12.5.23 - Year End Prep w/ guest Keeper

Michelle and Dan discuss some of the Year End Activities you can perform with your clients and our friends at Keeper show us how you can streamline this process with Keeper.

Learn More about Keeper at https://keeper.app/?via=QBPH

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Michelle Long, CPA and Dan DeLong who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/

Transcript

Michelle Long: 0:30

We have a great day today on the qb power hour as we are preparing for year end with a special guest keeper today So we're very glad to have you joining us for another qb power hour. So thank you all for being here My name is Michelle Long. I'm a CPA and MBA in entrepreneurship, the owner of Long for Success. Been a trainer for Intuit for a very long time, so I'm very excited to have you guys joining us. And speaking of Intuit, I am very busy today because it is the VCon with new updated content on the certifications. We got the QuickBooks certification, Advanced Cert, as well as the Payroll Cert going on today. And with that said we have thousands of people over there and I am helping with that so I am doing double duty today but it is like I mentioned new content And so what i'm going to do is we're going to drop the link for that in case you all are interested If you can attend that Just remember to go ahead and register because the recordings will be available after the event, as well as all the handouts, which are great resources. They have supplemental guides for the advanced certification. All those handouts as well. You can register, watch the recordings later. It's free CPE if you're a CPA and you need CPE for the end of the year. Go ahead and register. You can only get CPE if you attend live. Also, there is a tax VCon that's coming up January 10th and 11th. We'll put that. In the link there, but I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to be doing some Q& A for that as well as this. So I'm going to go ahead and take my video off and I'm going to be multitasking and doing Q& A on both. So I'm going to be listening to you all and monitoring and listening and everything. And I've given Dan a few things to share. So I will be attending and listening in the background. Special thanks to Chad and Joshua and Peeper for joining us today, but I'm going to go ahead and turn my video off But thank you everybody and I'll put those links in the Q& A if you need anything Put it in the Q& A and I'll be listening in the background. So thanks everybody and thanks again for all you do.

Dan DeLong: 2:26

Thank you guys All right. Thanks. Thanks for doing the double duty today. In true fashion, you're able to multitask in multiple places. So my name is Dan DeLong. I own Danwidth. I worked out into it for nearly 18 years to co host today. Also the co host over at Workshop Wednesdays at schoolbookkeeping. com is doing the tech editing for the QBO for Dummies series. Joining us today are a couple of guests from Keeper. Keeper, if you don't know I don't want to steal any of your thunder with regards to Keeper, and we'll talk a little bit about Keeper near the end. But Chad go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Chad Pues: 3:05

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you, Dan and Michelle for having us really excited to be here and share a little bit on Keeper, especially the ways that it's going to help with the year end process and review. My name is Chad. I'm one of the account executives here at Keeper. So I have the privilege of sharing the Keeper with. With firms all over the country every single day. But before that I come from a long history in public accounting where it was a partner and director of client accounting services. So understand the pain points that many of us are going through this time of year. Awesome. And Josh.

Joshua Musler: 3:36

Yeah. Nice to meet everybody, Dan. Thanks for having us on. I'm really excited to be here. As you can see by the slide, I focused on partnership marketing at Keeper, but not too dissimilar to Chad. I started my career as a CPA myself at KPMG. I focused on transaction advisory and strategy out in New York and have now moved into the ops marketing space and based in Denver, Colorado. So excited to be back in the accounting and bookkeeping industry where I started my career.

Dan DeLong: 4:08

Fantastic. Thanks again for joining us as you and as we'll get into, what Keeper actually can and does do year end activities or month end bookkeeping activities and processes is really up to you. In the main lane of what of what the keeper does. So appreciate you joining us here today. So the, some of the details about the QB Power Hour webinars, they're every other Tuesday at 12 Eastern. They aren't eligible for CPE credit, so stop asking me. CHeck the website for for upcoming events and options like this. We'll put the tax vicon and those types of things as well on there as well. But if you do need the PDFs of the slides, recordings, podcasts, and other resources, we do have qb power hour com slash resources as a one-stop shop there for you. But I will put in the chat and on the streaming platforms that we're putting things, the the link for today's resources as well. A little bit of the housekeeping. If you do have specific questions about the topics that we're talking about today, please put them in the Q and A, because that certainly makes it easier for us to follow up if it's not something that we can answer live on the webinar uh, if you do have general comments or just regular chatty types of things like hello, Michelle, or those types of things, please put them In the cat as opposed to the Q and a. And then, of course, we have the resources there. As far as the handouts and links as well as the web and our archive as well. Now we are trying something new today. If you are, we are investigating a new streaming platform that allows us to expand the channels that we're putting things. So we are actually on live on YouTube as well as Facebook. And if you are joining us, or you are happening to see it from Facebook we'll ultimately want to put this in the Facebook group that we have for the QB power users group. And that is going to require in order for us to see who you are and engage with the conversation. There is a it's something you have to acknowledge as far as the platform and the And and Facebook because, Facebook needs permission to do anything and and you'll be able in order to see who you are. Otherwise, it just goes up as Facebook user. So we can't address you as you so if you are seeing it from there, say hi, and then. We'll see if we can actually see you. All right, so our agenda today is is talking all about the QuickBooks Online Accountant Cleanup and Year End. So we'll talk a little bit about cleaning up the list, reports, writing off invoices, reclassifying transactions, the book's review, and fixing undeposited funds, preparing 1099s, which is always fun, and then Prepping for taxes now and then we'll segue into keeper can help out with with those types of things. And we've done these year end checklists and the, and those types of things in the past before. A lot of times we've dive in, div in, dive. We've dived, I don't know the word. We've gone into de more detail and demonstrated these sort, sort of things. And, in the essence of time we will reference those those prior webinars that we've done a little deeper dive or if we have a different video to to share with you there. So in, in the essence of time here today. Alright, so we'll start off with our first whole question, which is. Gone away. There we go. Okay. And it's there we go. Okay. It was out of order when I when I set up the poll questions. So I wanted to make sure that I wasn't launching the wrong poll question. So do you wait until year end to clean up your client's books? Or maybe do you. Do things recurring right? Throughout the week. Now Chad, you're you're a bonafide CPA. What what was your take on, on, on doing those kinds of tasks? Do you wait, see the year end or or do you find that it's better if you take those things routinely?

