QuickBooks Online Success Story
Accountant keeps isolated ranch's books straight with QuickBooks Online
At an Isolated Ranch in the Mojave Desert, There Was a Big Problem
The bookkeeping was out of control. No one knew how much money the ranch and its restaurant were making, or spending. The head office in Los Angeles was demanding that the ranch manager get control of the finances. But the manager never knew if head office had paid any of the bills, and she was about to quit in frustration.
To make things worse, none of the conventional solutions would work in this situation. Forget calling a weekly status meeting: The ranch is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from L.A. And occasional sandstorms blow up and completely knock out visibility and phone service. Forget shipping out a CD of the accounting file. The ranch is so remote that conventional delivery methods such as Fed Ex and UPS are inconvenient and expensive. E-mailing the file? The Internet connection — bounced off a satellite — is iffy for big file transmissions. Hiring an experienced book-keeper? That is difficult out in the desert, where there's no labor pool to draw from.
CPA for 12 years, QuickBooks Online Fan for Yhree Years
That's why Karen Monaco got a cry for help from the ranch's head office. Karen is one of two CPAs in accounting firm Terry Hansen and Associates in Arlington, TX. A CPA for 12 years, she's been using QuickBooks Online to work with remote clients for three years. "They told me, 'You need to figure out what's going on at the ranch,'" she recalls. "So my job was to go out there and get something working. And QuickBooks Online was the best solution possible. It's been wonderful."
So Karen flew to California, drove up to the ranch and pored over the ranch's paperwork. Then she set them up using QuickBooks Online, and trained the staff in some fool-proof procedures. Now the ranch's finances are up-to-date and accessible to everyone involved. "Now the manager can just log in her cash receipts, and the L.A. office can see what she's got at any given time. L.A. can pay the bills and the manager can pull them up and look at them. Today the manager is focusing on managing the ranch, not on bookkeeping. QuickBooks Online was a big help with that client," she says. "It's worked out great for them."
Keeping the Books vs. Running the Business
The ranch's location is extreme, but lots of small business people face the same dilemma: to manage the business they need to share information with different people and locations but traditional data sharing is difficult and impractical. With QuickBooks Online any authorized user including the owner, bookkeeper, or accountant can log into their company's accounts from anywhere, anytime, to keep them up-to-date.
Karen now has about 40 clients using QuickBooks Online, and she suggests it to every new client who comes through her door. "For the most part, my clients aren't bookkeepers and they don't want to be," she says. "So I can step in and do the part that they don't want to do. QuickBooks Online is more convenient than anything else I've ever worked with."
No More Commuting or File-Shuffling
As a CPA, she often has to clean up discrepancies in the accounts of small business clients. In the old days, that meant traveling to their office, or having a backup copy of their accounting file brought to her, and then attempting to install it on her PC.
Today, using QuickBooks Online, nobody has to commute or copy files. "They can log on, I can log on, and we can talk about whatever it is. I can help them, and they don't have to come in here, and I don't have to go there. I can even train their bookkeeper over the phone!"
What about Her Clients' Concerns about Data Security?
Karen tells her clients, "Most people do online banking, and QuickBooks Online is as safe as that." In fact, QuickBooks Online data files are protected in a data center behind layers of encrypted network security with dedicated IT staff to ensure data is always protected.
Another Big Plus: All Records Backed Up Every Day
"Small business owners are notoriously bad at backing up, because they have better things to do. So it's nice not to worry about that either," she says. The bookkeeping dilemma, solved. The convenience of a Web-based accounting system has gained Karen more work from her existing clients. "Instead of them bringing me a file at the end of the year that doesn't have a reconciled account for 12 months, I can go in to QuickBooks Online and say, "Hey, I noticed you didn't reconcile your account. Do you want us to do that?" And most of the time, they'll say yes quite willingly. I also have several clients where I run their entire bookkeeping department from our office," she adds. "The president logs in, approves his bills, and we cut the checks." And that makes everybody happy.
Thanks to QuickBooks Online, Karen provides better service to clients without the headaches of traveling, and her clients get peace of mind knowing their accounts are entered properly and backed up safely.
