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In September 2009, Intuit released a new web based tax software called Intuit ProLine(TM) Tax Online Edition (beta) for tax preparer’s and those individuals that need a comprehensive, low-cost and Web based 1040 tax program. This software is designed for low volume users whose customer base does not justify an expensive PC or networked tax software. Similar to other web-based software programs, and similar to QuickBooks Online, this program permits the tax preparers to work any time from anywhere providing they have web access. Intuit has many years experienced in the tax preparation business and has its TurboTax ,Pro Series ,and Lacerte brands. Intuit understands its customers’ needs and has the foresight to know that many of the tax software applications are heading towards “cloud computing” and this tax software is another example of a Web enabled program. How the Tax Software Works - The concept behind this program is simplicity, and Intuit accomplishes this, by setting up three basic workspaces for the tax preparer. These workspaces are “input”,” review” and “file”. The “input” workspace is where the tax preparer enters information such as information from Forms W-2, 1099, Schedule A and B,etc .. Locating the proper form is very easy. Within each form you’re able to enter multiple data entries by using a list and total feature in the software. The second workspace, is the “review” section which provides the tax preparer with a summary diagnostics and a list of tax related suggestions. And finally the third workspace, is “file” which allows the tax preparer to electronically file the return or to print the tax return for manual transmission with the Internal Revenue Service. In the past, tax preparers have purchased TurboTax software and pirated the tax software to prepare hundreds of tax returns by using TurboTax. In order to capture and capitalize from this market, Intuit designed a low cost tax software for a preparer that wants to prepare a tax return in the dining room of a client or their own dining room or from any location with web access. The value proposition is that this software is low priced and simple to use. Although the Intuit website currently offers the beta software for 2008 at no cost, I’ve been unofficially informed that Intuit will sell the software on a pay-per-use basis of $16 per tax return. This price is not currently shown in the Intuit website.This tax software becomes an affordable alternative for the tax preparers whose practice cannot afford to purchase the Pro Series or Lacerte brands. The software functionality is summarized as follows: (1) Single user for 1040’s (2) Pay for each return (3) EFile or ability to paper file for two states. By the end of the 4th quarter 2009 Intuit expects that filing will be available for the remaining states. (4) Data conversion (5) Status tracking with the Internal Revenue Service (6) Notes & lists with totaling capabilities embedded in the various forms and schedules(7) Diagnostics and suggestions with intelligent suggestions and (8)Technical support from Intuit. Even though hundreds of users have beta tested this software, there are always issues arising from any new release . Similar to other web enabled software, the software’s performance may be dependent on the web connection, which may result in sluggish performance. Also, there are taxpayer’s homes or offices that may not have web access, which would prevent the tax preparer from entering the tax information “on the fly”. Not a huge problem, since there are work arounds and alternatives, such as just gathering the information, and entering the data later into the software. I commend Intuit for producing a web-based tax preparer software for new low volume users as well as making it easy for those individuals that have used “pirated” versions of TurboTax in the past, to legally use a low-cost and affordable tax software. Sandor Lenner,CPA/MBA has provided accounting services for companies for over 35 years. He is a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and provides QuickBooks support and business accounting services. As an Intuit Authorized Affiliate, heoffers you discounted QuickBooks and Intuit software. He works as a part-time for Susan Missal Lenner, P.A. |
Posts Tagged ‘quickbooks’
Intuit - Affordable New Tax Software For Small and Home Based Businesses Tax Preparers
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009A Comparison of QuickBooks Online Basic to QuickBooks Online Plus
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009| Scentsy | Flameless Candles | Wickless Candles |
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QuickBooks Online has three levels of online accounting choices: Free, Basic, and Plus. Before making your decision to use QuickBooks Online, you have to decide between QuickBooks Online Basic and QuickBooks Online Plus. This article will analyze the differences between the two QuickBooks Online choices. Any small business accounting solution should be chosen to match the type of business you operate. There is also a free version called QuickBooks Online Simple Start, however because of it’s limited capabilities it was not considered for this analysis. Hereafter, QuickBooks Online Basic will be referred to as “BASIC” and QuickBooks Online Plus as “PLUS”. Each significant difference and brief comment regarding the functionality is discussed below. The following discusses the capabilities that work only with