Chad Pues: 8:11

Yeah, we, we made the move for a lot of the firms that I've been apart with to moving away from the year end cleanup only and trying to get those recurring accounting and bookkeeping services all year long. So that way we could spread that work throughout the year. Stay on top of it. So that way the team isn't crushed by the already crazy busy season. So definitely trying to spread it out throughout the year.

Dan DeLong: 8:32

Right? That seems like a good mindset. And as I'm looking at the Polls coming in here. I'm just gonna close the poll and in a few seconds and then share the results. It looks like that is a common thread. Yes, about 86 percent do routine tasks throughout the year. So that's a great mindset to be in so that you don't get the. Surprise at the end of the year, which could really, cause a challenge. Now, before we get into the year end do you want to talk a little bit about and I do mean a little bit about the Intuit announcement that was last week? I think it was last Thursday. About QuickBooks Desktop. So we're talking about year end. Some people think that is life ending, right? when we talk about what, what's happening with with desktop. So there was a stop sell date announcement which will be 7 31 of 24. And we wanna talk a little bit about what that means and unpack that a little bit. So new subscriptions are gonna be there's gonna be a stop sell. Or into it so they won't sell new subscriptions with regards to pro premier and. The plus subscription model, right? Which is with 2021 discontinuing in May, then all desktop versions of pro premier either windows or Mac will will be on a subscription model. So they will stop selling, um, new subscriptions on seven 31. Why is that date significant? Because that is into its end of fiscal year, right? So that is that is the date that they're actually going to stop selling. So I was considering what this would actually, how this would actually show up for people, like if they're going to stop selling on seven 31, what if somebody buys a subscription seven 30, right? That's an annual subscription. How are they going to get the most use out of that? Out of that annual subscription because they are annual and if you look at the firm of the future article I've linked it down here at the bottom there are asterisks and I try to mimic that on this slide There's asterisk all over and they have a disclaimer down at the bottom that says availability Terms, condition, pricing, special features, service, and support options subject to change without notice. They threw that disclaimer throughout the entire article, which makes people think, right? They make people think, what does that actually mean for me and my clients who are on desktop? So my wife and I, who both worked that into it for, double digit years we're having a powwow about it and we were what would, what does this mean, right? What could this mean for the end of and discontinuation of desktop? Because they've really set the stage here. So my thinking was, okay, what if somebody buys an annual subscription before the stop sell date? How do they get the most out of that year? And what would Intuit potentially do mid year, right? So my thinking is that and this is just, my based off of the history of what I've seen Intuit do in the past, no I don't have any authority as far as what that's actually, what is actually going to happen, but it is, this is what I think is going to happen, is that they'll stop selling on 731, and I think there's going to be a grace period during that next year, they'll probably make some announcement during that, after that stop sell date, as far as what the plans are, and that may be coming in the fall because that's when they will, roll out 2025 or, new versions of QuickBooks desktop as far as what would happen, my guess is that they're going to give a grace period of, this is your last year on this subscription. And we'll honor and support that until the end of that subscription. And then. For, for a variety of people that are, spread out throughout that year, those people will be to be renewed. So that I think that's what the coming year is going to, present to us with regards to what is the plan for QuickBooks desktop on the pro and premier side now new enterprise and into it has claimed that enterprise is the desktop product of choice. Moving forward, I don't think there will be any changes regarding enterprise, but with the pro premier enhanced payroll. Those types of things. I think that is going to be that. So with that if you do have the to continue the discussion about, what this potentially means or what this means to you, uh, please continue this discussion in the Facebook group. Now we. We don't want to have multiple or duplicate posts about this, so I'm trying to consolidate them back into the firm of the future posts that Michelle had shared with to continue that that lively discussion. All right, so going back into the topic of the day let's talk about cleaning cleanup or prepping for year end. So cleaning up lists is is a great place to start because that is the foundation of. The QuickBooks company files, the chart of accounts, customers, vendors, products and services, and adjusting the account mappings. So a lot of people that I've been, that I've talked to forget that you can merge, some of these list elements. Important to note though, in QuickBooks online, you're not actually, when you do merge, unlike desktop, when you merge a chart of accounts or a customer or a vendor. That combines all of the transactions under that on that list element. But in QuickBooks online, those are actually, you never actually can delete something. So in desktop, when you merge things, they actually do get combined and the two become one. Whereas in online, it automatically inactivates the one that you're merging from calls it deleted whatever it is. And then. The the merge to is it inherits all of the transactions. So it ultimately does do the same purpose, but you end up having an inactive list element. Even though there's no transactions to it, there's not anything that anyone can do about deleting that unused list element, but it is going to be there and hidden. So you won't see it. What's the word I'm looking for? Clogging up your lists by those views by by being active in your products and services. Always make sure that your account mappings are correct. And there is a tricky checkbox. When you do change the product and service accounts that things are pointing to, it shows up after you've made the change, and doesn't show it's not alert or anything like that. It'll say, would you like to update historical transactions? It's a checkbox. A lot of people miss it because it's right down, it's right below. It's positioned right below the drop down of the account that you're changing it to so you don't see it, you, your eyes. Directly go to the the save button, you miss it, and then it doesn't update, historical transactions like you hoped for, and that causes a challenge or a phone call or chat to QuickBooks uh, all because of a little checkbox. So you just want to make sure that if you are modifying that. Do that see that checkbox show up and put it in there, and then it will do historical transactions. Does not do that for an inventory item, however. As long as they are items of service based or non inventory parts that will be for that. Reviewing the reports, reconciling most balance sheet accounts looking for unusual balances, like a negative savings account. Ensure undeposited funds is clear, is clearing out and then opening balance equity to zero. Chad, what is your philosophy or thoughts about opening balance equity? That's like the quick books under the carpet account as far as like creating those types of things. What has your experience been with or thoughts about, and I'm always interested in an outsider's opinion about opening balance

