Introduction
QuickBooks is such a rich software that it contains several features that are rarely or never used, simply because the small business owner doesn't take the time to explore all of these valuable features. In this article we are going to examine several of these features that if used, would be of a great benefit to the small business owners. Most of these features are free, some of them require a nominal fee to purchase add-ons, but each one is far cheaper than the industry specialized software packages and best of all, each integrates seamlessly into your QuickBooks data.
1. The Shipping Manager
If your company does a lot of shipping with either Fed Ex or UPS, the shipping manager can integrate your costs and flow all information into your QuickBooks files. Click on the create invoices key and look for the word, "Ship" on the top menu bar of the invoice itself. You can enter your FedEx or UPS account number and shipping information once, and use this feature to schedule a pickup, track packages, and even to print the end of day reports. It allows you to skip the step of connecting to the Fed Ex or UPS site and will ease some of the time restrictions that this step places on your business.
2. The Feedback Button
The feedback button is located on the main menu icon bar right after 'search'. The changes that are made every year to improve QuickBooks software are ideas that have come from actual users of QuickBooks like yourself. It is an Intuit rule that the Feedback sent must be read, so whatever the idea is, SEND IT! They get everything from 'can I get a different color screen' to 'does my chart of accounts really NEED numbers?'
3. Intuit Marketing Tools
Google has teamed up with QuickBooks to allow users to market their business on Google through the QuickBooks software. Typically, the offer is $50 of free pay per click advertising for you business. Google will also allow you to market your products or services online by adding your business to Google Maps. Clicking on the Google icon will take you to a page where it will direct you to Marketing tips, ideas and more! Paying for the per click advertising has become a little overdone online, so as soon as you have reached your $50, I would recommend ceasing this promotion. There are ways to promote your business using search engine sites without paying for it but that is information for another article.
4. The Loan Manager
To find the loan manager, you must click on the help key and enter 'loan manager' to begin using it. This application allows you to enter in all your debt, short and long term, with the interest rates and payoff amounts. Then, you can experiment with different monthly payments to see how fast you can pay off the debt your company owes. Your debt can be significantly reduced by simply paying every other week instead of once a month. This feature will allow you to strategize the best possible scenario for you to get out of debt quickly.
5. Third Party Solutions
QuickBooks works with many different types of software packages. The place to find it is at the Marketplace site on Intuit's main website. The third party solutions page contains Industries that have unique needs. Construction companies for example, sometimes use separate software for estimating costs, and will have completely different software needs than the Retail or Professional industries.
6. Electronic Payments Sent Through QuickBooks
In general I discourage people in my training classes from downloading information into QuickBooks; this can lead to some difficulties if the information is not formatted according to QuickBooks needs. However, for those entities that can accept electronic payments, the small business owner can create the parameters to electronically pay these payments, all information flows into the program and there are fewer transcriptional errors made.
7. Customer Manager
Many business owners with more than 100 customers have purchased a program called ACT which retails at about $300. The Customer Manager is $70 off of an affiliate website and will do what ACT will do. It keeps track of each communication (email, letter, or phone calls), each document (invoices, sales receipts, etc) and each job or project associated with that customer. It also keeps track of your referrals, scans, pictures and customer history.
8. QuickBooks Merchant Service and Online Web store
If you have a web store for your business that wasn't set up through QuickBooks, chances are you paid too much for the setup and maintenance. QuickBooks has arrangements with the top online store generators which will allow you to be open 24/7 on the web and have all the information flow into QuickBooks while you are away. The companies that QuickBooks uses are: Go Daddy, Homestead, Network Solutions, Prostores (EBAY), and Website Pros. With the seamless integration of your merchant services account and the online web store, you can rest assured that your business continues operating, and customers can keep paying you, even while you are closed, or on vacation.
9. Gift Cards
For those Point of Sale users, they may not be aware that they can create Gift Cards that are unique to their business. Statistics show that upwards of 60% of all gifts during Christmas are Gift Cards to various stores. That's money in the pocket of the small business owner that cannot be used in any other store! A gift card represents money exclusively to your business so that you can now be on a level playing field with the larger retailers who can offer gift cards of any denomination to all their customers.
10. Document Manager
The Document Manager is part of the customer manager program which is available separately. This feature allows you to scan and keep all copies of invoices sent to you and filed under the individual customers or vendors. All of these scans are available to you with the touch of a button or click of a mouse so that all those filing cabinets become obsolete.
11. Extra tip
With all of these scans, files and more kept on your hard drive it is more important than ever to have a back up of your information that is readily accessible to you. Intuit offers an online backup service for your hard drive for $149.95 a year. It is thorough and will do what you need to have done. However, as complete and convenient as that is, there is a better choice out there which for $50.00 a year will back up everything on your hard drive from QuickBooks files and music, to documents, pictures and everything else. This service is called Carbonite and is located on that companies' website. I've had too many clients lose valuable data to viruses, Trojan horses, and worms to sit back and allow them to not back up their data.
