QuickBooks bookkeeping

QuickBooks Online, from Intuit. Your books stay in your own QuickBooks Online company, which you keep signing in to as you do now, while we work in it under our own login.

Your plan changes what the file can track more than how the monthly bookkeeping runs. Intuit's help describes two tracking features that depend on the plan:

• Classes, for splitting income and costs by department, product line or another part of the business, in QuickBooks Online Plus. Intuit suggests asking your accountant before using them.
• Projects, for grouping one customer's job with its income and costs, in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.

Intuit also mentions location tracking, for a business that trades from more than one location, as a more specific alternative to classes, and suggests keeping a class list simple, since straightforward classes make reports easier to understand. If you use either classes or projects, each transaction needs the right class or project. Otherwise the reports by class or project come out wrong, however tidy the bank side is. When a receipt or bill doesn't make the class or project clear, it's one of the things we ask you.

If you're still choosing a plan, our QuickBooks software page lists the user limits and features Intuit publishes for each one.

Transactions downloaded from your bank need a category so they land in the right accounts. Bank rules and match suggestions in QuickBooks Online speed that up, and we check what both have done.

A bank rule applies to money in or money out, for one bank account or across your accounts, and tests the description, the bank text or the amount. It then fills in details such as the payee and category. Rules run in priority order, and QuickBooks applies them to transactions in the Pending tab, marking each one with a RULE badge. A rule can also be set to post automatically, and those transactions show an AUTO badge under the Posted tab.

Match suggestions pair a downloaded line with a record already in QuickBooks when the amount is the same and the record's date is within 90 days before or 20 days after the bank line. Intuit lists cases where no suggestion appears:

• the amount differs because of a fee or discount
• several payments were deposited together as one amount
• the record falls outside the date range QuickBooks searches
• the record has already been reconciled

Those are the lines that need a person, and where errors tend to start. How a fee, a discount or a short payment is recorded is your accountant's call. Our part is pairing each line with the right record and raising the ones we can't place.

By inviting us from inside QuickBooks Online, so we sign in with our own login and your password stays with you. The invitation has to come from someone with primary admin or company admin access.

Intuit's help on inviting your accountant sets out the route for an outside firm: Settings, then Manage users, then the Accounting Firms tab, where you choose Invite firm, enter your accountant's email address or the firm's user ID, and select Save. The firm shows as Invited on the Manage users page until it accepts, then as Active.

Intuit says users invited this way don't count toward your plan's user limit. The same article says a firm invited this way can use Intuit's tools for reviewing the books.

If you have two-step verification turned on, Intuit says you'll enter the code sent to your mobile device before the invitation goes. Your accountant can be invited the same way if they're not in already, so you, your accountant and we each sign in to the same company. You can remove our access later from Manage users, as Intuit's help on managing users shows.

Through the Receipts tab, in any of three ways Intuit describes: upload files from your computer or Google Drive, snap a photo in the QuickBooks mobile app, or email the receipt or bill to QuickBooks Online.

Intuit says receipts can go in one at a time, or several files can be chosen and uploaded as a batch. QuickBooks reads each one and creates a transaction for review. From there it can be edited and added as a new bill or expense, or matched to a bill or expense already in the books.

Intuit's own notes on uploading:

• Put one receipt or bill in each image or file.
• Use PDF, JPEG, JPG, GIF or PNG files. Photos from a newer iPhone or iPad may be HEIC files, which Intuit says you can convert to a compatible format.
• Intuit advises against uploading receipts that show sensitive or personal details, such as card numbers or government identifiers.

Supplier bills can go in by the same routes, and are read and turned into a transaction to review in the same way. With the receipt already in QuickBooks, a bank line can be matched without asking you about it. That's why receipts sit at the top of your monthly share of the work.

Start with the features your business uses. Our Xero vs QuickBooks comparison shows what each vendor's pricing page says about users on the entry plans, where multiple currencies start, budgeting and changing plans. Weighing MYOB instead? MYOB vs QuickBooks and Moving from QuickBooks to MYOB cover that route.

Moving from QuickBooks to Xero sets out how the move runs, from tidying the QuickBooks file to reconciling again in Xero. Before you commit, look at what a move leaves out. Jet Convert, which moves QuickBooks Online data into Xero, lists in its preparation notes what stays behind, including:

• multi-currency files
• locations
• projects
• PDF attachments
• anything entered in QuickBooks Online after the data is taken, which has to be keyed into Xero again

Jet Convert's Standard package brings across this financial year's and last year's transactions, so decide how much history you want in Xero, and ask your accountant which years they'll need to see. If you track jobs as projects, or keep receipts as PDF attachments, plan where that history will live. The last point means a switch needs a cut-off date, after which entries stop in QuickBooks Online. A month end makes a natural cut-off, since the old file then closes on a reconciled month.