the cookies, but I still
made me go through and Clear theentire history, everything out
completely.
And then I had to go log backinto a whole bunch of stuff,
including my password protectorand such.
Understanding the differencesthere.
But I was, in the comments, Ididn't know WriteTool has a
(35:41):
clear cache button.
I'm going to have to go lookthat up.
I didn't realize that.
Dan DeLong (2) (35:45):
Yeah yeah, because that is that's one of
the reasons I think that mostpeople don't want to do that.
Yeah.
So that going through in the Inthe chat or the comments there
is that when you are clearingyour cash and temporary internet
files, then all of those MFAcodes and online banking tokens
(36:09):
and those types of things end upgetting part of that.
And then that is more of anuisance, especially when it's
just a testing step of to dothat, of doing that.
That's why I will typically.
Go into incognito first or useanother browser or dare I say,
(36:32):
use the desktop app, right?
Because that is something thatis completely independent of the
browsing experience that you'reusing and we'll.
Also eliminate the theextensions or anything else that
might be getting in the way ofthe online experience that
(36:54):
you're having.
So those things are things thatI would take steps first before,
immediately.
Tossing my cookies.
Matthew Fulton (37:04):
We've got some smart people in the comments
here that are all mentioning howthey actually set it up to clear
their cache and cookies all thetime.
I use another software calledCCleaner.
So it's C cleaner.
So two C's.
That is nice because it'll cleansome mess stuff up in the
registry that's almost always ona desktop realm when I have
issues if I start using that toclear through things we'll boot
things back up right away.
Dan DeLong (2) (37:28):
And then yeah, so we, again, incognito mode, or
as I love to call it in burritomode, because I'm always
thinking of burritos.
That is the private browsingsession inside of Chrome.
Every other browser has its owntake on that.
Firefox will have in privatebrowsing or Safari as well.
(37:51):
But then also just using anotherbrowser is, a good thing that
you don't normally do.
Yes, you have to do the MFA codeagain and all that stuff to, to
get to QuickBooks online, butusing a different browser.
All together is a good idea toto do that as a test, as well as
(38:12):
the desktop app.
It's a great place to go.
It's not always perfect.
But the big thing aboutQuickBooks online versus desktop
is there's nothing to download,install or update.
So knowing that, if you can'tget in to, QuickBooks online
(38:39):
that's going to have a hugeimpact on doing anything.
But if there are.
Usability issues or on,different areas of QuickBooks or
issues of those, of that nature,it will be on this website as
well.
And you can see the historicalone, so you can stop asking or
try trying to figure it out ifQuickBooks is having a, known
(39:04):
outage.
Now, when there is an outage itis and this has a green light.
Is saying that everything isback up and running.
It's not as instantaneous asjust turning on a light switch.
When there is an outage, there'sall sorts of redundancy checks
and things that they, have to doto make sure that it's back up
(39:29):
and running.
So something may say, yes, it'sback up and running or the
outage is over, but you stillmay have a lingering aftershock
of, of, a lingering issue, eventhough the status website says,
it's, clear you're in the clearMatthew any thoughts on that?
Matthew Fulton (39:49):
So there's one other place that I will go and
look at things, and this is alittle bit more extreme, but I,
spend a decent amount of time inthe Intuit developer area, and I
will go look at where theirknown bugs are there, and these
are the long term fixes, thingsthey know that maybe they have
to change code on.
Quite a bit of detail that'sthere, but you have to sign in.
(40:11):
You have to log into that areato see it.
I stay on top of that torecognize what's coming up.
Such as they're about to do a arevision to their minor updates.
They're going to do a new minorupdate, which means the old ones
won't work.
So when certain apps start goingdown and not connecting
correctly, you can really see itthere is a big part of it to the
(40:32):
interconnectivity.
Dan DeLong (2) (40:35):
Let's talk about some real world examples.
And if I chose you as a, as theexample, don't feel bad about
it.
Cause I think I did see Renee inthe chat.
It was upgrading simple start toessential.
So she had a client and her QBOAwas using simple start.
(40:56):
They're using essential theywere on Essentials, but she
downgraded them to Simple Startstill listed as the primary.
So they'd like to switch to theprimary user to them and then
move the billing to the client.
Simple Start only has one user,can't upgrade them.
When you try, or when she tried,she just got a blank screen,
(41:18):
regardless of which browser sheused.
If I could if I can keep them insome start and then add the
client as a company admin, doesthat kick kick me off as a
primary?
So there's a lot of informationthere.
So this was really a wellcrafted question.
Cheers to, to Renee for puttingall of this information in the
(41:40):
question, because there was alot, a lot of questions answered
before.
We started to explore, right?
So identifying and defining theissue, trying to transfer the
primary admin.
That's the ultimate goal here,but still stay in simple start.
(42:00):
She needs to upgrade in order todo that, but in order the,
unexpected result here is thatthe blank screen.
When upgrading, right?
So the choice of being able toupgrade there are two choices,
slim and fat when the when thescreen's blank and you don't
(42:21):
have that ability to even try toupgrade, right?
So we looking at the, some ofthe comments in there, just
trying to narrow it down, right?
And ruling out possibilities anda lot of them she answered in
the, post itself, right?
Is she doing the proper steps,right?
(42:42):
So I assuming knows she's done adowngrade.
So she knows how to, change thesubscription.
I would, assume based off ofthat and be pretty confident
that she knew the steps toupgrade.
So is there some, go ahead.
Matthew Fulton (43:00):
Real quickly, like in my head, because I
always like to try to solveissues in a sense, trying to
clarify what I see is thechallenge here is because they
were the primary admin, likethey said, only one user in a
perfect world, what would havehappened, of course, is you
would have already switched overthe primary user, since you can
only have the one person you canstill be on as the accountant,
(43:23):
but since you're on as theprimary user and the accountant,
how do you make this change?
When you're in both placesbecause you can't toss it back
over to somebody else and nowit's stuck is the whole point,
right?
Dan DeLong (2) (43:38):
Yeah.
So they needed to be able toupgrade to essentials at least
for a day so that they could addanother user as a company admin
and then do the transfer of theprimary admin once that's done.
And she would no longer be theprimary admin.
She would be a removed off ofthe manage users altogether.
(44:01):
And the only be in theaccountant firms section, which
is fine for simple start, if youare already that way, right?
So the client is already theprimary admin to begin with.
They can bite you, or you caneven create the QBOA or create
the simple start subscriptionand tell.
(44:25):
QBOA make my client the primaryadmin and then they
automatically become the primaryadmin.
You're the accountant user.
Kumbaya, all is right with theuser world there.
But because she started as theprimary admin and didn't add
them before downgrading thenthat, that's where this this
(44:49):
problem took place.
So they need to get it upgradedin order to add another user.
There was like, yeah, again, noslim and fat chances of getting
another user added to to asimple start subscription.
So data, is there something inQuickBooks online prohibiting
(45:09):
this process?
No that, that's that eliminatesa lot of problems in this
particular situation downgradingon the other hand might be,
potentially causing thesethings.
If they're in inventories turnedon their own plus, and they want
to downgrade to, anything lowerthan that that will stop them.
(45:32):
But the, result that she wasgetting of.
Blank screen would not be theresult that she should have
gotten if there was something inthe data, right?
Application something wrong withthe subscription who knows
right?
So this could you know, there'svery limited issues of the
Application itself unless ofcourse there is some kind of
(45:54):
known Issue, right?
Of all of this happening andthen of course system browser,
temporary or files those typesof things.
And that's what it ultimatelyturned out to be.
She had tried other browsers.
She tried incognito.
She tried everything else, butshe didn't try Firefox.
And when she did try Firefox, itworked so.
