Accounting and Taxes Simplified Written by the Barefoot Accountant

February 21, 2010

“Here I come to save the day!” Mighty Accountant is on the way!!

Filed under: Accountants CPA Hartford — Tags: accountants cpa hartford llc, accountants hartford, barefoot accountant, certified public accountants hartford, certified quickbooks proadvisor hartford, mighty accountant, mighty mouse, mighty mouse theme song, quickbooks consulting hartford, tax return preparation hartford, tax services hartford, the barefoot accountant, william brighenti — William Brighenti @ 5:42 pm

The Barefoot Accountant comes to your rescue! He's on his way to save the day!
Having problems with your taxes, accounting, QuickBooks? Do not fear, Mighty Accountant is here!

“Mr. Trouble never hangs around, when he hears this mighty sound.
‘Here I come to save the day’, that means that Mighty Accountant is on the way!”

For all tax, accounting, and QuickBooks needs, contact Mighty Accountant now: mightyaccountant@gmail.com. Or call 860-828-3269.

Please visit the Mighty Accountant’s website for more information: Mighty Accountant at Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC.

Follow the adventures of Mighty Accountant as he triumphs over the evil IRS man with the big yellow hat, obtains tax refunds with the quick of a snap, corrects QuickBooks messes in a flash, makes offers-in-compromise that even Don Corleone would not dare refuse….Laugh a lot, cry a little, brighten up your day by reading the blog of Mighty Accountant on Accounting and Taxes every day!

Stay tuned for more thrilling adventures!

Comments (0)

February 18, 2010

How much is 2 plus 2?

Filed under: Articles — Tags: abraham briloff, accounting profession, auditor independence, independence, the barefoot accountant, Unaccountable Accounting: Games Accountants Play — William Brighenti @ 12:37 pm

In his classic book about the accounting profession, Unaccountable Accounting: Games Accountants Play, Abraham Briloff recounts a supposedly true story suggesting the primary criterion corporations employed in selecting their public accounting firms. In the event that you may not have heard this story, I wish to tell it here and now, since it may still have relevance in our current times.

Once upon a time in accounting land, there lived eight big giants: Arthur Andersen; Ernst & Ernst; Haskins & Sells; Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery; Peat, Marwick, Mitchell; Price Waterhouse; Touche, Ross; and Arthur Young. These public accounting firms were regarded as gods by everyone in the business community and the accounting profession. Whenever they spoke, everyone listened. And whatever they signed, the business community accepted as gospel.

An executive of a corporation wishing to go public interviewed the partners of these various “Big Eight” accounting firms. He needed their seal of approval on his financials in order to enhance the valuation of his corporation’s stock offering. In each interview, all he asked of the partners from each public accounting firm was the following simple question: “How much is 2 plus 2?” Virtually all of the partners of the Big Eight accounting firms, thinking that the executive was a complete idiot, simply replied, “4, of course”,—that is, all but one partner from a Big Eight firm, who paused and remained silent for a considerable period of time, not replying with the obvious answer that the other interviewees had immediately spurted out. His response, after some serious reflection, was, “What number did you have in mind?” Needless to say, upon hearing what he wanted to be understood, the executive selected this partner’s public accounting firm.

Back then in 1972 when the book was written, Abraham Briloff did not think very highly of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), preferring his own acronym, CRAP (Cleverly Rigged Accounting Ploys), to describe the profession’s accounting methodologies. In fact, Briloff felt that the Big Eight firms in particular had been selling out their requisite professional posture of independence, especially in regard to their audit clients.

The question today, of course, is how much has really changed in the last 40 years? If Briloff were alive today, I can only suspect that he would reply simply, “not much.” Unfortunately, Abraham Briloff died years ago, and with his death, the accounting profession lost an important gadfly and watchdog, if not a part of its conscience. Regrettably, as long as accounting firms are hand picked by their clients, the question raised by Briloff many years ago will continue to haunt, if not tarnish, our profession: how truly independent and objective can accountants afford to be? Was Briloff too cynical believing that we as professionals would never bite the hands that feed us? Or are we too willing to be naive?

This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice. For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant.

Have a tax or an accounting question? Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants. For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website, Accountants CPA Hartford, and our blog, The Barefoot Accountant: Accounting and Taxes Simplified.

