Author: Ndukwe Ukabi

Foreign Exchange Transactions involve purchases or sales in currencies different from your local currency, and as such, requires effective tracking of exchange rates as the exchange rate is known to be in constant fluctuation.

As a business owner who pays for services or transacts in other country’s currencies, you need a flexible and simple financial software that will help you track banking transactions on your domiciliary accounts and reports, realized or unrealized gain/loss, in a manner that is easy to understand.

We have been deploying QuickBooks for small businesses in different career fields, we have seen variations in foreign exchange transactions, and we have helped our clients found a lasting solution to tracking their Foreign Exchange Transactions using the QuickBooks. The tips shared here works well on Pro, Premier & Enterprise Edition of the QuickBooks.

Here are key outlines you should understand when recording Foreign Exchange Transactions in QuickBooks:

• Activating multiple currencies.
• Add your domiciliary accounts & exchange rate.
• Updating your exchange rate daily, weekly or monthly.
• Funding your domiciliary account via BDCs.
• Transfers from your domiciliary account via BDCs.
• Tracking unrealized gain or loss on your domiciliary account.

Activating Multiple Currencies 

The first step to exploring the multi-currency features of QuickBooks is to activate your home currency. QuickBooks accounting software generates your financial report in a selected home currency and as such, needs to know your currency built.

To activate multiple currencies in QuickBooks:

• Go to Edit>Preference>Multiple Currencies.
• Select “Yes! I use more than one currencies”.
• Click the drop-down, view more currencies and select your home currencies – for the purpose of this guide, I will select Nigeria Naira as my home currency.

Add Your Domiciliary Accounts & Exchange Rate.

After activating the multiple currencies, the next step is to load all the domiciliary accounts held in their respective banks and their various balances. The same way you add your bank accounts in QuickBooks is also applicable here; but on the currency drop-down, select the currency in which the balances are held. For instance, if I want to add a USD domiciliary account, I will select US dollars under the currency list. The next step is to click “Enter Opening Balance” to add the US dollar balance as at selected date and then enter the latest exchange rate. You might ask; is it the CBN official rate or parallel market rate? Whichever one you are to choose will depend on the rate at which you fund your account.

N.B. QuickBooks is designed to automatically update exchange rate of companies whose home currencies are USD, EURO or GBP.  Exchange rates are relatively stable, and the presence of multiple currencies dealers is largely minimal. But, currencies outside these three requires manual updates.

Updating Your Exchanges Rate Daily, Weekly or Monthly.

As exchange rates fluctuate daily, you are also expected to update your QuickBooks Accounting Software so that all your foreign currency balances will reflect the current status of your business bank account, and if there is an unrealized gain or loss, the system will report accordingly.

Continue reading “Foreign Exchange Transactions and the QuickBooks Software.”

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The business of insurance brokerage is classified as a serviced based business like consulting firms. Therefore, the simple and straightforward procedures we followed when implementing the QuickBooks for consulting firms are exactly what we will adopt here. You may want to ask; why then are we doing a review of QuickBooks for insurance brokerage companies when we had already posted several tips on how serviced based companies can use the accounting software? Here is the reason – unlike a consulting firm, the money received (Premium) from the clients is not recognized as revenue. Only a percentage of that amount (Premium) is treated as “brokerage”, while the rest is payable to the insurance service provider. Hence, the need to understand how this can be implemented in QuickBooks can never be overemphasized.

In this guide, we will be sharing practical tips on how insurance companies can deploy QuickBooks for effective cash flow and financial management:

 

Clients.

The Customer centre in QuickBooks allows you to manage your customers, see their outstanding balances and track recent transactions. As an insurance agent, this window will help you add all the clients who are currently subscribed to insurance covers and if there are premium receivable from these clients, you can also enter the value at the beginning balance date. The payable is not supposed to be treated as an income. Here, you will learn the simple trick to map them to your liability account!

N.B.  Deleting a client on the system cannot easily be processed until all pending balances are cleared.

 

Insurance Companies.

These are the real service providers and as such, should be treated as vendors under the “Vendor Centre”. When adding the insurance service providers, you should take proper note of all premium payables in your books to avoid misrepresentation on premium payable reports. While you can easily add more vendors, the same restriction on deleting names of clients also applies here too.

 

Tracking Your Commission on Premium.

When clients pay a premium, be reminded that only a percentage of the value is recognisable as commission income in your profit or loss while the rest should be treated as a liability or payable, which is to be remitted to the insurance companies.

How then can we treat this in QuickBooks? Here is what you should do:

• Create a service item called “premium” and map it, under the income account drop down to a “premium payable account (account type: liability) and save.
• Create another item type for “other charge” and enter the agreed percentage of premium you are entitled to and map it to the income account; this is the actual income (brokerage) that will be displayed on your profit or loss report. Failure to follow this important steps means, “all premium received will be wrongly posted as income”.
• On the invoice window, select a line item for the premium paid and another line for the commission income.
• As the cash is paid into your bank, you are also expected to use “record deposit” on QuickBooks to record all inflows to your bank accounts.

