Service Descriptions
Our Controller services manage the flow and regulation of money in and out of the business related to sales, purchase & payroll transactions and ensure the complete and accurate recording of financial activity to the general ledger. This role encompasses the design, configuration, and maintenance of the accounting ecosystem using innovative and secure technology and is aimed at delivering clear and consistent reporting on the company’s historical performance. Click for details…
Sales |
Purchases |
Payroll |
Ledger |
Our CFO services turn numbers into meaning that drive action. We analyze performance to offer insight into results in light of trends and benchmarks and to provide strategic advice to assist company leadership with planning to strengthen revenue growth. This forward-looking advisory role encompasses analytics, strategy and process management and automation. Click for details…
Insight |
Strategy |
Automation |
Our Support services encompass the systems and the communication involved in all of the services we provide to our clients. This also includes access to our team for special projects and consulting services, not otherwise available to the public.
Infrastructure |
Sales
Revenue
Bringing money into the business fuels the entire accounting cycle. This process varies greatly from company to company. For businesses that do not need to track sales details such as customer, type of product or service, inventory, quantity, sales rep, class or location, we record deposits made by the business as lump-sums to a single revenue account.
Sales Receipts
For restaurants, retail and e-commerce businesses, we record summary of sales based on information from a POS or e-commerce system. This tracks the total sales for each different type of product, taxable and non-taxable, and records the various methods of payment received including cash, credit card, gift card and on account. Individual sales details related to the customer’s particular purchase can be obtained by the POS or web store reporting center.
Invoicing
A common issue reported by small business owners is that they lose track of whether a customer has actually paid them. Our accounts receivable workflow tracks the status of every invoice for every customer – from the time it is created, sent, received and paid.
We set up an efficient process with you to prepare your customer invoices for time, materials, reimbursables, delivery or fixed fees. Invoices are processed and assigned to you for authorization. You review invoices and approve, deny or skip each. We email approved-only invoices to your customers.
Customers can click to view, save or print the invoice. This activity is tracked and a message portal is available for customer inquiries. Attachments can be sent with invoices, as needed. QuickBooks’ merchant service allows customers to click the invoice to pay it via ACH or credit card.
Payments
Payments received on invoices outside of QB’s integrated merchant service system associated with the Online Invoice are recorded manually as payments against referenced invoices. You will submit complete information and images for these payments (check and remittance advice) and itemized deposit slips. We record the activity and reduce the balance due from the customer.
Statements
We create statements of account to your customers to show them the balance due on unpaid invoices. We send you draft statements for your review and approval. Approved statements are sent via email.
Purchases
Vendor Bill Pay
This service transforms your business by digitizing the accounts payable process. You or your vendors email bills to your unique, custom email address. Bills are processed and assigned to you for payment authorization. You review bills and approve, deny or skip each. We pay approved-only bills.
Our bill pay service is built upon world-class fraud prevention controls, including separation of duties and permissions, automatic positive pay security to verify that checks are paid to the payee for the proper amount, protection from common bank fraud schemes such as check washing and an audit trail with time & date stamped approvals and modifications.
We manage the integration of data to the general ledger, ensuring that vendors, bills and bill payments are recorded. We send “Welcome Vendor” emails to new vendors describing your bill pay process and requesting a W-9 form. We process and archive W-9 forms received from vendors. If your Bill Pay service is active, we prepare and submit annual 1099-Misc forms to vendors who submitted W-9’s for payments made during the time period that we provided Bill Pay service for your business.
Expense Reports
Employees and contractors submit expense reports using a web and mobile app for both reimbursement of business purchases paid via personal funds and to record details of purchases paid via company credit card.
Superior smart scan technology reads receipts to capture the merchant name, date and amount of purchase. There are many ways to submit receipts for smart scanning. The mobile app captures receipts on the go (such as meals and in-store purchases). Receipts received via email (such as hotel reservations, flight bookings and car rental receipts) can be auto-forwarded. Scanned receipts are easily uploaded.
We link to your financial institution to retrieve purchases made using a company credit card. That data is matched to receipts submitted. Credit card feed expenses are marked as non-reimbursable. Cash expenses are marked as reimbursable.
