Process Set Up and Conversion
The template file set up in QuickBooks generally takes about four to eight hours and that includes the finding the proper workflow that will make QuickBooks work for your business. This includes the process and permissions in the new accounting system, reviewing reports needed and designing what fields we need in QuickBooks to create those reports, and setting up a template QuickBooks file.After the template is set up, there may be a short period of double system entry to allow for continued training and process review. The double entry will help us learn what extra information we need to find a home for in QuickBooks.
The fastest way to get your conversion completed is to push in opening balances. Then we can continue to push in the details after the fact. If we have planned for the conversion, we can push in transactions through a certain point close to the conversion date. Then at the last minute we will push in the last few months’ information.
Fourlane can also extract data from the old software. The data comes in table format and generally there are 200-500 tables to mine. Every accounting system has different tables that we have access to. Fourlane provides options to lessen the conversion cost. The customer converting can review which data (customers, vendors, accounts) they don’t want to use and which transactions they want pushed into the new system.
For conversion, the following reports are needed from the current system:
- Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable as of beginning date importing and ending date importing
- Trial Balance or Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet by month for all months importing (Allowing us to true up to balance in the old file)
- Inventory value and quantity on hand as of start date and end date of importing
Data Conversion Types
We offer three different levels of QuickBooks Data Conversion, including “open balances”, “basic plus some details”, and “full conversion”.
Open balances includes open accounts receivable, open accounts payable, chart of accounts, customer list, vendor list, employee list, inventory list, services list, and trial balance details going back as many years needed. The medium level includes invoice history, bills history, and summary balances for anything else the customer desires.
Full Conversion is all posting transactions – invoices, credit memos, invoice payments, bills, vendor credits, bill payments, checks, payroll, job costing transactions, journal entries, deposits, cash receipts, etc. After all transactions are imported, then we need to do two monthly journal entries – The True Up. The first entry will zero out the trial balance for the month. The second entry will put in the balances that came from the previous software.
What To Expect
Every conversion is going to be a little different. You are switching to a new software and the new software can treat data differently. As an example – in some systems you can have one item that points to multiple sales GL accounts on an invoice. QuickBooks only allows you to point an Item to one GL account. When we set up the items it will tell us what GL account that item should hit. If that item should have been split to two GL codes, the True Up mentioned above will capture the details that QuickBooks does not do naturally.
Another example – in other systems when you use a department code it grows your chart of accounts. Rent for department 1 is 6000-001; rent for department 2 is 6000-002 etc. QuickBooks handles this data much better with its’ class feature. So we create a GL code called 6000 Rent, and use the class field on transactions to get the proper department expenditures into the proper Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet buckets. This keeps your chart of accounts smaller and allows you to run reports on the same data.
After knowing the expectations and what data we are moving into the new file, Fourlane can take these details to import to QuickBooks and turn the file back to the customer for review and training (Phase 3).