Chad Pues: 16:54

equity. It's a great call out on this list and because it does create so many headaches and surprises at your end where you go to, prepare for the tax return at the end of the year. And then all of a sudden there's an opening balance equity that opening balance in that equity account that you didn't expect. So definitely, would reiterate the recommendation here. Make sure that's adjusted to zero. If there's a balance there certainly investigate to understand where it came from because there's likely going to be an issue.

Dan DeLong: 17:23

Very good. Very good. And then retained earnings is always a good balance sheet account to look for. You don't want to be entering in transactions into into retained earnings unless you have the C, the P and the A at the end of your name. Or had been advised to by that, by those people. The QuickBooks. Automatically at the end of your fiscal year, whatever that year actually is, we'll take your net income and move it to routine earnings for you so you don't have to make those entries on your client's behalf, but you do want to make sure that if there is activity in there, that it's supposed to be in there and then reviewing activity in accounts like you, maybe they Incorrectly entered in transaction types like sales tax payments. They wrote a check or there's nothing posted to loan balances and they've made these payments. Maybe they can show up in your Profit and loss as all expense types of transactions. sO writing off invoices is another year end activity that a lot of people will end up doing QuickBooks online write off tool isn't recommended When sales tax is involved The invoice is in a closed period. Or you're on an accrual basis. The reason being is that when you do use the write off invoices tool, what it does is it discounts the original invoice. So when that invoice is in last year or in another closed period, that's when it's going to be impacting. The bad debt or, whatever account that you're writing things off to. So you, and their sales tax is going to be skewed as well. QuickBooks online is now giving you if you haven't noticed, there's a lot of I think it's a dry humor message where it says this is like oil and water or something like that, where you, when you're modifying a transaction in a period that. Should potentially be closed, especially when there's sales tax involved. This could be one of those things that triggers that. We do have a workshop link here about AR cleanup that you can check that out over at school bookkeeping. But when you have those issues of the or within a closed period or you're on a accrual basis. What you want to do in QuickBooks Online is use credit memos instead. Instead of using the write off tool, use a credit memo because it will allow you to be a little bit more explicit on the dates when you're recognizing those when you're recognizing the expense of the bad debt you would add a service or non inventory item post that bad debt expound Bad debt expense account. And then a little tip there of turning off automatically applying credit so that it doesn't arbitrarily go and change change an invoice or write off an invoice by by you creating that credit. But you create the credit memo and then manually apply. That through the receive payment screen or manually applying that however you prefer uh, reclassifying transaction. So this is this is a great tool to use when you see like when merging doesn't work, right? Like when you can't merge accounts, but you can. Move accounts. You can use the reclassify tool. We did have a workshop on reclassifying transactions over school bookkeeping, so we, you can check that out as well. But what some of the things that can't be reclassified products and services. The items, the accounts that are so if you have an invoice that's pointing to an incorrect service account or income service or revenue account you can't change reclassify the account. There. You can do. Class and locations, but you're not unable to do the actual account if there is an item on the transactions, that's where you want to go back to the product and service item and make sure that checkmark is checked off. And then expenses, the payment account or the bank or the credit card. You cannot change the source of the account of where it came from. Deposits and sales receipts, that's also again the source of the bank account that it's posting to. Those deposit to accounts can't be changed in the reclassification tool. And then inventory adjustments, billed expenses, payroll transactions, all of that the account. Account can't be changed because those are special types of transactions and you'll need to manage those in another fashion. All right, so talking about the books review this is a relatively new ish tool that's that's in QBOA. It's a lot of people didn't even realize that there is a drop down here to change that from setup to cleanup. And then that brings up a lot of different tools, and we've had a variety of other GB Power Hours where Michelle does demonstrate that a little bit deeper. But I also want to leave that for Keeper. Hey, no pun intended. It's a pro, a poet there. I need to rhyme. bUt, this is one of the things that I really