 

For Premium Paid To The Insurance Companies On Behalf Of Clients.

Since all premium paid by your clients sits in your bank account, it is usual for you to pay off the payables by remitting all premium received to the insurance. QuickBooks displays all premium payables with the “pay bills” available to help you make payment from your bank account to a selected vendor (insurance company). Before you make payment, you need to have setup your banks and their respective balances.

The same way you make payment for the premium on behalf of clients, that is how you record all administrative expenses from your petty cash.

 

Bank Reconciliation

At the end of the month, you are expected to reconcile your bank balances with your QuickBooks cleared balances; use the reconciliation window to process all missing transactions in your bank statements like credit transfers, bank charges, dishonoured credit, uncredited cheque etc. The end point of your reconciliation is that the beginning balance of the following month in QuickBooks should corresponds with what you have in your bank.

While these are few of the basic deliverables of implementing QuickBooks for an insurance brokerage firm, you are free to talk to our consultants on specific areas we can solve your toughest accounting challenges. Connect with us at:

14A, Bayo Dejunwo Street,

Maryland, Ikeja,

Lagos, Nigeria.

E-mail: info@accountingsoftware.com.ng

Phone no: +2348105090001.

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As at when this post was published, we had just concluded a training and the Chart of Account cleanup for one of our clients in the telecommunication industry. They are a fast-growing smartphone and accessories enterprise whose finance is already being managed on the QuickBooks Enterprise. Of all of their challenges shared with us, the major concern was that they have outlets in different locations, both within and outside Lagos, but could not record inventory transfers in QuickBooks Enterprise when smartphones are issued from the warehouse to various sales outlet. The reason for this challenge is simple, it is simply because they were not subscribed to Advanced Inventory Module.

If you are familiar with QuickBooks Enterprise, you would know that there is a module called “Advanced Inventory”, which is an additional feature only available to subscribers. It has the added advantage of allowing you to effectively manage your inventories, set up multiple warehouses or locations, and record inventory transfers.

For a retail store with multiple warehouse or branches in different locations, inventory transfer is part of their operations as these sub-outlets expect what they sell to come from their head office, while the head office in turn records such in their book for proper accountability. Another major area is sales; considering the fact the branches are also meant to be profit centres, Management needs to track their sales performance. Categorization matters here as it will not be proper for all income earned to be treated under an account head.

The scenario painted here depicts my client’s needs. The QuickBooks Enterprise they are currently running is not subscribed to “Advanced Inventory Module” as they felt it was expensive; not because of the fee (which was $1400 for a user license), but the fact that it is a recurring bill that is not priced on a user license. Rather, it is priced on up to 30 concurrent users. Although, businesses running in Nigeria are affected by several challenges, such investment and expenses will help them get their accounting and financial management right, yet it is on the high side and it is deemed out of range for management’s budget.

Our team was invited to overhaul the challenge, and proffer a workable solution that will track inventory transfers, generate inventory report of each outlet and their sales figure on a real time.

Continue reading “How To Setup Multiple Locations, Do Inventory Transfer In QuickBooks Without Advanced Inventory.”

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We had a meeting with one of our new clients who runs an established business in the hospitality industry here in Lagos, they needed an accounting software that will track all sales transactions on room booking, and bar sales at the back end office. Although, they already have a hotel management software for front-end sales, the major accounting features required to get necessary financial reports available were still missing out. So, ultimately, you would expect that the only solution is to import all daily sales transactions from the hotel software into QuickBooks which was our recommended path. But here is the challenge, the CFO also wanted all their past transactions in the last three (3) to be keyed into the accounting software so that they won’t miss out some transactions for reference purposes, here are what we did:

• We designed an IIF excel spreadsheet that will import all sales transactions into QuickBooks 

An IIF excel file is QuickBooks’ recommended spreadsheet format for importing bulk transactions, which could run for 5-10 years, by mapping each account heads and types into their necessary chart of accounts so that when each account head is imported, they are rightly reported in their financials. For instance, when we imported sales transactions, we expected the income heads and their corresponding accounts which could be cash or receivables, depending on whether cash was paid or not, to be displayed in the profit or loss account. 

• We downloaded the bank statement for the past years & imported into QuickBooks

While the IIF file handles the sales side of the prior year’s transactions, the bank statement shows all the payment made by their customers via direct transfer or POS and the expenses incurred so far, so it’s expected that by the time we import all banking transactions, they should have their prior year’s transactions in QuickBooks and when anyone reviews it, it would look like they have been using QuickBooks since inception.

I have already shared a guide on how we imported payments from school management portal into QuickBooks – This is not different from what we deployed in the hotel except that we added a new column that tracks expenses (cheque/withdrawal).

Like I said in that post, integration of third-party applications with QuickBooks is seamless on the latest version of at most 2-3 years. So, if you are still using an outdated version, you might need to upgrade before we implement.

