Make Your Accounting Software Work For You

A tech stack is a combination of accounting software and any additional apps that you can use to manage your accounting and financial reporting. Keep in mind, a tech stack is not a one-size-fits-all option. Your personal tech stack will be driven by your industry and the accounting needs of your company. For example, a restaurant will not need the same accounting software as a grain farmer. A small business should have an accounting software that’s flexible, easy to use, and scalable.

Don’t be afraid to change your tech stack as your company grows. You should consider reevaluating your company’s tech stack every three to five years to make sure you have the correct software solutions for your situation. There are many accounting software solutions on the market today, so don’t be afraid to shop around for what works best for you.

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QuickBooks Desktop

QuickBooks Desktop has been on the accounting market for the longest amount of time. It started off as a basic debit and credit accounting package and has grown into a more sophisticated and industry specific software for general industries, including manufacturing, wholesale, contractors, and nonprofit entities.

Users of QuickBooks Desktop will enjoy features such as:

  • Tracking income and expenses
  • Creating estimates and invoices
  • Industry-specific reporting
  • Sales tax tracking
  • Managing bills and accounts payable
  • Tracking time and processing payroll
  • Inventory management and tracking
  • Paying and tracking 1099 vendors

There are also over 100 standard reports that can be customized to fit your business needs. This software is currently available for both Windows and Mac computers and is a great solution for businesses who don’t have a consistent internet connection and businesses with more complex and industry-specific financial needs.

QuickBooks Online

As time has gone on, businesses have changed the way they’re operating, and technology has made it possible for businesses to market to their customers and engage in transactions online. With these changes, QuickBooks responded with the release of QuickBooks Online. This is a cloud-based platform that brings many of the traditional desktop features and has added some advanced features.

Users of QuickBooks Online will enjoy features such as:

  • Accessibility anywhere you have an internet connection
  • Mobile application
  • Automatic bank feeds
  • Automatic product updates
  • Tracking income and expenses
  • Invoices and accepting payments
  • Comprehensive reporting
  • Cash flow management
  • Sales tax tracking
  • Managing bills and accounts payable
  • Tracking time and processing payroll
  • Inventory management and tracking
  • Paying and tracking 1099 vendors
  • Track project profitability

This software also offers bank feed integration, where you can connect to your bank account and pull data into QuickBooks to review it before approving it and pushing it into your register. This gives you the ability to do less data entry, which in turn can lead to less errors. This software also allows your accountant access to the data, so if you have a question, they can enter your books and look at it with you, fix problems they discover, and provide insight to accounting questions. This means you no longer have to make a backup file to send to your accountant. They are constantly improving this software and adding new features.

There are hundreds of apps available to customize QuickBooks Online to meet your needs. Clients at Adams Brown use this software in the restaurant, construction, healthcare, retail and manufacturing industries.

Sage Intacct

Though QuickBooks has products that are useful for a variety of industries, there are other options available, including Sage Intacct. This software is good for medium to large sized businesses looking for a cloud-based software solution.

Users of Sage Intacct will enjoy features such as:

  • Accessibility anywhere you have internet connection
  • Mobile application
  • Customizable to meet business needs and growth
  • Automated workflows
  • Automatic quarterly product updates
  • Tracking income and expenses
  • Invoice and accepting payments
  • Customizable financial reporting
  • Manage and pay bills
  • Cash flow forecasting
  • Time tracking
  • Inventory manager
  • Track project profitability

Clients in the healthcare and professional services industries have implemented Sage Intacct and seen favorable results. The expanded tracking and reporting capabilities are beneficial to those who need them, and the software is easy to use.

Xero

Similar to QuickBooks Online and Sage Intacct, Xero is another cloud-based accounting platform. Users can track and pay bills, establish bank connections, allow transactions with bank connections to flow straight into the software, accept payments, and perform daily bank reconciliations.

Users of Xero will enjoy features such as:

  • Access anywhere you have an internet connection
  • Mobile application
  • Automated bank feeds
  • Automatic product updates
  • Track income and expenses
  • Invoice and accept payments
  • Comprehensive reporting
  • Cash flow forecasting
  • Sales tax tracking
  • Pay and track 1099 vendors
  • Track and pay bills
  • Time tracking
  • Payroll processing and reporting
  • Inventory manager
  • Track project profitability

Over the past year, Adams Brown’s agriculture team has been working with Xero to integrate Figured, which has a farm management software. In addition to streamlining the bookkeeping process, the combination of these programs provides a dashboard to track crop production, harvest information, costs, and other income. The ideal client for a Xero and Figured package is a grain farmer who may also have livestock and is best used with farms under 10,000 acres.