Plus: Importing -By using Plus, you are able to import your Simple Start Edition,QuickBooks Online basic, QuickBooks Pro or Premier Edition file(s) to PLUS only. Unfortunately, this type of import capability does not work with a Mac. Estimates - Estimates can be created and then seamlessly used for billing only in PLUS. Online Banking - Payments and receipts do not have to be entered into your QB register when you use Online banking. Instead of entering then, you only have to review them. When you download from your bank, QuickBooks is able to compare the bank’s transactions to your transactions in QuickBooks and identifies differences. Plus assists you in managing your cash flow, because you know which checks have cleared the bank, which helps you understand how much money you have in real time. This feature is only offered in PLUS. Exporting - PLUS provides you with the ability to export transactions and balances to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I can’t begin to impress upon you how importance of this feature for further analysis of your business. It’s a very important feature, since it adds greater reporting capabilities. It gives you flexibility is to analyze different types of financial data. Class tracking - This is similar to business tracking. Classes allow you to categorize transactions in more detail. By using classes, you are able to categorize each detail line on a transaction. For example, you can write one check to the office supply vendor for items bought for two different online business units while being able to track the business unit for those purchases. For example, you have a website development firm and a SEO business, and want to track revenue and expense for each business, you will be able to produce a Profit & Loss by Class report that will inform you if your website development business is more or less profitable than the SEO business. This feature is only offered in PLUS. Business tracking - With PLUS you can categorize data from different locations, offices, regions, or outlets of your company. You are able to assign each transaction to a business. By assigning a business to each transaction as you enter it, you can later see businesses on reports with great detail and clarity. Assigning businesses also lets you efficiently manage groups of transactions. Time tracking - With Plus you can enter your time into a time sheet when you bill by the hour i.e. consultants, website developers, SEO’s, freelancers, sole proprietors, etc. This feature is only offered in PLUS. Invoicing - Plus also permits you to customize the invoice.This is another reason to try both to see what works for you. Reporting and Financial Statements - With BASIC you get 40 standard reports whereas PLUS you get over 65 standard reports. In addition, you also get customization and formatting options. If you want to see a very detailed analysis in a chart format of the reporting differences can be found at Intuits knowledge base for comparison of the QuickBooks Online Products. Budgeting - You can use the budget feature to estimate income and expenses for future years. PLUS budgets’ use a format very similar to a spreadsheet, with a horizontal row for each of your income and expense accounts, and vertical columns for each month or quarter.This is a very rudimentary but provides a bench mark that every company should use. 1099 Reporting - The Internal Revenue Service requires that a taxpayer issue a 1099-MISC form to workers for nonemployee compensation providing the payer is a trade or business and the payments are to a noncorporate entity were equal to $600 or more for services rendered. Users-BASIC provides access for one person and your accountant (2 users). However, PLUS provides access for 3 users PLUS your accountant for a total of 4 users. Plus can be expanded to 25 users for an additional cost, which is reasonable. Support - BASIC includes email support provided by Intuit whereas PLUS includes callback and chat support as well as email support . Obviously, PLUS support is better, but with BASIC you can still get your questions answered. Pricing - BASIC costs $9.99 per month as compared to PLUS which retails for $34.95 per month . However, if you purchase PLUS through a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor you can purchase it for $21, which reflects a discount 40% discount, which is currently in effect at this time. Discounts and prices may vary in the future. Summary - Generally speaking, BASIC is for smaller companies, whereas PLUS is for small to midsized companies. Before you make your decision, you can test these small business accounting solutions for 30 days for both BASIC and PLUS and decide which is best suited for your company. They are other inherent limitations when comparing BASIC and PLUS to Desktop QuickBooks i.e. Pro, Premier, etc.. By far the most significant limitation is that the Online versions do not provide inventory capabilities, unless you purchase an inventory add on. Finally, its very important to ask you CPA or accountant for help in making this important decision. About the Author:
Learn how QuickBooks Online offers the essential online accounting tools to manage your business and the freedom to access your financials from your office, home, or the road. Sandor Lenner, C.P.A.-M.B.A has provided accounting services for 35 years. He is also a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and your offices as a part-time small business consultant for a Miami Accounting CPA firm.
