QB Power Hour Podcast

Making Bulk Edits in QuickBooks [5.26.26]

• Dan DeLong

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In this QB Power Hour, we’re breaking down the smartest ways to clean things up at scale inside QuickBooks (and when to step outside of it). We’ll walk through real tools and workflows that help you fix data faster, more accurately, and with way less risk.

We’ll cover:
• When to use built-in tools like the Reclassify Transactions tool and Undo in the bank feed
• How to handle vendor reclasses and large-scale cleanup scenarios
• When tools like RightTool, Transaction Pro, Saasant, and Spreadsheet Sync actually make sense
• Common bulk-edit mistakes (and how to avoid them)
• How to sanity-check your work so you don’t create bigger problems downstream

Because bulk edits shouldn’t feel like a gamble. With the right approach, they’re one of the fastest ways to clean up your books and get back in control.

Learn more about the Bulk Edits Cohort: https://www.schoolofbookkeeping.com/offers/XyReUTwy 

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

Connect with Sharrin's Clone and Conquer Hub: https://snip.ly/SharrinQBPH
Get QuickAnswer with Dan's School of Bookkeeping Community: https://snip.ly/QuickAnswers

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/ 


Power Hour Kickoff

Dan DeLong

Welcome everybody to another QB Power Hour. Hopefully those of you that were in the waiting room got the full experience of the video because we're not gonna be having the video play while I'm trying to figure out how to From advance the slides. Let me know if if that worked well. Put it in the, put it in the chat or, something like that because we wanna get started with the content today because we have a lot to talk about. And we might even get

Sharrin Fuller

to- Oh, yeah, Intuit keeping us active over here.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, and Anna Burke is, "What video?" So that d- that doesn't sound promising, Sharrin.

Sharrin Fuller

It's, so it was just the doo doo-

Dan DeLong

Yeah

Sharrin Fuller

Doo. Join our communities and find us over here, and- you don't get CP for this anymore. So all right, no one saw it. Yeah. You and I will have to test it later. It's okay. We'll

Dan DeLong

have to test it. Okay. So yeah, the little intro video that, that starts when we're, when we start the Power Hour talks about the housekeeping and all of that stuff, and that should be playing in the waiting room as you're waiting. Now, if you just got here and you weren't sitting in the waiting room, then you wouldn't see the video.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah.

Dan DeLong

We'll tech- we'll check

Sharrin Fuller

it out. Hold on. In case they missed it, doo- doo Doo, doo. Pretty- very nice

Dan DeLong

Am I on? You, are. All right. You are. You, you- All right you've been around,

Topic and Sponsors

Dan DeLong

you've been around the QB Power

Sharrin Fuller

Hour. I'm on YouTube. Lisa was in the waiting room for 30 minutes. Damn.

Dan DeLong

Whoa. L- so Lisa, did you see the video?

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. Or do you- Apparently not, but Lisa- Okay. All right. Go ahead, Dan. Do your thing.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, okay. Today we're gonna be talking about making bulk edits in QuickBooks. We'll talk a little bit about desktop, and we'll talk a little bit about QuickBooks Online, but we'll talk about some of the ways to make mass changes inside of

Communities and Registration

Dan DeLong

QuickBooks. We do wanna shout out, since apparently the video didn't say that we do have some spotlight sponsors, and this is how it keeps the QB Power Hour free for all the attendees. Please check them out and support them. Now, if you wanna connect with Sharrin and I and not get so interruptive back and forth because we don't rehearse the QB Power Hour- I

Sharrin Fuller

don't even look at the slides, you guys. I have no idea what we're talking about till it's in my face. I'm not gonna lie here. Dan is the, Dan lifts, I show up. That's it.

Dan DeLong

But if you wanna- So if you wanna connect with us on an uninterrupted basis we each have our own communities. What is your what is your commu- and I know it's Clone Conquer, but what is- Fix Businesses, Dan what is the takeaway? I

Sharrin Fuller

get owners unstuck. If you're stuck and you can't get out of it, and you're like, "I don't even know. Do I hire? Do I fix something? Do I bring in tech? And if I do, I can't even do it," I help you get out of that.

Dan DeLong

So it's advising the advisor.

Sharrin Fuller

I have a community, and I do one-on-one advisory.

Dan DeLong

Excellent. And then mine is more focused on getting the most out of QuickBooks, right? Yes. So if you have some questions or concerns about, "Oh, I want to get more out of QuickBooks or make things more efficient," that's where that's where School of Bookkeeping comes in. We are... If you're joining us for the first time, we have changed a little bit about the QB Power Hour, and we've made some categories of our of our w- webinars, so we have different ones in there. We've also made individual registrations. If you're still part of the recurring one, that's gonna expire after next time. So if you're tired of getting two alerts from me that- I

Sharrin Fuller

get four, just saying.

Dan DeLong

And I get, at least 16 so- Okay so so I'm, I'm-

Sharrin Fuller

You're four times better than I am, Dan, when

Dan DeLong

all those- I'm eating my own dog food when it comes to- when it comes to updating

Intuit News Setup

Dan DeLong

myself, that's gonna expire after the next one to- so hopefully everybody got the memo now that we've moved over to individual registrations. You can check out those on our website and put them on your calendar as well. So today we're gonna be... Hopefully, we get past the Intuit news part. And

Sharrin Fuller

I- Oh, you started with that. Oh.

Dan DeLong

Yes.

Sharrin Fuller

Smart.

Dan DeLong

Yeah so we're gonna talk about the, some of the news that happened on cue, like right before the Power Hour about the QuickBooks Payroll changes, as, as well as the Q3 results and the announcements that that occurred immediately following. So we'll, try to maintain a concise conversation about that, but-

Sharrin Fuller

Come on I

Dan DeLong

can't guarantee that. But then we'll go

Sharrin Fuller

into- My parents used to say that too, my teachers

Dan DeLong

But we do wanna g- get into m- bulk editing tools that are in QuickBooks Desktop and Online and some external tools. And over at School of Bookkeeping, we're gonna be having a bulk edit cohort. So if we're not talking too much about enough about what the bulk editing there will be an opportunity for more- concise or not as not as unscripted with the cohort that we have. So Sharrin, launch the first poll question, please.

