In this solo presentation, Linda Artesani of Artesani Bookkeeping explains why QuickBooks Online (QBO) is superior to QuickBooks Desktop, emphasizing the flexibility provided by the QBO App Store. She addresses a common forum debate about backup capabilities, clarifying that QBO data is continuously backed up on Intuit’s servers but lacks point‑in‑time restores unless a third‑party app is used. Linda then walks through her favorite third‑party applications, describing each app’s core function, how it integrates with QBO, and specific use‑case benefits for bookkeeping, rental‑property management, and professional services. The apps covered include Hubdoc (automated AP and statement capture), LedgerSync (bank‑statement import for credit unions and check‑image linking), 17hats (CRM, lead‑to‑project workflow, lease management), ChronoBooks (year‑end QBO backup), TSheets (time‑tracking and employee scheduling), Calendly (meeting‑scheduling integration), and Boomerang (Gmail email scheduling). She highlights cost considerations, time‑saving automation, and practical tips for using each tool, concluding that the app ecosystem makes QBO the clear choice for small‑business accountants and bookkeepers.
Chapters
Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping, and, um, Appy New Year. Yes, I said Appy. We're going to talk about apps with QuickBooks Online and apps that you can use professionally, not just for QuickBooks. I got into an interesting little debate and I actually haven't really responded yet on the forum, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss the differences between desktop and online and which one's better. I fall in the online category is better because of the apps. It gives a lot of versatility and you can select the apps that work for your business and you don't have to pick ones that you're not going to actually be using. One of the topics that when we were going back and forth on the forum was that QuickBooks Online, you don't have a backup. Well, you don't need to back up on QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online backs up— QuickBooks backs up their program on their own servers. So Intuit has multiple servers, they're all across the world, so your data is being backed up. But let's say, for example, you want to back up to a specific date. You don't have that ability to do that. It's just a continual backup with QuickBooks Online, and you don't have that ability to go back in time like if you had Desktop. And you needed to create a backup and then you did something disastrous and maybe connected a different app and you have to delete a bunch of information, you don't have that ability to do that with QuickBooks Online unless you purchase the app. So let's go to the App Store and see what's available. I'm just— I took a moment, hopefully they'll all stay open, to pick my favorite apps that I like to use with QuickBooks. Of course, my favorite app is Hubdoc. I find this to be my favorite app. I use it with a lot of my clients. You can go back and look at my other videos that will show you how it automates accounts payable transactions. I get my statements using this. I mean, I just love it. And there's some best practices for year-end that I will get into in a future video. One of my new favorite apps is LedgerSync. So LedgerSync is similar to Hubdoc in that it pulls in bank statements. It does not do the accounts payable piece. So what I like about this particular app is I've got several clients that use a small bank account at Suncoast Credit Union, which credit unions are usually very friendly to their shareholders. Instead of being a customer of the bank, you're a shareholder, and their fees generally are less. So I recommend clients to go to credit unions, but— Most of the credit unions don't interact with Hubdoc. They do with LedgerSync. Some of the really oddball ones are there. They've got a really nice list here so you can see the list of supported banks and credit unions, and it's quite extensive. I have a client with Achieva Bank, and it's not supported on Hubdoc, but it's supported here. There's a lot of other features, and I'll get into that in a subsequent video on how this works. There's a lot of other things in here. One of the other big things that I like about it is I can actually see when my client writes a check. What they were, who they wrote the check to. So I'm not nagging my client for that data and that information. I can actually pull it in right here from LedgerSync and I can take that picture and drag and drop it into the check. So there's no debate about what the check was written for. Another app that I love is 17hats. And 17hats is an app for customer management relations. So this is an app that I use for, it's connected to my website. So if you log into my website and you see You want to reach out to me, maybe I answered a question on the forum and you want to reach out to me to have me help you with QuickBooks. There's a little form on there that I have you fill out explaining your issue and this program will actually respond to the issue, respond back saying that I'll get back to you and it will take my lead, that would be a lead as far as how that transaction would happen. It would start out as a lead and then it would turn into maybe a project. Maybe I'll give you a quote. Maybe it becomes a contract. So I try to work in that fashion for for my customers. It's a nice way to stay on top of things. I had a lady the other day that called me up, and I had gone out to see her in Naples. She said it was a few months ago, and my brain told me it was a lot longer, a lot longer than that. And I looked, and it was over a year ago. So I was able to find all that information just from that initial contact from her. Through 17hats, and I use it for my rental properties. So it's very affordable. It's like $279 a year, and you can have as many companies on it as you want. I've got my rental properties on, on it as well. So I have my leases go out as contracts, and it's got that availability to have people sign the lease electronically. So no more mailing