QuickBooks Desktop Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping in QuickBooks Desktop: the company file kept current and reconciled, the Accountant's Copy handled properly at year end, and an honest answer on whether moving to QuickBooks Online is worth it.
QuickBooks Desktop is a different program from QuickBooks Online rather than an older version of it, and treating it as a legacy system is how businesses end up being pushed off a product that still suits them. Plenty of files belong exactly where they are: years of history, a workflow that works, and reports somebody built and relies on. The work is keeping that file clean rather than talking anybody out of it.
What the work looks like in QuickBooks Desktop
The Accountant's Copy and its dividing date
At year end an accountant usually takes an Accountant's Copy, which sets a dividing date. Before that date they can work and you cannot; after it you can work and they cannot touch it. It is a genuinely good mechanism and it goes wrong in one predictable way: the copy stays outstanding for weeks, somebody needs to change something on the wrong side of the line, and the copy gets cancelled with work already in it. Agreeing the date and the return window before the file goes out is most of the fix.
The file is a file, which has consequences
A company file has a size, it grows, and past a point it slows down and gets fragile. Lists have limits. Condensing shrinks it by summarising old detail, and that detail does not come back, so it is a decision rather than maintenance. Knowing which of those you are close to is worth more than reacting once the file starts misbehaving in the middle of a month.
Backups, portable files and the difference
The three formats do different jobs and get swapped constantly. A backup restores the file. A portable file is smaller and is for moving a copy around. An Accountant's Copy is the year-end mechanism above. Sending a portable file when somebody expected a backup, or restoring over a live file, is how a week of work disappears.
Classes and jobs are the only real dimensions
Desktop gives you classes and customer jobs to carry anything beyond the account, and used consistently they answer most of the questions an owner asks: profit by location, by division, by contract. Used inconsistently, which is what happens when the convention lives in one person's head, they produce reports with an unclassified column that quietly holds a fifth of the business.
Multi-user, and what a shared drive is not
Desktop supports genuine multi-user through its database manager, and a file on a shared folder that several people open is not that. The second arrangement is where file corruption comes from. Where more than one person needs the file at once, that is worth setting up properly or hosting, and it is worth doing before it causes the problem rather than after.
Questions about QuickBooks Desktop
Should we move to QuickBooks Online?
Sometimes, and not automatically. Online wins where people need the file from different places, where you want bank feeds and integrations doing more of the work, or where supporting the desktop install has become somebody's unpaid job. Desktop wins where the reporting you rely on exists there and not online, where the file carries long history, or where the workflow genuinely fits. What does not survive a conversion cleanly is worth knowing before you start: some report customisations, some memorised transactions and some historical detail. We will tell you what we think you would lose.
Our file is hosted. Does that change anything?
Not for the bookkeeping. Hosted Desktop is the same program with the file somewhere you both reach, and it usually makes the work easier rather than harder because nobody is emailing copies around. We work in whatever arrangement you already have rather than asking you to move.
Is the ProAdvisor certification for Desktop?
No, and it is worth being exact. The certification held here is the QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor Advanced certification, which is an Online exam. It is a software certification rather than an accounting designation, and Desktop work is experience rather than a certification claim.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.
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