Payroll Becomes Workforce

Sharrin Fuller

You got it. Launch. Launch. Which

Dan DeLong

version of QuickBooks do you support your clients with? And while that, while you're answering that, we're gonna go right into the what burns Sharrin's smores, and we'll talk about some- Get it out Intuit news and updates. So-

Sharrin Fuller

Get it out

Dan DeLong

first, first thing, you may have received a, an email in the last couple weeks about the QBO payroll changes. It is going, undergoing a verbiage change from QBO Payroll to QBO... or no, Workforce, sorry. So it's gonna be changing that terminology, and that seems to be a theme over the last couple weeks of terms changing. But basically QuickBooks or Intuit purchased a human capital management company, acquired a ma- h- human cap- human capital management company as a new acquisition. They are changing the name to, from just Payroll to Workforce because those the HSM or HCM companies is gonna bring bring to the fold, at least that's the promise, that there will be more HR-related things. Now, Sharrin, you're you're a fan of Rippling, which is, which would that

Sharrin Fuller

be- I am a Rippling fan

Dan DeLong

would that be in the same vein as an HS- HCM?

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, yeah. They're all using that HCM and HCA, human capital... Sorry. That's the new we got, we all got over CAS, and now they're bringing this in. It's just basically payroll and looking at the data. But yeah, same thing. It makes sense in the evolution of Intuit to have everything in one stop. They move the accounts out of the way. You bring in just the end user business owner, and they're like, "Oh, I have Intuit. I need nothing else. This is my whole back office system. I process everything," right? So it makes sense. They're moving in the right direction even though the, their HR product sucks.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, which was I think Mammoth was the was the company that they were working with, and I don't know what the what the outcome for that is. Probably it's gonna be the way of Melio when Intuit incorporated its own QuickBooks Bill Pay.

Sharrin Fuller

Yep

Dan DeLong

Melio got the boot. There is a link in the slides for the Firm of the Future article. I did just put in the chat the, Whoops, I didn't put it in the chat. I meant to put in the chat today's handouts. Yeah,

Sharrin Fuller

they've already asked me twice, but-

Dan DeLong

There you go

Sharrin Fuller

didn't want to, didn't want to interrupt

Dan DeLong

That is

Payroll Pricing Changes

Dan DeLong

in the chat there. Which I would've normally done during the intro video, but we don't have the intro video, so we're still, working through this. But there is a link there for the Firm of the Future article and the handout, so you can download that. So with change typically comes a pricing change or update. This is also on the Firm of the Future article as well, so you can take a look at it there. But the pricing changes for payroll have not heard anything about pricing changes for, QuickBooks Online. That get-- that did get hinted at on the third quarter results call, which, we're gonna talk a little bit about in the next slide. But the changes with payroll is, all being related to the employee-- the per employee cost. They're not changing any of the base costs. It's all just dealing with the- the per employee cost. So Workforce Payroll, which is-- was Core, QBO Payroll Core is increasing by fifty cents an employee. Then Workforce Premium is adding a three dollar surcharge to the employee cost. And the Workforce Elite is getting a, quite a jump from twelve to seventeen per employee. And then Premium and Elite are having this optional fif-- five dollars per employee add-on for the benefits administration. All that is we don't know the details of what that actually means, but we know that is going to be-- there's gonna be a charge associated with that. That's what we do know.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. Yeah

Dan DeLong

the ef-- the effective date for these pricing changes is July first if you're directly being billed by Intuit. So after-- So your next billing after that will in-incorporate these changes. If you are participating with a QuickBooks solution provider, the QSP channel those prices don't go into

Q3 Results and Layoffs

Dan DeLong

effect until after September first. If you have clients who are currently on a promotion they will not be affected by the pricing change until this promotion ends. So those are the, dates involving the, those pricing changes. So speaking of workforce changes Intuit had its third quarter results call last week and made some pretty interesting announcements. Basically, the third quarter is the results of tax season, right? Because Intuit's fiscal year begins on October first-- or I'm sorry, August first, excuse me. So their third quarter is right around the TurboTax tax preparation filing season, right? Working added to it, I didn't realize how heavily, How heavy that was that business unit the, tax preparation side of things was for Intuit, right? I was... I grew up, I cut my teeth in QuickBooks, right? So we were all in that particular business unit. So with this third quarter you look at the charts and all the things that, are readily available out there about Intuit as a publicly traded company. Q- Q3, or the third quarter, is typically the largest revenue source for Intuit. And as they were talking about it, it was... it underperformed, right? Because TurboTax being the do it yourself model is the, is getting disrupted, right? That's, really what it, boiled down to. They lost share, they lost some revenue on the, TurboTax side of things from my analysis of, what what they said. This is the season, right? The where QuickBooks then either looks at its budget, looks at those results of the third quarter- and makes makes adjustments based off of that. And the, easiest way that they make adjustments is by changing the workforce changing the, the number of badged employees that, that work for Intuit. So they announced a large reduction. It was seven- 17% of the workforce. One thing I do want to point out is that they increased their number of employees from the last time they had a huge layoff like this, right? You look back at the last time, it was like 9 or 10% of the workforce re- reduction. They had less of a headcount than What they laid off with what they had today, or recently when they announced these, the- these layoffs. So- at some point they do acquire employees. And, that could be part of the part of, the whole thing is that it could be a, an acquisition that caused the, raise in headcount. But I experienced- Yeah Several, iterations of this. Sharrin, go ahead.