(46:18):
There is no install
Matthew Fulton (46:19):
five new browsers, so I can use a
software we're not, it
Dan DeLong (2) (46:23):
didn't seem to make any reason why, they
wouldn't or why it wouldn'twould do this even in incognito
or using edge or whateverbrowser that she did use, but
she finally did use.
Another Firefox and, it works.
Matthew Fulton (46:40):
I also wonder, it sounds like it's already
solved, but I also wonder ifthere's maybe a timing thing,
right?
If, because you're doing thedowngrade, maybe you had to wait
X amount of time for it tobuffer and do whatever and then
try again, but, that is nuts.
Dan DeLong (2) (46:58):
There's another example.
They were reconciling aftermigrating to QBO.
So first bank reconciliation inQBO just migrated clients from a
desktop.
It's terribly wrong.
The deposits match, right?
So we're, Visualizing what's,happening there.
You can see it now you can,based on what they're what she's
(47:19):
describing here.
Okay.
She's in the reconciliationscreen and the deposits match.
But the expenses is almosttriple, tried to find other
posts.
The only of the issue I've seensome, but she's trying to
search.
And it says reconcile first.
Anyone know a fix for this,right?
So identifying and defining theissue.
(47:40):
She's trying to reconcile.
Expenses are overstated on thereconciliation screen.
Just as far as exploring ordigging a little deeper, where
are these expenses overstated,right?
So I'm visualizing, she'slooking at the reconciliation
screen and the expenses at thetop, of, the reconciliation
(48:05):
screen is.
Three times what she's seeing onthe statement.
That's an assumption that I'mmaking.
This would be, something that Iwould want to clarify.
And again, narrowing down theissue, right?
Is she doing the proper steps?
Is she on the screen that I'mvisualizing in my head?
Are there duplicate transactionsin the register?
(48:27):
These are things that I wouldask about.
Is it something data related?
What's the reconciliation ofthose stats, status, stat, I
statuses, what is the plural ofstatus?
And did they connect to the bankfee, right?
So that's one of those thingsthat I've been burnt by before.
(48:50):
Everybody has is once they'vereconciled or connected the bank
feed and it does that openingbalance, look back
reconciliation time, but thatwould be The opening balance
will be wrong, right?
So that would have, come up inthis question as the opening
balance is not what I expectedto be.
(49:12):
But that's it's, worthwhile toask that question, right?
Is this happening for otherclients?
Go ahead.
Matthew Fulton (49:20):
I'm, flashing back to doing the weekly
sessions when there'd be, we'dpull up different questions and
try to answer them.
And my immediate response alwaysinto all this stuff is to just
want to be like, Oh, have youtried this?
Have you tried this?
Have you tried this?
But what you're saying isreally, powerful.
We need to look at this from theperspective of how do you
actually troubleshoot.
(49:40):
The scenario first instead ofjust maybe you can do this and
do this I think for usaccountants, it can be hard to
do that at certain times.
And thank you for the reminder.
Dan DeLong (2) (49:51):
And especially yeah we're doing this,
especially on the Facebookcommunity groups, you're doing
this while you're helping yourclients and you want to be
helpful.
And maybe you just had this sameproblem and that was the
solution.
So you want to share that.
That one solution that, thatwas, Oh this, could be a nugget
(50:14):
for, somebody else.
And then of course, system couldbe a browser, temporary internet
files, right?
I'm trying to remember.
Oh, it was future datedtransactions.
That was the solution here wasthat they had future dated
transactions.
They didn't have the thestatement ending date that were
(50:35):
cleared or reconciled becausewhen you move from.
So that's one of the things thatshould have come up in narrowing
it down.
What month are you reconciling?
Are you reconciling historical?
Are you reconciling from the,moment on?
Those types of things.
That's what, happened is she hadsome future dated expenses that
(50:58):
were already reconciled.
I'm not sure how they got thatway, but, they didn't have the,
Okay.
Close off at the statement dateturned on.
So it was automatically checkingthose off in the in the
reconciliation, thus openoverstating the expenses.
(51:19):
So we hear a lot of times, I'veseen on the posts and whatnot
that when you do end up talkingto Intuit, they'll tell you
about a known issue, right?
Which we can debate probably awhole hour, whether that is a
(51:40):
way to appease you, get you offthe phone or if there actually
is a known issue but I, wantedto talk a little bit about
product investigations andescalations, from being on that
side of the fence, so to speak.
Every time that you call a caseis created, and you're typically
(52:04):
given some kind of case number.
You will get a follow up emailor you should get a follow up
email.
Asking, how your experience wasbecause that case is created and
that case is going to be the,resolution of that case because
(52:26):
they, they do want to strive forfirst call resolution is that
case is either going to be aclosed.
Or escalated if it's it's notresolved, then the close the
case gets escalated and thatcase will then get assigned to a
product investigation.
If there is already 1.
(52:46):
Available, and that's typicallywhere you would hear, oh, this
is a known issue.
Now the case number that youget.
Is different than the productinvestigation number you'll see
in the screenshot here.
This particular investigationwas INV 90173, right?
(53:07):
And that then gets passed.
To the supportability team whoif you like office space,
that's, those are the people whospeak to the engineers, right?
So they start working with allof the cases that are attached
to the, product investigationand pass that information on to
(53:29):
the, the, engineers to, in hopesthat they can find the root
cause of what it actually is.
Pausing it.
And I've talked about thisbefore where QuickBooks and any
technical application is reallyall the code is a ball of rubber
(53:49):
bands.
And if you imagine QuickBooksbeing a ball of rubber bands,
they have to then determinewhich rubber band is broken,
right?
Is it on the inside of the ball?
Is it on the outside of theball?
Is it somewhere in between?
And once they find that ball orfind that rubber band that's
(54:10):
broken, they have to fix it andthey can't fix it if they can't
duplicate it, right?
So they know they got to get tothe bottom of what is actually
the underlying problem of that.
And then they have to put theball back together in the order
that it was creating it, that itwas there with just that one
(54:31):
thing fixed.
That's a pretty tall order.
Because the last thing that theywant to do is fix one thing to
break another.
And then, but that happens,right?
We, We're all here because ofone thing broke or another,
right?
Matthew Fulton (54:49):
I use a similar analogy, but I will use the,
it's a pile of hay.
And because the hay is all ontop of each other and you're
like, okay, I need to just takethis one little nice, neat,
clean scoop out and move itover.
But you're always gonna havestragglers and weird stuff.
But more important, I need tospeak up on behalf of all the
accountants in case somebody islistening.
(55:10):
The area where we get frustratedis.
I hate it when I'm calling andthere's an obvious issue and I'm
being told There is no record ofthis ever happening before.
Oh, we don't have any known.
We don't have any known cases ofthis So this goes back to a
comment that was mentionedearlier that if we actually had
a really A clean place like inthe develop area where you can
(55:32):
go and see the bugs that are anissue they listed the different
type of Support tickets thenumber they can still be like
Private information can behidden we could go reference
there and see if there's anissue and then help reference
back and say it Looks like I'mhaving the same issue as this
ticket here.
Can you help me figure out andsee what's going on?
(55:53):
Because when we're like when weactually make that step to make
the call and spend the time onthe phone It is so frustrating
to do all that and then just tobe told.
Oh, you're the only personthat's ever had this my
Dan DeLong (2) (56:10):
yeah, it, yes it's, definitely a, what's a,
where you have to prove yourcase to, to, because they are
the gatekeeper of the next step,right?
Of actually getting thisescalated or not.
(56:31):
And then just like anything elsein product investigations are
subjective and based off of,potential looks like a duck and
sounds like a duck.
You may find that your, casegets associated with the wrong
product investigation, right?
Because it's, it really justboils down to.
(56:54):
This last bullet point, right?
It's got to be reliablyduplicatable.
And that means that anyone canfollow the steps to get this, to
have this have this happen.
And that's why you find thatclearing cache and cookies and
(57:14):
trying to incognito and browseris typically the first response
because.
