Chapter 22
Using the Accountant’s Copy
In this chapter:
• Understand the Accountant’s Copy
• Create an Accountant’s Copy
• Merge the accountant’s changes into your file
Many accountants specialize in supporting QuickBooks, which means they understand the software and know how to use it. Many have a specialized version of QuickBooks for accounting professionals on their own computers.
At various times during the year, your accountant might want to look at your books. There might be quarterly reports to analyze or prepare. Or maybe a physical inventory uncovered serious discrepancies in your on-hand quantities, requiring an adjustment to the inventory account on your balance sheet. Almost definitely your accountant will want to examine your QuickBooks file at the end of the year to help you close your books and prepare your tax returns.
Some accountants may ask for a copy of the company file, a backup of your company file (which they restore onto their computer), or a portable company file in order to review and make changes to your QuickBooks file.
If they use any of these methods, you shouldn’t work in your QuickBooks file at the same time. If you do continue to work on your local copy on your computer, the transactions you enter will be lost once you restore the copy your accountant returns to you. Why? Because restoring a regular backup overwrites the company file you continued to use. Not a good solution.
Understanding the Accountant’s Copy
QuickBooks has a better solution. Give your accountant a specially designed copy of your company file called the Accountant’s Copy. Let your accountant do the work back at her office while you continue to work in your copy. When the file comes back to you with the accountant’s changes, QuickBooks can merge the changes from the Accountant’s Copy into your copy of the company file, which means the work you do while the accountant is working isn’t replaced by the work your accountant does.
When you create an Accountant’s Copy, QuickBooks imposes restrictions on the type and extent of transactions you and your accountant can do to make sure you don’t work at cross purposes.
Creating an Accountant’s Copy
QuickBooks provides two methods for delivering the accountant’s copy you create to your accountant:
• Save a file You can save an Accountant’s Copy on removable media (CD, DVD, or flash drive) and send or deliver it that way. You can also send it via e-mail, although sometimes people can’t e-mail the file because of the size limits set by their ISP (Internet service provider) and/or their accountant’s ISP.
• Send a file to your accountant using a QuickBooks secure server If your accountant has subscribed to this service, you can upload for free an Accountant’s Copy to a secure server provided by QuickBooks and have your accountant download the file. QuickBooks notifies the accountant of the existence of the file by e-mail and provides a link to the file in the e-mail message.
ProAdvisor Tip: Only the Admin or External Accountant user can create an Accountant’s Copy, and the company file must be operating in Single-User mode to accomplish this task.
Saving the Accountant’s Copy
To create an Accountant’s Copy and save it to a location on your computer or on removable media, choose File | Accountant’s Copy | Save File. In the Save Accountant’s Copy dialog, be sure the Accountant’s Copy option is selected.
Click Next to move to the window to set the dividing date for this Accountant’s Copy. Your accountant will be able to work on transactions dated on or before that date in his copy while you can continue to work and create transactions that are dated after the dividing date in your company file. To learn more about this important date, be sure to read the section “Choosing the Dividing Date.” Click Next to save the file.
QuickBooks opens the Save Accountant’s Copy dialog and creates a filename that incorporates your company filename as well as the date and time of the file’s creation. That’s an excellent filename, and there’s no reason to change it. By default, QuickBooks saves the Accountant’s Copy to your desktop, but you can change the location if you wish.
If you’re sending the file on a flash drive, change the location by choosing the flash drive in the Save In field at the top of the dialog. If you’re planning to send the file on a CD or DVD, save the file to your hard drive and then transfer the file to the CD/DVD. After you save the file, QuickBooks displays a message reminding you of the dividing date and also reminding you to send the file to your accountant.
If you’ve password-protected your QuickBooks data file, you must give your accountant the Admin password so he can open it.
Sending an Accountant’s Copy to the QuickBooks Server
To create an Accountant’s Copy that is uploaded to a secure server maintained by QuickBooks from which your accountant can download the file, choose File | Accountant’s Copy | Send To Accountant, which opens the Send Accountant’s Copy dialog that explains the process.
Click Next to establish a dividing date. Your accountant will be able to work on transactions dated on or before that date in his copy while you can continue to work and create transactions that are dated after the dividing date in your company file. To learn more about this important date, be sure to read the next section, “Choosing the Dividing Date.”
In the next window, enter your accountant’s e-mail address twice to confirm the data, your name, and your e-mail address. If an e-mail address exists in the e-mail field of the Company Info dialog (in the Company menu) window, that address is automatically entered as your e-mail address, but you can change it.
In the next window, enter a password your accountant needs to open the company file in the Accountant’s version of QuickBooks. It must be a strong password, which means it contains at least seven characters, a mixture of letters and numbers, and at least one letter is in a different case from the other letters (usually, this means one letter is uppercase).
If your Admin password is a strong password because you enabled credit card security, as explained in Chapter 3, you can use the Admin password for the upload/download server access.
You can also enter a message for your accountant that will appear in the body of the e-mail message, notifying your accountant that you’ve uploaded the file. E-mail text is not encrypted as it travels around the Internet, so don’t use this message to give your accountant the password.
Click Send to upload the file to the server. QuickBooks displays a message telling you it must close all windows to create an Accountant’s Copy; click OK to continue. When the Accountant’s Copy has been created and uploaded, QuickBooks displays a success message.