wanted, Josh and Chad to really drive up to the surface because when I first heard about Keeper the way that it was positioned is the book's review handles a lot of these tasks that they were saying that they do. But there's a lot more to Keeper than it is, than what you can see in the book's review. And hopefully we'll. We'll be able to unpack that a little bit with with Josh and Chad. Fixing undeposited funds is I think this is a this is a Sisyphusian type of activity because it seems like you're always pushing that boulder back up the undeposited funds hill. First off is You know, people don't understand what undeposited funds account is, and that there's some special transaction or special functionality tied to undeposited funds. The only things that you can do, bringing things in and taking things out. So a lot of times people live in the bank feed and they'll throw Deposit, deposit into revenue. Meanwhile, their invoices and payments are posting into undeposited funds. Now, to that end QuickBooks has, in its infinite wisdom, has changed the name of undeposited funds to a more aptly named payments to deposit which makes a little bit more sense to the non-accountants. But of course now the accountants that are used to unde positive funds. Are looking for where's the undeposited funds account? It's called payments to deposit now michelle has a great video on cleaning up the undeposited funds because you'll want to be able to un Recognize, um, revenue or duplicated revenue because your invoices are pointing to revenue and then these deposits are also pointing to revenue. You'll be able to basically swap out the the payment with the deposit in the add funds to deposit. And she has a great video on that where it doesn't impact your reconciliation, great idea. All right. So we're going to throw up the, next poll, which is what do you like most about the books review the Chad? What do you like the most?

Chad Pues: 24:43

Yeah, so I think one of the most common uses for books review at least for my firm before we discovered keeper was the identification of transactions without vendors or payees because You can use the reclassify tool and Q B O A and reclassified in bulk transactions to multiple two different accounts. But you couldn't edit the payee from within that same tool. And so that required the team to then either change those one by one or, subsequently discovered the books review and the option to edit those pays in bulk there, which also happens to be available in keeper. So prior to keeper, I'd say the B. the transactions without vendors and payees.

Dan DeLong: 25:28

Got it. And I just realized I threw up the wrong poll question. So I'm going to Let this one sit for a little bit and then I'll throw up the right poll question. We'll ask that one while we're going through the 1099 topics as well, so we'll go ahead and end that one. And this was, this is part of the challenge about what happened with poll questions. They put them in a different launching pattern here. Let me end that poll and then we'll launch the. No, there we go. Yeah, it's it's backwards like they're labeled wrong. So this is why I need Miguel at the same time. All right, so preparing 1099. And Chad and Josh and I had a pretty good discussion as we were talking about this, about the preparation part of 1099s is a little bit different than the actual doing the 1099s, making sure that those, that information is correct Is it is just as important as the task of actually doing it in January. We have a couple articles there from into it about setting up the box 7 nonemployee compensation. In the couple was it in. Two years ago when they brought back the 1099 NEC form and the support for it inside of QuickBooks, uh, so there are potentially two different. 1099s to prepare one for non employee compensation and another for all the other things like pro rent proceeds and boat, fishing boat something or other. When I worked it into it it was all about box seven which was the non employee compensation. But there are other things to, to report on the 1099s, but it's not 1099 K, and it's not 1099 DIV, and it's not 1099 INT forms that it supports. It's just that 1099 miscellaneous or non employee compensation that it will support. Now the big thing is about that 1099 K is that payments are gonna, some payments are gonna be excluded. On the 1099. So reportable payments that are eligible for 1099s are, bank bank account bank transactions. So cash, check direct deposit electronic funds transfer, but non reported, reportable payments, credit card, debit card, PayPal, Stripe, Square, I think Venmo is now, entering into this this issue as well, but they're going to be getting a 1099K From the from the credit card or merchant account provider, and that will be segregated out. So if you pay people by those things, you want to make sure that those are excluded. Otherwise, again, they may be overstating their revenue from the, as far as what's being reported to the federal government. And then that would cause a nasty letter. Which which you don't want. You don't want to be on the receiving end of that. And then the prep for taxes which is, oh, go ahead. Sorry, 1 thing I just want to,

