QuickBooks Online Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping in QuickBooks Online: the bank feed matched rather than added, Undeposited Funds cleared, a closing date that actually closes, and the connected apps accounted for.
QuickBooks Online is the ledger most of the files here sit in, and most of what goes wrong in one goes wrong in the same handful of places. None of them is exotic. They are the ordinary consequences of a system that lets a bank feed create transactions, lets apps post entries, and leaves a reported period editable until somebody says otherwise. Each of the things below can be checked in your own file, which is deliberate: a page about a system you run should tell you something you can go and look at.
What the work looks like in QuickBooks Online
Add versus Match, and why the bank feed is not the ledger
Every line in the feed offers Add, Match or Exclude. Add creates a new transaction. Match links the line to something already in the books, an invoice raised or a bill entered. Pressing Add on a payment that was already recorded books it twice, and because both copies look reasonable on their own the error usually surfaces weeks later as revenue that never happened or a supplier apparently paid twice. This is the most common way a QuickBooks Online file goes wrong and the easiest to check: look for customer payments sitting beside invoices that are still showing as open.
Undeposited Funds, and the balance that only ever rises
A payment received against an invoice lands in Undeposited Funds rather than in the bank account, and that is correct behaviour: it lets several payments be grouped into the single deposit the bank actually shows. What goes wrong is nobody making the deposit. The account then accumulates money that cleared the bank months ago, the bank still reconciles because the feed side was added separately, and the balance sheet carries a figure nobody can explain. An Undeposited Funds balance that only grows is one of the fastest reads there is on the state of a file.
The closing date is the control almost nobody sets
Nothing prevents a transaction being edited inside a period that has already been reported, unless a closing date is set, and setting it with a password is what turns it from a suggestion into a control. Without one, a quarter that has been filed can change afterwards and nothing announces that it did. The audit log records every change with a user and a timestamp, so the history is recoverable, but recovering it is work and preventing it is a setting.
Bank rules act on their own, which is both the point and the risk
A rule categorises matching transactions automatically, and a well-built one removes real work every month. A loosely built one does the same thing at the same speed in the wrong direction: a rule keyed on a payee that covers two different kinds of spending will book hundreds of entries to a single account without anybody deciding to. The failure is quiet, because the file looks tidy. Everything is categorised. It is just categorised wrongly, and reviewing which rules exist belongs at the start of taking on a file rather than in a later cleanup.
Multi-currency is a one-way switch
Turning multi-currency on cannot be undone. It changes how the file holds balances, introduces exchange gain and loss into the ledger, and fixes the home currency permanently. For a business genuinely transacting in more than one currency it is the right answer. For one that switched it on to record a single foreign invoice it is a complication that does not go away. It is worth deciding rather than discovering.
Connected apps post into the ledger rather than report to it
Payments, e-commerce, expense and payroll apps connected to the file write entries directly into it. That means the ledger has more than one author. A sync that runs twice, or that runs after somebody has already entered the same transaction by hand, produces duplicates that look like ordinary activity rather than like errors. Knowing which apps are connected and what each one posts is part of reconciling the file, not a separate technical question to hand somebody else.
Questions about QuickBooks Online
Is the ProAdvisor certification an Online one?
Yes, and it is worth being exact about what it is. The credential held here is the Advanced Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor, and it is an Online exam rather than a Desktop one. It is a software certification rather than a professional designation, and it belongs to the person who sat it rather than to the firm. It is not a partnership, a reseller arrangement or an endorsement by Intuit, and nothing on this page should be read as one.
We are on QuickBooks Desktop. Should we move?
Sometimes, and not automatically. There is a separate page on Desktop that answers this properly, because the two are different programs rather than two versions of one and the honest answer depends on how you work rather than on which is newer. What we will not do is push a migration because it is easier for us.
Do you need to be an admin on our file?
No. We work on named user access you provision, at the level the work needs, and never on a shared login. You can see what we have done in the audit log and you can remove the access yourself at any point without asking us.
Is QuickBooks Online work available to US businesses?
Yes, in Canada and the United States both. The bookkeeping is the same work in either country. US federal and state tax filing is coordinated with a licensed CPA in your state, who prepares and files it from books we keep.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.
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