Staff select a category from a dropdown field for each purchase, such as Meals Expense, Travel Expense, etc. They can also add descriptive memos to each purchase. Violations are highlighted to draw attention to large amounts and overdue dates. Expenses are grouped into a report and submitted for approval. Approver(s) review expense reports and approve for processing. We reimburse approved-only and reimbursable-only expenses.
All approved expenses are recorded in the QuickBooks Online (QBO) general ledger. We manage this integration of data to QBO. We invite new staff to your company policy to submit expense reports for reimbursement, as needed.
This process does not include bill payments made to the financial institution to pay down the balance due. Those payments can be set up for automatic payment with your financial institution or scheduled via a vendor bill pay process.
Payroll
Employee Paychecks
Your employees will enjoy easy online onboarding, direct deposit and paystub notification for paychecks. Lifetime online access to your branded company payroll account allows them to access their pay history, W-2s, and to update their own information, including contact, bank account, and W-4s.
Your employees will use our online and mobile solutions for time tracking and PTO request and approval. You will provide changes to pay, new hire or terminations. We process paychecks for hourly, salary and commission earnings including payroll tax withholdings and employee deductions such as retirement, health, and garnishments.
Employer Compliance
Federal, state and local payroll taxes are calculated and paid each pay period and remitted at the frequency scheduled by each agency. Federal and state payroll forms are filed at their quarterly and annual due date, including annual W2 forms. Employee wages and employer taxes are recorded on the books as expenses and employee deductions such as retirement, health, and garnishments are accrued as current liabilities.
General ledger
Bank Feed
The bank feed is an important component of the cloud-accounting workflow. We link your bank to QuickBooks to accurately add new transactions to the general ledger or match to existing transactions. This also marks transactions as cleared which acts as a verification tool in the reconciliation process.
We record unmatched withdrawals directly to expense accounts using the Expense transaction. Additional categorization beyond the Chart of Accounts for class, location and/or job costing will be recorded if clearly designated on the supporting documentation received immediately at the time of sale or purchase. This service does not include the use of product/service items or sales forms.
Reconcile & Review
We reconcile bank and credit card accounts to statements from financial institutions. We reconcile asset & liability accounts and produce supporting detail of account balances. We review the period’s activity, including General Ledger classifications, uncategorized transactions, audit log, and prior period exceptions.
We also watch for common issues such as changes to a prior closed period, undeposited funds, improper negative balance sheet accounts, and opening balance equity.
Close
We close the books and compile financial reports, including balance sheet, income statement, cash summary, budget variance, AR and AP detail reports, supporting open detail reports, statements and reconciliation reports. We notify you when the period is closed and provide access to this information for your review and approval. You log in to QuickBooks Online’s Report Center to access additional information about your business.
Insight
Cash Flow Analysis
Managing your small business can be a lot of work – making sure your customers are happy, your products are selling, your customers are paying you, and making your payroll. 82% of small businesses fail due to cash flow problems. You need insight into your complete cash flow today and tomorrow.
We use AI tools to predict your future with confidence, so you can understand your current and future cash flow situation. A built-in cash flow calculator and anomaly detector helps you instantly know all aspects of your cash flow with no surprises. Make quicker decisions using your cash flow dashboard. Get notified about unexpected bills, overdue payments or out-of-cash predictions. Explore scenarios like buying new equipment or starting an expansion or hiring a new staff member by looking at the cash flow impact before you make the decision.
Financial analysis
Our CFO services are directly aimed at helping you review and read your financial information. Financial analysis highlights results, gives an overview of the health of the business, measures against industry benchmarks and lays the groundwork for strategy. Metrics of past performance help guide future decisions and impact future performance.
We’ll use charts, graphs, and flags to determine where to focus your energy. Visual insights pinpoint the quickest ways to impact the business and strengths that should be leveraged. We’ll discuss key business ratios and performance indicators, along with possible causes and potential solutions when those measurements are not ideal.
Analyzing your metrics in monthly, quarterly, and yearly segments allows us to notice trends in areas such as income, costs, and expenses and watch how they evolve over time. Industry benchmark comparisons tell you how you perform against others in your line of work. Risk indicators allow you to see the difference between revenue growth and expenses growth. Insight into trends in solvency, leverage, and profitability offer clarity and fuel important business decisions.
