In this conversational tutorial, Linda and Matthew (SPEAKER A) walk new accounting firm owners through the early steps of setting up QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA). They begin by discussing how to evaluate whether a client should move from desktop QuickBooks to the cloud, emphasizing the benefits of accessibility, real‑time collaboration, and the larger app ecosystem, while acknowledging that some industries (e.g., construction) may still need a hybrid approach. They demonstrate adding desktop clients in QBOA, explain how the Work tab now supports both desktop and online clients, and show the process of accepting accountant invitations—highlighting the use of incognito mode to avoid login conflicts. The hosts then cover migrating a desktop client to QBOA, stressing the importance of completing reconciliations and printing key reports before migration. Next, they detail how to set up wholesale discounts and the role of the ProAdvisor certification in unlocking free books, payroll, and client‑discounts. They compare two wholesale‑billing models (bundling Intuit fees versus passing costs to clients) and advise new accountants to secure payment before incurring subscription costs. Throughout, they reference supplemental PDFs and video links, share practical “quick tips,” and wrap up with a brief recap of the week’s lessons, encouraging viewers to apply the hybrid client list, task scheduling, and other workflow tools.
Chapters
Good afternoon, Linda.
Good afternoon, Matthew.
How's the day treating you?
Good.
So we're out of tax season, right? And I know that you, uh, had already started the process, but basically trying to create a tutorial or guide for people that are ready to jump in. They want to basically create their own Well, they're trying to create their own firm, right? So they need to get their QuickBooks Online accountant set up, they need to take the ProAdvisor test, so forth. And you've got some stuff already lined out for us, right?
Yeah, we're following the PDF from Cheryl's post, which I think is great, 'cause it's taking somebody, 'cause we've had a lot of questions, right, about people just, they come into our group and they wanna be in our group and they wanna learn how to build their business. So we thought this would be a great way to just kinda take this and go with it. So I'm gonna share my screen, bring you to the PDF.
It's a good idea. I mean, it's so easy to forget What we had to learn, as I always say, right? That, you know, these little things, those first steps are how you can do this successfully.
They're powerful. I mean, and you know what? If people can learn from our mistakes, then they don't have to make the mistake, right?
I got a lot of mistakes you guys can learn from.
Me too. We can share notes later.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
We're actually on week 2 here. So adding your first client. So last week I Yeah, exactly right. Oh, this is exciting stuff. So last week we signed up for the whole thing and went through it, and we'll put a link back to that. So we're going to assess whether a client should be in the cloud. So a lot of times we get that phone call, and it says to us that we want to— you know, we're thinking about going to the cloud, but we're in desktop. And it's great that they call us before that so we can tell them. So what do you do?
Well, so I mean, you know, should they be leaving desktop? Should they go to the cloud? I guess that is the first version of it. And since we're trying to set up QuickBooks Online Accountant, there is absolute benefits to the cloud. But you know me, I'm kind of a little biased.
A little.
To the hybrid solution. Like, there, you know, it really is important to find out what the needs are of the client. Do they need to go to the— can they still have the same efficiency out of desktop, or would they gain more efficiency or enough efficiency by going to the cloud? You know, there's certain industries like they've done a great job with QuickBooks Online Projects for advancing like job costing. But, you know, for the true diehard construction companies, desktop is still just— it's still the way to go at the time, right?
It's not— yeah, online's not there yet. It's getting closer, but it's still a ways away. So in that case, you might be better off staying with desktop and then using the hybrid solution because the reason why you created that was You know, why do we all want to move to the cloud? We want that accessibility, but you solved that with QBOXX. And we want the bank feeds. That was like the main reason I moved to it was bank feeds. And then you solved that with VendorSync.
So— We'll put a link to it down below. People can check that out. But, you know, bigger reasons. So for QuickBooks Online, fundamentally, the biggest benefit of jumping to the cloud is the ability that we can all access information at the same time. So previously, or even with the hybrid solution, it's usually a situation where somebody's in the file and somebody's not. And when you're first getting started, hey, maybe you're okay with working those random hours, but trust me, you don't want to do that. So it's, it's nice to have it on the cloud that you can actually interactively, maybe through a Zoom, be pulling up, looking at the information together, training, doing stuff like that. And of course, the much larger app environment also.
