Becoming a QuickBooks Expert

Warning: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Hector: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Cat Pollock, the original, the one and only Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia, CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks.

Hector: In this episode, we're going to talk about how to become an expert [00:00:30] in QuickBooks. Hi, Alicia, are you an expert in QuickBooks?

Alicia: Hi, Hector. Yes, I'm an expert in QuickBooks. And how did I get there? Yeah, me.

Hector: Too, but.

Alicia: I.

Hector: Did not say I'm a QuickBooks expert, and I cannot say I'm a QuickBooks expert. Why is that, Alicia?

Alicia: Oh, I think there's a copyright infringement on that. Yeah.

Hector: So I think Intuit wants to control how people frame themselves around QuickBooks. And you can call yourself [00:01:00] a QuickBooks ProAdvisor if you get certified, but you cannot call yourself a QuickBooks expert. Like, just try it. Put it on your website and notice how quickly you get an email a cease and desist letter so you can say expert in QuickBooks but not QuickBooks expert.

Alicia: Well, the key there is that a lot of people don't actually read their terms and conditions for being a ProAdvisor, and I highly recommend that you do that whenever you're talking about what you do as a professional. You can't lead with the word QuickBooks and on your website, you can't have QuickBooks [00:01:30] or Qbo in your URL, and you can't have the QuickBooks logo being bigger than your logo. So it's all in how you present yourself.

Hector: Okay. That's the negative side. Let's talk about the positive side. So the first thing to become a QuickBooks expert let's talk about becoming a QuickBooks expert from the perspective of building a skill set. And then separately being known as a QuickBooks expert from the perspective of just marketing. Like, you know, can can [00:02:00] customers pay you more than the average because you are an expert in QuickBooks? And again, I said QuickBooks expert. I got to be careful with that. So because you are an expert in QuickBooks. So because your expertise lays on using QuickBooks and fixing QuickBooks files or whatever, people come to you and you get more business because it makes no sense to become an expert in QuickBooks if you're not going to get a better job, or if you're not going to get more clients, if you're an independent accountant or ProAdvisor or whatever. So let's talk about from the perspective of building a skill set. We'll start with that because Alicia [00:02:30] is the author of like a gazillion books of QuickBooks, both desktop and online books for end users, books for universities. Alicia is the resident expert in education for QuickBooks. So I'll start picking your brain, Alicia, about okay, what kind of books, what kind of written material can people invest in to become an expert in QuickBooks?

Alicia: Well, I've written a couple textbooks that are available to the public through a through a company called quest. So if you go to Kristeva consultants.com, [00:03:00] I actually wrote a book about QuickBooks where you can learn how to use it step by step by step, like literally click this, type this in this field, press tab. And it really helps you understand the the process behind each of the forms and how it all links together. But not everybody is going to learn from books. You know, there's also training videos from myself, and you've got a course on Lynda.com, and I have a whole library breaking it up into little bite sized [00:03:30] pieces. So one way, two ways of learning are using a book where it actually explains it and walks you through the processes. Another way is watching videos, and the most important way is actually your hands on experience.

Hector: Yeah, well, let's talk about the hands on experience because that's sort of like the tricky part. So let's talk about how like, okay, if you don't have a live client to work with right now okay. And you want to become an expert in QuickBooks, obviously there's a big gap between not having a QuickBooks file to [00:04:00] play with and becoming an expert in QuickBooks. Well, what can you immediately do right now?

Alicia: So you can go to Craig's Landscaping, which is the text, the test drive file. And so if you go to quote intuit.com/reader read I r like redirect slash test drive. There's a sample file that's kind of a playground sandbox where you can try things out and see how it works, and then it resets itself every three hours. So every time you go in, you get a completely fresh [00:04:30] data set. And there's also one for QuickBooks Online Advanced. It's that same URL Intuit com slash reader editor slash test drive underscore us underscore advanced. And that allows you to play around with the QuickBooks online advanced features because there's a lot more of them.

