You woke up today ready to jump to the cloud with your accounting and bookkeeping... now what?
What does that look like for you? How do you move your bookkeeping to a cloud system? Which system should you use? Which version? How much does it cost?
Your first decision is which accounting software to use. Curtis-Villar supports both QuickBooks Online and Xero. QuickBooks Online is the current market leader in Canada, so we will focus specifically on its online offerings.
For most of our realtors, QuickBooks Essentials is the way to go. With this plan, you can track payables (which cannot be done in QuickBooks EasyStart), use bank rules, add recurring entries, and gain access to the mileage feature, which means no more MileIQ, Everlance or manual tracking sheets. The ‘manage bills’ feature allows your business to track bill status, record payments and create recurring payments. You can pay multiple vendors and bills at the same time, and if you still use cheques, you can create and print them with this software. We recommend moving away from cheques, but we understand some businesses still use them.
For those realtors looking to provide access to multiple users, you do not need to include your bookkeeper and accountant among them. QuickBooks Online allows businesses on all plans two accountant/bookkeeper users. For your other users, you can control the user-access levels and share reports. Each user is provided their own login.
From our experience with our realtors, we understand that paperwork and accounting are unwelcome tasks. We also know that with your schedules, providing your bank statements to us is not the best use of your time. With the QuickBooks Online bank feed, we have a solution!
In QuickBooks Online, you can link your bank account and credit cards (read-only access; it cannot make transactions on your behalf) to your account. When you do this, QuickBooks will also pull your monthly bank and major credit card statements and make them available for us (some smaller banks and credit unions are not compatible), freeing you from this task. We can move on with your bookkeeping without taking precious time from your day.
These are just some of the ways we can help you find balance between doing what you love and looking after your financial responsibilities. Contact us for further information on how we can help you with your transition to the cloud.