QuickBooks Online Success Story
QuickBooks Online turns around troubled real estate business for retired couple
For the Fleurys, retirement wasn't working out quite like they planned. Although they were the biggest landlords in Springfield, IL with more than 1,100 rental units, Barbara Fleury and her husband Fred moved to Marquette, MI to retire. They figured they could trust their two dozen employees to take care of everything from cleaning the halls to collecting the rents.
But then things started to go terribly wrong. "No one was paying the bills. Some creditors were screaming at us. One time, a red sticker was posted on the front door because the water wasn't paid," recalls Barb. "Employees were just spending, spending, spending." For months, there was nothing left in profits to distribute to their partners.
The Worst News of All
Then came the worst news of all: an employee discovered someone had been stealing rent money paid in cash, while marking apartments vacant in the books. All told, that employee embezzled more than $25,000. It was so bad they felt they might have to move back to Springfield to straighten out the mess. Not wanting to uproot her family, Barb tried a remote access program to tap into the computer at the office, but that didn't work well for her. She browsed the web looking for solutions.
Discouraged and disillusioned, she and her husband started to think about selling the business. Barb did more research and visited Intuit's web site, where she discovered QuickBooks Online. "I was thrilled," she says, "I thought, 'This could really work for us!' It makes anyone who can look at the screen a CFO." Moving their accounting to this Web-based system turned out to be just what they needed to get their business back on track.
Everyone Buckled Down
With QuickBooks Online, Barb could see precisely what was going on with her business, from wherever she was. Her employees got the message: It was time to buckle down. And they did. "Now all the bills are paid on time. My employees are accountable. Everyone is more aware of their spending. They see it like it's their own checkbook. And there are profits left at the end of every month," she says proudly. "When we have questions about vacancy rates or incomes, instead of having to call the bookkeeper in Illinois, I can access all that information from home. No one's got sole possession of those numbers any more."
Anywhere, Any Time Accounting
The Fleurys do a fair bit of traveling, and Barb loves the convenience of anywhere, any time access to her books. "I've been online with QuickBooks from Alaska, from the Caribbean, from Cape Horn, and from the Falkland Islands during a hurricane!" she says. On road trips, she takes her laptop to get access from any WiFi hotspot along the way. "QuickBooks Online frees me up to be someplace else. Our quality of life is so much better now, because we don't have to be somewhere we don't want to be. Now I'm retired, instead of going to the office every day."
The online system means more flexibility for employees as well. Her previous bookkeeper moved three times, but stayed with the company because she could do her job from anywhere. And Barb recently trained a new bookkeeper without even going to the office in Springfield. "We both got on the same page, and I was able to say, 'Do you see that? That's how you want to do that,'" says Barb. She calls the remote training "an unexpected benefit."
Smaller Bills and Faster Turnaround from the Accountant
The accountant used to visit the real-estate office once a year to look at the books: an expensive and time-consuming exercise. "When they came in, everything else stopped. It was costing me a lot of money, because they charged a lot to come out," says Barb.
Now, instead of waiting for an annual visit to inspect the books, her accountant monitors the books online, and catches any incorrect entries right after they happen. In fact, everything works faster and better with QuickBooks Online. "Our taxes were the fastest ever this year. Our partners all got their income statements much earlier than in previous years. And our accountant's bill was much smaller."
Complete Accountability
Best of all, Barb no longer has to worry about cash going missing. And the "Not Me" syndrome has disappeared from the business. "I have complete accountability, which is important to someone who has been burned," she says. "There's no more 'Not Me' because if you do something in the system, your name is right there. I can follow everything that happened." With the business humming along, Barb and Fred can imagine retiring for good.
They've sold off some buildings to bring their holdings down to 700 units today, and will likely sell more in the future. "I try my hardest to convince my buyers to use QuickBooks Online," she says. With buyers coming from other cities like Chicago, she tells them, "If you're in a different city, you need to use this product. You need it to watch your money."