Customizable Apps

There are multiple ways to customize the accounting software you choose for your business, and these tools help manage your accounts payable. There are several good apps on the market that are designed to streamline the bill pay process.

One commonly used software is Bill.com, which integrates with QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, and Xero. This software can be used for small and midsized businesses. Bills can be added to the software in multiple ways; a client specific email address or uploading the bill to the website. Once the information is in the Bill.com inbox, there are OCR capabilities that can read a vendor’s name, the invoice number, the due date, and the amount on the receipts. All the user has to do is select the correct amount to record the expense and add a description if needed. Users of Bill.com are also able to customize their approval workflow to allow businesses to maintain a separation of duties and reduce potential fraud. Through this app, there is an ability to create custom policies to require a different number of approvals or specific approvals based on the dollar amount of the bill. When payments are issued, they will go through the Bill.com payment network which allows payments to be issued on a virtual card (a virtual credit card that a vendor sets up with the software) or through electronic payments. Payment through this app makes the reconciliation process faster because all payments are processed as one batch when it’s posted from the bank account, so there’s just one withdrawal for everything that got paid on a specific day. When Bill.com is linked to an accounting software, the details are broken out into individual vendors and into your general ledger account details. There is a monthly pricing structure and a per user fee for this app, as well as a minimal transaction fees per check or AHS payment.

Melio Bill Pay is another common accounts payable program. This software is relatively new and currently only integrates with QuickBooks Online, but plans to support more accounting software in the future. Melio allows businesses to pay a vendor with a business credit card, even if the vendor doesn’t accept credit cards. This app will issue the payments on behalf of a company to a vendor with a check or bank deposit. You have the ability to set up payment approval workflows based on similar criteria to Bill.com. You can schedule payment due dates, so you don’t have to continue setting reminders on your calendar or worry about missed payment dates. Melio’s pricing is based on a percentage of the transaction for monthly credit card payments, so there’s no monthly subscription fee or transaction fees for checks or ACH.

Dext is a common document management app. Dext was previously known as Receipt Bank and integrates with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Sage Intacct, and Xero. This is an app that will take pictures of receipts, unpaid bills, or invoices and stores it in the Dext software and pushes it to your accounting software. Dext has various ways that you can submit your receipts, including a specific email address for vendors, a mobile app where you can take a picture of and submit any invoices or receipts, as well as uploading documents to Dext on a computer. Dext also has the ability to connect to suppliers who post invoices on their website called “fetch invoice,” which can be used for suppliers such as Amazon, to pull these receipts into the app and your accounting software. There are OCR capabilities, where Dext can read the vendor or customer name, date, total transaction account, and if the invoice was paid by debit or credit card it can read the last four digits of that card and connect it to the correct register in your accounting software. There is a new feature that allows users to upload a PDF version of a bank statement and Dext will extract the information and put the individual transactions on their app and send it back to you in a CSV format.

Safety in Cloud-Based Platforms

All three accounting applications suggested above (QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage Intacct) have processes in place to ensure their equipment and your data is kept safe. These three software companies maintain facilities with security equipment, 24/7 monitoring and surveillance, and on-site security staff as well as having to undergo regular security audits. They ensure the safety of their data storage hardware with standby servers and redundant and uninterruptable power supplies. Data is kept safe from phishing and malicious activity with specialized security teams that work 24/7 to monitor and detect suspicious activity. All three require user-specific login credentials and offer multi-factor authentication.

Though these companies have security measures in place, think about how you preserve and protect the data on your local computers. Do you have a process in place to regularly back up your data and are you keeping those backups off site? If you had an onsite disaster such as a fire or flood, how much time and resources would it take for you to get your business back up and running. How would you react if your computer was exposed to a virus or ransomware? There is a constant need to update your antivirus software, but you also need someone on your team that has the IT security knowledge to monitor and detect these threats and know how to stop them.

If you have questions about the software and apps that fit you and your business needs, please contact an Adams Brown advisor today.

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