Things are so intermittent whenit comes to unexpected results
in, QuickBooks online, becausethere are so many things that
could potentially be interferingwith the, online experience.
(57:37):
And I always would say in avacuum, everything sucks but in
a vacuum, it works right.
Like they test all this stuffbefore they roll it out.
Their setup is not going to bethe same as yours for sure.
There's always going to be thosetemporary internet files and
(57:58):
extensions and, browser updatesthat may or may not be on your
machine.
So it does need to be reliablyduplicated and that duplication
steps need to be documented and,passed on.
So either it's not informationthat have or.
(58:18):
Maybe it wasn't sent along inthe right way.
So I do want to call out, do ashout out to myself, if you
don't want to talk to it and youwant some quick answers and you
want to work with me over atschool bookkeeping, you can, we
have chat, email support.
(58:39):
There's day options, monthly,annual options or you can bundle
it with QuickBooks onlinesubscriptions.
You can check it out there.
And I don't put you through allof the heartache of.
Describing who you are becauseyou just log into the system and
start chatting.
It is one of the nicer ways tomaybe get some answers without
(59:03):
unless you need to talk to himto it.
I'll tell you, definitelyappoint you in the.
So our last polling question,did you find it useful
information or did you learnsomething new?
Any thoughts final thoughtsthere, Matthew?
Matthew Fulton (59:23):
The only other thing that it's hard to show
here having worked with so manydifferent app companies, when
you start to work with thedevelopers a little bit more,
sometimes they'll have you likerecord your screen.
If you do a screen recording,you can share with them the
different details.
Regardless of what the app isthat helps them for sure and
truly one of the best things thebest way to control your own
(59:47):
future is to help give feedbackin a positive manner.
So if you're having issues orchallenges or difficulties, work
with them from a positive pointand you'd be amazed how you can
connect and make betterrelationships.
It's how I now have differentconnections within the company
to help us with stuff.
I would suggest people doing thesame.
Dan DeLong (2) (01:00:07):
All right.
We appreciate you joining ushere.
Hopefully this was a light, QBpower hour after the, St.
Patrick's day and, tax deadlineor they kick the can extension
deadline, whichever, whicheverway you look at it.
(01:00:30):
And we'll see you next time onthe power hour.
We're going to be talking aboutdaily sales summaries next time
on QB power hour, and hopefullyyou have a.
Great week and week ahead andwe'll see you next time.
Have a great day everyone.
Dan DeLong (01:00:44):
Bye guys
The way I look at it, okay, so if you're here
today, you either survived St.
Patrick's day or the first roundof tax day.
So in the comments, tell uswhich one did you survive?
You can say both.
How you doing so far or that onthe 18th, are
Dan DeLong (2) (00:48):
you making it?
And that's why we wanted to keepthis one a little light, this
this, power hour.
So we're just going to betalking about things that you
really don't get yourself intoin the accounting profession is
really troubleshootingQuickBooks, because, you just
want to be.
(01:08):
The accounting professional inthis, relationship, but
sometimes it turns into you'rean it person or you're, you're
doing all sorts of things thatyou never imagined doing.
So I wanted to share some of thethings that I picked up while I
was working at Intuit that, thatmight help you maybe be able to
(01:33):
answer the question that comesright to you from with with your
client or.
When, dealing, if you do have tomake the call.
To, to Intuit.
So today we're going to betalking about bugs, glitches,
and you, or user error bestpractices in troubleshooting
QuickBooks.
It's
Matthew Fulton (01:51):
never user error.
Would you ever know?
Dan DeLong (2) (01:55):
My name is Dan DeLong owner at Danwith and
School of Bookkeeping worked atIntuit for nearly 18 years.
Talking to some, if not all ofyou at some point in time co
hosting today, also at theworkshop Wednesdays over at
schoolbookkeeping.
com spot.
Matthew Fulton (02:14):
Hello, everybody.
Matthew Spott Fulton here ofParkway Business Solutions and
the Facebook group, QB CommunityLive.
I'm also a survivor of Tax Dayand St.
Patty's Day, but I didn't, mydog doesn't pinch me, so I'm
fine, so I survived there.
Yeah, it's been a, it's a goodstart for the week.
Nice and energetic, happy to behere guys.
(02:35):
A
Dan DeLong (2) (02:36):
little bit about the QB power hour.
It's every other Tuesday at noonEastern.
Our upcoming episodes and topicsare on the qb power hour.
com website.
We are eligible for CPE, butthrough, earmark, as you may
have heard Blake talking aboutthat before we went live here.
(02:58):
They, we do have our own channelon on earmark, typically five
business days after the livewebinar, they'll post the replay
up there so that you can thentake those quizzes there and get
your CPE credit.
We will have some pollquestions, but they won't count
for the live CPE because wedon't do that with with the
(03:21):
power hour.
A little bit about thehousekeeping.
If you have specific questionsabout the things that we're
talking about today, please putthem in the Q and a if you have
general comments, put those inthe chat.
And then of course, I think we.
Did put the landing page that wehave the handouts.
(03:41):
If you're watching on YouTube orin the Facebook group, there is
a QR code there as well.
One thing we did want to mentionbefore we get too much too far
into the content here today iswe don't want this to be a
griping session about aboutIntuit or their service or lack
(04:02):
thereof.
This is, we, work with them and,they are there.
And we want to use them if, atthe best of our ability, but
everybody has some goodexperiences and not so great
experiences.
And we don't want to just doinga dog pile of, oh, yeah, I had
(04:27):
this bad experience.
Matthew, do you have anythoughts about that?
Matthew Fulton (04:31):
Let me tell you about some of my bad experiences
for last week first, but yeahultimately you guys get it.
We're here to, help educate andgive some, knowledge and ideas
of the things we're going to betalking about today of how to
troubleshoot these things.
It actually translates acrossall the different apps that are
out there.
So it's, a logical process.
It's things to think about whenyou're starting to have issues.
(04:53):
So you don't have to go downthat road of, let me call
support.
And I hope.
Before you even do that, you'regoing to one of the two groups
to ask your peers for assistanceon things first.
So
Dan DeLong (2) (05:07):
we also do have the the Kibbe Power Hour store.
So if you need a temperaturechanging mug or a pink hat,
Matthew Fulton (05:16):
beautiful hats.
Amazing.
I love your hat.
Dan DeLong (2) (05:18):
Thank you for photoshopping it on my head.
So let's talk about what we aregoing to talk about today.
We'll talk about thetroubleshooting flow, and using
an IDEAL workflow as an acronym,that, Intuit instilled upon my
(05:39):
folks like myself that did workthere.
As far as MO breakdown, whatthat actually stands for.
And then as you're workingthrough these things, various
issues narrowing it down is veryimportant.
Because if you ever tried tocatch a spider you don't want it
to get behind you.
(06:02):
So that's that's the whole ideaof narrowing down the root cause
of the issue.
We have some more acronyms tounpack about what those what
those might be.
And then we'll talk about somereal world examples.
And if time permits, we may justtalk a little bit about the
tags.
Update here, but let's start offwith our first poll question
(06:23):
just to get a good idea of whatversion of QuickBooks you
support for your clients becauseas we start to unpack some of
these things, we will find that,where you begin in the narrowing
down process might differ fromQuickBooks online versus
(06:44):
desktop.
We'll talk a little bit aboutthat.
Now, Matthew, are you solely?
QuickBooks Online.
When was the last time youtouched a desktop?
Matthew Fulton (06:52):
Just a couple days ago.
So actually I've been doing alot of migrations from desktop
to online.
I have one client left that'sstill desktop centric and,
motivating them to make thechange.
But I just had an interestingidea.
Have you ever gone back to thesedifferent polls over time to
capture the answers and see likea chart from your viewers of
(07:13):
like the transition of change?