Michelle Long: 28:42

yeah, sorry, 1 thing I wanted to pop in there and add on the 1099 something new this year. I just answered a question on it with the 1099. In the past the corrected ones, you couldn't file a corrected 10 99 in qbo. This was mentioned on the no webinar a couple of months ago. I think it might've been September too. But you, this year, and you look up the rules from the IRS because I don't remember the details, but this year, if you, e-filed your 10 99, if you have a corrected, when you have to file the corrected 10 99 the same way you originally filed it. So in the past. You couldn't file, e file a corrected one through QBO, but this year that has changed because the IRS rules changed. Pay attention to what the new rules from the IRS are. Go take a look at that. Go watch the previous In the Know webinars. And just be aware that this year you can do corrected 1099s with QBO if you originally e filed with QBO. Sorry,

Dan DeLong: 29:42

just wanted to add that. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yes. So always check out the in the know webinars. Keep updated on what's new, which I think we were talking a little earlier that the prep for taxes in the know webinar as well for prep for taxes. This is a great way to be able to send your QBO data. Client's data to a tax preparation software. No, Michelle and and Josh and Chad run screaming from tax preparation. But if you are one of those foolish enough to do both uh, you can have the the prep for taxes. We'll be able to, uh, send that over to Lassert or pro series or even Excel. Or your pro connect tax online to help in creation of those tax returns. One of the new things is that you can actually create adjustments that are non posting. But you do want to have them affect the tax return, but not the books, right? So it could be a depreciation type of thing or something that is interest done in the, on the tax return, but not in the book. So you can adjust them within. The prep for taxes function without actually affecting affecting the books with that wanted to toss it over to Chad and talk a little bit about, okay these things are what we have in available in QBO uh, or the QBO accountant side of the pool. But what if you need more, right? So what does, what is keeper and and what does it do?

Chad Pues: 31:22

Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you, Dan again for the intro and for having us here today. I'm excited to share more about what's in keeper versus what's in QBOA and the ways that keepers can be able to help. To set the scene for everybody. Our goal with Keeper is really to bring as much of that recurring bookkeeping and accounting work into one piece of software. So that way you don't have to jump between three or four apps just to close your client's books, dig between QBOA modules to find some of those valuable tools that QBO makes available and bring them all into one place. And so our focus is really in four different areas. The first being task management, where you can define that process that the team's going through each period. Give yourself high level visibility into understanding where the team's at all times. Secondly, we integrate directly with Q B. O. To offer review tools that are going to automatically catch coding errors and flag other types of transactions that need to get cleaned up similar to what a book's review is doing in that transaction review section. Third, we have a secure and easy to access client portal to communicate with your clients on things like uncategorized transactions and document requests throughout the year. So you don't have to go back and forth via email all year long to get those answers. And then finally, we have a custom reporting module as well, where you're able to customize those management reports within Keeper. Define and report on key metrics and KPIs to add additional value to those deliverables and even include graphs and other visuals in those packages. So we're doing quite a bit here. But yeah, I'll I'm happy to jump into each of these kind of focuses in a little bit greater detail beginning with our client portal. I Think one of the this is one of the major attractions to keeper for my firm specifically related to the communication with clients on transactions that need to get that we need a little extra clarification on to understand where it needs to go with keepers portal. Because we integrate directly with QBO, we can flag those transactions within Keeper, push those to a client portal for the client to provide their responses in a timely manner. I know that QBOA does have a module where you're able to ask those client questions for that additional clarification. One of the pain points that we've experienced in the past though is That requires your clients to have an Intuit account. It requires them to log in with that Intuit account. And there's extra hoops for them to jump through. Keepers Portal is made secure by using what are called Google Magic Links. For clients to access the portal. All they have to do is click the links in the notifications that you're pushing to them from Keeper, and those links will take them to the portal, which is mobile friendly, as we see here in that screenshot to begin responding to those requests and questions. So it makes that communication much easier than that back and forth via email or trying to use at least in my experience, QBO's integrated version. Yeah, that's,

Dan DeLong: 34:17

That's a good call out because what if they're A service based type of industry where they're, in front of a client and now they're either going to forget your request uh, if they can't add, if they can't answer it right at that moment, or gosh, I got to know, make sure I'm in the right app in order to address that. And. Lord forbid, if I've gotten, I've got to upload something to, to that as well. And I have it on my phone available for that. This gives them the ability availability to do that.

Chad Pues: 34:48

Exactly. Exactly. And, many of us have used portals in the past, and we know that as soon as we introduce a portal that requires a username or a login or a special app for them to download, the clients would just rather email you instead. And with the Google magic links, it doesn't feel like that traditional portal experience because it is as easy as clicking those unique links to get into the portal and respond to those questions.