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein. The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

Comments (0)

February 4, 2010

Is accounting really boring, or has virtually the entire human race just been getting it all wrong since the beginning of time?!

Filed under: Articles — Tags: accountants boring, certified public accountants boring, cpas boring, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 7:06 pm

Spock the Vulcan CPA I’ve noticed on Twitter a bunch of tweets from younger people complaining that accounting is boring. This may very well be true for those who are not accountants. Non-accountants include those individuals who once loved accounting until they took, and were flunking, intermediate accounting in college and then switched their major to marketing, a much less challenging discipline than accounting, to say the least. I suspect that they are the main culprits spreading this libelous fiction on Twitter that accounting is boring (and, by implication, that CPAs are nerds, but that is an entirely different libelous fiction, for which we in class action intend to sue). Don’t you remember when the Marketing Department would sponsor a Halloween Costume Party, and would add a handwritten note at the bottom of your invitation saying, “just come as you are: you don’t need a costume”? Marketing people can be so petty and mean spirited. They call themselves Marketers, but we accountants know what they really are: salespeople! Don’t you just hate salespeople?! Doesn’t everybody hate salespeople, except salespeople? (But then, I have heard, that on occasion they are not so fond of salespeople either, especially when they find themselves the recipients of a plethora of sales calls during the dinner hour.)

There are two schools of thought as to why some individuals, when stroking a debit or a credit, experience ecstasy and others vomit before suffering a cardiac arrest. The Pavlovian Institute of Salivation Studies (aka, PISS) asserts that CPAs love accounting because of the presence of a gene that non-CPAs lack. They based their findings on a series of tests conducted on 100 Russian female CPAs with thick ankles, who both sweated and salivated while debiting and crediting all night long. On the other hand, the Freudianists argue that there is no such gene; rather, they argue one’s love or hatred of accounting stems from early childhood experiences, basing their argument on Freud’s theory found in his “Masochistic Pleasure Principle”, which asserts that anyone experiencing ecstasy while reading tomes of FASBs, GAASs, Regs, Codes, etc., must have experienced in early childhood both the Electra and the Oedipal complexes, resulting in a very confused, sad, miserable human being. As we all know, Freud himself was a very confused, sad, miserable human being, which explains why he was such an excellent accountant although he kept confusing the terms debit and credit as he did the sexes and the entire civilized world for over a century; however, he did rake in millions of sheckles from all of his nutty theories as well as from all of those sexually repressed, nutty idiots who believed them, again attesting to his love of accounting.

Initially I believed that that Masochistic Pleasure Principle theory accounted for my love life in college. Women that I dated in college while pursuing my accounting degree lapsed into comas, never to be heard from again. Frankly, I found that behavior strange, if not down right rude. That Houdini phenomenon puzzled me for a very long while, thinking it was due to my cologne. But then one night while I was reading a passage from FASB 8 on a date at the drive-in, it occurred to me—after feeling a draft coming from the passenger side of the car as a result of its door being left wide open—that perhaps not everyone shared my passion for accounting. And I was right!

It was then that I came to the realization that our love or hatred for accounting stemmed not from any Freudian psychoanalytic theory based on mommie and daddie sex(although I swear that my CPE notes on accounting and auditing have enhanced my virility much more so than that viagra that I have been taking daily for 10 years) but rather on our genetic code. After reading that earth-shattering genetic treatise, “Mein Kampf”, written by a somewhat controversial Austrian social engineering theorist, who advocated genetic cleansing to the nth degree of infinity, I reached the conclusion that either you’ve got the good genes or you don’t have the good genes. If you’ve got the good genes, you definitely love accounting and would never, ever find it boring. If you don’t have the good genes, you are a loser and you will always find accounting and accountants boring. As CPAs, we have the good genes and therefore belong to an elite, master, Aryan race, similar to the Vulcans, of which Spock is an exemplary example as well as an excellent accountant. Do you recall that it was only Spock who counted the number of Tribbles in the episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles”? No small coincidence there.

Conclusion: those who lack this gene are inferior to us and are in real big trouble, according to the author of “Mein Kampf”, whatever his name is.

I hope that this article has shed some light on why all those morons out there in Twitter Land find accounting so boring.