Here's a big fat homeworkassignment for you, but yeah,
that'd be interesting, right?
Dan DeLong (2) (07:20):
Yeah I should do that.
I don't know how long Zoomactually holds the The reports
in there, whether I've actuallydownloaded them but I do look at
them.
Matthew Fulton (07:34):
We're seeing, we've got a majority of people
there that have answered here.
So it's still
Dan DeLong (2) (07:42):
typically in the past.
I have seen about 11 percent ofour, active viewers are about
solely QuickBooks desktop.
So seeing that at 4 percenttoday is, definitely a.
Trend on the downside, but maybethe topic was bug glitch user
(08:04):
error is what brought all theQuickBooks onlines.
And there's, no such thing as abug or glitch in desktop.
So I don't need to show up.
We're
Matthew Fulton (08:11):
not going to go this way, buddy.
Okay.
Dan DeLong (2) (08:15):
All right.
So let's go ahead and end thatif you want to share the results
there, Noah.
Let's first go unpack this wholeidea of an ideal workflow.
And, when I was going throughthe troubleshooting training,
working at add into it what Irealized is that every call, and
(08:39):
this could be like Matthew wassaying, this could be for any.
Technical application or,anything like that they, all
boil down into three mainbuckets.
How do I do something, I, wantto do something, but I don't
know how to navigate to do that.
(09:00):
They would refer to it as abusiness.
Business acumen, but businessusage, those were the, how do I
types of questions, people thatjust didn't understand how to do
one thing or the other, I didsomething and then there was an
error doing it, where there's abig pop up or.
(09:24):
QuickBooks closes or you can'tlog into QuickBooks.
Those are, errors where there'ssomething that that QuickBooks
is saying to you that couldultimately be used as a way to
find a, find an answer to that.
And then this thing called anunexpected result.
(09:48):
Like I did something and.
Something happened that I,didn't expect to happen.
That could be an error, right?
And an error could be anunexpected result because you
would not expect that to happen.
But it could be, I did somethingand I now can't find said
(10:08):
transaction or somethingunexpected happened to that.
And the unexpected part iswhere.
Troubleshooting really comes inbecause how do I, you, should be
able to use the end producthelp, resources should be
available for figuring out howto do these things, errors same
(10:31):
thing, right there, there shouldbe now.
As, we'll unpack and spot us,put some screenshots in there.
There's, some pretty poorerrors.
The what was it?
The, sideways melted ice cream.
Matthew Fulton (10:48):
No, it was the shoelace untied was my favorite
forever.
Of course, that's not an
Dan DeLong (2) (10:52):
error, that's just a screenshot of an
unexpected result, right?
Matthew Fulton (10:58):
Now, real quickly, before you go on from
this, there's one other part ofthe, how do I.
And I think most peopleunderstand this, but when we're
supports responsibilities tohelp you figure out issues with
the software, not to teach youhow to do bookkeeping or
accounting.
That's a key fundamental withany kind of a software.
(11:19):
It's like their job is tosupport you on the, in how the
software is supposed to work,not the legal ramifications of,
if you do something a certainway or
Dan DeLong (2) (11:29):
yes there are two keywords when, it comes to
how do, you do something that Ialways stressed to people it's I
can tell you what you can do,not what you should do.
If you have a should question,then I would refer.
refer you to contact youraccounting professional and you
(11:50):
could do either right like youcan put your all of your
purchases to cost of goods soldquickbooks is not going to say
hey that's a problem that's aproblem it will allow you to do
that but whether you should ornot then that's where that's
where we get into a little bitmore of a you know that gray
(12:11):
area of that sort of thing.
Now, if the accountant says,Hey, I need, I should track this
as inventory.
Then I can tell you howQuickBooks allows you to track
the inventory, set up inventoryitems so that it should get
tracked appropriately.
So here's an example of thosethree kinds of buckets, right?
(12:34):
I'm going to use a deposit.
I want to receive a payment andhave it go record directly into
the bank, right?
That would be an example of howdo I do this sort of thing,
right?
So I can show you how to dothat.
I can tell you how to do that.
Or In the error, I recorded adeposit and I got a message at
the top that said something wentwrong.
(12:54):
That's a, that's an error, whichis also an unexpected result.
But, the other example of theunexpected result bucket, I made
a deposit and I don't see it inthe register, right?
So now there's some kind oftroubleshooting that we, need to
do to, find out what happened.
And to your point Matthew,here's some of those.
(13:16):
Oh, so useful error messages,right?
Matthew Fulton (13:20):
Yeah.
These were just over the weekendas we were prepping for this and
I was going through some stuff.
These, I'm like these are timelylittle screenshots I can pull up
and put there.
But I will also say to prove thepoint, sometimes it's user
error.
I was trying to figure outearlier where a certain journal
entry went to that I put in.
I'm like, who deleted my journalentry?
And I was getting all flusteredabout it.
(13:41):
Then I went and looked at theother company and saw I put it
in that one.
Dan DeLong (2) (13:47):
He's admitting to user error.
Wow.
Matthew Fulton (13:50):
Yeah, actually I did the right thing in the right
company.
I just look for it in the wrongcompany.
So again there's, great examplesof that.
But like these were situationswhere, trying to make edits on
multiple, having multiplemonitors, you can be going
through and trying to go toofast at times.
(14:11):
So another example, potentiallyof user error, if you have too
many tabs open in.
In the software and you'retrying to do too many things at
once in one area, you may getsome of these things, but there
are also times where you're justfocused on one thing and it's
not refreshing correctly.
It's not writing back to thedatabase fast enough.
(14:33):
It can be the challenge, Ithink.
Let's one of the
Dan DeLong (2) (14:37):
one of the errors like this that's in
desktop is an unrecoverableerror.
You typically you'll see thiswhen you're doing something in
QuickBooks and then you get thisscreen that says we're sorry we
had an unrecoverable error andit has all this detail about
what would what you would thinkyou would be able to maybe
(14:58):
search on or do things like,find your answer.
There's codes and, things likethat, but an unrecoverable error
is, QuickBooks is way of saying,I can't do that.
And I'm going to
Matthew Fulton (15:14):
break the rule real quickly here for the people
watching in the comments, butmake it funny.
What's the funniest or like bestquick story you've had of an
error or glitch or something putin the chat.
I'd love to see what peoplewould say, but we're doing it
for fun and humor.
Not to.
Dan DeLong (2) (15:31):
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Good idea.
All right.
What we want to have when, we'retalking technical issues is
having an ideal conversation andstands for five sections of this
conversation.
And, when I started doingtraining there and into it, a
(15:53):
lot of people had some, Qualmsor questions about the
difference between the two.
So there's identify, which isidentifying the problem which is
typically what the person willsay when, they first, start to
reach out to you, but definingis where you would define the
(16:14):
desired outcome.
What is it they actually arewanting to do?
And then exploring is where youexplore those solutions to
accomplish that goal.
And you've probably had manyexamples of that, and I'm not
sure if there's any showing upin the, comments now, but where
your client or someone has,called you or said, and what
(16:39):
they've said is not what they'retrying to do.
And you just have to unpack,what the hardest part, what they
were actually solving for.
So that.
Maybe what they started withwhat what they thought the
problem was is not really whatthe problem is, you just have
to, take that layer back.
(16:59):
And I think I talk about alittle later, but it's turning
what they say.
Into what they mean,
Matthew Fulton (17:06):
That's true in all of our practices always,
right?
So I have a little saying thatkind of goes along with this
It's really easy to forget whatyou had to learn and what I mean
by that right now is Sometimeswhen the client is coming to you
and they're having an issue Theyare free like we know and we
take for granted step one twoand three of how to get
(17:27):
something done a certain way Andthey're just trying to jump
straight to three Instead ofdoing the other pieces first, so
identifying the challenge isreally the key part of it
because you can't solve anythingor help if you don't get to the
real crux of the issue, right?