David Roberts, CFE, CQBPA, MBA, lives in Kissimmee, Florida with four girls, three dogs, two snakes and one wife. He has been a member of the ACFE for 5 years and has been studying fraud for longer than that. He is the owner of Homesoon Accounting Services which specializes in Quickbooks Consultations and Fraud Prevention and Detection.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_S_Roberts
Thursday 26 February 2009
Sunday 15 February 2009
Using Construction Estimating Programs and Your Business
When you are supervising a construction-contracting firm, it takes a lot of manoeuvring such as managing the projects and labor relations as well as scouting around for new work prospects and keeping a running tally of the expenses. There are times when contractors get so caught up in the daily challenge of their business dealings that they find no time for constructive planning of their business. You know the scenario, so busy you haven't the energy to try to think long-term business plans. Now imagine having the assistance of a Construction Estimating Program, the programs design is to give you the best support while you build a profitable business. Construction Estimating Programs take care of to help you plan long term, allowing you to breathe easy and enjoy life.
Good construction estimating programs are designed to create to use the job specifications and a retrospective run to help you develop project schedule that is easier to stick to for a smoother running construction business. Construction estimating programs will aid you in producing a used materials list, scheduling when supplies need to arrive on site and a time and work schedule for your subcontracting teams.
Construction estimating programs give you more significant and down-to-earth guidelines to determine the actual expenses of a job, and you are better able to build a profit margin. This eliminates the atmosphere that many medium and small construction-contracting companies have of living from one week to the next. Construction estimating programs allow you a concrete overview of long-term accomplishments, and helps prevent the costly mistakes, which affects your profit margins. Identifying those costly mistakes will give you a heads up and give you the room to work your budget to include some of those costly mistakes that are normal in everyday business. Take for instance, that you are working multiple job sites, construction-estimating programs can drastically advance your margins, by allowing you to identify what materials can be purchased for both assignments, thereby saving you on the expense of buying materials in bulk. A construction estimating program allows you to determine which word crews are indeed doing their jobs, by meeting their responsibility requirements as well as their time schedule, which is vital in acquiring the best work crew for the job.
Of course, good construction estimating programs will require compatibility of your business accounting program, which the majority will run compatible with the industry standard QuickBooks and some are compatible with Mind Your Own Business. The generation of reports should be easily customized and fast, since by the end of a work day, the least you have energy for is sitting in front of a monitor for hours trying to tally up the invoices and retrieving the correct report.
At the end of the day, you are able to easily keep your business in control. Using construction estimating programs, by following the organization of your work activities, and the exercise of using such software so when you clock out; your on your way home, to your life, rather than continual worry for being organized and what your profit margins tally up to.
Nick Hurd is the developer of LiteningFast Estimating. LiteningFast is an estimating program that helps you estimate faster, easier and more accurately. It's integrated with QuickBooks to provide job cost.
It was introduced to be market in 1994 and currently has over 3,500 users in the US, Canada, and around the world.
You can find more information at Using construction estimating programs in your business. You'll be glad you did.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nicholas_Hurd
Good construction estimating programs are designed to create to use the job specifications and a retrospective run to help you develop project schedule that is easier to stick to for a smoother running construction business. Construction estimating programs will aid you in producing a used materials list, scheduling when supplies need to arrive on site and a time and work schedule for your subcontracting teams.
Construction estimating programs give you more significant and down-to-earth guidelines to determine the actual expenses of a job, and you are better able to build a profit margin. This eliminates the atmosphere that many medium and small construction-contracting companies have of living from one week to the next. Construction estimating programs allow you a concrete overview of long-term accomplishments, and helps prevent the costly mistakes, which affects your profit margins. Identifying those costly mistakes will give you a heads up and give you the room to work your budget to include some of those costly mistakes that are normal in everyday business. Take for instance, that you are working multiple job sites, construction-estimating programs can drastically advance your margins, by allowing you to identify what materials can be purchased for both assignments, thereby saving you on the expense of buying materials in bulk. A construction estimating program allows you to determine which word crews are indeed doing their jobs, by meeting their responsibility requirements as well as their time schedule, which is vital in acquiring the best work crew for the job.
Of course, good construction estimating programs will require compatibility of your business accounting program, which the majority will run compatible with the industry standard QuickBooks and some are compatible with Mind Your Own Business. The generation of reports should be easily customized and fast, since by the end of a work day, the least you have energy for is sitting in front of a monitor for hours trying to tally up the invoices and retrieving the correct report.
At the end of the day, you are able to easily keep your business in control. Using construction estimating programs, by following the organization of your work activities, and the exercise of using such software so when you clock out; your on your way home, to your life, rather than continual worry for being organized and what your profit margins tally up to.
Nick Hurd is the developer of LiteningFast Estimating. LiteningFast is an estimating program that helps you estimate faster, easier and more accurately. It's integrated with QuickBooks to provide job cost.
It was introduced to be market in 1994 and currently has over 3,500 users in the US, Canada, and around the world.
You can find more information at Using construction estimating programs in your business. You'll be glad you did.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nicholas_Hurd
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