QuickBooks, Long Set-up

One of the bigger projects that Miramar Traffic and Parking Signs, LLC aims to accomplish is the implementation of QuickBooks to streamline accounting and data recording for the company. I was firstly tasked with researching the service and determining if it was the right choice for what we wanted to use. Miramar had simply been using Excel spreadsheets before to record transactions, information on customers, and to make our quotes and invoices. The process of using Excel spreadsheets was tedious, and we both knew it was not the optimal way to continue recording company information and transactions.

I started by reading about QuickBooks in online reviews, articles, and on their website itself and it seemed to be an easy to use and viable option for Miramar. I was not fully convinced though just by reading about the service and seeing screenshots, so I proceeded to watch online reviews and tutorials to gain an even better understanding of their product’s capabilities. I spent hours watching tutorials from a CPA who walked me through the different processes of setting up your account, entering all the necessary information, and how to record future transactions. Once I understood how to work these processes, I relayed the information to my boss, and we purchased QuickBooks for our company.

I had originally thought that the researching part of the QuickBooks project had been long and drawn out as I tried to learn the details, but the transfer of information from Excel and the set-up of our invoices and other documents took longer than I expected. The issue with speed was that I had to walk my boss through each of the different functions, because I would not be the one using the program once I leave so it was imperative to teach him how to access the relevant information. In order to make things go more quickly and efficiently, I suggested that I should set-up the pages that would not need to be altered once the set-up was finished, while he could go focus on learning how to customize and fill-out the quotes and invoices to look the way he desired, as he would be sending those directly to customers. This worked well, as QuickBooks can handle more than one user on at one time, so I was able to get basic pages set up for the company and transfer in some of the pertinent past Excel information, while my boss was able to focus on setting up the pages that required his judgement. We were able to complete the QuickBooks set-up and now we use the service for any sales transactions we make.