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Outsourcing Your Small Business Accounting Functions to Family
Friday, June 12th, 2009| Scentsy | Flameless Candles | Wickless Candles |
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If you own a small business, interested in minimizing a portion of your payroll, considering outsourcing your current bookkeeper or accountant, and someone in your family is not working, outsourcing to family may be a viable alternative for you. Outsourcing your accounting or bookkeeping functions may result in reduced payroll costs, or the conversion of fixed costs to variable costs, insurance, benefits and some tax savings, etc. However, before you start outsourcing, you will need to invest in a quality fax machine or scanner. The type of fax machine or scanner depends on the volume and frequency of documents(i.e. vendor bills,customer invoices bank statements, etc.) to be scanned and sent to your outsourced accountant. Scanning or faxing is necessary because all of the source documents have to be sent either by email or fax to the outsourced accountant to record the bookkeeping transactions. As an owner of a small business or the person responsible for the accounting or bookkeeping, it’s important to establish a process by which to monitor the activities of the outsourcing company or person. Outsourcing may make sense, providing a competent and independent person oversees and monitors the financial results on your behalf. We often read that that if you outsource, some of your business accounting functions to a foreign country, then your labor costs will decrease as compared to what you would generally pay in the United States. In these uncertain times, when small business owners are facing survival issues resulting from lost sales, skyrocketing costs, contraction, often exacerbated by family unemployment, then it may make sense to give thought to employing a family member to help with the small business accounting. By employing a family member in your house or outsourcing your accounting function with family in a distant location, rather than outsourcing to another country, you may actually help the U.S. economy, in your own way, by keeping jobs in this country. A baby step,but certainly the right one for our country. This idea works, if the owners or members of the owner’s family can learn QuickBooks, or another comparable online accounting software program. It’s helpful, if the family member has some basic financial knowledge to undertake this responsibility of entering the financial information into an online accounting software. Given the current economy in the United States, there are situations where family members are now unemployed and are now ready, able and available to help and make a positive contribution to the family business. QuickBooks Online Plus is one of many online accounting softwares available and easy to learn. With training, most people with common sense can handle QuickBooks. If you decide to chose this option, it’s important to have a CPA or accountant available to ask questions and to receive timely answers, as well as a mechanism in place to allow for real time or after the fact corrections or adjustments to the accounting records. Under either option, outsourcing to a foreign country or to a family member, an accountant or CPA is the ideal person to monitor either in real time, or after the fact i.e. monthly or quarterly financial information, and to check that the reconciliation process is working and more importantly, that the outsource team or family member,are doing their job. With the correct QuickBooks Online or other QuickBooks versions with remote access, it is possible for your CPA or accountant to remotely monitor an outsourced accounting department, whether the outsourced department is in a distant location or outsourced to family. If you are thinking about outsourcing, it is recommended that you consult with your CPA or accountant to make sure that outsourcing is well suited for your particular small business accounting situation and to help access the skill sets of the person to provide the outsourced service. This concept of outsourcing to one or two family members may not work for a large or mid size business. However, if you own a small business, interested in effectively reducing a portion of your payroll costs, have decided or thinking about outsourcing your current bookkeeper, and someone in your family is unemployed, outsourcing may be right for you. Once again, this will work as long as the outsourced family member is properly supervised and monitored by a CPA or accountant. In the beginning there may be more time required by your CPA or accountant to train and to oversee as compared to time that your accounting professional currently spends each month or quarter. In the long run, the amount of time required by your accounting professional should diminish. Notwithstanding, some time will always be required of your accounting professional to monitor the activities of the outsourced person. About the Author:
Sandor Lenner,C.P.A. / M.B.A has been providing accounting services for companies for 35 years. Also, he is a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and provides QuickBooks support while working as a part-time consultant with Susan Missal Lenner, P.A. . Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter on timely accounting, tax and small business topics. We will not share your email address with anyone.
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Online Accounting - Do You Need QuickBooks Help in Deciding What is Better for My Business,QuickBooks Online Plus or QuickBooks Pro using remote access ?