Dan DeLong (2) (17:45):
And then acting is when you actually take steps
to correct.
The issue, if you're correctingwhat they initially said for
gospel as the issue, you mightbe barking up the wrong tree.
And then the last step, whichnobody ever does, looking back
(18:06):
and making sure that issue wasresolved, a lot of times.
And I've seen this on the, on,on both of our Facebook groups,
man, is Somebody will post aquestion.
It's pretty vaguely worded, orthere's a typo or something like
(18:26):
that.
And the first comment orresponse is a solution.
Wait I, don't know if that'sactually what we're trying to,
what we're trying to solve forhere.
And then you'll see somebodyelse offer a different solution
and then it, just ends up beingthis wall of possible actions to
(18:50):
take when we don't even knowwhat it is that they're trying
to do.
So that's really where where wewant to look before we leave,
right?
Because we often think we knowthe answer before the question
is even finished.
And then acting before youunderstand what the goal is or
that desired outcome as thiswoman, we can see what she's
(19:14):
going to, what's going to happenhere.
But we've all it's, a it's,human nature, right?
We, What looks and sounds andsmells like a duck, I can't, can
you remember all the things, allthe sensory, right?
You hear this thing over andover again.
(19:36):
And then you're just by, bymuscle memory, you say okay you
just got to clear your cash andcookies or whatever it is.
And then of course that doesn'tthat doesn't help.
I love dog bird and this was acommon thing, right?
Where's dog boards, techsupport.
Hello.
(19:56):
I shut up and reboot, right?
Like that.
That was his his answer for mostthings.
And there's a reason thatrebooting your machine will take
care of a lot of things.
But as, he's saying there at theend, it's like my call time is
improving because he didn't evenlisten, but this is where you
(20:18):
move from what they say to whatthey mean, right?
This particular post was apotential client has 26 QT 2019
files.
What is the best way to put themonline?
So there's a, lot of vaguenesshere.
One, there's a typo, right?
(20:38):
And I assume we're going to haveto assume that QT means QB and
that it's 2019 files, but reallywhat is the best?
That's a very subjective wordin.
If you go and find this post,you'll see a lot of people
answering the question withoutunderstanding what it is that
(21:01):
they are looking for, right?
And in the best situation, theyare talking about the best price
to put 26 files online.
All right.
So that's really what they meantby best in that particular post,
not necessarily.
You could, bring it up to 2023or 2024 and has account in
(21:26):
addition, and it has the batchimport or batch migration tool.
That would be the best way toget it.
I'll get them all intoQuickBooks online, but that
doesn't solve what they're,asking for.
Matthew Fulton (21:40):
One of the most important questions that wasn't
even clarified there, PC versusMac.
Dan DeLong (2) (21:45):
Yeah.
Cause that changes
Matthew Fulton (21:47):
the world dramatically on that.
Dan DeLong (2) (21:49):
So let's go with with our second poll question is
where do you go for help withQuickBooks?
And you alluded to it, right?
Go to the Facebook groups, askin your, community, where do you
go?
Thanks for answering.
Dan DeLong (22:03):
No, just kidding.
Okay.
Dan DeLong (2) (22:07):
Where do you go for help now that you just took
a drink of
Matthew Fulton (22:10):
Oh, where do I go?
It really goes back to communitybecause it's going to be all the
different people I've beenfortunate to connect with.
And there's certain people weknow are powerful in different
areas.
So I really lean into mycommunity on things.
I'm, over.
I'm not wasting time trying tofigure certain things out
(22:30):
myself.
I'd rather connect with somebodywho maybe knows a little bit
better.
So we'll pay it forward.
Like we help each other out asmuch as we can and go back to
it.
And then YouTube.
Dan DeLong (2) (22:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, people are mentioning, yes,this should be a multiple choice
question.
I guess what I was asking iswhere do you go for first, like,
where's your, what is your go toto area, obviously you could do
all of these things, at the sametime, for some.
But what's your go to place for
Matthew Fulton (23:03):
good answer.
I like that one.
Dan DeLong (2) (23:09):
Nice.
Yeah.
And it's funny because sometimesI'll get stumped and I'll go ask
a post in the Facebook group andit seems like people are afraid
to answer.
Because I, honestly need helpsometimes
Matthew Fulton (23:25):
same here, guys.
I'm just as stupid as everybodyelse.
I, there are many times I needhelp out there on certain
things.
Like over the weekend, you may,some people may have seen my
post about PayPal being acluster, something.
And.
It's just nice to be able to dotwo things.
One, give validation that it'snot just you.
(23:45):
Two, to get somebody aftervalidating, it's not just you to
help you have you thought aboutlooking at this way?
Because just one little questioncan help you really understand
how to, just fix it, get pastit.
Dan DeLong (2) (24:02):
It looks from the the poll, it looks like
Google is the It's the top topanswer.
Hopefully it leads back to thoseFacebook community groups, but I
guess you can't
Matthew Fulton (24:16):
feel right.
Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2) (24:17):
Yeah.
All right.
Now let's talk about narrowing,it down.
Once you've defined that goal asto what it is that the that,
they want to what, they want,what they're looking to actually
do and especially when it's anunexpected result, is narrowing
(24:37):
it down to find the root cause.
And the best way that I canexplain this is picking a card,
right?
The magician, tells you pick acard, any card, right?
That there is a finite number ofcards in the deck, right?
There are potentially 52.
(25:00):
Answers to what card did youpick?
And you could just start going.
Is it the ace of spades?
Is it the two of spades?
Is it the three of spades?
So on and so forth.
But that is going to take anexorbitant amount of time.
Just to finalize and get to thatanswer.
You might get lucky.
And yes, it was the ace ofspades that was picked up.
(25:24):
But There are ways to actuallyeliminate a lot of the issues or
a lot of the possibilitiesbefore even starting, right?
And so the example here is thecard red or black, right?
So if the answer to that isblack you've eliminated, 26
(25:45):
possibilities, right?
So now that you know that thesuit is black, you can ask these
binary questions of, is the suitspades?
Yes or no.
Gives you the same amount of,possibilities.
Because if they say no, then youknow, it's,
Matthew Fulton (26:08):
So you're saying it's like the game, guess who?
It's do they wear glasses?
Exactly.
And the hat on.
It's Dan.
Okay.
Dan DeLong (2) (26:19):
Yeah.
And then if this the spades ifit's not a spades and it's a
club, and if ace this questionnow that now, when you start to
get.
Really close to the potentialsolution, you start have to
asking questions, especiallywhen they're binary questions of
yes, no close ended questions oftests, right?
(26:43):
If, ace is high, so I had to putthat as a, as a qualifier in the
question because if you justsay, is the card higher than
seven.
If they are assuming that ace islow, ace is a one, the ace could
be the answer, but you've let itOut of the box, so to speak by
(27:07):
not putting in that specific,qualifier in the question,
right?
So those three tests or thosethree questions now have reduced
the possibility of 52 down to 6,right?
And then it's a matter of then,you can just do is it this is it
that So you've only got six morethings to, to really
Matthew Fulton (27:29):
find.
So I think where the challengecomes into play when it comes to
working with support teams onthis is They forget to explain
to us at the beginning What, whythey're doing this, right?
Just if you're, you've got anemployee, you're asking them to
do a certain task, if you givethem the bigger picture of what
they're trying to do, we'reprobably willing to pull more
(27:50):
cards a little longer.
If they say, look, I'm going toask you some questions that may
seem a little obvious.
But I need to help whittle thisdown and narrow it down because
I've got this big decision treein my brain of pro of things
that it could be So we're gonnago through some of the stuff to
get it down and fine tune it toget you really the help you
need.
And I think that gets forgottentoo often.
Dan DeLong (2) (28:10):
It does.