While these tips can help hotel get started faster, it is still adapted to businesses in other industries. If you have prior years’ transactions in excel and looking for a solution that will help you push them into an accounting software, feel free to contact our support department, send a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or call 08105090001

The flexibility of QuickBooks accounting software makes it the preferred accounting software for us at BigResources Solutions – We interact with several business owners in divers’ fields of work. With our experience and professional expertise around implementations, we were able to excellently resolve the toughest challenge of one of our clients, and we are also able to provide you with the simple tweak you need to perfect your accounting system.

Recently, we were at one of our client’s office who had previously installed QuickBooks. He was still having challenges in tracking school fees payment on a real-time. At the beginning of the term, there were countless credit flows from parents into the schools’ corporate account, the accounting staff were not able to manually input all the transactions due to limited manpower compared to the number of students in the school. This led to a delay in report submission to the management as they could not generate a list of all the students and their receivables faster.

Click Here – See How QuickBooks works for Private School Management

Based on our technical expertise in accounting software and application integration, our professional team was called on to help resolve this challenge.

The school currently has a school management portal deployed to help manage all their registers, teachers assessment of each student, exam scores etc., but what we needed from the portal was a detailed report of school fees payment (CSV format) so that our application can read it and import into QuickBooks.

After reaching a deal, we contacted the web portal developer to help us re-format the CSV format of the payment report using our QuickBooks acceptable file – this is very crucial as QuickBooks developers’ documentation for importing payment transactions clearly states an acceptable format and required details – data of payment, name of customers (which in this case are the students), amount paid, and the bank receiving the flow.

Moving ahead, we installed our application on the administrator’s system where the company file is domiciled, so that all import can be easily pushed into their necessary ledgers. But there was still an issue; the desktop based offline application could not connect to the QuickBooks Charts of Account nor display existing students as it is in the QuickBooks. On troubleshooting, we noticed that the client’s QuickBooks desktop version was 2013 and Intuit QuickBooks has stopped supporting such version. We tested the application on my system since I have the latest version and it worked. We had to back up the company file, upgrade the QuickBooks Pro 2013 software to QuickBooks Pro 2017 and then restored the file to the new version. This fixed it!

We eventually connected to the recently installed QuickBooks and ran our first payment import from the school portal into QuickBooks – all the invoice balances (amount due) were knocked off by the actual amount paid while their corresponding banks were credited.

I am excited that our solution helped our client to solve their toughest challenge and now, they can process hundreds of payment transactions into QuickBooks in less than a minute; a workflow that would have taken about 3 hours if done manually.

You might want to know if we can adapt our solution to your existing business. Yes, we can! We can help you import your banking transactions into QuickBooks!

Request for a meeting with our accounting software expert by sending a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or call 08105090001

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Last week was a very busy one for us; a popular real estate and property management company here in Lagos called our office to help solve one of their toughest financial challenges. By organising their tenants’ record in QuickBooks according to properties. We implemented a simple system that tracks rental payment from these tenants and also helps to generate a report on the performance of various properties located in Ikeja, Ikoyi and Yaba, Lagos State. Although this type of implementation is not new to us as we had earlier shared a YouTube video on how property managers can explore QuickBooks for effective financial management. But the fact that the owner is interested in remote and unrestricted access financial reports from anywhere in the world makes the project an interesting one.

First, we gave a recommendation on the best QuickBooks version to install, and also, we recommended that it should be saved on a cloud folder on Premier Desktop. Why these recommendations? They needed 4 users – one at each property management office and the fourth for the manager who was interested in the reporting side of the software.

Another reason why we recommended desktop software was that they have a robust cloud server that is accessible from anywhere, all you need to do is to call the IP Address on an internet-enabled PC and log on to the company’s file; which means, staff can also update property information outside the office.

You can learn more about our QuickBooks Premier User License Software  & Prices here

Customizing QuickBooks for a property management company is a straightforward process if you understand the key reporting requirements of your client. For us, we consider these important points:

• Properties & Locations
• Tenants
• Rent Collections & Service Charges
• Security Deposit
• Property Maintenance & Repairs
• Remittance to Landlords/Property Owners
• Report

If there are more specific areas of the property management business, outside the key points mentioned, we always request for such information so that some vital parts of setup aren’t skipped.

So, let’s look at how QuickBooks can be customized for a property manager:

Properties & Locations

Every real estate business starts from the asset they own, which is the unit that generates cash flow via rent and service charge. In QuickBooks, we set the various properties up as an asset – added as a customer (find the reason why we do this under Tenant Setup) and create a class. The class feature allows you track all revenue earned and expenses incurred on a particular property, so you can easily view the financial position of each of the properties you manage.

 

Tenants

In setting up all your tenants on the system, it will be completely unprofessional if you add all the names of the people occupying your properties without grouping them by property type and locations – this is the reason why we added the properties type as customers. Then import the tenants as a job classified under the property units they occupy. Apart from an organised reporting output, you can also generate a well detailed report on tenants, balances and the rent receivable of each property at every point in time. For instance, if you have a landlord who wants to see all the tenants occupying his/her properties at Ikoyi, you will easily generate such property specific report if these tenants are rightly grouped under the properties they currently occupy.