Sharrin Fuller

I saw... So first of all, shout out to Intuit. They did it right this time. When they did the layoff, they actually didn't go, "Hey, 50% of these people sucked." Yeah. "But we're not telling you which 50%." So shout out to Intuit for not doing that again. Secondly, I was going through my LinkedIn trying to figure out who, and it was a lot of Credit Karma people. Almost significantly- Credit Karma staff. So that, again, Intuit pisses me off. Yes. But, it tracks, right? I know... Does everybody want me to be angrier, right? I'm- Okay, just making sure. Just making sure they're not... But they bought Credit Karma. And honestly, Credit Karma can be so automated in AI that they're like, "We had all these people, we don't need them anymore." So not only that, most of the departments that they had that stand alone on Credit Karma, they merge into whatever they had in Intuit. So that being said, I think they needed to get rid of all the Credit Karma people, but at the same time took a chance to get rid of some others that they won't announce- were underperforming because that went so well last time. So- Yeah anyhow, like I said, if you're in my community, if you watch anything I do, if your job isn't client facing, relationship facing, they're gonna try to replace you with computers,

Dan DeLong

yeah. And, that seemed to be the the biggest thing is that TurboTax and Credit Karma, they aligned the the business units under one thing. The middle management components and, the teams that were part of both TurboTax and Credit Karma, because that's really the- personal finance side of Intuit. There was some redundancies in, positions and those roles were eliminated. It's hard to believe that there's 3,000 of them that were redundant, but that is, That's what they said. These changes they happen pretty frequently, and being Yeah A part of this being part of the, of this experience it became part of the culture. Just working there that, okay, we're in the fourth quarter. Who is it this year, right?

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. And it's never anybody that expected it. People that'll say, "Oh, hey, I was there for 15 years." I'm like at least you get a longer severance package." Like- Yeah Almost, I, it... Almost everybody that I know used to work at Intuit. You did, Hector did, Allison did. I cannot believe how many of you ding-dongs used to work at Intuit. Ding-dongs, 'cause I just can't work for the man. So- Just saying.

Dan DeLong

But, Whoops to their credit they typically, they do this catch and release thing where they, they reorganize, and they restructure, and they make re- requisitions. And it's instead of the culture of, "Hey, we think you would do better in this position," they just- ever, right? And then allow folks to look at what's available and reapply, right? And a lot of times that's what happens, is that people don't actually have to turn in their badge because all they do is just reapply for another position and get rehired for that position. And, that way they're it- I get it that they're getting the type of people that they want for those positions. And those people are putting in the initiative to get those positions. But it is, a lit- it is a little stressful. I think that's- Yeah the nicest way to-

Sharrin Fuller

I feel bad. And the problem is, Dan, is that everybody's laying off right now, like everybody. I, it, all these big, corporations. So it's scary 'cause it's like, where are they gonna go? I, if you look across the accounting channel, almost all, not almost all, but a large portion of the tech that you see at conferences, they're getting rid of their partner program. They're sending in their sales and marketing people to the booths instead of their big old partner program, right? They're spending less money on trying to get us into their product. I have a few ideas around that. But there's, where are these people gonna go? What are- what are we going to do? Are we all just gonna rebuild robots for a living? What are we going to do? I think we need to start torching the AI plants and the AI field circ- Let's just, all of us accountants uprise. We can do it. There's more of us than them. I'm just saying. I

Dan DeLong

know.

Sharrin Fuller

We're strong. That had nothing to do with what you were saying. But I said, it anyways.

Dan DeLong

You did. All right. Let's let's talk about what we're, supposed to talk about today. We will actually, in an upcoming QB Power Hour, we are gonna be talking about robots versus humans.

Back to Bulk Editing

Dan DeLong

And and so we will continue this this chat conversation about-

Sharrin Fuller

Hey, that's mine. I'm actually hosting that one. Yeah.

Dan DeLong

I'm interested-

Sharrin Fuller

I know

Dan DeLong

to see what you come up with.

Sharrin Fuller

I know.

Dan DeLong

The bulk changes making mass changes inside of QuickBooks. Let's talk about some of the reasons that you would make mass changes, right? Incorrect categorization rules, bank rules or something that, that were functioning or not, functioning properly. You maybe have to clean up some of the lists updating the customers with their address or, Making changes that you might need. But it, especially in QuickBooks Online, a lot of those changes are individual, right? So it ends up being a, a rote clicking thing. And then with the inability, I think, for keyboard shortcuts to be as useful as they are in Desktop it becomes m- some of, somewhat of a challenge sometimes, right? So y- and then if you are moving

Desktop and Online Tools

Dan DeLong

a client from Desktop to QuickBooks Online, a lot of times you need to make some post-migration changes. And so sometimes you want to do that in one fell swoop, right? So let's talk about some of those tools, right? So in Desktop bulk editing tools, the biggest one, and I think I think it was... A lot of times when I talk to people about Desktop and making ma- bulk changes to lists, a lot of people didn't even realize that Add/Edit Multiple List Entries was an option. And that is one of the things that they, if they wanted to update something they would, call in first okay, I got a spreadsheet, and I just need to bring it in." and sometimes those particular things that they were dealing with didn't have a way to get in outside of some kind of third-party tool, which we'll talk a little bit about. So the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries allows for that to happen. You can customize the columns to match your Excel spreadsheet. There are built-in Excel-ish, Ex-Excel-esque types of things like copy down and things of that nature where you can show these lists, whether they be customers or vendors or your items list and then make those mass changes in one fell swoop. Obviously, the bank feed you can do a lot of undoing or ignoring as far as making vast, mass changes. There is tools and utilities for the income tracker or the bill tracker where you can do a lot of things in, bulk of sending or printing transactions. And then, of course, with Enterprise and, and/or your Accountant Edition, you've got some batch tools in there where you can batch create transactions individually with with invoices as well as other options very similar to what in, Advanced with batch enter transactions but also batch cla- batch reclassifying and deleting or writing off invoices and fixing unapplied customers and vendors payments, merging vendors. A lot of tools are inside of QuickBooks Desktop to do a lot of things at once. In QuickBooks Online there are batch actions on most places. The bank feed undo is the ability to remove a lot of transactions that have been added to your QuickBooks through the register if they've been posted or un- you want to unmatch them. You can batch undo them. You've, of course, got the batch reclassify transactions and batching transactions. And in QuickBooks Online Advanced, you've got the spreadsheet sync s- which is an add-on that's included with QuickBooks Online Advanced for Excel or Google Sheets we did do