It does.
And that's, again backing uppart of that that ideal workflow
where you've got the def thedefine, it's a shared
expectation that part of theconversation is definitely
important.
So here's some, methodologiesthat we would use at add into
(28:31):
it.
They came from so spud was aquicken terminology.
So dating ourselves definitely,or UDOS is what I was trained
on.
But they are the areas ofpotential.
Problems, right?
And the idea of these of theseacronyms or terminologies was to
(28:57):
help us, eliminate most of theproblems with, by, by, narrowing
these, things down and, wherethat root cause could actually
be and spud stood for systemprogram user or data.
(29:18):
So those are potential potentialwhere the root cause could
actually lie.
And then UDOS was, that's thesame thing, but in a different
order.
The idea was that the firstthing would be where the largest
potential root cause could be.
So user, not, blaming anythingon, the users, but, maybe not
(29:45):
missing a step doing things,maybe not understanding where
to, go to do all these thingsand then data.
Application and system.
Now this is where desktop waswas king in my world learning
all this stuff.
I don't know where QuickBooksonline organizes the
(30:08):
possibilities of the hierarchyof solutions.
I would imagine.
System would be and then systemis environment, right?
So your windows operatingsystem, what browser you're
using, what whether you're Macor windows those types of
things.
I, would imagine that system isprobably the higher of the two,
(30:31):
because the immediate answer is,did you clear your cache and
cookies,
Matthew Fulton (30:36):
but so I'm, going to kick back there for a
second.
Because if you think about it, Iactually feel like system should
be one of the last ones.
Dan DeLong (30:46):
Yeah.
Matthew Fulton (30:46):
If you're building a cloud based
application that is supposed tobe accessible by all these
different platforms, the systemportion of it should be a little
bit lower, further down.
User in front, guaranteed.
Application, then data, thensystem, I think would be my
(31:07):
order of them.
Dan DeLong (2) (31:09):
Utes.
Matthew Fulton (31:11):
Yeah, it's not a very yeah
Dan DeLong (2) (31:13):
it doesn't, have a catchy spud or and the thing
that they would tell us is thatif you don't use UDOS, U D S,
and that's what would happen ifcause you would end up getting
that spider behind you becauseyou wouldn't narrow it down in
that particular fashion.
So we've used some, there's sometests that would help to
(31:37):
determine the area, does ithappen in a different browser or
incognito or on a differentcomputer, right?
If you have the same thinghappen in, in a different
browser slash incognito mode on,a different computer, then yes
or no, right?
(31:57):
These are, closed endedquestions and closed ended tests
to help you narrow it down,right?
Asking open ended questions.
That, elicit more of more than aone word answer.
It's certainly a way to notnarrow it down.
That was I'm sorry, that washorribly worded.
(32:21):
You can definitely let it getout of the box if you ask.
Open ended questions.
So these are close endedquestions to help, test binary.
Matthew Fulton (32:34):
Yes.
I have a quick close endedquestion for everybody here.
Be honest, how many times you'vecalled support and you knew, you
forgot to actually try to clearyour caching cookies first, but
then you got on a call forsupport and you're like, yes, I
tried it.
I've done it too.
So be honest, did you do it ornot?
Dan DeLong (2) (32:50):
All been burnt.
Matthew Fulton (32:53):
Maybe.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Keep going.
Dan DeLong (2) (32:55):
Program application, right?
Does it happen in a differentversion?
This is more for a desktopsolution.
In a different because youreally don't have that option
in, in, in with QuickBooksOnline.
Dan DeLong (33:11):
Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2) (33:12):
Is it a widespread problem?
Is there a known issue, which Iknow we hear that more than we
should, right?
If they knew all these issues,why aren't they fixing them?
This is the next response, butwe'll talk a little bit about
the product investigationslater.
(33:33):
User, what steps are they doing?
Does it happen with me?
And this is very important toget the steps to duplicate
because you can't fix what youcan't duplicate.
So if you don't see the problem.
That doesn't mean that it'sstill not a problem.
It just means that those stepsto duplicate aren't duplicating
the problem for you, right?
(33:54):
So if somebody says I'm,creating a deposit, where do you
go to do that deposit?
Cause where I may go to take adeposit might be using the right
tool, shortcuts.
That I have bookmarked and theymay actually be clicking on the
plus new button going todeposits, right?
(34:14):
Understanding the exact stepsthat they're taking to be able
to duplicate it to see if it'ssomething that the user might be
doing and then data.
Does it happen in anotherclient?
Maybe in the test drive file?
Or in desktop, if you use asample file or some other demo
file, you want to talk a littlebit about tossing your cookies,
(34:37):
man.
Matthew Fulton (34:38):
Yeah.
Cause one of the things we werejust mentioning, the whole idea
of clearing your cookies,clearing your cache.
I don't always want to have togo through and clear all of my
cookies in my browser history,because it means I'm going to
log out of.
Everything I'm gonna have to relog into everything again, but
there are ways that you can gowhen you're logged into
QuickBooks online.
(34:59):
You click on the little buttontowards the left side of the URL
and clear the cookies just forthe site.
You're on in comparison to goingto your settings and I'm.
Talking Google Chrome here.
So if you're Safari or somebodyelse, sorry, you have to find it
on your own there You can go anddelete all of your browsing
history and get everythingcleared out and on a recent
(35:20):
support call I had done theclear the cookies, but I still
made me go through and Clear theentire history, everything out
completely.
And then I had to go log backinto a whole bunch of stuff,
including my password protectorand such.
Understanding the differencesthere.
But I was, in the comments, Ididn't know WriteTool has a
(35:41):
clear cache button.
I'm going to have to go lookthat up.
I didn't realize that.
Dan DeLong (2) (35:45):
Yeah yeah, because that is that's one of
the reasons I think that mostpeople don't want to do that.
Yeah.
So that going through in the Inthe chat or the comments there
is that when you are clearingyour cash and temporary internet
files, then all of those MFAcodes and online banking tokens
(36:09):
and those types of things end upgetting part of that.
And then that is more of anuisance, especially when it's
just a testing step of to dothat, of doing that.
That's why I will typically.
Go into incognito first or useanother browser or dare I say,
(36:32):
use the desktop app, right?
Because that is something thatis completely independent of the
browsing experience that you'reusing and we'll.
Also eliminate the theextensions or anything else that
might be getting in the way ofthe online experience that
(36:54):
you're having.
So those things are things thatI would take steps first before,
immediately.
Tossing my cookies.
Matthew Fulton (37:04):
We've got some smart people in the comments
here that are all mentioning howthey actually set it up to clear
their cache and cookies all thetime.
I use another software calledCCleaner.
So it's C cleaner.
So two C's.
That is nice because it'll cleansome mess stuff up in the
registry that's almost always ona desktop realm when I have
issues if I start using that toclear through things we'll boot
things back up right away.
Dan DeLong (2) (37:28):
And then yeah, so we, again, incognito mode, or
as I love to call it in burritomode, because I'm always
thinking of burritos.
That is the private browsingsession inside of Chrome.
Every other browser has its owntake on that.
Firefox will have in privatebrowsing or Safari as well.
(37:51):
But then also just using anotherbrowser is, a good thing that
you don't normally do.
Yes, you have to do the MFA codeagain and all that stuff to, to
get to QuickBooks online, butusing a different browser.
All together is a good idea toto do that as a test, as well as
(38:12):
the desktop app.
It's a great place to go.
It's not always perfect.
But the big thing aboutQuickBooks online versus desktop
is there's nothing to download,install or update.
So knowing that, if you can'tget in to, QuickBooks online
(38:39):
that's going to have a hugeimpact on doing anything.
But if there are.
Usability issues or on,different areas of QuickBooks or
issues of those, of that nature,it will be on this website as
well.