Also, when adding tenants to the properties they occupy, we also took into account, rent dues from each tenant, service charge payable and security deposits paid (if any) so that reports on transactions with these tenants can be accurate. For advanced payment or prepaid rent, just add a minus (-) to the figure on the balance field, or else, the figure will be tracked as receivable instead of rent.

Rent Collections, Commission & Service Charges.

The major source of income for a property manager is not rent but the commission portion of the rent paid by the tenant. Service charge is also an income but at times, it’s mostly spent on repair and maintenance.

Let’s discuss the process of setting these up in QuickBooks:

First, add “Rent” and “Service Charge” as services on the item list window and map them to their respective income account under the account drop-down. Without this, you can’t create an invoice for rent or service charge due, on a monthly or annual basis.

After this step, go ahead to create an invoice, map it to the properties the tenants occupy, print and send to your respective tenants. Without selecting the class, you will not be able to determine easily which property generated X amount, and what is expected from the other properties.

The email feature on the Invoice Window makes the distribution seamless as you can send an e-copy to all your tenants online.

The Receive Payment Window allows you to record payment made by a tenant, which could be an instalment or final payment of the invoice sent earlier. You can also select the bank account the fund is domiciled, and at the end of the period, check your bank statement in QuickBooks using the “register option under banking” to view all rents paid into your account and other banking transactions – bank charges, payments, and cash balances.

Security Deposit

For payment made as a security deposit, it should not be treated as an income because it’s a payment that is refundable to the tenants. Although this is rare in practice but the accounting treatment remains the same.

Go to “Record Deposit” in QuickBooks, select the tenants that made the payment, the bank where the money is paid into and Security Deposit, under the “From Account” – It’s assumed that you already have security deposit added to your Chart of Accounts as a current liability.

Property Maintenance & Repairs

This is not different from your normal expenses but you should select the properties such expenses are incurred on under the class drop-down; this is where you map your spending to the property so that your profit or loss by class can show you what you spent at the end of a specified period.

For instance, if I pay a plumber to fix the toilet at Ikoyi properties, write check records and the amount paid, while the class feature lets me state the property such expenses were incurred on.

Remittance to Landlord     

The figure you should recognise as an income for your property management business is not the rental fees paid by tenants but the commission portion agreed with the property owners (the landlord) – even though the money is paid into your bank account, you still need to pay the landlord the actual amount owned (tracked as remittance to landlord). Before you do that, ensure that you have added “Remittance to Landlord” on your Chart of Account setups under the “cost of sales”.

To pay the landlord, use the “write check” window – on the bank account drop-down, select the bank where payment will be debited from, enter the actual amount you are remitting to the landlord’s account, then select “remittance to landlord” under the expenses account at the button of your window, fill in other information like memo and select the class, which is the property rent was collected.

I already shared a key reason you should select a class for invoicing and payments- it will enable you to easily map your transactions by properties and generate a detailed profit or loss figure on each property you manage.

Report

Apart from the profit or loss by properties, you can also view report on rent due for payment based on properties/tenants, see all expenses incurred by properties, generate a trial balance, bank statement transactions, view your real-time balance sheet report (statement of financial position), cash flow and other relevant reports necessary for decision making in a real estate and property management business.

While these tips have been proven to be effective in the management of a property business, we also know that you may have some specific areas or questions you need clarifications on, don’t hesitate to send us your questions or inquiry about deploying QuickBooks for your real estate or property business.

Kindly send a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng   or call us on, 08105090001, 08084219399.

Medical centers still rank high in the corporate environment with the busiest staff. This is a clear discovery that is not unconnected to the steady influx of patients who are looking for a lasting solution to their health challenges. At times, medical directors get so busy that they pay less attention to finance, cash flow, and the overall performance of the company. While some use excel spreadsheet to record and track payments made by their patients, others use the same file containing the history of patients’ health status to record the amount due, amount deposited and balances. I even noticed that only less than 1% of accounting officers in medical centres can accurately generate a receivable report due to unorganised transactions’ history.

This definitely explains why medical centres, as a matter of urgency, need to quickly upgrade their accounting system to a better platform like the QuickBooks for efficient and effective transaction recording. There are different areas where accounting software can improve the operation of a medical centre; this ranges from the receivable side which I have earlier explained to more complex areas such as inventory management, invoicing, payments, banking, reporting and timely decision making.

Starting from the Inventory side, records prove that medical centers are big time buyers of pharmaceutical products which they often use in treating patients, and as such, they need to supervise and monitor the flow of goods, medical products, its’ usage and quantity on hand at any given time such that when the accountant or store keeper is being called to present a detailed and updated report of inventory activities, it would be available in lesser time than when the conventional accounting method is used.