Poll and Tool Limits

Dan DeLong

a workshop on school bookkeeping about making bulk edits with spreadsheet sync, so there's a link there for that because that took us about 45 minutes, and we're not gonna take that 45 minutes right now. So if you wanna check it out, go ahead. Second poll question: What tools do you use to make bulk changes inside of QuickBooks today? Is it the tools inside of QuickBooks, or maybe there's other tools that that you use. Karen, in, in your history of QuickBooks, do you is that-

Sharrin Fuller

I use the QuickBooks tool. It's always been... Honestly, it's been progressively better from when it first started. That's why that one time when I... Remember I messaged you. I'm like, "Where the hell is my toolbox?" I need to, I needed to make bulk edits and yeah. You can make 'em in so many places now. I haven't... Back in the day, I used to use Transaction Pro, which before it was called Transaction Pro Importer or Transaction Pro Deleter. They actually had two different websites. You remember back in 2000, like- Yeah 14. Anyhow, for desktop. And I used that until QuickBooks started adding it in. I make... I'm... I am in Books. I still stay in Books to keep on top of it, but I, yeah, I utilize it like crazy. I haven't seen a need, what I'm saying, is I haven't seen a need for a third party at, yet, yet.

Dan DeLong

Yet.

Sharrin Fuller

I'm sure I'll get I'm sure I'll get people pointing in on how I'm wrong. But I just haven't seen it, honestly. It's one of the things QuickBooks does right, and it should. It should. They should. This should be something that you should not need a third party for, in my opinion.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah.

Dan DeLong

So- It's just,

Sharrin Fuller

yeah, it's just- Good job being average with your product. Sorry. I'm just angry at, I'm so angry at them. I don't know why. They've done nothing to me except piss me off. They haven't personally... Actually, that's not true. They, their representatives have personally said things to/about me- so maybe I am justifiably bitter.

Dan DeLong

Old jaded.

Sharrin Fuller

Jaded, or I just- have no filter, but whatever.

Dan DeLong

Maybe

Sharrin Fuller

both. See, most everybody here, 76% are QuickBooks only. 26% are Right Tool, and then 16 are SaaS transaction. When some- when you guys, the six, the seven of you that said something else, can you drop in the chat what it is? I'd be curious to know. But go ahead. If it's Go ahead, Dan. I'll get- Zed

Dan DeLong

Access or something like that. But yeah, there's, Oh,

Sharrin Fuller

Keeper. Keeper does do it now.

Dan DeLong

That's true. That's true All right, so QuickBooks can only do so much, right? So each tool has its limits, right? So if you're not using QuickBooks Online Advanced, you don't get access to spreadsheet sync to, to do those things or the batch transactions or some of the other utilities or tools that, that might be in there, the workflow automations and those types of things. And, oftentimes those batch actions are limited to only certain functions. 'cause like you can go in on a, vendor screen and update You know, historical transactions and that's part of a batch batch action. But if you wanna... It's always seems to be the shallow end of the pool and it's like what about this?" And then, "Oh, we don't do that," right? Type of thing. And then there's the challenge of discovery, right? Like, where do you go to find these things? There's Each screen might have a different view or, look of that, right? Like when you're importing in Desktop, that's when it tells you, "Hey, you could go over to add, edit, remove or add, edit multiple list items in Desktop." So a lot of people didn't even realize that it's there, and they have to tell you "Hey, it's over here instead." batch transactions, you can't edit all types of transactions, and results vary on what you can actually edit, right? Even if it's on the invoices where it's something that you can. And then Advanced, the custom fields is a manual process, right? There's really cool things that you can do with those custom fields, but if you can't batch edit them that's a challenge, right? And that, became evident to me because I moved Helped, a company move from Desktop to Online, and they were using vendor type as a as a field, and that's not a field in QuickBooks Online. So we had to turn that into a custom field so that they could categorize their vendors by type. But they have 8,000 vendors, and to edit-

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah

Dan DeLong

Each particular there's 2,000

Third Party Utilities

Dan DeLong

active, I should say. So 2,000 vendors editing advan- the custom fields was a manual process without some kind of alternative to be able to do that. The, external utilities there are, plenty as people are, are- Oh, yeah are saying. We're gonna focus primarily on Saasant and Right Tool Tool Pro. I love that,

Sharrin Fuller

Saasant. Saasant. I don't know why, I just always loved the name. Probably 'cause my sassy Sharrin emoji that I have, but Saasant.

Dan DeLong

Yeah. Now there are others, right? You, mentioned them Transaction Pro or

Will Apps Become Obsolete

Dan DeLong

TPro or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Zed Access Automate Transaction- Ooh the Da- Data Transfer Utility.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. I have a, I wanna know, I wanna hear your opinion on this. So all these third-party integrations got created because Intuit didn't have it yet, Right. Uncat. Let's talk about Uncat. Love Brandon, his daughter's adorable. They bring the best stuff to all the conferences. But at what point does a product like Uncat no longer become relevant or something we need when QuickBooks... I still don't think QuickBooks does uncategorize well, like getting it to your clients at all. I would never use it. But our project management tools really do. Same with these type of things. Obviously Intuit has spent some time y- researching other products that are doing well, like Double. I think Double does something, then Intuit does it, right? And I was just talking to Ben about it. I'm like, "Ben, Intuit's copying you. Isn't that is, doesn't that give you some sort of like ego trip?" And he goes, "No. I, yeah, it's great to see a big old product steal all our ideas and get paid for it." I'm like, "Okay, makes sense." But I'd still be like, "Ha th- so at what point do you think we start, like these third-party integrations start becoming irrelevant?