Comments (2)

February 2, 2010

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a CPA

Filed under: Articles — Tags: certified public accountant clients, certified public accountant gone mad, cpa clients, crazed cpa, I have my tax clients, loser tax clients, tax clients, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 2:03 am

My clients are driving me crazy!

Am I the only CPA attracting whacko, cheap, mean-spirited, stupid, desperate, lazy, crooked, brain-dead, sloppy, crazed clients?

Do you get those daily calls from cheapoes who, upon attempting to do their own tax returns, become stumped on a tax issue and want to pick your brains for free? Or from losers wanting to qualify for a HUD mortgage, but need an accountant to fudge some numbers on unfiled tax returns for the past five years, and are unable to pay your fees, but offer in trade an old Adobe Creative Suite CS3 that they somehow acquired but cannot for the life of them recall how?! Or how about the caller who doesn’t have a W-2—no less knows what one looks like—but needs to file a tax return immediately in order to obtain a tax refund to pay his child support to stay out of jail? And the client who uses QuickBooks but debits revenue for receipts, credits revenues for loans, and expenses all capitalized costs, and then asks you where all his money went? Or the client who insists on mixing personal with business disbursements year after year, in spite of your threats of reprisals year after year? Or those who send you a backup copy of QuickBooks and have no idea what the administrator’s password is?

Do you, too, have clients who bring in documentation a dribble at a time, as if you were the IRS auditor? Or better yet, clients who bring in receipts white-washed from having been left in their jeans while doing their laundry? And those few who do have receipts, do they bring them into your office in a shoe box all folded, torn, caked with filth, and scrumpled up so that they are unreadable to the human eye, never having heard of file folders? Or how about those small business owners with bank statements full of indecipherable electronic transactions without a clue as to what they were for? And you, too, must have clients who think that the tax organizer is for you to fill in, not them.

And do you have the proverbial client who keeps asking in metronome fashion, how can I pay my taxes? Or the ex-husband who still wants to claim his ex-wife as a dependent? Or the up-and-coming business tycoon who not only wants to deduct as business travel every mile on his new corvette, but every meal, those trips to the Caribbean, and even the ski lodge rental for the entire winter with his family, and then complains about your bill?

Do you, too, have clients emailing you every hour of the day about some issue or question? Or who are insomniacs, calling you faithfully on the hour every night after 11:00 PM? Or leaving you voice messages, placing their calls strategically before your office opens or at lunch or dinner hours, so as to require you to pay for the returned long distance calls? Or those unforgettable ones who need their tax returns processed immediately, even though they take months, if not years, to pay you? Do you also have clients whose QuickBooks files are a total wreck, missing half of the transactions that occurred throughout the year, but then complain that your tax return preparation fees are more than those charged by the franchised tax preparing services in town, after you had spent endless hours reconstructing their records in the twilight zone?

And you must also have as clients those recalcitrants whom you had called, emailed, begged, pleaded, and wooed more times than you ever did your wife throughout your entire married life about bringing in their vendor information on time in order to process their 1099s, only to have them dump their lists in your office on the 31st of January, no less, with either taxpayer identification numbers or addresses missing?

Or how about that Pakistani client, who in spite of his pious devotion to Mohammed, heaps upon you a slew of endless vulgarities that would make a camel’s mouth go dry because you off-handedly and unknowingly remarked to his wife that the accounting records prepared by her were a wreck, after which she obediently reports your “insult” to her husband, sobbing uncontrollably as if she were violated by a gang of heathen infidels?

Where have all the clients gone who saved receipts? Are business checks a relic of the past, replaced by debit cards and nebulous electronic transfers with acronymic descriptions? Are bank reconciliations too taxing even in QuickBooks, where all that is required from the user is a click here and a click there?

Alas, tax season has arrived.

——————————————————————————–
If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein. The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

Comments (0)

January 31, 2010

Why not a CPA as President?

Filed under: Articles — Tags: accountant for president, certified public accountant president of united states, cpa president of united states, elect cpa as president, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 2:18 pm

Murray Blum for President With the economy the most central issue, why not elect a CPA as President? A recent poll showed that 47% of our fellow citizens thought that the economy was the central issue of our country. So we elect lawyers to manage and direct our economy? Does this make any sense? Why not elect someone who can read a budget?