For drugs or products purchased from local or foreign vendors, there is a simple workflow that takes you from the point of sending “POs” to receiving inventory into the store and making final payment in Naira or US dollars. And as these products are used, QuickBooks has a material adjustment window for recording every usage on a daily, weekly or monthly basis along with a corresponding cost of sales account to track their value on the profit or loss account.

Another vital part of your account is the Invoicing Window which is designed to track all income earned from medical services rendered to patients, while using “Receive Payment” to record payment progress so far. This will greatly improve the way report on patients and their outstanding balances are prepared and presented.

The Banking Section lets you monitor all cheque payments, customer deposit/transfers from/to your bank account with a “Use Register Window” serving as a bank transactions summary statement for you to make comparison of your actual bank balances. If there is any difference, you can initiate a reconciliation via the “Reconcile Window” to track missing figures like bank charges, interest income, un-presented cheques, uncredited cheques or transaction commissions.

The above are some of the deliverables of the QuickBooks Accounting Software customized for medical centers. You can also connect with our client support team, on 08105090001, 08084219399, for more questions about getting your accounting system right and improving the accuracy of your financial report.

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Whether you are a small, a growing or a multinational assembly; one important factor you must not ignore, and which you must pay apt attention to as a general overseer or church finance officer, is the overall financial and cash flow position of your church. A number of times, I hear church admins tell me that they really do not need strict accounting policies or documentations as everybody is spiritual; hence they are expected to exhibit a great level of financial discipline and honesty towards the church finance. That’s quite interesting! But for me, I believe as much as there was a Judas among the twelve disciples, there stands to be more of such persons in the church considering the number of crimes church people commit since they are less likely to be caught.

Back to the aim of this guide – deploying accounting software for churches; I’d like to share key reasons why tracking cash flows in churches is very important:

• You plan the church budget on a weekly, monthly or annual basis based on cash flow trend and how can you plan when you don’t know how much you are expecting or cash on hand?
• You incur expenses and would like to channel fund to vital projects that will drive church growth, with accounting software, allocating resources based on data presented seems easy. You also see the possibility of expanding the church’s presence to areas that are not currently covered.
• Church also pay workers, hence, they need to track salaries and allowances.
• Plus more

How QuickBooks Can Help Churches Track Cash flow

Members

Every church accounting must start from membership record; you need to have details of your members so that income categories like ‘Tithe, or Special Donations” can easily be traced to a particular member.

Revenue

The key sources of revenue for churches are ‘offerings’, ‘tithes‘, and ‘special donations – seed offering, thanksgiving etc.’.  In QuickBooks, you can create each of these revenue categories as an “item under service” and map it to an income account.

Expenses

It’s not only profit-organizations that incurs expenses, churches also do. Besides, the church is one of the top spenders as they embark on several community developments, life transforming projects, building projects, etc., within or across the border. At least, if I do not know how other churches spend, I can confidently say that the church where I worship spends heavily on local and international projects including outreach events worldwide.

With QuickBooks, you will not only track daily, weekly or monthly expenses, but will also have a feature that makes it flexible for you to map them to a specific project or event for accountability purpose.

While these areas are updated on the front end, executives can explore the reporting side to view the overall report of statement of asset and liabilities, revenue and expenditure, membership collections, tithe, etc.

For more details on how we can deploy and improve your church accounting system using QuickBooks, call our instant report centre: 08084219399, 08105090001 or email us at info@accountingsoftware.com.ng

Accounting Software For Restaurant & Fast Food Business – See Why QuickBooks Is The Best Software For Managing Small Bar, Big Restaurant & Fast Food Business!

I recently had a conversation with a client who was expanding his business and wanted to know if QuickBooks can accommodate his new restaurant business without a hitch. As we began to chat on phone in the early hours of today, he pointed out key areas of the business he wouldn’t want to be left out. He said,

 

• I want to be able to send invoice from QuickBooks to my corporate customers.

• I’d like to track all inventory purchases such as food items – down to the unit of measures For instance, if I buy a bag of rice, I don’t want to write it off as a one-off expense but monitor the usage in Kgs and know what my inventory balances are on a real time.
• I also want to see how much I have spent on the business and compare that with the prior month or prior year’s expenses.
• I want to incorporate my bank transactions too, so that the system can help me reconcile the differences.
• I have over 50 + customers whom I supply food in packs every day – I really want to know how much I make in sales, those who paid me and those  customers that are owning me so I can track and recover my money. This is because I sometimes forgot that some customers are yet to pay which is a bad one for my business.
• I don’t even know what my actual profit or loss level is right now as all daily transactions are documented in a paper and I think my food business has outgrown that level.

Then, he concluded by asking, “Can QuickBooks do all these?”

If I want to quickly respond without explaining the process, I would probably say “YES”, but I will still leave him in the dark because he wants to know more. I had to take my time to address each of the challenges he expressed, and then explain the different features of Quickbooks that make all the requests possible and seamless. Lest I forget, the version I recommended for this line of business was QuickBooks Premier because of its’ numerous unit of measures; as my client was interested in tracking all foods stuff, actual quantity purchases, usages and balances on hand to monitor questionable activities among his staff.