Dan DeLong

It's it's part of... I- it's an interesting phenomenon, right? Is that and, truth be told the first time I heard of Keeper at Scaling New Heights, I went to talk to them. And the individual telling me what they do, I was like isn't that already in QBOA right now?" You know- Yeah That was the, impression that I left with. I'm like, well-

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah

Dan DeLong

but to- Yeah A power user of Keeper or Double you will definitely say it does a lot more than what those things do. And and I think that's where- Intuit or QuickBooks And they're

Sharrin Fuller

not wrong

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

I totally think they do. Uncat was the best at uncategorized. And then Double started adding it in. Client Hub has it. Financial Sense has it. And so it really makes me think. I'm like I, f- I don't, I know I want to see Brandon succeed, and I know there'll always be a small amount for him, but it's like I really would've wished somebody would've brought, bought his product. And I don't mean to call him out directly, I just... He's just such a good guy, and I, always think about that. But I see things like Tool, which apparently will always be there

Staying Relevant Fast

Sharrin Fuller

because QuickBooks they're doing it better. Plus I have to show love for Hector even though he pissed me off on his LinkedIn post the other day. But anyhow he just really supported them, and I was like, "Yeah, never mind." But yeah, it just makes me think about whenever I go to the conference, I'm like, "You'll be obsolete. You'll be obsolete. You'll be obsolete. You'll..." And then they never show up again, and you're like, "Yeah, 'cause-" I guess- You know, if you see a need, fill a need

Dan DeLong

In the... In the grand scheme of things, it's where do do they continue to expand their offering, right? Uncategorized or Uncat, right? That was the need that they filled, and they ended up building a whole branding thing around it, right? So eventually when it gets to the point of where QuickBooks does catch up or other third parties do it better than those things, that could very

Right Tool vs Intuit

Dan DeLong

well be a challenge for, them to continue to remain relevant, right? Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah

Dan DeLong

But that doesn't mean that they're not, right?

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah

Dan DeLong

speaking of Right Tool, right? It- there's constantly things for to improve on. And, Yeah And, as to Hector's benefit he uses it enough and he can see those limitations. Yeah. And he has said, "This is an app or, an extension that shouldn't exist."

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But the, I guess the, good thing is, for something like Right Tool, they can move much faster because they- Yeah don't have to go through 17 departments and approval and boards. They're just like, "This is an issue. Everybody's telling us this issue. Let's code it in." like, it's that simple, and it'll be ready in a week. Yeah. So they can move faster, but I still think that Intuit, honestly, most of them probably just have people that sit in their product, and they're like, "We need to add this, we need to add this, we need to add this."

Saasant Migration Power

Sharrin Fuller

and they don't want to put them out of business. They actually like them because they're probably saving them a shit ton of money on R&D.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

A double subscription and a Right Tool subscription, and they're like, "That's my... Our R&D is $17 a month."

Dan DeLong

Exactly. So let's talk a little bit about Saasant. They have just like QuickBooks, they have a desktop product, and they have an online product. And there is a hybrid product called the Migration Level, but it's still on the the desktop side. One of the things that I use it myself mostly for for conversions or migrations. There is a migration option between desktop to desktop, right? So when you have these large companies that have a lot of data in them maybe there's some damage in the file and it can't be fixed taking a subset of data and moving it into another QuickBooks desktop file, is a really cool option. Or if they tend... One of the challenges of QuickBooks desktop is multiple people could be in different company files. And maybe one user did all this data entry in the wrong company file, and they want to be able to consolidate or merge them, right? This is, the tool or u- utility that, that allows you to do that relatively streamlined, right? One of the things I really appreciate about it is that during the Migration Wizard, it will say, "Hey, this preference is turned on in the source file, and it's not on... And here's what it is in, the target. Maybe you might want to change that." Or there's a little checkbox to actually interrupt the migration if there's an error, right? Because you may have a, A contingent transaction, right? If you, if an invoice doesn't come over, then of course the payment that paid that invoice won't come over, and the deposit made off of that payment won't come over. So you want to make sure that the prerequisite transactions make the journey, and having it pause the migration rather than just skipping over it and then you have to deal with the outcome or the consequences is part of a challenge. There's other tools and utilities in there. There's a PDF to Excel utility where you can extract bank statements and those types of things built into the tool. You can, What was the other thing? There, there are some automation options. So if you just plug in a a file, you can automatically map it. You just plug it in, and it

Saasant Online Credits

Dan DeLong

makes those changes for you. It is an annual subscription but it's about three hundred dollars for the top tier, right? So it's there's no limit on the, number of transactions that you, do with with Saasant for Desktop. With Saasant for Online, just like QuickBooks Online, it has a company aspect to it a company connection a-a-aspect. And then within that company aspect, you have different tiers of things that you can do. There are multiple tiers or multiple company options, a multiple bulk bulk option where you can purchase a connection to three or ten and then you can swap things out, right? So if you're doing a project for a particular client you can add them to your multiple company billing. And then when you're done with that, you can kick them out and then add another company to it. And those they work on credits, though on the, QuickBooks Online side of things. Each particular import, export, or deletion is a credit, and it's based off a line item, right? So if you have one invoice with fifteen line items, that's fifteen credits. But on a multiple billing, they pool them for you, right? So if you have a company that doesn't necessarily need five thousand credits they can be- Yeah Essentially utilized for a bigger project that you might have. Just keep in mind when you're swapping connections out, like if you have a three, three company and you're swapping things in or out, there

Right Tool Pro Features

Dan DeLong

may be a billing cycle that needs to occur. So it's not like you can just keep swapping them out each day, right? Keep that in mind. But there's links in there to, check them out. And then Tool Pro is I think fast becoming an accountant's

Sharrin Fuller

favorite friend. Yeah, I hear about it everywhere. They say if you have QuickBooks, you need Right Tool. Yeah. You have to have it.