Dan DeLong: 35:12

And on your screenshot there, on your screenshot there, you can have this. It's white labeled to your firm, right? It looks like a client portal, but it's not.

Chad Pues: 35:21

Yeah. Great call out there, Dan. Yeah, completely a white label to match your firm. So your logo, your domain, your colors throughout. So your clients will never even know the keeper name. Nice. And all right. Yeah. I know that QuickBooks has started to include some task management functionality where you're able to start defining some of that process that you're going through for your clients keeper does that, but with a little bit greater There's some more features here and some more customization. One of the big draws for me and my firm was the ability to look at a high level client list dashboard like we see here in this screenshot that list those clients on the left list those team members that are assigned to that particular engagement. And then out there to the right an indication of the progress that the team's making as they progress through that work. So you know exactly where the team's at all times without needing to, again, either check in with that team member and say, where are you on client X, Y and Z? You've got that high level visibility and transparency here from the dashboard. And you can even see those open items in the client portal that remain from this dashboard as well. So providing more transparency to know where the team's at all times. And we can go to that. The next slide. All right. And this is where we start to talk about those integrated file review tools that I mentioned earlier. 1 of my favorites from Q. B. O. A. that I mentioned earlier was the ability to identify transactions without payees because it's only in the books review functionality that you're that you were able to bulk reclass uh, or reassign payees within Q. B. O. Keeper actually puts that tool front and center here. So you have that same ability to identify those transactions that have transactions without payees that have been coded into the ledger. Bulk reassign those from within Keeper and any changes made in Keeper get pushed back to QBO automatically. So Keeper's Client list or client close page, which contains these different review tools that are going to flag those transactions that need attention becomes the place where the team is doing that month or year end review. Simply addressing those different transactions that show up in keepers various review tools. So rather than manually scanning that general ledger to try and pick those out one by one. Keepers got a whole host of review tools that are going to identify those types of transactions. And I mentioned the transactions without payees report as a similarity between QBOA and what Keeper offers. The one that we see in this screenshot is actually our expense inconsistency report, which is going to flag for your team any transactions that appear to be coded differently from how they've previously been recorded within the client file. Indicating a potential coding error. So it makes it really easy for your team to see, okay, this has been coded inconsistently. We can see that it's been traditionally coded to advertising and marketing 100 percent of the time. Again, your team's able to make that change in keeper and that gets synced back to QBO automatically. So a lot of great tools there. And then finally, the financial reporting module. I mentioned earlier that we do have the ability to customize those financial reports within keeper because we're integrated with QB. Oh, we're pulling in that ledger data and providing the ability to customize those statements. My favorite piece of our reporting package is that executive summary that you see there in that screenshot, which is a great one pager for those clients that are easily overwhelmed by a full set of financials because it's going to hit those high notes quickly, but also give the team the the ability to define and report on key metrics and KPIs. That are relevant to that specific client as well to add more value to those deliverables. So color

Dan DeLong: 39:09

coded too. So yeah, exactly. Those

Chad Pues: 39:14

visual cues that, that are going to resonate with your clients,

Dan DeLong: 39:18

your check engine light. Yeah, exactly. Please see the accountant for further explanation. All right. So you talked a little bit about the 1099. So let's Let's talk a little bit about that and show it now, if anybody has of anything that we high level that we had talked about that you want to see, because Chad will, we'll be able to demonstrate we do have a little bit of time for a keeper demo. If you have one, something that you want to see a little bit more of, please put that in the chat so we can guide guide this for you.

Chad Pues: 39:50

Yeah, perfect. Yeah. A great call out on the 1099, for years, everyone has said that April is the worst month of the year for accountants. But in my experience, January kind of took that prize or that cake just because of all the pains associated with 1099 and. The pain is not so much the preparation of the form but rather the identification of eligible vendors and the collection of those W nine. And keeper has a tool within the platform. That's going to help the team to identify and assist with those two specific things. And I'd love to walk uh, everyone through that right now and show how that's going to work. Okay.

Dan DeLong: 40:30

I'll go ahead and stop sharing. And we haven't even talked about, the payroll aspect of year end which, I think a lot of people have just like taxes have run screaming from as far as payroll preparation, but that's another thing that adds to the January. Quagmire, I guess it's the best way to describe what happens in, in January because not just the deadline for 1099s, but also W2s and the 941s and those types of things that are also due on that day. So it does get quite challenging. And then on top of that you have with the e filing, there's a lead time that you have, so you don't have the deadline. Hooray. You have a deadline plus time for it to be processed.