And you can see the historicalone, so you can stop asking or
try trying to figure it out ifQuickBooks is having a, known
(39:04):
outage.
Now, when there is an outage itis and this has a green light.
Is saying that everything isback up and running.
It's not as instantaneous asjust turning on a light switch.
When there is an outage, there'sall sorts of redundancy checks
and things that they, have to doto make sure that it's back up
(39:29):
and running.
So something may say, yes, it'sback up and running or the
outage is over, but you stillmay have a lingering aftershock
of, of, a lingering issue, eventhough the status website says,
it's, clear you're in the clearMatthew any thoughts on that?
Matthew Fulton (39:49):
So there's one other place that I will go and
look at things, and this is alittle bit more extreme, but I,
spend a decent amount of time inthe Intuit developer area, and I
will go look at where theirknown bugs are there, and these
are the long term fixes, thingsthey know that maybe they have
to change code on.
Quite a bit of detail that'sthere, but you have to sign in.
(40:11):
You have to log into that areato see it.
I stay on top of that torecognize what's coming up.
Such as they're about to do a arevision to their minor updates.
They're going to do a new minorupdate, which means the old ones
won't work.
So when certain apps start goingdown and not connecting
correctly, you can really see itthere is a big part of it to the
(40:32):
interconnectivity.
Dan DeLong (2) (40:35):
Let's talk about some real world examples.
And if I chose you as a, as theexample, don't feel bad about
it.
Cause I think I did see Renee inthe chat.
It was upgrading simple start toessential.
So she had a client and her QBOAwas using simple start.
(40:56):
They're using essential theywere on Essentials, but she
downgraded them to Simple Startstill listed as the primary.
So they'd like to switch to theprimary user to them and then
move the billing to the client.
Simple Start only has one user,can't upgrade them.
When you try, or when she tried,she just got a blank screen,
(41:18):
regardless of which browser sheused.
If I could if I can keep them insome start and then add the
client as a company admin, doesthat kick kick me off as a
primary?
So there's a lot of informationthere.
So this was really a wellcrafted question.
Cheers to, to Renee for puttingall of this information in the
(41:40):
question, because there was alot, a lot of questions answered
before.
We started to explore, right?
So identifying and defining theissue, trying to transfer the
primary admin.
That's the ultimate goal here,but still stay in simple start.
(42:00):
She needs to upgrade in order todo that, but in order the,
unexpected result here is thatthe blank screen.
When upgrading, right?
So the choice of being able toupgrade there are two choices,
slim and fat when the when thescreen's blank and you don't
(42:21):
have that ability to even try toupgrade, right?
So we looking at the, some ofthe comments in there, just
trying to narrow it down, right?
And ruling out possibilities anda lot of them she answered in
the, post itself, right?
Is she doing the proper steps,right?
(42:42):
So I assuming knows she's done adowngrade.
So she knows how to, change thesubscription.
I would, assume based off ofthat and be pretty confident
that she knew the steps toupgrade.
So is there some, go ahead.
Matthew Fulton (43:00):
Real quickly, like in my head, because I
always like to try to solveissues in a sense, trying to
clarify what I see is thechallenge here is because they
were the primary admin, likethey said, only one user in a
perfect world, what would havehappened, of course, is you
would have already switched overthe primary user, since you can
only have the one person you canstill be on as the accountant,
(43:23):
but since you're on as theprimary user and the accountant,
how do you make this change?
When you're in both placesbecause you can't toss it back
over to somebody else and nowit's stuck is the whole point,
right?
Dan DeLong (2) (43:38):
Yeah.
So they needed to be able toupgrade to essentials at least
for a day so that they could addanother user as a company admin
and then do the transfer of theprimary admin once that's done.
And she would no longer be theprimary admin.
She would be a removed off ofthe manage users altogether.
(44:01):
And the only be in theaccountant firms section, which
is fine for simple start, if youare already that way, right?
So the client is already theprimary admin to begin with.
They can bite you, or you caneven create the QBOA or create
the simple start subscriptionand tell.
(44:25):
QBOA make my client the primaryadmin and then they
automatically become the primaryadmin.
You're the accountant user.
Kumbaya, all is right with theuser world there.
But because she started as theprimary admin and didn't add
them before downgrading thenthat, that's where this this
(44:49):
problem took place.
So they need to get it upgradedin order to add another user.
There was like, yeah, again, noslim and fat chances of getting
another user added to to asimple start subscription.
So data, is there something inQuickBooks online prohibiting
(45:09):
this process?
No that, that's that eliminatesa lot of problems in this
particular situation downgradingon the other hand might be,
potentially causing thesethings.
If they're in inventories turnedon their own plus, and they want
to downgrade to, anything lowerthan that that will stop them.
(45:32):
But the, result that she wasgetting of.
Blank screen would not be theresult that she should have
gotten if there was something inthe data, right?
Application something wrong withthe subscription who knows
right?
So this could you know, there'svery limited issues of the
Application itself unless ofcourse there is some kind of
(45:54):
known Issue, right?
Of all of this happening andthen of course system browser,
temporary or files those typesof things.
And that's what it ultimatelyturned out to be.
She had tried other browsers.
She tried incognito.
She tried everything else, butshe didn't try Firefox.
And when she did try Firefox, itworked so.
(46:18):
There is no install
Matthew Fulton (46:19):
five new browsers, so I can use a
software we're not, it
Dan DeLong (2) (46:23):
didn't seem to make any reason why, they
wouldn't or why it wouldn'twould do this even in incognito
or using edge or whateverbrowser that she did use, but
she finally did use.
Another Firefox and, it works.
Matthew Fulton (46:40):
I also wonder, it sounds like it's already
solved, but I also wonder ifthere's maybe a timing thing,
right?
If, because you're doing thedowngrade, maybe you had to wait
X amount of time for it tobuffer and do whatever and then
try again, but, that is nuts.
Dan DeLong (2) (46:58):
There's another example.
They were reconciling aftermigrating to QBO.
So first bank reconciliation inQBO just migrated clients from a
desktop.
It's terribly wrong.
The deposits match, right?
So we're, Visualizing what's,happening there.
You can see it now you can,based on what they're what she's
(47:19):
describing here.
Okay.
She's in the reconciliationscreen and the deposits match.
But the expenses is almosttriple, tried to find other
posts.
The only of the issue I've seensome, but she's trying to
search.
And it says reconcile first.
Anyone know a fix for this,right?
So identifying and defining theissue.
(47:40):
She's trying to reconcile.
Expenses are overstated on thereconciliation screen.
Just as far as exploring ordigging a little deeper, where
are these expenses overstated,right?
So I'm visualizing, she'slooking at the reconciliation
screen and the expenses at thetop, of, the reconciliation
(48:05):
screen is.
Three times what she's seeing onthe statement.
That's an assumption that I'mmaking.
This would be, something that Iwould want to clarify.
And again, narrowing down theissue, right?
Is she doing the proper steps?
Is she on the screen that I'mvisualizing in my head?
Are there duplicate transactionsin the register?
(48:27):
These are things that I wouldask about.
Is it something data related?
What's the reconciliation ofthose stats, status, stat, I
statuses, what is the plural ofstatus?
And did they connect to the bankfee, right?
So that's one of those thingsthat I've been burnt by before.
(48:50):
Everybody has is once they'vereconciled or connected the bank
feed and it does that openingbalance, look back
reconciliation time, but thatwould be The opening balance
will be wrong, right?
So that would have, come up inthis question as the opening
balance is not what I expectedto be.
(49:12):
But that's it's, worthwhile toask that question, right?
Is this happening for otherclients?
Go ahead.
Matthew Fulton (49:20):
I'm, flashing back to doing the weekly
sessions when there'd be, we'dpull up different questions and
try to answer them.
And my immediate response alwaysinto all this stuff is to just
want to be like, Oh, have youtried this?
