Proadvisor benefits QBO

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. I just wanted to do a quick tutorial about the ProAdvisor program. So for example, if you were in my line of business, or even if you were— and this kind of ties into last week's post about being self-employed— maybe you've got a job where you're a bookkeeper and it's wearing you down for whatever reason. And that's pretty much how I began my journey here as The owner of Artisani Bookkeeping. I had a boss that, let's just say, he tried to get every bit of energy out of me. I had a salaried job and he, I think he felt like he could, he was winning if he got 60 hours and only paid me for about 40 hours. And it just wore me down. It was weekends, it was nonstop. I was an office park manager and had a— couple of clients on the side that I did some bookkeeping for that were small, tiny. This is going back to the late '90s, and I started to search for work using the newspaper and then going out to jobs because it was QuickBooks Desktop back then, and started to work for customers, and word of mouth kind of spread, and I started to pick up a lot of customers where I could no longer take the full-time job and continue with my part-time job. And that's how I started. And I started out as a sole proprietorship. I just had this little side gig that I did and it became pretty beneficial. So one of the things I did when the QuickBooks ProAdvisor program came out was I joined and I took the tests every year. And the first year that the advanced testing came out, because there was a lot of us, and the first year the advanced testing came out was, I believe, 2007. And I drove up to Boston. I lived in Rhode Island at that time and met some really wonderful people. It was a wonderful network. This is before QuickBooks Connect and all of that. It was a wonderful networking opportunity. And they just kind of laid out what they were, where their goals were, and eventually became this, the ProAdvisor program, where you have Advanced and Regular Certified Advisors. So the first step would be, if you wanted to do this, would be, I would highly recommend, A, sign up for the program, B, take the test. And get the first certification and then work towards the second. Everything you need to pass both of those tests is in the program, and there's lots of tools out there that doesn't cost you anything. So for example, if someone's looking for a ProAdvisor, and this could be just a user in QuickBooks that's having issues with the program, and maybe they are having trouble with any issue really in QuickBooks Online. And because you work in this constantly all day long with different customers, you become aware and find out how to fix these things. And a lot of the training will help you through that. So as you start to take these tests, you get to be listed, and this is a way to get leads. Now, to be honest with you, depending on where you live, you might not get many, especially if you only get the first level certification. The advanced level, and I'm just going to search my town. The advanced level puts you on a higher listing. It's listed. There are several criteria involved: how long you've been advanced, so you can't really beat that or bump that up. But the more certs you get, like point of sale, I just don't use it for clients. I probably could pass the test. I just it's not my niche, not my niche market, so I stay out of that. But I am online advanced. Took that right when it came out. Advanced certified for the desktop, which was a heck of a test. Back in the day, it's probably better than it was initially. This was one that was for sure probably the hardest test I've ever had to take, and enterprise. Listing with reviews, asking clients or anybody else to list reviews is also beneficial. And this is a good place and someone can just click to email you right from here if you have that setting. So let's go into the file itself. And see what it looks like. So I'm just bringing you to the client page. So this is when you sign up, your actual data is in this part of it. This is your business in here. The ProAdvisor tab is where you would find all the things that have to do with being a ProAdvisor and all the benefits and the perks and where you'd be able to find that testing. So the training is right here in the training tab. So this is new, they've changed the training so it's a lot better than it was. But you can see here that there is a lot— this page is really slow to load. I get a lot of error 404 on it. So just so you know, this is a sample file, so I don't know what's happening here, but the training would be in this tab. Let's go back and see if it can refresh here. Because they just redid this page, I think that part of that has to do with this. Hopefully it will load. It's nice when you're trying to do a video and it doesn't load. Here we go. So you can find it in here. There's just little videos about how to begin and take the test, and then you can get into the certifications and get into the online certification and start to pull all that in here. Self-employed, you can be trained in that, learn that. That's probably a really good one to learn. And then you can go back a couple of years with the desktop if you want to do that. The desktop certification, it does cost, has a cost to it. There's a fee because you get the cert, you get the program with it. Right now they want the online people, so they're pretty much giving it away right now. So that is why you'd want to become a ProAdvisor. You get some leads and you get the training. It's self-paced, it's easy to go through, it's easy to navigate. The first test is not hard. The advanced test is a little bit hard. It's actually nowhere near as hard as the desktop training. So that's the benefits of being a ProAdvisor. Now they've got this Work tab over here. And oh, and this was where— before I get to the Work tab, this is where you would have your team. So this is where my team would be. And in here is the Work tab. So I would make my team members. So I have several people that work for me