Dan DeLong

Now there's tons of batch features. I, I took a screenshot of the settings when you're in Tool Pro which is the paid version. There is a Right Tool free where you can just do... You get a free option, but it doesn't have any of these batches batch functionality. But you can see all the options that you can switch on or off. This was very useful. I'm trying to think of a better way to say for that the use case that I was just talking about where they were- using the right, the vendor type field in desktop, and then turned it into a custom field, right? Because you can update custom fields on transactions vendors, customers. There's a lot of other pretty neat things there, like changing the case, right? If you have your all-caps customer

Sharrin Fuller

You can say-

Dan DeLong

Oh

Sharrin Fuller

my God. They... It really does that? Oh.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

Those customers- Oh, yeah are always in their 70s. Why? Like, why are you yelling at me, Claude?

Pricing and Promo Deal

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. Wait, Cla- Clive?

Dan DeLong

You can change the case of your customers. You can swap out the display names, right? So if if they're names versus customer companies you can, use the, Right Tool Pro to, do that. Cost of the Right Tool Pro is $75 monthly for the first user, and then 25- Oh, that's

Sharrin Fuller

good

Dan DeLong

for each additional user. And there's no... Be- because the way that Tool Pro works is it's a browser extension, right? Yeah it sits over top of the browser. There's not a per company cost to, to Right Tool Pro. And Hector has been so nice and gracious to give us a QB Power

Mineral and July Cohort

Dan DeLong

Hour promo. So for the first year, you get $15 off that first user. So it ends up being $60 a month. Basically you can add a second user almost for 10 bucks, right? You can learn about that there. Whoops

Sharrin Fuller

So- I should show you what just hit my inbox right now. Oh, what's that? Intuit QuickBooks and Mineral. If you have QuickBooks Workforce Premium, you already have Mineral. The... Tomorrow we're doing a live Mineral walkthrough. There you guys go. There you go. Tomorrow they're doing a live walkthrough, whoever the hell this is. Oh, Mineral, trustmineral.com.

Dan DeLong

So we are doing at School of Bookkeeping, we are doing a deeper dive cohort at School of Bookkeeping in mid-July. So after Scaling New Heights settles, but before Intuit Connect we will be doing four live sessions. We will dive into the desktop options the, QuickBooks Online options, and then talk a- talk about Saasant desktop and online, and then do some workshopping with with Right Tool Pro. It's $279 for the cohort. They are reco- going to be recorded, so if you can't attend those live sessions, you can always watch them later. And there are discounts available if use our referral link for any of these external tools. So you can check that out.

Custom Fields Workarounds

Sharrin Fuller

Questions you said- And you can also get... Privacy, you mean you can get the trial during that month too, so they could sign up for your thing, try it out while they're doing all that stuff, and then decide which one they want to keep and use, right? Exactly. That's what I would do. Yeah, and so-

Dan DeLong

That's

Sharrin Fuller

how I would do it

Dan DeLong

there, there never seems to be... And I think that's part of the challenge with all of this is that there's not like a silver bullet because custom fields are solely not... They're not, a great option for the Saasant, right? Biggest issue with, with these external tools with you're u- if you're using custom fields or definable custom fields, especially in QuickBooks Online Advanced, and let's not get too Into the weeds with the tags issue. But when tags turned into a custom field, Yeah a definable drop-down, as its solution, and now that's stuck in all of, all the versions of, QuickBooks Online these third-party applications really can't integrate with that, right? It was always one of the limitations of the API for for pl- things like Saasant or Transaction Pro, is that they couldn't directly integrate with the custom fields, right? So that's where Tool Pro and Saasant could be used in conjunction with each other, right? So there's things that- Yeah Saasant can do that Tool can't do, and vice versa, right? So if you did need to update your custom fields, Tool Pro would be a great utilization for that. And a- as it sits right now, it's really the only option. And then to your point, Sharrin when the API gets on board- with all of these third parties and they figure out the way to integrate with with those custom fields, that will limit the value or lower the value- Yeah of Right Tool Pro, right? So- I don't know.

Sharrin Fuller

I still think Tool will be, always be a few steps ahead of Intuit. I think that's the point. And I also want to point out- Yeah to everybody that you are watching in real time my, the virus my husband shared with me develop. At first I got on this call, Dan "Dan, I'm not feeling too well." Now I'm like So you guys have all watched me progressively get sicker- Fierce. in the last 45 minutes, just so you know.

Dan DeLong

We'll do a time lapse. In real time. We'll do a time lapse of, Yeah of

Sharrin Fuller

how- Of me holding my paper towel to my nose 'cause I can't get up to blow it yet. Ugh

Dan DeLong

Go

Sharrin Fuller

ahead. Yeah I, just always think that Tool's gonna be ahead. They have to. Yeah. That's their whole business model.

Dan DeLong

Yeah and I think, and that's a great point for any technology a company, right? Yeah. Th- in order to remain and have that value, they are gonna have- Yeah to continue to, evolve and continue to add features and functionality, right? Resting on your laurels is- Yeah Is, just going to allow you to be- to get overtaken, right? And, you're gonna be lapped if you're not continually improving. 'Cause QuickBooks will continue to go at its own pace and and these functions and features we're, all just sitting here waiting for some of this to happen, right? And if you, and if you-

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah

Dan DeLong

wait for it to happen, you will con- just continue to wait, and be, get to do whatever it is that you're allowed to do when it actually gets- You know, a- as a f- as a function inside of QuickBooks. So that's where these tools fill the gap, right?