Hector: I don't know why QuickBooks doesn't have an easier URL for the test drive. Like why does it have to be so weird? Why can it just be like quickbooks.com/test drive? Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox for a second. One thing is worth mentioning is [00:05:00] the test drive is great. We use it all the time to test our app. We write tool. We log in to the sample file and see if the features are working the way they're supposed to. But if you're working on something and let's say you're entering a bunch of information and you go out to have lunch and come back, if it logs you out, it's going to get reset, which is good. That's, that's that's how sample files should work. As an educator. Right. Creating videos or creating content, blogs, even books like you do. Alicia, you want the experience to be consistent for every student at [00:05:30] any point in time that they log in, they log in in January, or they log in in December, and they looked at the 90 days worth of transactions. They should rotate dynamically based on when you load that up. And QuickBooks has done a fabulous job doing that. This is much better than with QuickBooks desktop. With QuickBooks desktop, the desktop file, you have sample files, but they all have fixed dates again. And that's also.

Alicia: 1998.

Hector: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. And these fixed dates were sometimes are in the future, sometimes are in the past. What's really nice about the QuickBooks [00:06:00] online sample files that you always have sort of fresh data, yesterday's transaction type of thing. So I love that. But again, it won't help you to do sort of a long term project. So for a long term project, what you want to do is you want to create a 30 day free trial. What are your thoughts about that?

Alicia: Well, there's the 30 day free trial, but then it's only good for that 30 days. Another approach that you could take is you could make a free Cuba file the QuickBooks online for [00:06:30] accountants file. Now, I'm not encouraging everybody to go out and just make a million of those Cuba accounts because they are specifically for accountants. But if you need a test file or you want to put your personal transactions in there, which is another really good way of practicing QuickBooks, or you need a sandbox for training or, you know, there's a lot of different reasons you can make one of those free companies. And then that way you have an ongoing file where you can test [00:07:00] things out.

Hector: Look, no matter what, I think you need a fresh file. You need a clean file to test it on. Because part of being an expert in QuickBooks is not just knowing how to use QuickBooks. Well, it's knowing how QuickBooks interacts with external things. So how does QuickBooks bring in data from Chase or PayPal? Or how does QuickBooks bring in data from Spotify? I mean, from Shopify or from Amazon? Like how does QuickBooks interact with third party POS systems or payroll systems? So [00:07:30] part of being an expert in QuickBooks is not just using QuickBooks. It's understanding how other systems through the API, through the integrations, talk to QuickBooks. And you have to have a file that you can just sample sync and see how that works. So you understand how data comes in from third party software. That is part of being an expert in QuickBooks.

Alicia: Because you can't do that in Craig's Landscaping. You can't do that with the sample file.

Hector: You cannot correct. You need to have a separate file. So all right. So so we have Alicia's books. We have my YouTube channel. [00:08:00] We have other YouTubers that create QuickBooks videos. We have LinkedIn learning I have a course there. We have Royal Wise which is Alicia's database of of awesome courses. One of the ways people can can like what about going to school? Is there like a school for QuickBooks? What are your thoughts on that?

Alicia: Well, it's actually interesting that there's not a lot of academic programs for QuickBooks. Like even if you take a get an accounting degree, you're lucky if you get a half a semester or maybe a semester specifically [00:08:30] in the software, because they don't want to pick a piece of software, they want to be agnostic. And so sometimes community colleges will have the night classes or supplementary classes that you can take that will teach you how to use QuickBooks. So that's another route that you can take.

Hector: I'll give you a warning about those. Those are slow. The community college.

Alicia: Program. Yeah.

Hector: Yeah they're slow. So it's interesting because you go out and look at one of Alicia's courses. Right. [00:09:00] Like I'm sure you have a course on like an A through Z fundamentals of QuickBooks. And the course is probably, what, four hours, five hours, six, six hours. Okay. So people look at a six hour course and they're like, okay, it's six hours, okay. They have nothing else to compare it with. Then you look at a university or a local community college course and it's 18 weeks and every and every week is, let's say two hours. It's like 36 hours. And you go, well, you know, if it costs me about the same to get a six hour class versus a 36 hour class, I mean, if you're looking at just [00:09:30] that, obviously you're going to go for the 36 hour class. But think about it. If you are a fast learner, if you already have an accounting degree, if you already have been playing with QuickBooks in 18 week class is going to bore you to death. I mean, it's absolutely just way too slow. If you if you know nothing and you're starting from zero and you just graduated from high school, then that will be fine because you're going to have a whole bunch of other people, career changers and stuff like that that will attend those courses, and you're all going to go about the same [00:10:00] speed. But when you're a fast learner, I think this sort of online, you know, five, six hour chunks, if you know how to use them correctly, they're going to be much, just much more useful for you, right?