these big fat envelopes with leases. It really, really makes it automated. For the rental property business as well, it's good because I tag all my customers, which are my tenants, by their street, so their building, their address. So Providence Street is one of the buildings we own. So everybody in Providence Street, if I need to contact only that property, I can put out one single email, grab all my tagged contacts for Providence Street, and put it out as a bulk email, you know, obviously I put it as BCC so everybody doesn't get each other's email address and then I can send out one email, maybe save it if it's like, hey everybody, you need to take your air conditioner out of the window, the heat season started. Regular recurring kind of emails like that I can send out to my tenants. It's really wonderful and I'll probably go into more depth on that as well. One of the debates we had was about backing up your records in QuickBooks. Sometimes there's a need for it. So ChronoBooks is what I would recommend to use to back up your file in QuickBooks. What's nice about it, it just came out in April, and what's really nice about the program is it's going to back up your books today. So year-end, you might want to back that record up. So if you're ever audited, if you've only been using QuickBooks for 2017, now you've backed it up, and if the IRS wants to see your data file, you now have an ability to send them that file, and you're not giving them 2018, 2019, you're just giving them that one year. So if you don't have this, it's $10 a month. If you don't have this particular app, I would recommend maybe bringing your records down into Excel, saving that, or if you have the desktop program, you could also export the file to desktop. And then obviously in the desktop program, we have the ability to kind of close off one year if you have the accountant's version. TSheets, another great program. That I highly recommend. It's time management. It's great for someone who tracks their time, time card entries, time entries. Maybe they do that kind of project work billing. Architect maybe would want to use this, this app. Contractor. It's easy for the customer to have their employees log in on their phones, log off. It's a really great app. In fact, it's the number one app on the App Store. So if you are interested in that, definitely look into it. If this is— it's very affordable. It was a standalone company, it was just purchased by Intuit, so now it's embedded into the program, into QuickBooks. Really wonderful program, can't say enough about it. If you're looking for a time management program, TSheets is the way to go. They have excellent support team. Hope that stays. They claim it's going to. They're far, far superior. In fact, if Intuit's listening, they should— Practice how TSheets did their job of being on the money with customer support. Customers were king with them. I know support with QuickBooks, I have phenomenal support with QuickBooks with the Diamond team that I have, but I think the average user doesn't get the best support. Online chat is probably the best. So another program that I use is Calendly. So Calendly for me works wonderful if I have someone who wants to meet with me, maybe review the records. For the year-end or maybe to use for training, remote training. I do a lot of remote training, particularly this time of the year. It gets pretty busy with people who may have been doing their books and then they realize they've looked at it or their CPAs looked at it and said, what is, you know, if you only had $10 in your checkbook, how do you have a $40,000 profit? And then you have to look to find out what's wrong. Well, I might do a remote training with someone like that to just kind of target where their problems are in their program. Maybe it's setup or maybe it's something else. So we'll do a remote session together. And so this works with my calendar so I can send this out, a link out to my customer to this calendar and they can go in and try to find a meeting time that works, that works for both of us. And I can schedule my calendar to do my regular bookkeeping work and my training and I've got it blocked out on my calendar so somebody can select the meeting. I don't have to go back and forth with emails. It saves time. You know, I love to save time. Another one that I like to use, let's see if I can bring it up here, is Boomerang. So Boomerang is a program built into Google Gmail and you have a Boomerang inbox and outbox and then anything that's bounced back. But what I like about Boomerang is I can send out an email and schedule it. So I'll have emails scheduled for my customers to go out around the time, I'll have it already pre-written up. And then as I finish the files, I'll make just one boilerplate one and I'll schedule them to go out when I'm ready to finalize someone's books and do my remote meeting with them. I'll have a link to my Calendly, to my calendar on that email and I can schedule that. So this is something that I use for a customer that I need to remind them of something monthly. I can set it and forget it. So I have a client that I only do payroll for and every month, they only have monthly payroll, I send them out an email Mm-hmm. Telling them I need your, I need a copy of your, you know, how many hours you worked, if there's a bonus, and I have that set up so automatically goes out. I don't have to think about it. In fact, when they ask me back, I'm like, oh, that's right, that email went out. So I don't have to remember to do it every month. It goes out for me on my behalf. Highly recommend it. There's a fee for it. I think it's $150 a year. Again, these apps are just time savers. If you look at the cost and weigh it up as the amount of time you get back in your day, Then it becomes worth it to go to use these apps. And I think that that's where hands down QuickBooks Online is far superior to Desktop. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I hope everybody has a happy, happy New Year and a prosperous one. Take care now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