Custom Reporting
Our monthly close package includes reports as supporting documentation to account balances. For any other reports or to read up-to-date information about your business, anytime, anywhere, log in to QuickBooks Online’s Report Center. These reports are interactive so you can customize the date range and other variables to find the information you need. Customize columns, group transactions, display comparison periods, rename reports.
Remember that current accounting periods are open and changing until closed. Look for our monthly notification that the period is closed, before logging in to run reports for final numbers. Contact us if you need help creating a custom report.
Strategy
Forecast & budgeting
Strategic planning employs insight and guided questions to identify fiscally sound decisions to support the growth of the business. We translate the business’ goals into an achievable plan and then provide analysis, review and advice on the business’ performance.
We use interactive live forecasting and budgeting models which are automatically tracked against real-time live actual data which helps to further improve the actions taken in the future.
This planning identifies critical issues before they occur and holds key staff accountable for results. The data is there to reveal the performance of the various operational functions of the business and spark conversations, make decisions and implement changes to affect growth.
Our strategy meetings will reveal answers and adjustments that are at the very heart of strategic planning:
- adjustments to the forecast
- adjustments to the business itself
What a relief to have a forecast to help you through these tough decisions. No flying blind.
Leadership
We work with you in a next-level capacity, beyond accounting, to assist you in the leadership aspect of your business – vision, execution and accountability.
What is your vision? It should resonate with everything you do. Good decision making requires clarity and confidence. Your customers, employees, and associates are looking to you to lead them. Our proven process will guide you in proactively aligning your business with your vision. It is important, ongoing work and the foundation of your company’s culture
To execute your vision, you will need to define streamlined, effective business processes. Your products and/or services are the implementation of your knowledge. Your knowledge capital is your secret sauce. Our methods will assist you in organizing it to create revenue and determine whether you have the right people in the right roles to deliver.
Our program will help you assemble a leadership team and a regular practice to hold the entire organization accountable to the vision. You will track a scorecard of pre-determined key metrics. You will set milestones and answer to their status regularly. And you will spend significant effort regularly solving the firm’s biggest issues.
Automation
Process Oversight
If your in-house staff is performing any function related to the accounting processes of your business, we strongly urge you to partner with us as your guide. Billing clerks invoice your customers in the exact manner you intend, AP clerks and Controllers split tasks for best practices for separation of duties, payroll clerks don’t forget to process holiday pay, and bookkeepers reconcile and close the periods consistently and effectively.
Knowledge capital
The single most profound value in cloud-accounting lies in the process. We’ve curated best practices for performing web-based transactional accounting work. As national industry leaders in cloud accounting process, our team has pioneered the development of these processes. This service passes the immeasurable benefit of this knowledge capital to you.
- Your staff work from a list of tasks assigned to them.
- Each task contains a checklist with step by step instructions for how to perform the tasks.
- Tasks are super-charged with resources to give staff the information they need when performing a task, such as links directly to the site or document related to that particular step, a secure password vault, and procedure guides containing screenshots, tips & tricks, and further explanation on the details of the steps found on the checklists.
Workflow management
We provide web access to our interactive resources to empower your staff to perform accounting tasks under our guidance and support. The collective knowledge and experience of many cloud-accounting pioneers are available at your fingertips through this service. There are so many things to be done in running a business; it is imperative that they be organized and tracked. Set it and forget it.
- Your staff log in to view and perform their assigned tasks every day. You sit back and watch your business at work.
- The resources we provide are related to the services we offer, but you may also add any other tasks for your business that you would like to delegate to staff, such as your particular process for invoicing clients, integrating e-commerce sales, or recording summary activity from POS systems.
- Tasks can be deferred and re-assigned. When staff go on vacation or call in sick, the clear instruction makes it easy to re-assign the work to another.
- When staff perform a task infrequently, such as quarterly or annually, these checklists become ever moreso critical to the accuracy of the work being performed.
- Tasks that are performed repeatedly are scheduled at the proper frequency to appear on your staff’s list at the proper interval.