Yeah. And so we'll go to the file for a moment and just show how I added one client to— here's the accounting, and I've already added one client named VendorSync to the desktop client.
To it.
So I've already invited, added them in. And all I did was, this is your book section. So I just came in here and added the client, and that's how it puts up there. So it's a desktop client, and I just came over here and you can add a new customer, and it's pretty simple. And just come in here, put the name in and all that, and then just fill it out. And then that adds it in. So I could just put, you know, I can add a second desktop customer, you know, Linda Company, Linda Company, or whatever, and just save it. And now I've got 2 customers. So, you know, you come back up to your client list and here you go. So—
And the reason to do that real quickly is actually because of the benefits that come along with the Work tab. So initially you could only have clients in there That were for QuickBooks Online, and that's a different process. So I'm sure you're going to go through that as well. But then if you wanted the tasks that had your upcoming tasks to show up when you click on the Work tab, it would only be available for people that had QuickBooks Online. Right now, by being able to put any kind of a client on there, you can do that for all of your different clients. So if you have a mixture.
Right. So which is great because we didn't have that ability initially. So this is wonderful. So now we've actually had somebody call us and they, they're already in QuickBooks Online. So we want to have them, um, we want them to be here too. So we want to be connected to them. So we asked them to invite us as an accountant user, which is really simple to do. You just have them, and I actually have it in a template that I use with 17hats that says, you know, add me as an accountant user and actually have them add me if they're in QuickBooks Online and I'm going to give a price. I actually have them do that before they even become a customer. And it's just, you know, you go to the gear, you go to the gear, and in here you'll be in your own file, not an accountant one. You go to manage users, add accountant At an accountant, and I'll put a little snapshot of that in, in the blog.
I've got a video that we'll shoot over. I'll get you the link and actually shows how to do it too. So perfect.
That'd be even better. So I've asked this client law firm to invite me because with the law firms, I have to use LeanLaw because it's only web-based. So all my clients from me, the law firm ones, are all in the web and they've invited me. They did follow the directions and they've invited me. So yay. Let's pray this works. I'm going to accept the invite. Oh, probably will because I'm in incognito.
And what I've found with this, for it to be successful every time, is like you said, incognito. Really, the best way is make sure as an accountant you're already logged all the way out of anything QuickBooks Online. If you do that, you— 95% of the time it works first shot.
So I just picked my own firm and I am still open here. So that's Probably the problem. I'm clicking it. It's not working.
But that's okay. So what would happen here is the reason this is pulling up is if you do have different firms or like you and I, we collaborate all the time. So I have access to some of the clients on your firm and vice versa. So you're actually assigning which firm the client would be going to. So normally when you would click this, it would pop up and then you would just see it on your dashboard like you currently have.
Just not gonna let me. Maybe it will now because I— this happens all the time, by the way.
So thanks to the magic of a little slice and dice of the video, what we did real quick is we went back in, made sure we logged all the way out of everything that could be considered Intuit-related, and then that we went back and actually accepted— opened the email again outside an incognito window and put in the information, username, password, and bada-boom bada-bing, we've got the success.
So we have success.
Yes.
Okay, and then now you're gonna see here's the law firm account, and you can see that it's a QuickBooks Online account because of the little, little logo here, which is going to take me to the law firm account, which now I can directly access, right? Which is what I wanted to do. Now I can get into the client's file and— oh, look at welcome newbie. That's kind of funny.
Nice naming convention.
All right, so let's go back to the PDF. And let's go back to PDF, wherever it is. Okay. So the next thing is migrating the desktop— migrating your first desktop client to QuickBooks Online. We're going to provide a link because we've already done a video on that. And then how to add any kind of type of client to list. We've done that. And let's talk about wholesale discounts because we do have that in QuickBooks Online.
So real quick touchpoints on a couple of the things you had said there. So the migrating your first desktop client, the The reason it's really important to take the time to go and watch that video is there are very specific things that do and do not transfer from desktop to online. And if you're not aware of those, you can make the process a lot more time intensive for yourself, if you will. Probably the most important thing is you want to finish all of your reconciliations as far up, as close to the transfer date as you possibly can. And then you want to print out your Profit and Loss and your Balance Sheet and accrual method. Have copies of those because then once it all gets pulled up, you would then reconcile, run those reports from the cloud, and they should match. We're going into deeper detail in that video that's being linked.