Chad Pues: 41:16

Januaries are absolute killers. I'll save this story, but 1099 has put me in the hospital one year, so I'll share that another time. But yeah, the pain is real. Just making sure, can you see the screen that says 1801 Brands? Yes. Okay, perfect. I want to make sure I'm sharing the right screen here. So just to set the scene here, what we're looking at is the client closed page, for example, client 18 and one brands, specifically looking at that November period and the closed page is where the team will manage the majority of their client work and keeper. This is where we'll define those tasks. This is where the team will be able to go through those transaction review tools, like transactions without payees and make those changes here and keeper. But down here in our payee entity review, we have. What is my favorite review tool and keeper? And it's that prepare 10 99 support that I referenced earlier. So again, this report is intended to help you identify potentially eligible vendors and then collect and organize that 10 99 information. So that way you don't have to scramble those last couple of weeks of December 1st, couple of weeks of January. So to really drill in here and walk through what's happening within this report. Keepers pulling in any client vendors that meet that year to date spend requirement that could trigger 1099 reporting requirements. So all year long when a vendor hits that 600 in year to date spend threshold, excluding credit card spend by default, keepers going to pull that vendor into this report along with any available vendor profile information that's already been saved in QBO. When that information gets pulled into this report, it makes it really easy for the team to identify when they're missing information related to that vendor. And if they are missing that information. You're able to actually request the W nine through keeper from your client through that client portal that I mentioned earlier or from your client's vendor. If you make that request from your client's vendor for that W nine, they're going to get an email that's going to say we're such and such accounting firm. We're preparing for year end. We need a copy of your W nine. They're going to have a link in that email. That's going to take them again to a branded landing page like this. It's going to match your firm's logo. They're going to have the opportunity to upload that existing W 9 if they already have it filled out. Alternatively, they can fill out that form on screen, which is going to produce a signed PDF that your team's going to be able to reference back here in Keeper and When that W nine's received. Oh, go ahead.

Dan DeLong: 43:52

More importantly, it's not going to set them up with a with a self employed version of QuickBooks which, which was an unintended side effect of doing that through QuickBooks.

Chad Pues: 44:04

Yeah, good call. I forgot about that, but that was definitely part of the pains when we were trying to get those W 9s pre keeper. But when those W 9s are received, the team's going to be able to reference those on screen, update that vendor profile information based on what they see, check that important box that 1099 is going to be necessary, save it. And when that is saved, all of that information is then pushed to QBO back to that vendor profile. So that way, all of that information is there at the end of the year when you go to prepare those 1099s.

Dan DeLong: 44:40

Chad, there was a couple questions about excluding the credit card spend. You have that, I see the check mark there. What what is pulling from QuickBooks these credit card spending? What is it? What is it looking for? As far as what is a C spend activity and what is not? Yeah,

Chad Pues: 44:59

great question. So the credit card spend that's getting excluded with this check box here is based on the chart of accounts. So when that account is set up as a credit card account, keepers excluding that spend from this year to date spend. Now, if you want to exclude additional transactions, maybe you have Non reportable transactions to a that are included in an account like cost of goods sold. You can specify those specific accounts that you want to exclude from that year to date spend calculation. So that way you're only pulling in to that year to date spend calculation. What's going to be relevant and reportable further. You can drill into each vendor's transactions that are included in that year to date spend calculation and exclude individual transactions if you have or know of an exception for one reason or another. sO there are a lot of ways to make sure that you're calculating that year to date spend correctly,

Dan DeLong: 45:57

right? I saw somebody mentioned like Zelle, right? That's a bank. Bank transfer, but it's maybe done a little differently. Would that be something that you would be able to do inside of the account

Chad Pues: 46:13

restriction? Yeah, good question. In a situation like that, and I can't remember exactly where Zelle falls with like the PayPals and the Venmos and if they're issuing 1099Ks.

Dan DeLong: 46:23

We have 26 days for the government to change that on us as well. Anything we say today may not be the situation in 2024. Got

Chad Pues: 46:33

it. Yeah. Always cutting it down to the wire. 1 of the things that we recently enabled here is the ability to exclude transactions based on checker reference number. So for debit card spend, that is not reportable. If that memo or that checker reference is like debit or maybe in the example of Zelle, add Zelle to that exclude list here. So that way, those transactions are not included. So there are some options there to just make sure that you're pulling in that year to date spent. That's going to be the most relevant and needs to be

Dan DeLong: 47:05

reported. Yeah, those articles that I have posted about in the handouts, we'll talk about the specific ways to enter, put the reference number in so that QuickBooks will exclude those payments. But now you can mirror that through Keeper if you're using

Chad Pues: 47:20

Keeper. Exactly. And then the last thing that I'll say on this tool is this tool is literally plug and play. So you connect a client to Keeper and Keeper is going to produce this list for you. If you're thinking, I'm intrigued by what I've seen here today. I want to learn more, but I don't have the capacity to explore task management, file review tools management reports. This is a great way to get started, especially this time of year. And we'll share some more information on how we can help get you started with free trials and additional demos to dive in further webinar.

Dan DeLong: 47:54

And could you speak to a little bit about what Keeper's model is? Is it like a platform fee? Is it per client fee? How does that typically work with

Chad Pues: 48:04

with Keeper? Yeah, so our pricing is based on the number of clients in keeper. So 10 US dollars per connected client per month. There's no, oh, really?

