Importing To QuickBooks : When Clients Do Most Of The Data Entry

Chris Ragain for LedgerSync writes: You may see the benefit of importing to QuickBooks when working with a blank file every month or when doing traditional write up, but what about when you have clients that do most of the work themselves and you are simply reviewing and making sure every transaction is complete?  LedgerSync and QuickBooks imports can be a huge time saver for this scenario as well.  In this post I am going to show you how to use importing to QuickBooks and the Bank Feeds screens to make your reconciliations and review much faster than the traditional methods.

Lets Setup The Scenario

The client I am working for has a tendency to enter some checks, most of their deposits, and some of their electronic transactions.  But for the most part it is a mess every month and my job is to come in and find what is missing, get everything coded correctly, and issue financial statements.  Until now the best way to find what is missing is to open up the bank statement and go transaction by transaction to fill in what is missing, then run a bank reconciliation to make sure I have everything.

However today I have downloaded a WebConnect file from LedgerSync and I am going to import that and use the Bank Feeds screen to do my work.

So first I went into LedgerSync and chose the dates that I wanted and made the file (which I saved to the same desktop that QuickBooks is on).  Next I have imported the file and this is the screen QuickBooks has given me once it read the import:

As you can see, I have several transactions of different colors and completion.  Here is what they all mean:

Gold= Transactions that were in the bank file but not in QuickBooks and QuickBooks is not sure how to code them.

Red= Transactions that were in the bank file, but not in QuickBooks but QuickBooks thinks it knows how to code them (based on past work, QB calls these “rules”)

Blue= Transactions that were in the bank file AND in QuickBooks.  QuickBooks is saying they were already coded but just wants you to check them.

Can you start to tell how much this is going to help?  Quickly you know what was missing, what was in there, and you can review them all and quickly post them.  Here is what I do first:

Blue Transactions

The blue transactions are the easiest, I just need to quickly review them and make sure they are coded the way I want them to be.  If you need to review a check, LedgerSync has it for you in the images section.  Once I know these transactions are ready to go I make sure they are check marked and at the bottom of the screen you can see a button called “Batch Actions”, if you want to approve these now just click that button and select “Add Approve”

CAUTION- You will also find the Red Transactions checked, so don’t click “add approve” until you either uncheck them or have reviewed them as well.

When you click add approve, nothing really happens since these transactions are in there already, it just tells the system these are fine and reconciled.

Red Transactions

To be clear, the Red Transactions are not in QuickBooks yet, but QB believes it knows where they go and how to code them.  That is why they have checkmarks next to them automatically ready for you to “add approve” them.  Check the payee and account, if they are an expense payment and there is a bill that needs to be matched, you can go to the right of the transaction and click “Select Bills to Mark as Paid” or if it is a deposit that you need to put against an invoice select “Add More Details”.  See Below:

Once you have reviewed all of your Red Transactions you can “add approve” those and that has QuickBooks actually enter them into the register.  Until then they had not been and you could have deleted them out of bank feeds (by clicking the batch actions button and selecting “Ignore” that will delete your checked transactions in bank feeds) but once you hit “add approve”, the red and blue transactions are gone and in the register and all you have left are the gold transactions.

Gold Transactions

Gold Transactions are easy to take care of, you simply choose what payee and account you want each to go to.  You can “add approve” them one at a time, or wait to you have them all reviewed and do it at once.  You can also setup rules for these transactions so they show up as Red Transactions the next time you do this work.  Once you have “add approved” all of the gold transactions your screen is empty and guess what?  YOUR DONE!

Summary

As you can see, whether you enter every transaction for clients or if you are just cleaning up, LedgerSync and Importing to QuickBooks can help you tremendously.  The next time you are entering transactions think to yourself:  “Couldn’t I just LedgerSync this?”  Chances are, you could…