Yeah. And you want all dates. And I usually make a portable file and just kind of— especially if the file is kind of big. So that's just a couple of quick tips. So wholesale discount. So let's go back to our accountant. file, which you can come right here to get back to it. So now we're back in our accountant file. If we wanted to add wholesale discounts, that's where you can— is it under clients?
It'd be the gear icon to the top right.
That's right. It's over here where you can add them.
So you can either add there, and then you can also go to your account and you'll see your billing for everything.
Right.
So now this is obviously a company file we created just for this whole process. So we're not going to see tons there, but that's because we're just getting started.
Just started and I didn't put a credit card in, so it can't charge me. So it'll be kind of hard to charge me subscriptions, but you can— you get 50% off. So you can bundle that into your— yes, want money before it will take me to the screen to add them. It's— you get 50% off the cost of QuickBooks. So right now the Plus version is $60, you get it for $30.
Okay.
You don't get that amount off with the Advanced. It's 30% off. Correct. The other ones, Essentials and also Simple Start, which I never really put anybody in that, but you get half price off that. So it's normally $20, you get it for $10. And then Essentials, $35, you get that for half. So it's a, it's a good deal and you can bundle it and pass it along to your clients only if they're brand new to QuickBooks.
And a couple things to keep in mind as well. The ability to get those discounts and to do this, you really are supposed to become a Certified ProAdvisor for that to pop up and become available. So they're looking for that commitment level that, hey, we've given you online access, we're letting you do your stuff in here. Matter of fact, when you become certified, you get your own books for free and your own payroll for free. So that's huge. And if you don't— once you become certified, you'll be able to pass those discounts on. This is one of those areas that you and I have a— we tend to agree to disagree on what Way to go forward. Although with all the different changes, I'm kind of leaning in your direction. Wholesale billing, you've got 2 ways. You can either wholesale bill, put it on your own bill. So with our company, we take all the billing for all the Intuit stuff onto our own. So we have a very big Intuit bill every month, and then we bundle it in as part of the package of our services. We could though also, as a form of wholesale billing, actually provide less of a discount but have the client put it on their card instead. And that is actually— it's probably a great way to go because it's really tough to, as prices increase on different softwares, trying to break it out and price your services competitively and not eat that extra bit when prices increase.
Yeah, and that's happened for a couple of years now and it's gone up $10, and that's about when I actually stopped doing it. I was bundling it when I used to be able to pass that along an existing client in QuickBooks Online. Most people come to me already in QuickBooks Online. And I'll tell you, a lot of times at the end of the year, I'm having this conversation because they're looking at the total number as we're, you know, going through the files. And they're like, I paid you that much. And I'm like, you know, I think I'm gonna start to pull those fees out because they're forgetting that the payroll's in there and then the subscriptions in there.
And even apps sometimes because they do the bundling with certain apps that can go into the billing also.
Right. And that can add up to quite a bit of money a month. By the end of the year, it's a lot bigger numbers. So that's the reason why I'm not adding it in anymore. And I still add the apps in. I just don't add the payroll and the QuickBooks because of the bigger, bigger numbers, especially when I'm dealing with advance. And you really got to make sure— and that's one of my biggest tips to anybody starting out— is that get paid first. It's so nice to have a big open heart and say, oh, you can pay me later. But if you're paying for the subscription, you're already paying for it ahead of it. Yeah, get paid first.
That's a good point, but especially before you're creating it. So, um, so yeah, I mean, I guess that's kind of week 2. As a quick recap, we, we went through, we were trying to assess whether the person would be a good company file to go to the cloud or not. We're going to provide additional links to videos on how to transition from desktop To online. And matter of fact, we also just did a video that kind of shows going online to desktop. So for full complete, you know, circle, we'll, we'll link both into the setup. Then the third one was how now with the new client list, you can actually add any type of a client in there, which means you can access that work section to schedule a task, make recurring tasks, those kind of things for even companies that are not online, but you've got that powerful dashboard to control it all. But that's a topic for another time.
Yeah, we have a lot of little nuggets still laid out here to go through. But thank you for helping me. This makes it so much easier. And we always have good insight from both of us from different— we come from different places and different backgrounds. So—
West Coast!
West Coast!
So everybody, here's wishing you a very successful week.