Dan DeLong: 48:12

Brick in the bank there.

Chad Pues: 48:14

Yeah. Review tools, client portal management reports, task management in one place$10. Really affordable. And there's no like minimum number of clients required. You don't have to bring in your entire client portfolio. You have the option to choose which clients are going to be the most relevant for your firm to manage and keeper. And does

Dan DeLong: 48:32

it, is it regardless of cause now the new offering of QB ledger is a is an option in QBO. Is that something that they, that, that keeper can connect to as well? It

Chad Pues: 48:43

is. It is. So we were very excited to hear about the announcement of QB ledger just because we have so many clients that have or users that have been trying to get on QuickBooks online, but couldn't afford the subscription fees to do that with QuickBooks ledger. They can and it does integrate with keeper as well. So you get all of these benefits. With the ledger account as well.

Dan DeLong: 49:06

Another question that was asked there. Is it only pulling oops, stop sharing. And it changed my, Oh, I'm sorry. Is it only pulling in vendors with the tick box checked in QuickBooks or all vendors over 600?

Chad Pues: 49:22

Got it. Yeah, that's a really good question. I'll start sharing my screen again. So keeper is pulling in all of those vendors, regardless of whether or not that tick box is checked, because many of us know that unchecked box doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't tell us that it's a C corp that we've requested a W nine three years in a row. And so when that vendors pulled into this report, it's going to get pulled in with a 10 99 needed status of unknown. And if when you receive that W nine, you determine that yes, it is a C corp. We don't need that 10 90 or that W nine or that 10 99 rather. You can filter that out by toggling that status from unknown to no. So that way you know that vendor doesn't need that 1099 in future years either.

Dan DeLong: 50:06

Anything else that you want to show in the portal itself before you stop sharing again?

Chad Pues: 50:12

No, I think that was it for right now. I think that was a good intro and I appreciate you letting me share my screen. Am I good to stop sharing? Okay, perfect.

Dan DeLong: 50:22

And I stopped it for you. So there's some resources, right? So if you're watching on our streaming platform, or if you're watching and you don't want to, you don't have the handouts, you don't have the links, you can just whip out your phone and and do the, QR codes we have for the ProAdvisor certification training. That'll take you to take you to that. In school bookkeeping, we have A course, a whole course on QBOA in, inside of that. There is a trial needed but you can, you have a 30 day free trial to be able to check out, check that out and review that. And then also learning more about Keeper as well. All of those are QR codes or direct direct links there. Anything else that you guys have seen with the, I already asked the last poll question which I would have teed up right now. But I was. A little Zoom challenge, I guess is the best way to describe it. We already asked that poll question, but anything else that you you want to want to wrap up on Josh or Chad? Oh, go ahead, Josh.

Chad Pues: 51:22

No,

Joshua Musler: 51:22

all I was going to say is thank you for having us on. Nothing else specific to the product and I'll let Chad throw in some final words, but for everyone that joined, just wanted to give a big shout out for listening in, learning more about our product. If you're interested in learning more. And any questions that weren't answered, we'll follow up. We have some webinars coming up that I'm happy to share a link to. I know a lot of times people want to listen to customers that actually use the product, not just Chad and I, and happen to have a webinar coming up. And I think our customers do a better job of talking about Keeper and the benefits of Keeper. Then even chat and I can

Dan DeLong: 51:59

That was probably the, that was probably the biggest moment for me when it came to what is keeper in the, in, in that area is Michelle and I went to the happy camp last year. And Keeper was a part of that, and I was just amazed of the people that were there were definitely promoters of Keeper, right? Ben the CEO, didn't have to say much about his own product because there were 25 percent of the people that were there were already Keeper users, and they were ecstatic about the things that they could do. And that was a year ago. So you've got some improvements since then, too. Very

Michelle Long: 52:36

strong advocate of Deeper because it's so impressive and it's such a time saver and everything, it is definitely wonderful. So thank you guys for bringing it to our listeners because it is a huge time saver. And yeah, like Dan said, they couldn't speak highly enough about it. Ben just had to sit there and smile. He was like, this is great because they would just sit there and just talk about how fabulous it was and how I wish I would have seen this years ago and how amazing and everything. They would just sit there and just start talking and selling it, with their stories, so it was really amazing to hear. Them being such great advocates for it. So it is really

Dan DeLong: 53:16

impressive.

Chad Pues: 53:18

Thank you both again for having us on and letting us share a little bit about keeper today. Really appreciate it.

Dan DeLong: 53:25

Awesome. So thanks again for joining us. We do have some other questions that we can forward to the team and you guys can follow up on to make sure that everybody gets their questions answered. But we hope you all have a great holiday great year end, we might have another QB power hour before the end of the year, or we may have a replay of a more common or more popular one. Because the next schedule one is like the week before Christmas. So we might stay tuned for that. And we appreciate you joining us on the QB power hour, and we look forward to seeing you next time, whenever that is. Thanks,

Michelle Long: 54:02

everybody. Thanks for all you do.