Old School Cleanup Stories

Dan DeLong

And that could be a right tool thing, could be- I

Sharrin Fuller

wish this was around back in the day when I was heavily doing bookkeeping. I would've loved this. Some of us had to do it the old school way.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

Right click, delete. Right click, delete.

Dan DeLong

Yeah. Ugh. I had I, I had a situation where somehow duplicate sales tax items got into QuickBooks Desktop. W- they were using some kind of integrated application that just- kept creating duplicate sales tax items. Probably it was in the thousands, right? It was all ZZZZZ sales tax. Or something like that. And in that particular case it was something that was manual. There was no- Yeah there was no utility that I could use to do that because there were transactions associated with those duplicates. So it wasn't something you

Sharrin Fuller

could delete. Tryin' to undo it, yeah. It's crazy. It's, it is- Yeah it is nuts to me. Transaction Pro Deleter, which I know that's not what it is anymore, but that's where I... Where really what I use is when something imported, you're like, "Son of a..." But even then, you'd have to, you didn't get to identify, like you can now. You guys have it so easy now. All of you younger people, if you weren't doing this 15 years ago, you don't know what it's like 15-plus years ago. If you start throwing out- I'm

Dan DeLong

dying

Sharrin Fuller

over

Dan DeLong

here a M- in my day,

Sharrin Fuller

I used to- Back in my day. I've been doing this for, what, 20 years? Over 20 years now. 22. We

Dan DeLong

had to use keyboard shortcuts- So and we

Sharrin Fuller

loved it. Dude, I had Quicken on a Macintosh, like one of those big gray things with the bottom. I'm not even joking. It was, like, all green. The screen was the green cursor.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

Wow. And as

Dan DeLong

Murph was saying- By the s- yes, that's what Mer- That's- that was M- what Merge was for, and that's what we had to do, is we had to- Yes manually merge 9,000 sales tax items

Sharrin Fuller

each one. I was gonna say, Murph used a whole abacus and a chisel in a

Dan DeLong

cave. But I just paid my son 100 bucks or whatever. "Hey, would you like to just rote click ar- around in QuickBooks and merge?" Because there was no tool that allowed you to merge transact or merge list items because that it needed that prompt of, "Hey, this item's already in use. Would you like to merge them?" And then you, it would... You'd have to actually say yes to that in QuickBooks and, there's no tool that, that actually does that for you. So those were part of the challenges that you have with these third parties. There might be a message or a prompt that can't be done. So I think as we get into operational AI where you see the mouse moving around or you're able to program those types of things that's gonna be something that will eliminate a lot of inefficiencies when it comes to how fast can you actually click and type inside of- Yeah inside of QuickBooks. Did we miss any any comments, concerns,

ROI and Next Episode

Dan DeLong

questions?

Sharrin Fuller

No I hit, all them up. It was quiet today, which is crazy. Even Murph was not as not as nuts as he normally is, so anyhow. But no, I think we got them all. This is... Honestly, I do think I don't know how anyone could be in QuickBooks without something like that, unless you're really not... It really depends. If you're just doing minor stuff, but if you're doing cleanup at all, I feel like you have to have right tools. It's like an investment. You figure if you charge 150 bucks an hour, if it saves you an hour, then you've made your ROI, 'cause it's only 75 bucks a month, right? So you only have to save 30 minutes a month to break even, when you're gonna save way more than that,

Dan DeLong

exactly.

Sharrin Fuller

Anyhow. So

Dan DeLong

the next time on the QB Power Hour we'll be having Fishbowl on to talk about their catch of the day. So we threw a, pun in there of fish and catch. So we'll be joined by Kendrick, who is their chief evangelist, and walking through some of the some of the options that are available inside

Poll and Efficiency Banter

Dan DeLong

of Fishbowl. You can check that out on our website and register for that. And

Sharrin Fuller

bring your Fishbowl pins.

Dan DeLong

Your fidget spinner swipe.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh my God. Love it. Yes. Love it.

Dan DeLong

All right. Let's roll the last- I'm ready poll question for this

Sharrin Fuller

session. I feel like I don't care about this question because- honestly if you answer no, I don't care. Dan cares. Sure. If you answer no, I'm like no." we- No, you know how many people are gonna say no we can't lean them all. Now everybody's gonna, everybody's gonna say no. Nah. I would, to spite me. You know we can see who you are, right? Oh, seven of you are jerks. Dan, it's not you, it's me. They your information's very useful. I'm the one that they're like- "Why is she here? What happened to Matt? Bring Matt back."

Dan DeLong

We'll, find out when you actually start,

Sharrin Fuller

There you go. Carol wants to know what the bulk changes cohort is That was the one you just did, right? Yeah. Carol, the slides are in there, and then-

Dan DeLong

Yeah

Sharrin Fuller

Dan, you want to send those over to her?

Dan DeLong

Yeah. This cohort is-

Sharrin Fuller

Also answer yes, right? If you answer yes, Dan will reach out to you.

Dan DeLong

Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So this is the deep dive cohort that we're doing at School of Bookkeeping where we're gonna have four sessions in July, where we talk about these things a little... In a more intimate setting, right? So we'll deeper dive into what the things that you can do in Desktop, the things that you can do in QuickBooks Online and then what options that you have with SaaSSant on Desktop and and/or Online, and Tool Pro. So you can check that out there. And like I said, there are discounts available if you activate some of these things, if you don't have them already

Sharrin Fuller

Love it.

Dan DeLong

All right.