Alicia: Well, my five and six hour class, my six hour class is still just showing you how to do an invoice and take a payment and deposit it. The books that I have with Kristeva consultants.com are more step by step approach. And I actually have classes that use those textbooks right on my website. And I don't [00:10:30] even think I've told you, Hector, but I am releasing a QuickBooks desktop course, like this week and publishing a book on Amazon that was originally based on Doug Slater's original textbook that probably trained thousands of the people listening to this right now. And so I've got a new course for desktop that's again, that's step by step, click by click with videos of watching me actually doing it so you can follow along. And that course, that course is designed to be probably 12 weeks. Realistically [00:11:00] it's pretty dense.

Hector: So it's 2023 and you're just publishing a QuickBooks desktop course. Well, tell us about like, should we even should we? Should we learn QuickBooks desktop? That's a big question. Should we bother learning a QuickBooks desktop?

Alicia: Well, my my thought actually in teaching the course is that now that Intuit education is no longer supporting desktop training, if I put out a QuickBooks desktop course, then I'm going to be one of the only people left in the market with a good [00:11:30] solid desktop training. So that's one of the reasons why I went ahead and am republishing this book and this course. But yeah, there's still a place for desktop. I mean, yeah, I would say probably we've got maybe ten years left in the life cycle, but that's still ten years of getting business done. There's no manufacturing and assemblies in Cuba, and we don't have the level of job costing that a large construction company needs. So there's still a place for desktop. Desktop is not dead [00:12:00] yet.

Hector: No, I'm with you there. I'm probably one of the few people that still create QuickBooks desktop videos in YouTube. It still gets tons of views, so I don't know what the total number of QuickBooks desktop users is right now.

Alicia: Declining. Yeah.

Hector: It's declining that. We know that for a fact. But but I know that QuickBooks desktop enterprise users are over 100,000 and that one is not declining. And that's because even the advanced version can't do a lot of the stuff that enterprise can [00:12:30] do when it comes to like job costing and inventory, as you mentioned. So there will be there still is a market for QuickBooks desktop. And if you become an expert in QuickBooks desktop, just like Alicia is one of the few creating the course, you'll also be one of the few experts in QuickBooks desktop. So right now I'm seeing that the average rate that we're able to charge as a company and still be competitive with a QuickBooks desktop consultation is much higher than with a QuickBooks online. And the reason [00:13:00] for that is because QuickBooks online has less buttons for you to break QuickBooks, which sounds like a good thing. But as a consultant, I love having more buttons. Not because they can break it, because there's just more things to do, so there's more moving parts that the end users obviously value. The complexity of understanding a more complex software, and they pay the consultants more. So there is some value in the short term to becoming an expert in QuickBooks desktop, because there's not that much supply [00:13:30] and there's still some demand.

Hector: But long term, your biggest ROI would be on QuickBooks online, obviously. Now, the one thing that I will add here to the argument is, and people come back and say, Hector, why are you even talking about QuickBooks desktop or Alicia? Why would you even train? Show people how to use QuickBooks desktop, QuickBooks online, you can add an inventory app, and it can do this, and you can add a construction app. You can do that. But yeah, but good luck finding a course or a book that talks specifically on how to use that app and QuickBooks and also [00:14:00] take, take in mind that these apps move a lot faster than QuickBooks instead of development. So by the time you publish a course on anything with QuickBooks online and an app within six months is stale because they changed the screens, they changed the way it works in the back end. People criticize the way the items map or the accounts map, so they change the workflow of the setup. I mean, there's so many moving parts with these third party apps that it's almost impossible to write educational content for it. So the only way to really, truly learn a [00:14:30] QuickBooks online and app is to actually have it and have real data, which what makes it so difficult for somebody to become an expert at.