and they would be listed there and I can give them projects. I can give them jobs from there. The Work tab is a work in process. I actually was setting up all my customers in here, creating client requests, which is a really great feature. I can request a document. They can get a little notification when they go into QuickBooks, nice red light in your red lettering that your accountant is asking for documentation, maybe statements, maybe anything you need from your client. It can be right there in the program. I can create a project and assign it to one of my team members here. The problem I was having with this was that the screen's very cluttered. I think this is just gonna have to take some time to really get used to working in and navigate with. And I started setting my clients up and I just kind of gave up on it. I use Asana instead. It's a lot easier to work in and I'll put a link in the page for that. So it's got a lot of benefits. One of the other benefits of being a ProAdvisor is you can actually come in here and find the apps for your clients and for your business. So client apps, you can click on here and I don't have any real clients in here. They're kind of fake because this is an app for businesses that is an app you can reach your clients app. So you can come in here and start to find apps and you can add some of them to your client right from here. They don't have to. Some of them like TSheets, which is part of QuickBooks, you can add here. The bigger ones you can. I'm not sure about Hubdoc, but some of them you can and some of them you just can't. You have to actually go ask the client to sign up and help them because when you're in a client's account, the app tab doesn't show up on the side toolbar. It used to and they did away with that, so that's gone. So some of them I just had to do that with a client the other day that wanted some invoicing, robust invoicing with InvoiceSherpa, and you just can't have that on there. I had to ask him to sign up for it. He couldn't sign up for it on his own. So most of the popular apps are here, so you can find the bigger ones, the big boys, and there's lots of apps. Apps for your clients that will help them to customize and work in QuickBooks Online for their businesses. Noify is one off the top of my head that works really well with contractors. I like Invoice Sherpa for my landscaping clients because they have a lot of small bills and small invoices, and it's a nice little automated reminder system. Of course, TSheets is fabulous. Love that one for time tracking, and it's just robust. It has a lot of things, and it works right in the program. It works really well with QuickBooks Online Payroll. I have not used Expensify yet, but I know that's a real popular one. Hubdoc, of course, you can go back and see about 5 blog posts that I've written about it. All-time favorite. So this is a place that you can get those and add them to your firm and add them to your— some of them you can add to your clients' firms. So that is there. This is no longer, so this company was purchased by somebody else. But so that's all here in the app. So you've got this practice toolbar that gives you things of this nature. So your client list is here, your team members are here, the people who work for you are here. So it's nice even if you don't have a team when you start off, it'll start to build. Any training or any ProAdvisor perks are in here. So some discounts on the software is in the ProAdvisor tab as well as your training. The Work tab obviously is if you want to use it. If you're just starting, it's probably not too bad. I just have so many customers, it was just becoming too, too clunky for me to use. The Apps is also a great place to find your apps, get your apps, see the apps for the customer, or even looking for them, you can search them. These are all apps in this piece that are vetted by QuickBooks and gone through a pretty rigorous rigorous application process to be listed here. There's some apps that aren't listed here that you can just Google and you might find them and they're still good, but they just haven't been vetted by QuickBooks. These are the ones that you know that if you add them to your program, they're going to be— they're going to work well with QuickBooks. They've gone through a process. One of the other things I wanted to show you as far as QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor membership for your own business, and this is a tool that will be in any customer that links to you as a ProAdvisor, or as an accountant, add an accountant feature, you get this little toolbar. And this is— I use this all the time. So I can reclassify transactions from here. I can actually bring up a little box and just go through and move a whole bulk of transactions around if they're in the wrong account in the chart of accounts. I can see the voided and deleted ones. I love that piece. Writing off, if you have that in your customers and that's part of their type of business. Journal entries you can do from here. So Some of these things can be found over here on the plus sign and the gear, but it's easier just to— these are the things you use the most often. Reports tools, I really like that because I can preset. So if I'm working in a client's file for 2017, I can just preset the date range and put that in there, and I can also lock out the fiscal period from there. It's really nice. I can access my chart of accounts, place I spend a lot of time in. My accountant reports are here. I do a lot of reconciling. So all that's in this toolbar, as well as if you wanted to Provide tax services if you've got that ability to do and you're certified in that kind of— that type of work or listed in that type of work. So that's it in a nutshell about the ProAdvisor program. I hope that kind of clears it up. If you have any questions about it, I've been doing this type of work for many, many years and I'd love to answer your questions. You can add me in— add a question on Facebook or reach out to me directly via my website. Thank you for watching. Bye now. Bye.