For so many small business owners, the holiday season brings in more orders, sales and service requests – which means you’re busy. Especially at this time of year, your accounting software should bring more joy and less stress as you manage your business.

In that spirit, Intuit® has released six feature updates that can bring calm vibes to the busy season. The first two features are only available to customers with QuickBooks® Online (QBO) Advanced; the rest are available to all of our QuickBooks Online customers.

We’ve been a proud employer of veterans since the early days of our business, and we love to take this opportunity to thank our two current employed veterans, Patricia Burchfield and Tatyana Kelly, for their service and make them feel appreciated.

OK, so I will be the first to admit that in running this business, and in trying to stay sane the last few years that occasionally I have missed things.

Well, apparently I missed something huge.

Alternate vendors was enhanced a few years ago in QuickBooks Enterprise, and I totally, completely, did not know until this week.

When working with a new client, a lot of times the discussion starts around software and flows, and eventually follows a meandering path back through the annals of my memory to ACC 101.

While accounting software looks fancy and intimidating, there are a few things that we go over that helps. I recently put this up on our company whiteboard, and had several people comment on how helpful it was, so I thought I would try to replicate it here.

Accrual-based businesses report income and expenses according to GAAP, or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. There are certain guidelines on when a business should use accrual-based bookkeeping, such as when inventory will be kept on hand or when you are above a certain revenue threshold, but many small businesses use a cash-based method instead.

If you’ve just recently started a new business, you may or may not already have some ideas for marketing your products or services. Regardless, if you’ve searched the Internet for ways to begin your marketing journey, you’ve probably read about a marketing plan — the big, intimidating document that requires a significant amount of research and consumes time that could be spent diving head-first into your work. However, even if you plan to hire a marketing team right away, it will be beneficial for you to begin writing a marketing plan yourself. And don’t worry — it’s not as difficult as you might think. Together we’ll explore the ongoing process of marketing and some key research topics that will give you an excellent start to a marketing plan for your new business.

As of July 31, 2022, Intuit will close the books on its QuickBooks Online Advanced (QBOA) partnership with Fathom. If you use QBOA, you were likely already notified of this. Fathom is a software that provides data analytics and visualization, and its integration with QuickBooks greatly enhanced the value and readability of a bookkeeper’s client reports. If you weren’t familiar with Fathom, then this bad news has no effect on you!

When I was around eight years old, I went with my parents to a used car lot. We were greeted by an employee who barely listened to what my parents were looking for before immediately disregarding our budget and taking us to the most expensive minivan at the dealership. He continued to ignore my parents’ requests and only slowly made his way down in cost from one vehicle to another, assuring us with every other breath that he would “get us taken care of.” He seemed quite proud of himself at end as he pushed my parents to make a hasty decision. When we left (empty-handed, I might add), my mother sighed and said, “Well, he was a salesman, wasn’t he?” The way she said it made “salesman” sound like an insult.

I love working in my office away from home. I said it. I feel like I’m standing in a support group and voicing a personal truth against skeptical faces, but I said it. Stacked next to a vast majority of professionals, my story may be a little different.