QuickBooks is very flexible and can adapt to any kind of business if you understand all the features as a consultant. The “invoice and sales” window lets you record credit and cash sales while “purchases order, receive inventory, and pay bill” are workflows that track the processes involved in refilling your store with food supplies up till the final payment on actual goods received.

I am sure that how I customised the software, to track food sold in packs to individuals or corporate customers, is of great concern and interest to you! With QuickBooks assembly under the “inventory section”, I showed my client how to add new stock whenever they have fresh food in the store.

You need to track expenses incurred such as payment of service providers’ bills and other relevant payables, before you can accurately view all cumulative business expenses, QuickBooks has a “write a cheque and enter bill” feature designed to help you enter details of transactions, including amount, date and descriptions.

The ‘banking window’ mimics your actual bank transactions as it also monitors cheque issued, deposit, transfers, charges with a ‘reconcile window’ available for end of the month reconciliations.

For management report, you can explore the company’s snapshot – a very interactive reporting feature that tells you how your business is doing in less than ten (10) minutes. It shows all account heads and their balances, customers who owe you, top selling products, income & expense trend and expenses breakdown for quick decision making.

While these are some of the features available for food and restaurant business owners, I also understand that there might be peculiar challenges in your food business that you might be interested in addressing. Why not send a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or call 08105090001 so that we can help improve your accounting system.

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This review of the QuickBooks accounting software, customised for Cooperative Societies will help you understand how to manage operations, automate transactions, as well as how to generate reports.

We have been deploying accounting software for growing businesses in Nigeria, both in premise and remotely, which has exposed us to the diverse cash flow challenges confronting SMEs and how to rightly provide the best solution using a combination of accounting skill and financial software customization. One striking thing in this industry is that every client/business has a unique problem. Today, I will be sharing tips on how Cooperative Societies can run their finance effectively using the QuickBooks.

In deploying QuickBooks for Cooperative Societies, I have discovered that there are core things finance managers of Cooperative Societies need to get right in order to accurately track cash flows, generate a reliable financial report and to ensure an on time decision.

Continue reading “Accounting Software For Cooperative Societies; What To Look For!”

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Are you looking for a Serviced apartment management & reservation software? here are useful tips on how to find the right solution and why QuickBooks accounting software is the best.

A serviced apartment business is one that is fully furnished and available for short or long term stay – it’s slightly different from a hotel; in addition to the similar services offered by hotels and guest houses; amenities like TV, bathroom, bedroom, you have a kitchen to cook your meal if you like. It’s actually a great choice for business travellers who are staying for a longer time and are looking for a home away from home.

For startups running a serviced apartment business and are interested in automating their business and accounting system while focusing on growth and sustainability of their business, this guide will help you understand how implementing an accounting software will drive efficiency and improve productivity. You may also refer to my previous article on accounting software for hotels in Nigeria; it contains similar deliverables just that I will be expanding the idea by discussing steps to track the performance of serviced apartment.

In setting up an accounting software for your serviced apartment, you need to ask certain questions before deciding on the best financial application to deploy:

Continue reading “How Serviced Apartment Owners Can Use QuickBooks To Manage Cashflow”

How I setup QuickBooks for Bureau De Change – Learn the simple way to deploy financial software solution for currency exchangers on the cloud or desktop!

What makes a great financial software consultant is not the excellent knowledge of accounting and finance, but the exceptional skills in understanding clients’ IT needs and customizing an existing low-cost off the shelf software that will deliver the right solution. This is the reason BigResources Solutions is the leading accounting software partner in Nigeria – we have deployed more QuickBooks compared to other accounting software.

QuickBooks is not only simple to use, it is flexible in building a custom chart of accounts, tweaking certain account types and redesigning windows. Also, seeing the result of your customization instantly makes it one of the best accounting software used in Nigeria.  One sector where we have demonstrated a high level of competence in QuickBooks customization is in financial service – currency exchange business popularly known as a bureau de change.

Although I have initially posted a general article on accounting software for bureau de change, this review is more detailed as I will be using what implementing QuickBooks for a local bureau de change in Lagos was like, to help you get yours right.

Bureau de change, even though they are into foreign currency transaction, should be treated like a retail based business in other to get your accounting software setup right. This is based on the premise that they buy products too (currencies), and resell to customers. But, if you do not follow the steps outlined here, you might not only end up generating wrong financial report but also experience multiple problems caused by dual accounts that mimic your bank and inventory account respectively where in actual sense, what you have in your domiciliary account (which is where you sell currencies), should be the same as your stock balance (currency on hand).

So in your statement of financial position (balance sheet), you are expected to treat your bank balance as currency stock on hand.