Saturday, June 6th, 2009| Scentsy | Flameless Candles | Wickless Candles |
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This article has been written to provide QuickBooks help and to assist a small business owner when considering the advantages and disadvantages of QuickBooks Pro with remote access and QuickBooks Online Plus. It should be noted that a less robust version of QuickBooks Online is available and is offered by Intuit,the manufacturer of the QuickBooks products. That software was purposely not analyzed in this article. We should understand the term remote access before we undertake this analysis. Basically, remote access is data communication between a local and remote location and the ability to remotely access such data. Today, its sometimes called a Virtual Private Network. There is also the term, remote desktop which generally means the ability to have a graphical interface shown on a local computer, while a remote computer is in another part of your office or another state,country or world. The definition of online accounting is the ability to process accounting information through the World Wide Web. Now that we have an understanding of the remote vs. online accounting,we can provide some QuickBooks help by comparing and contrasting the differences in two typical small business accounting QuickBooks products,- QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Online Plus. Remote access with QuickBooks Pro allows you to remotely use your desktop QuickBooks Pro accounting program and data while the data is maintained on a networked server in a different location. Accessing QuickBooks Online Plus is similar to pressing a shortcut button for any internet application. QuickBooks Online Plus is a web enabled software application providing many useful online accounting features and functions. An important disadvantage is QuickBooks Online Plus’s inability to handle inventory. For companies that have inventory, this drawback is critical and for those companies that do not have inventory the drawback is not important. The advantages and disadvantages of QuickBooks Online Plus as compared to QuickBooks Pro is analyzed below. The advantages of QuickBooks Online Plus as compared to QuickBooks Pro with remote access are summarized and ranked by level of importance as follows: 1. No wired network required. You can connect different departments or offices in multiple locations or from home as long as you have WIFI. 2. Three simultaneous users plus your accountant are included. You can also add another 25 users for approximately $3 per month per user 3. The Intuit servers back up each day off site 4. Automatic software updates and QuickBooks help support included in cost 5. Quicker and simpler sign in ” Just press your Web shortcut key” The disadvantages of QuickBooks Online Plus as compared to QuickBooks Pro with remote access are summarized and ranked by level of importance as follows: 1. Does not handle inventory and purchase orders, this rules out retail, manufacturing and distribution type companies from using QuickBooks Online Plus 2. Cannot process multiple currencies 3. Unable to open multiple QuickBooks windows in QuickBooks Online Plus 4. No Company snapshot/dashboard in one desktop view You can even outsource some of your bookkeeping and online accounting functions with QuickBooks Online Plus, as long as you establish a system to check and monitor the outsourced employee(s) work. Also by using a typical web based sign-on for QuickBooks Online Plus, you can have simultaneous access from any location, which allows owners, employers, investors to share,collaborate,communicate, and make timely and informed decisions, since everyone receives in real time the same online accounting information. Now, your accountants can provide QuickBooks support by reviewing your QuickBooks online accounting financial data with QuickBooks Online Plus,from anywhere as long as they have internet access. There is no time waiting for them to get back to their office to answer your questions. QuickBooks Online Plus’s small business accounting advantages outweigh its disadvantages of using QuickBooks Pro with remote access, as long as you don’t have inventories in your business or you don’t transact or conduct business in multiple currencies,then my preference is for QuickBooks Online Plus to handle those companies with small business accounting needs. Notwithstanding the above recommendations and before you make any decision it’s important to meet with your CPA or accountant for QuickBooks help,to perform an accounting needs analysis of your business. No matter what you do, it’s also important to test the processing speed of your computer to determine whether the QuickBooks Online Plus as compared to QuickBooks Pro with remote access is best suited for your particular situation. You should also observe and test how your employees manually enter the day to day accounting information to evaluate the speed by which the employees are able to enter the data and the computer/web performance and speed of your significant online accounting processes i.e. billing customers,recording deposits,paying vendors,etc.. About the Author:
Sandor Lenner,CPA has provided accounting services for companies for 35 years. Also,he is a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and offers QuickBooks support and business advisory services . As an Intuit Authorized Affiliate he can offer your businessspecially discounted QuickBooks software.
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