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Bank feeds in QuickBooks can be a time saver yet many businesses don’t utilize this feature because they are a little unclear about what it is.  Often times “bank feeds” are confused with your banks “online bill-pay” yet they are very different.

FEATURE OVERVIEW

I am going to attempt to give a simple overview of how Bank feeds and rules work in QuickBooks so you can determine if they would be helpful for your business.  Keep in mind; there is a small fee to utilize this service monthly so you will want to determine if it’s worth it.  The fee charged by your bank will likely be around $15 a month.  Not all banks offer this automation but most do.

Bank feeds automatically pull your transactions daily from the bank or you can perform an “upload” any time you want to pull them manually.  Once the transactions are in QuickBooks you can easily match your deposits/credits as well as your withdrawals/debits.

How your withdrawals/debits are posted in QuickBooks depends on how you have recorded them.  If you enter a bill and pay the bill in QuickBooks then when the bank feed takes place QuickBooks will find the “match” and you will simply “confirm.”  Once you confirm then that line item in the bank reconciliation will show as “cleared.”

If you have an expense that you didn’t record in QuickBooks such as a purchase on “Amazon” you can simply add this expense.   You don’t even need to create an invoice for the transaction and you can select from a dropdown the vendor and account to code to.

Your deposits will work similar to your withdrawals.  If you have already recorded the deposit in QuickBooks you can easily match it and if you didn’t it’s easy to add and selected the appropriate customer and account to code to.

RULES… RULES… RULES WHO NEEDS THEM?

You probably don’t NEED them but will likely want them.  QuickBooks allows you to setup various rules.  Once setup, QuickBooks will recognize the deposits or withdrawals and will know what vendor or customer they belong to as well as how you want to code them.

SETUP

While setting up your bank feeds in QuickBooks you will be able to select from a drop down how far back you want to go to import transactions.  You can go up to 90 days back but keep in mind that you don’t want to bring in transactions that you have already recorded in QuickBooks.

For example, let’s say it’s March 10th and you have already reconciled the bank accounts for February.  You don’t want pull in data from February so don’t go that far back.

Be careful when initially setting up that you don’t end up with duplicate transactions.  You will also want to pay attention to the opening balance entry that QuickBooks automatically enters into your bank account if you don’t have any transactions posted in QuickBooks to that account.

To setup bank feeds and rules in QuickBooks use the “Help” search in QuickBooks or give us a call at 916-224-5831.  I hope you found this article helpful.

Do you ever get to the end of the year and wonder what happened to all your money?  I have talked to many business owners that are running so fast trying to keep up with everything that they really don’t understand the big picture.  They sometimes wonder why there are only pennies left in retained earnings at year end.

GOOD DATA = GOOD REPORTING

You will know exactly what happened at year end if you understand QuickBooks, keep on top of your Bookkeeping, post your transactions to the correct month and account code, know what reports to run and how to read them. If this is Greek to you I highly recommend that you outsource your QuickBooks Bookkeeping.   That is unless you have the time and patience to learn the principles of accounting, QuickBooks software, and have time every month to keep up with it.

Once you have accurate and up to date data in QuickBooks I recommend that you create a budget and or forecast.  I believe that almost any kind of business would benefit from doing so and monitoring them throughout the year.  If you do so, you shouldn’t have any surprises at year end.

Creating budgets and forecast in QuickBooks is quite simple.  Initially you set them up for the year and you can run your reports monthly to see if you are staying on track.  QuickBooks will do a comparison of the actual against forecasted.

BUDGETING\FORECASTING AND GOOD DECISION MAKING

Keeping up with budgets and forecast can really help you make good business decisions.  For example, let’s say that Michael & his wife Michelle own the Shadow Brook Inn.  The Shadow Brook is a Bed & Breakfast as well as an event center hosting weddings and various events thought the year.  Playing with a budget in QuickBooks can help them make sound business decisions so they have no year end surprises.

Michael and Michelle are doing all the work themselves and are getting quite burned out.  They are cooking, cleaning, landscaping, setting up and taking down tables and chairs, keeping up with bookings, collections, and their QuickBooks bookkeeping.  They want to hire some help but aren’t sure if they can afford it.  They can play with the budget to add employees and will be able to quickly see if this is an affordable option. They might find that they can’t afford help year round but they can afford to bring help on in the busier summer months.

IS IT TIME TO BUY NOW OR DO I NEED TO WAIT?

Let’s say in 2015 Michelle would like a new oven, updated bedding, curtains, and a dining room table.  Michael wants a new lawn mower and some fruit trees.  These purchases will cost the business an estimated $10,000.  Ideally they would wait until they had the additional $10,000 in their retained earnings.  Sometimes things happen and purchases are a must and a decision needs to be made quickly.  If you have current and accurate data in QuickBooks you can play with your budget and or forecast reporting to help you make a right decision in a hurry.