Setting up QuickBooks for BDCs:

• To load all currencies (USD, EUR or Pounds), create an item for each of these foreign currencies, enter quantity on hand (or at bank) and map it to “their individual bank account under asset account”; this is the field that merges the stock and bank account feature in one account head.  The advantage of following this tip is that when you buy more currencies, your bank balances will increase and the quantity on hand will as well increase by units added. Also, when you sell via bank transfer to SMEs or individual customers, your bank balance is debited and stock on hand falls by the same sales value.
• Talking about buying and selling more currencies, I activated exchange rate (used Naira as the home currency) and added normal current account (Naira) and domiciliary accounts (USD, EURO & GBP); this makes it easy for clients to buy currencies from CBN or other BDCs, using the Naira account at official or parallel market rates, into their domiciliary accounts. On sales, the invoice and receipts are there to track credit and cash transactions.
• On inventory report, you can always refer to different reports; stock valuation (currency on hand and their value), stock activities (transaction details of each foreign currency), physical stock count (to check what you have in the bank and the value reported in QuickBooks for reconciliation purposes).
• Adding to sales, you can view account receivables and transaction history of your top customers.
• Also note that you need to update your rate for USD, EURO, GBP manually as exchange rate fluctuates. This gives rise to exchange rate gain/loss or unrealised gain or loss.
• The banking features in QuickBooks let you transfer fund between accounts and also reconcile bank statements.

Finally, the overall report section shows the actual profit or loss position of your bureau de change with trend analysis.

While these will help you get started, faster and in the right way, you can also contact us if you have questions or want us to implement QuickBooks for your BDC.

Send a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or call 08105090001

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Wakanow.com Travels is one of the fastest growing travel agency in Nigeria. As at when I updated this post, the company had just announced their official presence in Kenya and the UK, a move it embarked on to provide exceptional local travel packages to her growing customers in these countries. 

Wakanow started 8 years and has since grown to become a successful travel and tour startup in Africa. The company’s travel and booking platform are connected to Amadeus – the world’s biggest internal and local reservation system. 

Wakanow offers GDS and non-GDS booking services; you can book travel via the company’s website directly from Amadeus and pay using a debit or credit card or walk into Wakanow travel centres to make a booking and pay cash.

Before the news about Kenya and the UK office opening, the company’s management approached my former company for QuickBooks with a detailed request on what their expectations were.

Continue reading “How I Implemented QuickBooks Desktop On The Cloud (WakaNow Travels)”

Learn more from our implementation experience in the oil and gas sector; a simple guide to deploying accounting software for petroleum companies.

This article is an expanded review of a previous post on accounting software for a petrol station. Following our implementation of QuickBooks accounting software in an oil and gas company, we will be adding more details and what you should know about setting up QuickBooks in the Oil and Gas sector.

Ordinarily, you may think that such oil and gas implementation job requires a bespoke or customised software designed specifically for the oil industry but that’s not the case. We have been using QuickBooks to help our clients organise their books and improve their accounting system for over 4 years, so, it’s quite flexible for us to find a way around to make oil & gas set easy.

Customising QuickBooks for an industry like this is not new, we have successfully implemented this software in a more complex environment like micro-credit and financing, manufacturing and real estate.

Continue reading “How We Deployed QuickBooks In An Oil & Gas Company”

This article contains tips on how to implement an accounting software for fitness centres or gym equipment management business.

Fitness is an evergreen business niche that attracts low, middle or high-income customers every day; a growth that is not unconnected to the need to live healthier, longer by burning fats and eating the right diet.

I have a client in this niche whose sales trend is upwardly growing by 40-50% annually, with no sign of slowing down, people walk in to buy a treadmill, sit-up, the bench, dumbbells, stationary bike, and so on. While some of these customers make cash purchases for personal or family use, others request in bulk for their new or emerging fitness business centre. As more money flows into the fitness industry, there is an urgent need for accountants, CFOs and business owners managing gym centres to accurately account for every penny that comes in and flow so that they can easily measure growth in real time; income, expenses, profit or loss, top customers, etc.

Continue reading “Implementing Accounting Software For Your Fitness Centre”

As a business owner or finance office in charge of managing finance for a  bottled or sachet water company (pure-water), key areas you may be interesting in more than anything are how to accurately track sachet water productions, quantity produced, the number of bags distributed to customers or resellers, amount returned and the cash collected by salesmen on a daily basis.

Sachet water business, at times, can be frustrating if you don’t have an effective accounting system that will monitor cash flows, expenses and report the actual stock movements – you may even lose more than you are gaining, especially when your staff are not trustworthy.

In implementing an accounting software for your sachet water company, here is a brief demo on how we can customise QuickBooks Premier for your business: we choose Premier because it comes with a manufacturing feature; a built-in function that assembles your raw materials into finished product – so if you had bought nylon, paid for factory materials or dug a borehole that supplies water, the software can accurately monitor all cost incurred as bill of materials – which is the cost of production.

For companies that have multiple warehouses or store in which stocks are transferred from the main production unit to other stores where salesmen can pick them up for distribution, QuickBooks Enterprise is highly recommended.

