CPA Firm Technology Blog

QB Accountant’s Copy Issue with Importing Edits

Since today is March 14^th, many of my friends who do predominately taxes for a living are working away trying to get those client trial balances adjusted so they can complete those last-minute C and S-Corp tax returns. If you’re one of those accountants who uses the great functionality of the Accountant’s Copy in QuickBooks (and you know who you are), read on. If you aren’t using Accountant’s Copy (e.g. you don’t have files with a file extension of QBX, QBY, and QBA in your QuickBooks directory, please ignore this issue).

Here’s the issue:

 Unpatched systems using the QuickBooks 2008 Accountant’s Copy can sometimes fail to import edits when converting data from a QBY to a QBW file (e.g. importing the Accountant’s Change file into the client’s production QuickBooks file). This happens only under certain circumstances (some examples below).  This can be a very small problem if the accountant has made very few edits. However, there is also the chance of losing large sets of data when an accountant makes extensive edits. 

QuickBooks 2008 Update Release 5, due March 13, 2008, addresses most of the existing circumstances under which the above issue occurs.  However, we know that not all ProAdvisors install all releases for many reasons (such as the extreme workload compression we all experience this time of the year).

 The error may occur under the following circumstances on unpatched systems:

•  If reconciled account names contain special characters
•  If the accountant enters and then modifies a journal entry
•  If the accountant modifies a deposit, then enters a new line
• If the accountant enters an account number that duplicates a number that the client has entered while the accountant has the file

 Here’s what you should do:

1.  If you are using the Accountant’s Copy feature, you should download and install all available updates for QuickBooks 2008 as soon as possible.
2. You should also advise your clients of the risks here, and pay extra attention to confirm that your client’s adjusted trial balance (e.g. after importing the QBY file) matches the values on the accountant’s final adjusted trial balance.

If you have questions about this, please read Intuit KnowledgeBase Article #1009092, or contact Intuit support.

Free Margaritas at Convergence

This is Marshall. He's at the Avalara booth in the Expo hall, and would love to pour you a nice frozen margarita in the expo hall. Go in, take a hard left, and look for the tiki hut. ( I gave up tequila in the late 1980's after an unfortunate incident in college, but the margaritas looked really good.)

Greetings from Convergence 2008

 

I'm back on the road again, with the AIIM conference in Boston last week, some vendor site visits Thursday and Friday, and I'm writing this from Orlando where I've been attending Microsoft partner briefings and Convergence.
It struck me this weekend how far we have come with technology since I graduated from college. I had just signed up for the new Sprint unlimited phone/data plan ($100/mo, all you can talk and surf), and I was thinking about my business travel when I had just graduated from college. I remember that whenever you got off of the plane, you made a mad dash for the pay phone banks to check your messages with a human at the office (and by messages, I mean paper messages). Last week, I downloaded a 3mb pdf file on my Treo 755P while the plane was loading, and reviewed the listings of sessions at Convergence next week from my phone. Crazy changes in a very short period of time- and it's still evolving. I wonder what things will be like in another 15 years...
Convergence is quite the experience- imagine a massive convention center with thousands of MS Partners, as many as 2000 employees, and a trade show the size of a football field focused on all of the MS Dynamics products. A few things to not miss if you're here:
1. Avalara has a booth (just inside the expo area against the left hand wall). They do outsourced sales tax as an add-in app for GP, and have some really amazing geospatial technology which helps you make the byzantine world of sales tax easy. Visit their booth, or go to Avalara.com. They have a super-primo tiki party on Thursday night- if you're a GP partner, see Marshall and get the passes. I'm told that it's THE party of the show.
2. HP is here in force- you can't miss them- right inside the front door. They have enough computing power here for a small data center, and I recall some nice giveaways as well.
3. The MS Dynamics and other Microsoft groups have a strong presence here, including FRx. You should go speak to some of the product managers here while you are in Orlando- they are really nice, and have been very helpful.
4. CCH is here with their sales tax solutions for companies. Since the IRS uses their solutions, they're one of the 800 lb gorillas in this space.
5. Captaris looks interesting- will be going back to learn more about their products this afternoon.
6. Lots of good-looking report writers here, including the Solver Excel reporter. I'm going to kick the tires on a few while I'm here.