Alicia: Yeah. And, you know, going back to our original question of, well, how do you learn QuickBooks online? Because we know that there's no better way to learn than to do, but you don't want to be practicing and making mistakes in your clients files. So one of the biggest recommendations that I can make is when you make when you sign up for QuickBooks online for accountants, [00:15:00] you get a free copy of QuickBooks Online Advanced with payroll. And for those of you who speaking to the accounting firms out there, where your QuickBooks for your own company is in desktop, import that into Qbo and then get used to it because you know your data, you know your workflows. And so then you can translate that into QuickBooks online. And then that's one of the ways of teaching yourself how to use it.

Hector: Yeah. Well one of the major misconceptions [00:15:30] is because they call it a conversion. People feel that when you have a desktop file and you upload it to because that's what you're doing, you're uploading it to QuickBooks online. You have converted, right? Which means that like you're one, you're not the other one anymore. And that's not how it works.

Alicia: You've migrated I think it's you.

Hector: Migrated and you have two copies of the data. So you could run in parallel. You could run QuickBooks online in parallel to QuickBooks desktop. And you can kind of compare how the how the two work and one way of becoming an expert in QuickBooks online without having to [00:16:00] break your current QuickBooks desktop system is just do this migration. Stay in QuickBooks desktop if you need to, and then on the side, play with the QuickBooks online with familiar data data that you're that you're used to working with, run reports and stuff like that. And then you can break anything you want in QuickBooks online, because your QuickBooks desktop is still the source of truth or the other way, right? If you migrate to online, online is the new source of truth, then you can migrate twice, migrate to company A, migrate to company B, have one live one, and one that you play with. Again, [00:16:30] you get a 30 day free trial, and past the free trial you will have to pay the monthly fee, but people forget that you can make these sort of duplicates of the files to play with the QuickBooks data.

Alicia: If you're going.

Alicia: To do that though, keep in mind that you are now working in parallel, so you've got twice as much work to do, and then you have to make a decision. At what point are you ready to cut over? If you if you're within 60 days, you can actually purge your qbo and then re import your desk, your desktop data. But if you're [00:17:00] outside that 60 days, you may wind up having to make a whole new file in order to once you're finally ready to go live. So if you're taking Hector's advice and doing it in parallel, be careful that you've got a time constriction on you, and you should really be doing your major data input in Qbo and then using the desktop and backup if you have to. Otherwise you're going to have to do it all again.

Hector: Yeah. And we have a we have a bullet point. We were brainstorming on this episode, [00:17:30] bullet point of like, all the other pointers that you can have to become an expert in QuickBooks. So one is and you mentioned this earlier is create a file QuickBooks online file, even if it's a free trial. Connect all your personal stuff your personal bank account, your personal credit card account. Pretend it's a business every time you have a deposit that's a sale or something. And all the expenses are business expenses, although they might be personal stuff. But just like, try to, like, pretend that's real data. You're familiar with it. The information is coming in. You use. That's one important.

Alicia: One. Use each of your family [00:18:00] members as a different class, and then you can make tags for like vacation and eating out. And so that you can practice using tags. And so you get creative with using the different features in different ways with your personal data. My personal file is actually more complex than my business file.

Hector: Oh, totally. It's going to have a lot because if you want to, you want to do like the way kind of profit first talks about the individual bank accounts for separate budgets. Okay. So in the personal in personal financial planning I think that [00:18:30] was called the envelopes or something. The envelope system where you put so much money in the envelope for the vacation, or so much money for the upgrade of the bathroom and so much money for the college or whatever. And it's all like, sort of like stacking cash away in different places in your house, separated by envelope. You know, you don't have to stash the money away. All the money can stay in the bank, but then you can use the tags or classes or locations or whatever to QuickBooks.

Alicia: Organize QuickBooks QuickBooks checking actually works really well for personal files, because it gets the interest rate, and you can create all [00:19:00] of those different envelopes so you can put money away for vacations and put money away for Christmas presents. And then that money becomes untouchable. And then you have it when you're when you need it.

Alicia: Yeah.