I love the scene in the movie, “Dave”, when Dave Kovic, acting as President, calls in his buddy, a nerdy accountant named Murray Blum, played by Charles Grodin, to find $650 million dollars in the budget to keep open shelters for the homeless. Do you recall what Murray says, reviewing the U.S. budget?

“I’ll tell you, Dave. I’ve been over this stuff a bunch of times. It just doesn’t add up. Who does these books? I mean, if I ran my business this way, I’d be out of business. “

However, in an hour or two over lunch (Blum loves bratwurst; no quiche for him), Blum finds the funds. Let’s face it: accountants are meat-and-potatoes kind of people; some lawyers can’t even spell that word…recall Dan Quayle. Accountants love the meat… they look at the numbers, add them up, and make certain they balance and whether or not one has the funds. Lawyers? Put two lawyers in a room, and you have a never-ending discussion…excuse me, debate. Put 100 lawyers in the Senate, and you have lots of endless discussions, and gridlock.

The perennial question is, can lawyers add? Maybe it has something to do with left side/right side of the brain, verbal and quantitative abilities being on opposite sides of our central synapsis unit. Lawyers can sure talk. And they can write better than us accountants. Do you recall those arrogant replies to your legal confirmations as a young public accountant, with their corrections of your spelling and grammar in red ink? And they can write—and write—endless tomes in that Swiftian language called “legalese”. But have you ever noticed their inability to compose correctly any reports dealing with money? Did you ever receive a bill from an attorney? I rest my case, my dear Perry.

Personally, I think accountants should govern the entire world. I’m tired of generals with degrees in war becoming dictators, and lawyers talking endlessly and gridlocking, and B-rated actors holding public office and reading scripts. Engineers are not suitable either: remember Hoover? Keep them building dams. If a prerequisite to being President was an accounting degree, our country would not be in debt for $12,297,657,622,986.34 as of 08:41:56 on 01/14/10, and owned by the Bank of China. Always the accountant.

In 1964, I recall a speech at the Goldwater convention made by an actor who was to become President. The theme of his speech centered on our reckless government’s fiscal and tax policies, when our national debt was $311 billion dollars. When he took office in 1980, it was $907 billion dollars; when he left office in 1988, it was $2.6 trillion dollars. Never once did this President (excuse me, actor) present a balanced budget to the United States Congress. So much for actors on budgets and leadership. They can read the lines, but do they mean what they say?

Rest assured, an accountant means what he or she says. An accountant knows that a budget must balance. If an accountant were President, here is what you could expect:

A balanced budget.
No waste or pork (except for bratwurst).
No needless wars: CPAs are geeks; we’re used to getting beaten up. And only “pay as you go” wars, which would end all wars immediately anyway. We’re broke!
And press conferences not covered by the media. Why would CNN, FOX, MSNBC roll cameras and microphones to hear a CPA rattle off numbers for two hours? Rest assured, your NASCAR, football, baseball, or basketball game would never be interrupted for a Presidential press conference again.

It’s time for a CPA to come forth, run for office, and save our country. Any volunteers?

Comments (2)

I’m mad. Why aren’t CPAs volunteering to help businesses and individuals here in our economic disaster?

Filed under: Articles — Tags: accountants helping businesses, cpa assisting individuals, cpa helping businesses, CPA volunteer, CPAs volunteering Haiti, free tax advice, free tax help, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 2:11 pm

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s wonderful that CPAs are volunteering to assist those poor souls in Haiti. I congratulate and thank them. And I am not equating our country’s situation to that in Haiti, where hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. That is truly tragic and heart-breaking. However, where have these CPAs been for the past year during our economic disaster? People here have been losing their jobs; businesses have been going under; millions have been unable to afford health insurance (my wife, a cancer survivor of 7 years, was denied health insurance by Aetna and Blue Cross/Blue Shield and others); millions have been losing their homes in a national disaster that may eventually equal, if not exceed, the great depression. Isn’t our current and expected economy a national disaster, too, requiring a state of national emergency? However, I haven’t seen one accounting firm offer to help. Have you? If so, please step forward and let us know.

