Automating Business Documents with QuickBooks

Getting Your Forms to do the Work for You We see businesses of all sizes relying on QuickBooks for their accounting software. Whether your organization is a startup or a $20 million company it is often hard to beat the flexibility, value and user base offered by QuickBooks. But despite this widespread market presence we see very few companies leveraging the forms customization features in Quickbooks. Here are several opportunities for your business to use this valuable tool to get more done with less effort. Customize Estimates to Summarize or Replace Your Contracts Quickbooks allows you to create Estimates that you can send to your customers, but most businesses don't use them because they don't include disclaimers or service information important to customers. Instead of using QuickBooks these business use a pre-printed form or possibly an Excel or Word template to create estimates or quotes. Using the Layout Designer in QuickBooks you can easily add blocks of standard contract language and place specific order or product information wherever you want it on the page. If your estimates contain multiple pages and cannot be ported to QuickBooks single page format consider designing your contract summary page in QuickBooks. Getting estimates and quotes into QuickBooks is a powerful efficiency tool because once the information is there it can be tracked, converted to a sales order, used as the basis for packing slips, and ultimately turned into an invoice...all with the simple press of a button. In other words, you enter the information once and you are done. Format Sales Orders to Mirror Workflow Manufacturing companies call them work orders, distributors call them pick lists, service companies call them route sheets. No matter what they are called all organizations have or should have a document that guides their service or product fulfillment process from start to end. The QuickBooks Layout Designer allows you to create standard form elements like checklists, sign off boxes, and workflow diagrams. If took my advice in step 1 and your quotes or proposals are already entered as QuickBooks estimates it is as simple as pressing one button to convert them into the "Sales Order" workflow document and start production. The other great advantage to building workflow documents from previously created estimates is the decreased opportunity for items to be left out or inadvertantly changed between contract acceptance and delivery. It is also less likely that there will be minor but embarrassing differences between things like document numbers, client addresses, phone numbers and sales rep contact details. Keeping everything in QuickBooks ensures consistency. Invoice in QuickBooks (please) If there is one area in which Quickbooks should be your exclusive tool it is invoicing. Many businesses don't like the generic look of QuickBooks default invoices. The newest version of QuickBooks introduces a form customization wizard, but whether you are using the newest version or one of the older editions it is a fairly straighforward matter to customize invoices to look identical or similar to the documents you get from your printer. If you have a sales order document already in QuickBooks creating the invoice is a simple one-button process. That is another great time saver that you can take advantage of, but the real reasont to do all invoicing in QuickBooks is that it makes for the most accurate set of accounting records. If you run two systems, one for invoicing and QuickBooks for everything else, sooner or later you are going to make an expensive mistake. Bringing it all together If you want to leverage the potential of QuickBooks form customization to make life easier in your business I would suggest you go about it this way. Map out your workflow first. Get in front of a whiteboard or a big, blank piece of paper and draw a picture of what happens from the time you create a formal pitch for a prospect to the moment you receive the last payment for a job well done. Decide how forms can help you facilitate this chain of events. If you start creating forms first you'll just wind up changing them over and over again until they mirror your business process. Think about consistency at the beginning. Do you want your forms in color or black and white? Color makes a big difference, but if only one of your fifteen employees has access to a color printer it may not matter. If you are going to be emailing documents (much recommended) you may not even need a color printer. But also think about what fonts you will use, which logo file is best for all documents, whether you want a standard footer, etc. If you do this in the beginning it adds a lot to your presentation. If you don't do it in the beginning you usually find that it is just too much work to come back later and change everything to maintain a consistent look and feel. Design your forms on paper first. If you already have pre-printed forms consider what you want to change about them. One of the big advantages of using QuickBooks for print-on-demand forms is the ability to change and try new things. But think them out on paper first and the work in QuickBooks will go much faster. Hire expert help. You may not need someone to design every form for you, but paying a CPA firm that knows what they are doing to walk you through the design process for your first form will teach you a lot and save you hours of frustration and headaches down the road. Think of it as an investment in reducing printing and business form costs for the rest of your life.