How QuickBooks can work for a sachet water business:

• QuickBooks has an inventory feature that lets you set-up all factory materials needed to produce bags of sachet water including cost incurred, quantity produced and available for sale units.
• You can run transfer to track all stock distributions to various outlets or locations by inputting “quantity transferred to or fro” at cost price.
• For sales, you can use the sales receipt to track all bags sold for the day and amount collected which should automatically reduce the quantity on hand at the specific selling location.
• All cost incurred on selling and distributions can also be recorded as cost of sales to ascertain the actual profit on sales.
• Salaries and wages paid to salesmen, including office expenses can also be recorded.
• QuickBooks banking window lets you track your bank accounts, cash transfers, cheque payments, charges and reconcile differences between the bank statement and cash book balances at the end of the month.
• For payroll, you can track all bonus, deductions and PAYEE using journal entries.
• QuickBooks also has a reporting window that reveals the actual position and trend of your business on a real time – profit or loss, statement of financial position, cash flow, sales, expenses and more.

For inquiries on how we can set you up with QuickBooks or for further questions on areas you want us to address, contact us on 08105090001, 08084219399 or mail info@accountingsoftware.com.ng

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Private equity firms are private finance firms that invest in high-growth and profitable businesses – They mobilize fund from selected individual or corporate bodies, buy equity shares in small – medium firms ranging from 5% to 20% with the purpose of enjoying steady return on investment for a certain period or selling their investment at a premium.

This article is not about private equity firms but shares useful tips on how a typical accounting software customised for private equity firms should work – using QuickBooks

Investment in shares

In QuickBooks, you can create all the existing equity holding of a firm as an asset (Investment) and add their current value of the shares as an opening balance.

Here is a sample snapshot of how your equity holding:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also effect changes in the value of your equity holding on a monthly or annual basis and track unrealised profit or loss via “General Journal Entry”

Sales of Equity Shares

On the sale of equity share in a company, QuickBooks can also track the value of transactions (part or outright disposal) and record cash received (direct credit or cash). You can do this via the “General Journal Entry Window”

Finally, dividend earned which could be reinvested or received as cash is not left out – You can use the “General Journal Entry Window” to treat the transaction.

For more guide, read tips on accounting treatment for trading stock here.

If you have questions or need us to present a demo on how QuickBooks can work for your private equity firm or hedge fund, contact us on 0810-509-0001, 0808-421-9399 or send a demo request to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng

Courier companies are serviced based businesses that help clients or customers deliver parcels, documents or goods to different locations. A good example of a courier company in Nigeria is FEDEX, one of the world’s leading logistics companies serving million of individuals and corporate customers.

In this guide, I will be sharing tips on how accounting software can simply automate your business processes and make daily tasks effective:

• You have a customer dashboard designed to manage your client’s information and show their transaction history. If you maintain an individual account that tracks all transactions – payments and invoices – specific to each client, an accounting software will accurately reveal the current status of your customers – receivables, recent payments, the latest invoice issued and cumulative transaction value.

Continue reading “Accounting Software For Courier Company”

Our QuickBooks Accounting software, which comes with genuine licenses, product numbers and validation code, lets you run your business efficiently. You can opt for the one-off desktop version or subscribe to the online version depending on your needs.

While the desktop version is installed on your computer system, you can as well have it on multi-user platforms where we will network your laptop PCs to a central server or selected administrator system. The Cloud version is managed by QuickBooks which gives you seamless and unrestricted access to your data file, even from your mobile or tablet via QuickBooks mobile app.

To help you understand the desktop version better, here are the different QuickBooks desktop software and their features.

QuickBooks Desktop Accounting Software for Small Businesses In Nigeria

1 – QuickBooks Pro

QuickBooks Pro helps small & mid-sized businesses to manage inventory purchases and sales through purchase orders. The maximum current users allowable on QuickBooks Pro is 3.

These tools are there to make your life easier and give you control over your accounts.

• Lead Centre:
  Enter follow-up notes for sales lead and contacts that can be converted to customers.
• QuickBooks Calendar
  · View daily/weekly and monthly reminders/to-do notes and transaction that is due.
  · Easily print your calendar for staff meetings.
• Customers/Payment/Company snapshots
  · Customise your own dashboard to view important customer information, overdue payments and general company performance.
• Customer collection centre
  · Take control of overdue invoices by making use of the new collection Centre
  · Select and email overdue invoices in batches with the click of a button.
• Report Centre
  · Tag your favourites report for future use and run them at ease with the options to export to Excel or PDF.
• Customer and supplier Centre
  · View customer balances and transactions at a glance for all customers or suppliers.
  Reconciling your VAT, performing bank reconciliation and balancing your books are simple with QuickBooks Pro.

Don’t know the right software for your business, you can contact us for support and advice

For pricing plan, installation, set-up and training, call these lines: 0810-509-0001, 08084219399 – send a mail to info@accountingsoftware.com.ng

Continue reading “Understanding QuickBooks Software & the Right Version for your Business”