Sharrin Fuller

He- Dan, I need to hop over in your thing and see what else you teach, because I have so many people that are just starting businesses in my community, and they're like, "How do you do this?" I'm like, "I don't teach you that, but Dan does." You're welcome. I teach you how to run the business and how to be efficient and how to only work three days a week. I don't teach you how to do actual work. Other people can do that. And

Dan DeLong

yes, and then I'll get you down to one day a week. Oh, yeah. It's all those, QuickBooks efficiencies that we'll be

Sharrin Fuller

figuring out. There you go. That's pretty at my last firm I only worked five hours a weekend, there you go. I guess it can be, done if you have the right efficiency set up. That's my new hashtag.

Intuit Layoffs Talk

Sharrin Fuller

I'm the hashtag efficiency expert. Wah-wah. There you go. All right, show us your next slide.

Dan DeLong

Oh, that's it.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, that was it? That is it. The next steps?

Dan DeLong

Yes.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, my goodness. We ended on time?

Dan DeLong

This is the, this

Sharrin Fuller

is a

Dan DeLong

first.

Sharrin Fuller

I wanna... We have five minutes left just to just, can we go back to talking crap about Intuit- Yeah, wanna talk about Intuit? and then we lay everybody

Dan DeLong

off? So what are your

Sharrin Fuller

thoughts? So- Oh, my God. I was just, honestly, I laughed, because when you do this everyone said they, they learned via an email and a calendar invite. I understand it's thousands upon thousands of people, but what's the right way to fire that many people without notice? Like, how, there, I guess there's no right, you can't physically bring that many people in, so I guess there's no right way, right?

Dan DeLong

Yeah. Yeah,

Sharrin Fuller

I was- Would you prefer to be fired from a company that you've been with for 40 freaking years or whatever? I'd be pissed. Yeah. There's just no right way.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, there's never a great way to do it. The the solace is that Intuit has done this a lot, and it's kind of-

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, I

Dan DeLong

know. I just know it's

Sharrin Fuller

great

Dan DeLong

They have really great practice at it, right?

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah.

Dan DeLong

In in my, tenure there-

Sharrin Fuller

That's what they sell. We fire your, employees for you. We are good at it.

Dan DeLong

In the last few years that I was there, you know- Yeah if they would've asked for volunteers, I would've raised my hand.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah,

Dan DeLong

but I was and, they do these things in all sorts of different ways, right? It's, they- Put people into a meeting, a virtual meeting, or, "Hey, log into this"- Yeah and then they give the announcement. There were stories of a, There was one time, there was one time they took, they, exited people out of the building, took them to a spring training game, because in Tucson they do spring training, and at that point anybody who did not go to that event was informed. Which- Which was interesting.

Sharrin Fuller

So if you couldn't make it, so my dad or my dad's on his deathbed, they're like, "Yeah, sucks to be you. We all die. You should've came to this event"?

Dan DeLong

No, not that. They, I mean- Oh they invited ev- If you didn't get the invite, then that's that's-

Sharrin Fuller

Oh That- Only the people invited were So they brought all the people. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Did, it, do you remember my book, the story about how they fired the one girl that worked with us? They took us all to l- breakfast. We're like, "Where's Christina?" And they're like-

Firing People Reality

Sharrin Fuller

"Oh, so she's actually being fired right now. We didn't want you guys in there when we did it." Yeah. We're like, I'm like, I was so pissed 'cause she was my- my assistant. I'm like, "Excuse me? You took us to breakfast and you plied me with mimosas while you fired my assistant that we..." 'Cause we were a small group- Yeah very close. And I'm like, "This was shitty." But then I, now that I own a business, I think there's no right way to... Honestly, when I let somebody go, I have to be cold and be like, "Didn't work out. Sorry. You wanna talk about it more? Sign your severance agreement, the separation agreement. I'll pay you, and then we can have a chat about it." But you gotta protect your assets and the rest of your company, and it sucks. It's just the hardest part of owning a business is people.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

I mean-

Dan DeLong

Yeah that's-

Sharrin Fuller

Anyhow

Dan DeLong

I, made a conscious effort or, a thought in my mind that I was not going to have employees because I did not want to have that conversation.

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah. It's hard, especially when you hire family and friends. So if you want- if you hire family and friends, you better be prepared to fire family and friends, and that never goes the way you think it will. I've lost so many friends that I've, was helping them out by giving them a job and then they turned out to be crap employees. Maybe some my fault, but no, not, some of them were not. And then I never talked to them. They got pissed when I fired them. I'm like what do you want me to do? You were stealing time." what do you want me to... What do I do here? I'm saying we're still gonna go get beers. I should be like, "F you stole from me." But anyhow, it's just crazy, so anyhow. That's a whole topic. Yeah.

Dan DeLong

Never a never a great conversation to have or to- No Even consider

Sharrin Fuller

having. You wanna know the best part is when you're doing so well in business you hire somebody that does it for you. I had a director of operations- my four-foot, four-foot nothing. She's like 4'8", 97 pound Cuban Monica- and I would send her because any time I'd have to fire somebody I would be violent. I'd be sick for like days and knowing that I was gonna have to let somebody go, 'cause just the anxiety of knowing that how they're gonna feel. They're not gonna be able to pay their rent, and I lost my job, and how do I tell my spouse? So I would make her do it. I don't care.

Dan DeLong

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

I paid her. Yeah,

Dan DeLong

she would-

Sharrin Fuller

You're the fire-

Closing Goodbye

Sharrin Fuller

Do- You're the, chopping block.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, sh- she would just go in and say- I have no shame

Sharrin Fuller

in that

Dan DeLong

Hey, what was your favorite subject in high school? Mine was history, and so are you."

Sharrin Fuller

He's... She was even colder about it than I am. Oh, wow. Oh my God, exit interview. There was no exit interview. Exit interview was, "Why did you suck? Oh, you didn't know you sucked. Now you do, but just kidding." All right, Dan, this was a great way to end this very informative webinar.

Dan DeLong

All right. We will see you next time on the QB Power Hour when we talk with Fishbowl, and we hope you all have a great day.