I’m mad. I’m mad at voting for Obama for real change, and then seeing billions given to those responsible for this calamity, while millions of victims were laid off by those responsible. I’m mad that executives of banks receiving TARP money received billions in bonuses from those funds. I’m mad that viable solutions to the subprime mortgage crisis have been proposed by the best brains in our country at Wharton and Stamford, only to have been ignored by our leaders. I’m mad over the Supreme Court’s latest ruling allowing Corporations to give unlimited funds to political candidates. But I’m really mad at the American citizenry for not getting as mad as me. Somehow we have all become too complacent and dignified, feeling it is inappropriate to get mad. Thank, God, our forefathers got really mad over a tea tax. As Howard Beale ranted, you first got to get mad; hopefully, action—real change—will then follow.

When will the American people, certified public accountants, accountants, and others unite in a voice for real change in our country? Can they? Will they? Not likely. Again, that’s what truly makes me mad. We all know that the jobs will not return, not when there is so much talent abroad willing to work for as little as $.25 per hour. And we all suspect that millions of more jobs will be lost. I have a small public accounting practice, and half my clients are considering bankruptcy; many fear losing their homes; some cannot pay their taxes. And if you own an accounting practice, won’t you be affected, too, by your clients losing their businesses, their jobs, and their homes? Do you think they will continue to pay you to do their accounting and tax work? If their businesses fail today, yours will follow tomorrow.

It’s time for CPAs as professionals to get more involved and stop burying their heads in their cubicles, ticking, checking, footing, and cross-footing ad infinitum. It’s time for some kind of action. At the very least, get mad; speak up: even a nerd can be heard. Offer to help small businesses and individuals here, struggling to survive. On October, 12, 2009, I issued a press release, offering assistance to small businesses and individuals in dire need of assistance. A copy of the press release is available at http://www.cpa-connecticut.com/accounting-tax-assistance-press-release.html. I encourage all of you to get involved. I thank you in advance.

Please forgive my bombast, but I’m mad.

Comments (0)

Is it time to give your CPA the boot?

Filed under: Articles — Tags: accountants hartford, change accountant, change certified public accountant, change cpa, evaluate cpa, fire certified public accountant, fire cpa, firing accountant, firing cpa, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 2:05 pm

It’s that time of year again to assemble all of your financial information and bring it to your Certified Public Accountant. However, some of you may be dissatisfied with your current Certified Public Accountant and are contemplating a change.

In a mailing to business owners back in 2003, I included the following list of the Top 10 Questions for them to ask themselves in order to determine if it was time to change certified public accountants:

Do you grab your chest when you open your CPA’s bills?
Do you feel shunned by your CPA whenever you call his office?
Are you tired of seeing a new face handling your account each year?
Are extensions your CPA’s MO?
Are you no longer shocked when you receive an IRS notice?
Do you find yourself auditing the work of your CPA?
Do you suspect that your CPA never heard of tax planning?
Can’t remember the last time your CPA discussed his findings with you?
When you receive your financials, is it already time for next year’s?
Do you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, worrying about an IRS audit?

A lot has changed since 2003, especially in regard to information processing. Moreover, the American economy has been suffering from a meltdown for over a year—which may last many more years to come. Consequently, considering whether or not to change CPAs may even be more necessary and urgent now than ever before. In light of this, in addition to the 10 questions listed above, I decided to compile a list of 10 things to be especially on the lookout for to assist you in deciding whether now is the time to change CPAs.

My Top 10 List for Knowing When It’s Time to Give Your Current CPA the Boot!

Your CPA brags about all the money he made on investment referrals to Bernard Madoff’s Investment Securities.
The cover letter accompanying your tax return is in Sanskrit, bearing a New Delhi address.
You received a wedding invitation of your CPA’s marriage to his prison cellmate, Buster.
Your CPA included your dog, Muffy, as a dependent on your 2008 Form 1040.
Your CPA billed you for a 2008 Form 1040 tax return filed for Muffy.
Your CPA’s tax organizer asks you for all of your credit and debit card numbers, CVV numbers, PIN numbers, expiration dates, and names as they appear on the cards.
Your financial statements and tax returns appear on his website as testimonials.
Your CPA off-handedly mentions that he recently hired some big mafooch named Guido to handle collections.
Your CPA text messages his attorney always before signing your financial statements and tax returns.
Over drinks your CPA lets it slip out that that correspondence course—found on the back of a matchbook cover—sure paid off for him.