QuickBooks then sends an e-mail to your accountant (see Figure 22-1) and to you (see Figure 22-2).
FIGURE 22-1 |
QuickBooks notifies your accountant that the file is available and explains what to do next. |
FIGURE 22-2 |
QuickBooks also sends you information about the file transfer. |
Choosing the Dividing Date
The text in the Set The Dividing Date window (see Figure 22-3) explains that your accountant works on transactions dated on or before the dividing date, and you work on transactions dated after the dividing date. You and your accountant should discuss the dividing date you select.
FIGURE 22-3 |
The dividing date establishes boundaries and limits for the type of work you and your accountant can perform. |
While your accountant is working with the Accountant’s Copy, you can continue to work in your QuickBooks file, adding transactions dated after the dividing date. There are some limitations, however, in what you can change in your file while an Accountant’s Copy is outstanding:
• You can add a new account but not subaccounts. You can also make new accounts inactive. But you cannot add a subaccount to an account that existed prior to creating the Accountant’s Copy.
• If you perform a reconciliation of your bank account (or other account) and clear transactions dated on or before the Accountant’s Copy dividing date, be sure to advise your accountant that you’re performing a reconciliation. Otherwise, if the accountant performs a reconciliation for the same month and/or clears the same transactions, the reconciliation will be undone in your QuickBooks file when you import the accountant’s changes.
The dividing date you select should be the period for which you need your accountant to examine your books and make needed changes, which may not be a year-end date.
Some people send an Accountant’s Copy with a dividing date matching the date of a report they need for a special reason—such as an income statement and/or balance sheet the bank wants to see because of an existing or potential line of credit. Other users may need an “accountant-approved” detailed report of transactions for the company’s partners or a nonprofit association’s board (usually a month, quarter, or year-end date).
To give your accountant a period in which to insert changes, such as adjusting journal entries or reversing journal entries, set the dividing date about two weeks after the end date you need. For example, if the report you need is as of the end of the last quarter, set the dividing date for two or three weeks after the last quarter end date.
Merge the Accountant’s Changes into Your File
The file your accountant sends back is not a complete QuickBooks company file; it contains only the changes made by your accountant. In addition, the file is encrypted so it can be imported only into the company file you used to create it.
Use the following steps to open the file and import it into the original company file:
1. Be sure the company file from which you created the Accountant’s Copy is open.
2. Choose File | Accountant’s Copy | Import Accountant’s Changes From File (if the file is on removable media) or From Web (if your accountant is using Intuit’s file transfer service).
3. Navigate to the location where you saved the file your accountant sent, and double-click the file listing; the file has the naming format <CompanyName> (Acct Changes).qby.
4. The Incorporate Accountant’s Changes window opens so you can preview the changes that will be merged into your company data file and read any notes your accountant wrote. (Before you import the changes, you can save the report as a PDF file or print it.)
5. Click Incorporate Accountant’s Changes. QuickBooks walks you through the process of backing up your current file before importing the changes and then merges the changes into your company data file.
If any transactions failed to merge with your company file, a message appears informing you of the failure. The window includes buttons you can click to save (as PDF) or print the information. QuickBooks, however, will automatically create a PDF and save it in the same location as your QuickBooks data file.
Click Close. QuickBooks displays a message asking if you’d like to set a closing date and password-protect the closed period as of the dividing date you set. If the dividing date on this Accountant’s Copy was the last day of the previous fiscal year, this is a good idea, so click Yes; if not, use your own judgment. (You can learn about setting a closing date to protect data in the previous fiscal year in Chapter 18.)
QuickBooks opens your company file, the text on the title bar changes back to its normal contents (instead of displaying a notice that an Accountant’s Copy is outstanding), and you can work in the file with no restrictions.
ProAdvisor Tip: After you’re up and running again normally, you can delete the file your accountant sent you, and you can also delete the Accountant’s Copy file you created if you saved it instead of uploading it.
Cancel the Accountant’s Copy
Sometimes, accountants report that they have no changes to make; sometimes, accountants send you an e-mail to notify you of a small change and ask you to enter the transaction manually; and sometimes, you decide you made the Accountant’s Copy in error and don’t want to wait for a file to come back (don’t forget to tell the accountant about your decision). Whatever the reason, if you’re not going to get a file back from your accountant, you can cancel the Accountant’s Copy in order to work normally in your company file.
Another reason to cancel the Accountant’s Copy is because you simply don’t want to import the changes you saw in the Incorporate Accountant’s Changes window. Call your accountant and discuss the problem. If the end result is that you prefer not to import the changes, close the Incorporate Accountant’s Changes window without importing the changes and cancel the Accountant’s Copy.
To return everything to normal, choose File | Accountant’s Copy | Remove Restrictions. QuickBooks asks you to confirm your decision. Select the Yes, I Want To Remove The Accountant’s Copy Restrictions option, and click OK.
Caution: If you cancel the Accountant’s Copy and then later decide you want to import and accept the changes, you cannot import the copy you’ve just canceled. You’ll have to create a new Accountant’s Copy, send it to your accountant again, and she, in turn, will need to redo whatever changes were made in the Accountant’s Copy.
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