Hector: One thing I find interesting is there isn't a QuickBooks checking style product for the personal finance yet. At least, you know, like if you if you're using mint or you're using Credit Karma, all the like personal products into it has, you know, why isn't there a, you know, a personal bank account that can take advantage of this envelope sort [00:19:30] of system, but that's different than using class locations and tags. So just want to make sure you remember that, you know, if you use QuickBooks checking and you you subdivide the cash in your bank by this envelopes is not the same thing as using class locations or tags. If you really want to become an expert in QuickBooks, I think the class location and tag will actually get you closer to what like a business would do, right? So I think it's a good point to make, but I think, I think the first point of using class locations and tags is much better, I think. Esther Friedman [00:20:00] carp feedback from Canada I think one of the things she was known for is she used a QuickBooks file to plan a batmitzvah, and I think it was just amazing, like she showed us, you know, how how she used a desktop system, a desktop accounting system to plan a very personal thing.

Hector: And then she she showed us how she created accounts and subaccounts and classes and customers as they invited and showed us that basically all you're doing is, is you're it's just a database. It's a financial database. And you're organizing things in whichever way, shape or form. And [00:20:30] once you sort of transcend that, this is just a check or just an expense or just a deposit, you transcend that and you understand that QuickBooks is essentially a database of stuff, and reports is the way you organize that stuff in a way that it makes sense for business. You start sort of like, you know, like in The Matrix, when you start seeing the ones and the zeros and stuff, you start really seeing like the accounting is beyond just accounting. It's a database of data. And then once you understand how the database works, you'll be much better at manipulating the reports later on.

Alicia: I [00:21:00] want to shift it a little bit. Going back to the overall question of how do you learn QuickBooks online? The ProAdvisor program has a certification, and when you have a A account, if you look in your left hand navigation, you'll see something that says ProAdvisor. And then when you click on ProAdvisor, there's two tabs, one for benefits and one for training. And when you head into the training, there's training on using the software. There's training on payroll. There's all kinds of stuff in there. There's walk through trainings [00:21:30] where you can go through and read about things and then answer questions about it. There's the they also point you to the videos, which you can also get at QB training Events.com, which are free trainings, video trainings. Hector and I are sometimes the presenters, or sometimes the little elves in the background on the Q&A, and all of that material supports the certification tests. And there's two different certification tests. There's a basic certification we and in the back call it core certification. But you don't see the word core anywhere. [00:22:00] And that's the certification that every single ProAdvisor should get. Which is basically like what does this button do? What does this feature do. And you know, it's good for knowing what buttons to click and what the software does.

Alicia: Yeah.

Hector: So we have the Intuit webinars that are pretty much weekly at this point. It's QB trading events. Dot com is what it is. We have the ProAdvisor program courses that are all certifications because there's basic bookkeeping. [00:22:30] There's basic like advisory for for accountants. And then there's some that actually lead to a certification like QuickBooks Online Core, QuickBooks Online Advance, and I believe QuickBooks Online Payroll is a new certification. You definitely want to exploit those. Like if you want to become an expert in QuickBooks and you don't, at least sign up for the ProAdvisor program, the free version and become certified in everything that it has. There's really no hope for you if you can't get past that. So so so you could save this whole 20 minutes of this episode and just.

Alicia: Go to ProAdvisor, [00:23:00] go.

Hector: To ProAdvisor dot Intuit comm get every certification, especially specifically the advanced certification.

Alicia: That's where I was going to go next. Yeah.

Hector: Why is the advanced certification so important, Alicia, and why only 10% of the ProAdvisor is advanced?

Alicia: Well, QuickBooks Online's regular certification tells you what buttons to click, but QuickBooks Online Advanced Certification is knowing how to use the product. And don't get confused about advanced QuickBooks Online Advanced the version, and QuickBooks Online Advanced [00:23:30] Certification. It's not certification in the advanced software. It's being an advanced ProAdvisor. And when I'm looking to hire somebody, I don't want somebody with a regular certification. I insist that they have the advanced certification because that's focusing on how to use the software, how to what to do in unusual circumstances. What do you do if you accidentally charge somebody sales tax and you need to refund their sales tax, you know, unusual [00:24:00] situations, how to game the system and obscure features that you might not use in your day to day. So it's the things that are more occasional use. And that's really what distinguishes you as an expert.

