QuickBooks Online conversion course for accountant

I am struggling to unearth the traditional debits, credits, audit trail etc. in QBO

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Can anyone point me to a tutorial or similar, aimed at qualified accountants, which is an orientation course when adapting to QuickBoooks Online (QBO)?

 I am attempting to make the transition from traditional desktop accounting to QBO. Since QBO, like Xero, seems to be aimed primarily at users who for the most part have almost nil in the way of accounting background, it seems (understandably but frustratingly) to avoid all the traditional accounting system terminology (or jargon, depending upon your viewpoint) and structure with which I was brought up and am so at home. Things like Sales Daybook, Purchase Daybook, and crucially a clear audit trail.

As a specific example, I am logged into the QBO UK sample/demo company and have found the TB (relief!). From there I can I drill down into the Sales account which takes me to a report itemising, with invoice numbers, the make-up of the sales figure in the TB. So far so good. But when I click on one of the constituent invoice lines the underlying invoice to which I am taken (Inv 1009 in this case) is in US$, is long and complex with several rows bearing different dates, and some undated, and nothing equates to the value making up the TB value. (Value from this invoice reported in TB for period 01/01/2018 to 19/10/2018 is £1,494.91. The underlying invoice is in US$ and the net VAT total is $43,606.58.) I have no idea what from that invoice ended up in the Sales nominal account for the period I am looking at – nor for any period come to that.

This does not constitute an audit trail.

I must be missing something fundamental (I hope so, since client is switching to QBO), which is why I am asking for an orientation course aimed at traditional accountants. If I can’t find my way, reliably and unambiguously, from source to TB to accounts and back again I am lost.

Any thoughts (other than a general “there are lots of You tube videos available” – coz I know that, thanks?

Thank you

Replies (4)

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panda ketteringUK
By ketteringUK
19th Oct 2018 20:53

Audit Trial in QB - you can forget.
At the place i used to work at (large midlands chartered practice with many sides) we used to say that all crooks use QB as it's next to impossible, without blowing up the the budget, to follow the transactions.
Cash basis / accruals basis TB - why all these nonsense???

Control Alt and Delete
and then
Shut Down

Tomorrow will be another day

Thanks (2)
Replying to ketteringUK:
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By Graham Pears
19th Oct 2018 23:48

Hi kettering - thanks, that's really interesting. It certainly feels that the more accounting is taken away from accountants and into the control of non-accountant software developers - the more "technology" we have - the weaker the accounting guts, logic, visibility, reassurance we have. Inadequate audit trail is so utterly contrary to the accounting process that I really wonder how we have been allowed to get here. If you cannot trace then you cannot verify - so are we to take things on trust? How do auditors cope with that? Or anyone for that matter. Do people just take at face value whatever figures they are served up with? I find this hard to believe.

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Replying to Graham Pears:
panda ketteringUK
By ketteringUK
20th Oct 2018 08:24

Dear Graham,
I came across some article and one of the conclusion was that the accountancy professional will not be required in 20-30 years time due the full automation and technology.
Some of it is already here - direct feeds, expenses picture/upload/convert.

To answer the other point - there is always an element of trust (or suspicions with some clients). Besides the obvious analytical review / p&l analysis / ratio checks / vat to TO % check / confirming 'larger' expenses&purchases , etc there isn't much more we can do.
Quite often the clients use the software to save on accountancy fees. We can't 'verify' each transaction and agree with the hard copies. We do request copies of the larger invoices and few random expenses claims 'to satisfy ourselves to minimum'.

One of the greatest strength of desktop version of Sage that any deleted/amended transactions appear on the NL printouts. I am yet to see any cloud based bookkeeping package that does it. So if the client decides to 'reduce' the sales invoices as the vat is too high , there is no way of knowing it that the invoices was changed, especially when they have business that operates cash.

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By LJCASE
20th Oct 2018 13:15

Interesting that this question has come on the same day as another from an accountant who was also having QBO trouble.
QBO and others we could name are not aimed at accountants but at clients. We do things differently/correctly and the software providers arent interested in whether we spend hours getting things right.
May I direct ketteringuk to my post under the other QBO Any Answers. QBO are pushing on tv etc and I said all along that clients would leave. And they are - I've just lost one because QBO 'does it all for you'.

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