Perhaps you have a few tips to share about knowing when to change CPAs.

Comments (0)

Beware the Ides of March and April, QuickBooks Users!

Filed under: Articles — Tags: QuickBooks clients, QuickBooks errors, QuickBooks files, QuickBooks Ides-of-March, QuickBooks mess, QuickBooks users, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 2:01 pm

Beware the Ides of March and April, QuickBooks Users!

Tax time is here for S Corps, Limited Liability Companies, Sole Proprietorships, and many C Corps. And many rely on QuickBooks as their accounting software. And every year starting about now, we certified public accountants receive these companies’ QuickBooks files in various states of condition: a few pretty clean; some OK; most a mess. Why are so many of these files a total wreck when QuickBooks has been hailed as the miracle worker of small business accounting?

The majority of these QuickBooks’ messes result from users who are not formal accountants. It would be fair to say that most users wouldn’t know a debit from a credit even if their lives depended on such. Somehow small business owners have acquired this mind set that if they merely purchase and install QuickBooks, that virtually anyone can become an accountant and process their accounting records. Not necessarily so. It is true that QuickBooks can be a powerful accounting tool for many small businesses. But this is dependent upon the following conditions:

QuickBooks having been set up correctly;
The user understanding the intricacies of the software;
And the user understanding at least basic bookkeeping.

Satisfying all three of these conditions in a small business is as likely as Senator Joe Lieberman advocating the public option of the health care bill next week.

I have witnessed many business owners delegating the bookkeeping function to their spouse, to an individual passing themselves off as a QuickBooks guru without an understanding of bookkeeping, and even to themselves, after working out in the field all day in their trade or profession. Money is always tight for small businesses—now more than ever—and owners of small businesses inevitably scrimp on the bookkeeping function, relegating it to the bottom of their list of priorities. They feel that if QuickBooks is the do-it-all accounting software, then they can hire anyone at $10 to $20 per hour to input their company data, and that all of their financial information will just fall into place. Again: not necessarily so. In fact, quite the contrary may ensue, and herein lies the irony: these non-accountants can, and often do, make a total mess of one’s accounting records.

Perhaps you know from first hand experience from having been lulled by one of those major home improvement stores into believing that you could undertake a home improvement project yourself, such as tearing down walls, ripping out plumbing, rewiring rooms, only to end up making a mess, leaving it half done or hiring a professional to salvage your house, and ultimately costing you five times more than it would have cost you if you had hired a professional to do it in the first place.

And so with small businesses and their bookkeeping. QuickBooks with its focus on visual features and mouse clicking as opposed to text fields, unattractive tables, and spreadsheets, lulls its user into feeling competent in its use. But allowing someone who does not have a solid knowledge of bookkeeping to process your business transactions in QuickBooks could end up ultimately costing you many times more in “repair” bills than if you had a qualified professional handling your bookkeeping or accounting function. However, if you insist on being chintzy and having a lowly paid employee without solid bookkeeping skills enter your company’s data into QuickBooks, here are a few suggestions:

Have that employee only enter cash receipts and cash disbursements. Don’t overburden him or her with any complicated accounting entries involving RESPAs, WIP accounts, prepaids, overhead application, etc.
Have the individual enter the transactions utilizing QuickBooks “forms” rather than using general journal entries. If your data entry person only took a bookkeeping course years ago in high school, restrict him or her from making journal entries in your QuickBooks company’s file.
When engaging a certified public accountant, hire one who knows QuickBooks inside out. Unfortunately, many do not. It’s not difficult to assess your outside accountant’s knowledge of QuickBooks: ask him or her some technical questions about QuickBooks and listen carefully to the answers given. For instance, ask him or her the meaning and significance of the terms “source” and “target” as used in QuickBooks. If he or she does not know, it would be advisable to find someone who does know. At the very least, your CPA should also be a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor.