Have you tried this?
Have you tried this?
But what you're saying isreally, powerful.
We need to look at this from theperspective of how do you
actually troubleshoot.
(49:40):
The scenario first instead ofjust maybe you can do this and
do this I think for usaccountants, it can be hard to
do that at certain times.
And thank you for the reminder.
Dan DeLong (2) (49:51):
And especially yeah we're doing this,
especially on the Facebookcommunity groups, you're doing
this while you're helping yourclients and you want to be
helpful.
And maybe you just had this sameproblem and that was the
solution.
So you want to share that.
That one solution that, thatwas, Oh this, could be a nugget
(50:14):
for, somebody else.
And then of course, system couldbe a browser, temporary internet
files, right?
I'm trying to remember.
Oh, it was future datedtransactions.
That was the solution here wasthat they had future dated
transactions.
They didn't have the thestatement ending date that were
(50:35):
cleared or reconciled becausewhen you move from.
So that's one of the things thatshould have come up in narrowing
it down.
What month are you reconciling?
Are you reconciling historical?
Are you reconciling from the,moment on?
Those types of things.
That's what, happened is she hadsome future dated expenses that
(50:58):
were already reconciled.
I'm not sure how they got thatway, but, they didn't have the,
Okay.
Close off at the statement dateturned on.
So it was automatically checkingthose off in the in the
reconciliation, thus openoverstating the expenses.
(51:19):
So we hear a lot of times, I'veseen on the posts and whatnot
that when you do end up talkingto Intuit, they'll tell you
about a known issue, right?
Which we can debate probably awhole hour, whether that is a
(51:40):
way to appease you, get you offthe phone or if there actually
is a known issue but I, wantedto talk a little bit about
product investigations andescalations, from being on that
side of the fence, so to speak.
Every time that you call a caseis created, and you're typically
(52:04):
given some kind of case number.
You will get a follow up emailor you should get a follow up
email.
Asking, how your experience wasbecause that case is created and
that case is going to be the,resolution of that case because
(52:26):
they, they do want to strive forfirst call resolution is that
case is either going to be aclosed.
Or escalated if it's it's notresolved, then the close the
case gets escalated and thatcase will then get assigned to a
product investigation.
If there is already 1.
(52:46):
Available, and that's typicallywhere you would hear, oh, this
is a known issue.
Now the case number that youget.
Is different than the productinvestigation number you'll see
in the screenshot here.
This particular investigationwas INV 90173, right?
(53:07):
And that then gets passed.
To the supportability team whoif you like office space,
that's, those are the people whospeak to the engineers, right?
So they start working with allof the cases that are attached
to the, product investigationand pass that information on to
(53:29):
the, the, engineers to, in hopesthat they can find the root
cause of what it actually is.
Pausing it.
And I've talked about thisbefore where QuickBooks and any
technical application is reallyall the code is a ball of rubber
(53:49):
bands.
And if you imagine QuickBooksbeing a ball of rubber bands,
they have to then determinewhich rubber band is broken,
right?
Is it on the inside of the ball?
Is it on the outside of theball?
Is it somewhere in between?
And once they find that ball orfind that rubber band that's
(54:10):
broken, they have to fix it andthey can't fix it if they can't
duplicate it, right?
So they know they got to get tothe bottom of what is actually
the underlying problem of that.
And then they have to put theball back together in the order
that it was creating it, that itwas there with just that one
(54:31):
thing fixed.
That's a pretty tall order.
Because the last thing that theywant to do is fix one thing to
break another.
And then, but that happens,right?
We, We're all here because ofone thing broke or another,
right?
Matthew Fulton (54:49):
I use a similar analogy, but I will use the,
it's a pile of hay.
And because the hay is all ontop of each other and you're
like, okay, I need to just takethis one little nice, neat,
clean scoop out and move itover.
But you're always gonna havestragglers and weird stuff.
But more important, I need tospeak up on behalf of all the
accountants in case somebody islistening.
(55:10):
The area where we get frustratedis.
I hate it when I'm calling andthere's an obvious issue and I'm
being told There is no record ofthis ever happening before.
Oh, we don't have any known.
We don't have any known cases ofthis So this goes back to a
comment that was mentionedearlier that if we actually had
a really A clean place like inthe develop area where you can
(55:32):
go and see the bugs that are anissue they listed the different
type of Support tickets thenumber they can still be like
Private information can behidden we could go reference
there and see if there's anissue and then help reference
back and say it Looks like I'mhaving the same issue as this
ticket here.
Can you help me figure out andsee what's going on?
(55:53):
Because when we're like when weactually make that step to make
the call and spend the time onthe phone It is so frustrating
to do all that and then just tobe told.
Oh, you're the only personthat's ever had this my
Dan DeLong (2) (56:10):
yeah, it, yes it's, definitely a, what's a,
where you have to prove yourcase to, to, because they are
the gatekeeper of the next step,right?
Of actually getting thisescalated or not.
(56:31):
And then just like anything elsein product investigations are
subjective and based off of,potential looks like a duck and
sounds like a duck.
You may find that your, casegets associated with the wrong
product investigation, right?
Because it's, it really justboils down to.
(56:54):
This last bullet point, right?
It's got to be reliablyduplicatable.
And that means that anyone canfollow the steps to get this, to
have this have this happen.
And that's why you find thatclearing cache and cookies and
(57:14):
trying to incognito and browseris typically the first response
because.
Things are so intermittent whenit comes to unexpected results
in, QuickBooks online, becausethere are so many things that
could potentially be interferingwith the, online experience.
(57:37):
And I always would say in avacuum, everything sucks but in
a vacuum, it works right.
Like they test all this stuffbefore they roll it out.
Their setup is not going to bethe same as yours for sure.
There's always going to be thosetemporary internet files and
(57:58):
extensions and, browser updatesthat may or may not be on your
machine.
So it does need to be reliablyduplicated and that duplication
steps need to be documented and,passed on.
So either it's not informationthat have or.
(58:18):
Maybe it wasn't sent along inthe right way.
So I do want to call out, do ashout out to myself, if you
don't want to talk to it and youwant some quick answers and you
want to work with me over atschool bookkeeping, you can, we
have chat, email support.
(58:39):
There's day options, monthly,annual options or you can bundle
it with QuickBooks onlinesubscriptions.
You can check it out there.
And I don't put you through allof the heartache of.
Describing who you are becauseyou just log into the system and
start chatting.
It is one of the nicer ways tomaybe get some answers without
(59:03):
unless you need to talk to himto it.
I'll tell you, definitelyappoint you in the.
So our last polling question,did you find it useful
information or did you learnsomething new?
Any thoughts final thoughtsthere, Matthew?
Matthew Fulton (59:23):
The only other thing that it's hard to show
here having worked with so manydifferent app companies, when
you start to work with thedevelopers a little bit more,
sometimes they'll have you likerecord your screen.
If you do a screen recording,you can share with them the
different details.
Regardless of what the app isthat helps them for sure and
truly one of the best things thebest way to control your own
(59:47):
future is to help give feedbackin a positive manner.
So if you're having issues orchallenges or difficulties, work
with them from a positive pointand you'd be amazed how you can
connect and make betterrelationships.
It's how I now have differentconnections within the company
to help us with stuff.
I would suggest people doing thesame.
Dan DeLong (2) (01:00:07):
All right.
We appreciate you joining ushere.
Hopefully this was a light, QBpower hour after the, St.
Patrick's day and, tax deadlineor they kick the can extension
deadline, whichever, whicheverway you look at it.
(01:00:30):
And we'll see you next time onthe power hour.
We're going to be talking aboutdaily sales summaries next time
on QB power hour, and hopefullyyou have a.
Great week and week ahead andwe'll see you next time.
Have a great day everyone.
Dan DeLong (01:00:44):
Bye guys
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