- A management dashboard and interactive customizable reports provide you with information such as which tasks are currently assigned but not yet complete, how much time is spent on these tasks, and the average time spent to complete a task over the varying recurring instances it is performed.
Process Advisory
As accounting professionals deeply experienced with web-based workflow, we offer tremendous value as process automation advisors. We are your solution for accounting technology design, implementation, training, and oversight.
Intuit has declared its intention to be the platform for small businesses. It does so with QuickBooks Online as the general ledger at the core and an ecosystem of apps available in the QB app store to plugin, as needed.
We are experienced with the integration afforded by Intuit’s open API, are familiar with the rigorous process by which apps are tested for security and interoperability before being listed, and attend national accounting technology conferences where we can identify solutions to automate your processes by performing unique functions and integrate with QuickBooks. This serves to keep non-accountant users out of the sensitive general ledger, reduce labor by automating once-manual work, and reducing the errors that often accompany either manual work or duplicate data entry, all of which are costly to a small business.
Process Customization
All of our customers and the small businesses that fuel our economy have unique needs and can often benefit from some type of custom automation to reduce errors and do away with expensive and monotonous manual processes. We have built many a custom solution for our clients. It gives them a competitive edge and helps them stand out from the crowd. Read about a few of our custom builds:
- A real estate broker submits invoices to a title company to get paid. Except it’s not called an invoice. It’s called a “Demand Letter”. And it doesn’t look anything like a standard invoice. It looks like a letter – with the information about the home sold, including the sales price, the details on the seller and the buyer of the home, the amounts to distribute to the broker and the agent, and the bank account routing information. This manual process was lengthy and error-prone.
We created a modified invoice screen that allowed the brokerage firm to enter the data related to the home sale. At the push of a button, they could print a very modified looking invoice…that looked exactly like the industry demand letter. The receivable and revenue and agent commission cost all posted properly to QuickBooks - An e-commerce company used a shopping cart web store that automatically posted sales receipts to QuickBooks for every online sale. That was great automation! But then, every morning they had to make a big spreadsheet of all of the orders from the previous day and manually run calculations to divide them between their 4 distribution warehouses, based on a number of variables. We built a Fulfillment screen that grabbed all sales receipts, automatically calculated the variables and assigned them to the appropriate warehouse, and then sent each warehouse its daily list of orders to fulfill along with each order’s packing slip, shipping container, and shipping label…all at the push of a button.
- A law firm spent days and days, every month…sending hundreds of emails back and forth to each partner…with attachments of the previous month’s invoices to review, modify and approve before sending on to the client. Countless modifications requested by the partners were typed into the body of the emails, oftentimes lost in the chaos. We built a screen that allowed each of the firm’s partners to log in and see all of the invoices created in QuickBooks – but only the ones assigned to them. There they could review the invoices assigned to them, make modifications directly on the screen, and approve charges, authorizing the invoices to be sent to the customers.
Infrastructure
System architecture
QuickBooks Online (QBO) is America’s premier cloud-accounting software for small businesses and the center of our cloud accounting ecosystem. Our advanced-certified experts set up and configure QBO for your company. We also set up & maintain the integration and configuration settings for the other apps we use to perform our services. These powerful solutions improve access, mobility, efficiency, collaboration, accuracy, customer and vendor relationships, fraud prevention, data security, and business intelligence. It is critical to their success that they are managed appropriately. Your subscriptions created, owned and managed by us are included as part of this service.
Client hub
You will use Client Hub’s web or mobile app as your central point of contact for
interacting with us.
- Send short text Messages to our team.
- View Tracked Items requested by us (To Do, Yes/No, File Attachment, Text Response, Accept/Decline).
- Launch Links to the apps & resources that you use…all from one place. Simple, secure,
awesome. - Access the Ticket Portal to view email exchanges between us logged and
tracked as tickets. View status of tickets, search history of communication, monitor
tickets logged by other members of your organization and track open items.
Genius bar
Access to our advisory and consulting services for projects and general support are available via the Genius Bar. Our team of accounting professionals consists of national thought leaders, trainers, and members of Intuit’s elite trainer/writer network and advisory council and are experienced in working with businesses using the best-of-breed apps in our tech stack.