Your accounting records are too valuable of an asset to entrust to just anyone. Most small business owners forget the investment of time and money required in the set up of the software, the data entry processed over the years, as well as the intermittent clean up work provided by outside consultants. Protect this investment from damage by restricting its access to only those qualified in its use. Otherwise, your QuickBooks accounting mess may cost you thousands and thousands of dollars of clean up in the end, if not every year.

Comments (0)

C’mon, admit it. Don’t you just hate QuickBooks?!

Filed under: Articles — Tags: hate QuickBooks, QuickBooks, QuickBooks CPA, QuickBooks fees, QuickBooks versions, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 1:57 pm

Do you hate QuickBooks?

Everybody’s using it, and so are you, but c’mon, admit it, don’t you hate QuickBooks? Well, maybe not QuickBooks, but Intuit? Every year, Intuit forces us CPAs to buy a new version of QuickBooks for ~$500, if we want payroll included. And much more, for additional users!!!! How? Because for us to be compatible with our clients’ QuickBooks’ files, we need the same year’s version. And if you are just starting up a CPA practice, you may have to acquire prior years’s versions to service clients using them. I’ve got one client still using QuickBooks 2002! That’s an oldie but goodie. I hate that marketing ploy, being forced to buy something every year. And now being forced to buy a separate payroll module, since Intuit will not update the tax tables for free every year in the program. And every year it seems that Intuit comes up with another feature to pay for. This year it’s the Intuit Statement Writer. No, it’s not included with the Premier Accountants Edition, as I expected it to be. There’s a fee with that edition, unlike the now defunct FSD, Financial Statement Designer, which was not all that convenient and easy to work in. Oh, by the way, the QuickBooks gurus refer to the Intuit Statement Writer as ISW, in the event that you do not want to appear like a deer-in-the-headlights when you hear the lingo in accounting circles.

Do you remember the good old days when QuickBooks was easy to work with? You didn’t need to know what a “source” or “target” was in QuickBooks, or round up a posse to find out how to execute something correctly in it. And I hate the marketing program of Intuit. All my clients feel that since their records have been processed in QuickBooks, everything’s correct, no major adjustments are required, and my fees at year end should be less. Wonderful.

Have you noticed the newly evolved culture of QuickBooks specialists on the web, too? They even hold national conferences and seminars on QuickBooks. Wow. And they get all of this media attention. However, do they know anything about real accounting and taxes and the significant changes occurring in GAAP now?

You are probably a good CPA. You know GAAP, GAAS, and the Code inside out. But, honestly, do you really want to devote all that time learning the intricacies of QuickBooks to assist your small business clients who probably do not have the sheckles to pay you for this assistance in the first place, or who expect it dirt cheap? And do you really want to hire a new employee because of his or her QuickBooks abilities? Think again. There are a bunch of competitors out there, offering strictly QuickBooks bookkeeping services, cutting each other’s throats in pricing. You don’t have to be a CPA to be a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. There’s no degree required. You simply buy the program, take the exam as if it were a CPE course, and voila: you’ve got a shingle to hang up, like millions of other people out there now.

Intuit does not appear to be very grateful to us CPAs, either. Did you ever receive a commission from Intuit for setting up all those clients on QuickBooks? I never did. I believe their standard discount to us is 20% off list for selling QuickBooks to our clients; however, most office stores sell the program at 40% off. That’s gratitude!

I hate Intuit. Yeah, I hate QuickBooks, too.

Comments (0)

January 10, 2010

Never Deselect Warning Messages in QuickBooks

Filed under: Articles — Tags: QuickBooks one-time messages, QuickBooks warning messages, QuickBooks warnings, the barefoot accountant — William Brighenti @ 7:38 pm

There are a host of warning messages in QuickBooks. Unfortunately, QuickBooks allows the user not to display them. This is a weakness of QuickBooks, since many users are unaware of the full significance of these warnings.

An abundant error committed by users of QuickBooks involves the posting of an income account item to an expense account item, or vice versa. For instance, an item used on sales invoices is selected entering a purchase order, vendor bill, or check. In order to minimize this error, convert the item to a two-sided item, with both an income and an expense account.

If you have requested QuickBooks not to display warning messages in the past, go to General > My Preferences and check “Bring back all one time messages”. Better yet, contact your Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor or contact us for additional assistance: Accountants CPA Hartford.

Comments (0)

Older Posts »