Hector: Yeah. So troubleshooting and error cleanup basically. And that's what experts in QuickBooks get paid the big bucks for right. Troubleshooting something that's not working because sometimes it's user error or the data doesn't jive in a certain way. Or the [00:24:30] third party app is not integrating or cleaning up a mess. And these are these are what the best experts get paid the most, get the most for. And I believe that if you invest in it, there will be ROI at the end. The last tip here that I have is actually two. One is offer to help a friend do it even for free. So help us open a small business and do it for free. Like what would be some pros and cons of doing that?

Alicia: Well, the con of doing it is that you're spending your time doing it for free. There's [00:25:00] also the possibility that you don't know what you're doing yet, but if you're not directly responsible on a legal and professional level for the data, you're just kind of helping them out. And that gives you an opportunity to see how people are using QuickBooks and to learn what to look for, because an expertise is being able to just look at a set of data and know what's wrong with it, knowing when something is out of place and that's the skill that you really want to develop. And that's where looking at somebody else's QuickBooks really comes into play. [00:25:30]

Hector: And lastly, an unpaid internship, like how would you go about getting an unpaid internship? What do you think?

Alicia: Alicia I'm other than being in an academic program, I'm not exactly sure how you would go about that. If you're part of a community college class, frequently having an internship is a requirement for your degree. Otherwise, just a normal business. It's you're just still kind of volunteering to help a company with their books.

Hector: Yeah, I guess you could call a local accounting firm [00:26:00] and say, I think that you should have something in terms of certification or degree or whatever. And first, so you can call a local accounting firm, a CPA firm and say, hey, I just graduated from college or I just became a ProAdvisor. I just like you have to have something that's sort of like the pivotal catalyst for them to go, oh, okay. This person did the minimal effort to know a little bit about it. It's just not some drifter that wants to come in and learn for free, right? And say, hey, I'm looking for internships. Do you need any help with bookkeeping or data entry? [00:26:30] I do have this core knowledge, but I want to apply it and I'm open for an internship. So basically it means working for free. At the end of the day.

Alicia: It's just really super important that if you're going to take that route, that you ask a lot of questions because you don't want to make mistakes in books that somebody else is accountable for, because that will come back around. And one more recommendation that I can really make is getting a mentor, finding a coach. And there's, you know, having a business coach is one thing, but having a QuickBooks coach is another one where [00:27:00] you can actually ask questions of somebody who has expertise. And that role is being filled a lot of the time by Facebook groups, for example, or LinkedIn learning groups, where you can go and ask questions. And it's important to have that. But I also really recommend, if you can find somebody who has that expertise, where they can look at your books with you and make suggestions or show you what you're doing wrong, that is a really valuable approach. It is a service that I do offer through my gold membership, and I have a lot of colleagues [00:27:30] who offer the same similar programs.

Hector: Yeah, to be clear, this whole mentorship thing is people think that mentors are like just hanging out, waiting for somebody to pick them. That's not really a thing. And in some cases, some people have been mentored at no cost to them. Let's just just call it like that. No, actual there wasn't a price of admission to get into that. Mentor, let's call it that. Some people have been lucky enough where they've had a mentor type of relationship in the past. But if you go if you're trying to become an expert in QuickBooks and your approach is, let me [00:28:00] go find the mentor, this is going to cost you, this is not going to be like somebody will pick you up and grab you under their wing for no reason whatsoever. Again, maybe not. Maybe you start as an unpaid intern and then maybe you get a job, and then maybe at that firm somebody mentors you, so to speak. But like, you're not going to find mentors. There's no mentors out there just waiting to give their time for free to help you build a whole career.

Alicia: But there are people who do have paid programs like myself who specialize in that, and it can be really helpful because then you get that confidence [00:28:30] of learning what you do know and discovering what you don't.

Hector: I agree 100%. That wraps it up. Just quick reminder in the show notes we have the email for the show. Email us if there's any questions. If there's something we didn't cover specifically having to do with becoming an expert in QuickBooks, and we'll try to address it and cover it in the show in the future.

Alicia: All right. Thanks, Hector. This was a great topic.