EOFY efficiency for your firm and your clients
Discover how firms are finding more hours in the day and building more productive practices with the tools in the QuickBooks suite.
End-of-year tax can be a busy time for accountants, especially with many small businesses looking to update both their business and personal finances. We spoke to Chartered Accountant and Founder of Infinance Solutions Tish Bhagwandeen about how she has streamlined processes in her firm using tools in the QuickBooks suite.
Achieving efficiency for your clients, and your firm
“The initial focus of Infinance Solutions was to offer CFO advisory services. This evolved very quickly when clients started approaching me to assist with their bookkeeping, BAS and taxation needs. I realised that by centralising these services, there was an efficiency to be achieved for my clients,” Tish said.
“The accounting and taxation landscape can be very technical, as accountants we have the ability to manage this with relative ease. However, as with managing any business there is always a fair bit of admin work and this can tend to fall by the wayside. For me, it comes down to simple things that can save me time and make my admin load easier, such as electronic signatures and automatic reminders.”
The tools in the QuickBooks suite can simplify your review process by providing a single area where you can review year-end tasks and view any source documents that have been uploaded or add documents if required.
Prep for Taxes provides that ‘one-stop shop’ where you can review all your clients’ financial year information in one place. You’ll have complete visibility of your clients’ Balance sheet and Profit and loss statement accounts with current financial year, prior financial year, % changes, as well as the dollar amount changes, all on one easy-to-view screen. What’s more, once complete, you can export the data directly into QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT to streamline data and save even more time.
Finding more hours in your day
“I’d say the Prep for Taxes function within QuickBooks Online usually saves me at least an hour on a tax return. One of the bottlenecks when drafting tax returns is obtaining access to supporting documents such as bank statements and reconciliations. Prep for Taxes gives me the ability to save supporting workpapers directly in the file, meaning you never have to send an email requesting documents such as bank statements. This feature alone creates huge efficiencies especially if you have an external bookkeeper or other people working on the job with you.”
“Apart from providing direct access to the workpapers, I also have the ability to leave notes on the file. I can add notes on specific balances. This is a great way to keep communication centralised and it means that I am sending one less email, hence reducing email traffic. By minimising potential follow-ups, I am able to get at least an hour back in my day.”
“There are built-in automatic reminders. This means I don’t have to think about sending manual reminders to clients to sign. There is also an extensive audit trail that is maintained within that keeps track of when you sent out the return, when it was signed, when it was lodged, for example. So, if you ever need to go back and look at the timeframe of a tax return, it's all electronically stored in one place. QuickBooks Tax definitely hits all the marks for me from an audit perspective.”
For more tips to streamline your End of Financial Year, visit the Intuit QuickBooks EOFY Hub and join one of our webinars, or give us a call at 1800 618 521.