After analyzing your reports you might come to a conclusion like this.  The fruit trees and updated bedding, dining room table & curtains would be nice but they aren’t a must and can wait until 2016.  There is a wedding next week and the current lawnmower is dead and the old stove has cooked its last meal after 30 years of service.  They must be replaced right away.  By playing with your budget\forecasting you will be able to see if you can spend the cash on these items now or finance. If financing is your only option what can you realistically pay monthly?  You can determine this by playing with your budget in QuickBooks.

I hope this article has inspired you to utilize a very helpful tool in QuickBooks. To learn more about how to use these tools you can look up information in QuickBooks Help or give us a call at 916-224-5831.

I work with small to mid size businesses in the Auburn area supporting their Office, Bookkeeping and Payroll needs.  I try to stay on top of what is going on out there so I can give my clients the best service possible.  I recently attended a business luncheon in Auburn and the topic was “Legal Updates for 2015.”  Although the topic sounded incredibly boring, to my surprise it wasn’t.  The speaker was David W. Tyra, an Attorney with Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard.

One item that David spoke about was the “Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014.”  You might be wondering why Suzanne is informing you of old news from 2014.  First of all, very few small businesses are even aware of this Act.  Second, it will need to be implemented in your workplace by July 1, 2015 if you have employees on payroll.

Summary overview of the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families of Act of 2014

I am going to give you a simple summary and then will tell you where you can go to get ….the rest of the story.  Better yet, I’ll provide you a link.  The Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families of Act of 2014 basically states that you must provide paid sick leave to all employees.  “All” means “All” and that includes temporary as well as part time workers.   Anyone on your payroll that has worked at least 90 days for you gets paid sick leave.  They are entitled to 24 hours a year or 3 days a year whichever is greater.  For example, if you have an employee that works 9 hour days they will need to be paid 27 hours a year.

How much do I pay my employees for sick pay?

Hourly employees are paid out at their regular hourly rate.  You will need figure out what that rate is for those on salary or commission.  To do so you will take the total wages for a full pay period and subtract any overtime pay.  Take the hours worked in a full pay period and subtract any overtime hours.  Next you will take your total wages and divide by your total hours to determine their hourly rate.  Last but not least, double check that this is correct by clicking on the link that I will provide at the end of this article and get advice from those “in the know.”

What steps does your business need to take to implement?

• Revise your employee handbooks
• Notify your employees
• Post an updated poster in your break room
• Decide if you want to accrue sick time or give the employee 3 days up front
• Make sure whomever handles your Payroll knows about this Act
• Modify your Payroll stub if needed (Sick time balance must be on each paystub)

Accrue or Not to Accrue that is the question

You basically have two options to administer keeping track of sick time and they are:

• You can give all your employees 3 days of sick pay up front for the year.
• You can accrue your employee’s sick pay throughout the year making sure that by the end of the year they have accrued 3 days.

Pros & Cons of how you administer

Let’s say you hire Sam and he has worked for you for 30 days.  Your policy is to give your employees the 3 days sick pay up front.  After 30 days Sam will see his 3 days of sick pay available on his paystub.  Sam suddenly becomes sick and takes three days off.  He comes back to work for a few days and then decides the job isn’t working out so he quits.  Sam worked for you for a little over 1 month yet he got to use a years’ worth of sick pay.

Another scenario would be that Sam decided not to quit and he stays on your payroll for a year.  The next year he is given 3 sick days up front again.  If he doesn’t use them that year they don’t rollover to the next year.  The next year he will simply get 3 new ones.

Now let’s talk about Sara.  She is hired on at your brother’s company.  Their policy is to accrue the sick time.  Sara is very healthy and didn’t need to take any of her sick time her first year.  Since your brother’s company uses the accrual method for sick time her hours will roll over and the beginning of her second year she will have 6 hours of sick time accrued.  If she has another healthy year she will start with 9 hours the following year and so on. You can see this could really add up.  There are obviously pros and cons to both methods so you will need to determine which one make the most sense for your business.

How can I become informed and stay on top of legal issues that might affect my business?

One of the business owners at the meeting I attended asked how it was possible for small business owners to know about things like this.  Basically the reply was that in the eyes of the court ignorance is no excuse.  I see that in this case ignorance wouldn’t be bliss either.

If you would like to keep up with legal issues like this I suggest that you sign up for a free subscription on Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard’s website www.kmtg.com.  There are many different subscriptions you can be added to so be sure to select “Labor and Employment.”

I hope you found my first blog helpful!

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