tracking your income/billing

[schirallicpa]

I have a spreadsheet that goes back as far as 2001 for my billing.  But I had -until 2019 -awesome secretaries helping me.  In 2020 I had a number of idiots and 2021 hasn't been much better.  My spreadsheet system seems too overwhelming for them.  (let's see, column for name, column for type of work, column for charge, column for amount received, column for date.  Yeah - that's a lot for people to handle any more.)  (Sorry - I'm a little sarcastic, but I just don't know why it's complicated.)

How do you guys track billing and income?  

[Catherine]

I use QuickBooks.

[jklcpa]

I use a spreadsheet that starts out very similar to yours except mine has 3 distinct sections.   

The first is like yours with an additional column for late fees, discounts & adjustments.  The second section has the date of collection, a total column that ties to payments received and has columns for each quarter that are used for my state gross receipts reporting.  Finally the third section is for my insurance purposes with a total that ties to total billing and with columns for total hrs, total billing that is then spread to columns for tax, review, compilation/bkkpg, other.

 

 

[BulldogTom]

12 minutes ago, Catherine said:

I use QuickBooks.

Me too.

Tom
Longview, TX

[Tax Prep by Deb]

2 hours ago, BulldogTom said:

Me too.

Tom
Longview, TX

Me three!

[grandmabee]

9 hours ago, Catherine said:

I use QuickBooks.

Do you put your income by client into QB?  I just put totals for tax work with the deposit.  I use the return manager and print it out each year after I mark that they paid and amount.  It doesn't keep all year just current and then I have a file for each year.  It probably would have been handy to see all the years together but at this point I am not changing.  Hoping to retire in 3 or 4 years.

[BulldogTom]

8 hours ago, grandmabee said:

Do you put your income by client into QB?  

Every Client, every invoice,  and most importantly, by date.   I run a report every year that tells me revenue by date/customer so I refresh my memory on who is coming in at what time of the year and with what issues they normally have.  

Mid tax season and near the end of tax season, we run a report that tells us who normally comes in by that time of the year and has not so we can call them and see if they are coming back.

Tom
Longview, TX

Tom

[Randall]

I just have a manual file.  Billings, one file for unpaid, one for paid.  I do enter in QB late in the year and my checks written to get a summary of my income, expense, profit.

[Patrick Michael]

I use QuickBooks Online.  When you get the Accountant version you get the subscription and payroll for free.  I know some people do not like the online version.  It took awhile to get used to and the figure out a couple of work arounds, but it works fine now.

[grandmabee]

Doesn't it seem slow to you?  I log in for a client and reclass where they put things in expenses and it is so slow going from one screen to the next and how many steps to get it done.  Desktop is so much faster for me.  I have a fast computer so it is not that.

[Abby Normal]

21 minutes ago, grandmabee said:

Doesn't it seem slow to you?  I log in for a client and reclass where they put things in expenses and it is so slow going from one screen to the next and how many steps to get it done.  Desktop is so much faster for me.  I have a fast computer so it is not that.

QBO is torture. I fire any client that switches to it.

[Lee B]

The limiting factor is often your ISP's upload speed which is usually 6 mbs.

[Catherine]

On 1/11/2022 at 7:11 AM, BulldogTom said:

Every Client, every invoice,  and most importantly, by date. 

This.  I also run reports, but slightly different ones from what Tom says he runs.  Mainly to the same purpose - but my WIP spreadsheet answers (in more detail than QB) the questions he runs his reports for. 

[Catherine]

On 1/12/2022 at 3:42 PM, Abby Normal said:

QBO is torture. I fire any client that switches to it.

We refuse any new clients who want QBO and do not support it; I detest it with a deep and sincere loathing.  That said, I do pass along subscriptions at my cost for several clients who insisted (they have special circumstances, and in-house bookkeepers who know QBO).  

[Abby Normal]

I also told good clients who switched to QBO that their tax prep bills would double. #FiringByFee

[Patrick Michael]

On 1/12/2022 at 3:21 PM, grandmabee said:

Doesn't it seem slow to you?  I log in for a client and reclass where they put things in expenses and it is so slow going from one screen to the next and how many steps to get it done.  Desktop is so much faster for me.  I have a fast computer so it is not that.

One trick I have found is it's running slow or doing weird things is to empty the cache and restart the browser.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

[Lee B]

On 1/12/2022 at 12:42 PM, Abby Normal said:

QBO is torture. I fire any client that switches to it.

 

On 1/13/2022 at 2:43 PM, Abby Normal said:

I also told good clients who switched to QBO that their tax prep bills would double. #FiringByFee

 

On 1/13/2022 at 1:03 PM, Catherine said:

We refuse any new clients who want QBO and do not support it; I detest it with a deep and sincere loathing. 

Abby & Catherine,

I don't use or have any clients that use QBO.  Why do you dislike it so much?

I know another accountant in town that uses QBO for all his record keeping.

[BulldogTom]

I was switched over to QBO for my day job, and I don't care for it, but I don't hate it.   I have a problem with finding the setup screens that I used in Desktop forever.   And I have had a problem with the program changing some of my default accounts leading to some interesting balance sheet reports.   It is also slow when run over a VPN.

I think I just need to understand the setup better, as we converted from Desktop and the setups all converted for us.   I don't know all the places to change things yet.   Been about 2 months on QBO.

Tom
Longview, TX

[mcb39]

On 1/11/2022 at 6:20 AM, Randall said:

I just have a manual file.  Billings, one file for unpaid, one for paid.  I do enter in QB late in the year and my checks written to get a summary of my income, expense, profit.

Similar here., although I enter nothing into QB.  I find that Quicken is adequate, but mostly I do it on paper as I go. I log the clients when they come in; cross them off when finished.  Have another log for income when they pick up and pay.

[Catherine]

9 hours ago, cbslee said:

Why do you dislike it so much?

The key items for me are:

• Kludgey moving from one screen to another; very slow and clunky and non-obvious. Plus you can't go back to where you were; you have to go back to menus and re-navigate.  Very much worse than QB desktop multiple windows.
• Reports are very much more limited in QBO.
• No auto-fill function.
• No adding on-the-fly in number fields - e.g., multiple items on a bill.
• No splitting transactions until *after* they have been recorded. 

That's what comes to mind off the top of my head.

Ever work on the same year program with QB desktop for Windows and QB desktop for Mac?  And the Mac version felt like it was four rev's behind and treated by the developers the same way they'd treat Weird Uncle Ed at Thanksgiving, who smells a little off, tells sketchy inappropriate stories, and no one wants to sit near him?  That's how QBO feels to use.