Bookkeeping software can help your business do more than keep track of your income and expenditures. QuickBooks, the industry leader of bookkeeping software, makes some of the best programs on the market, including the latest version of QuickBooks Pro. This program does a lot more than bookkeeping, however. It’s an investment that will benefit your business’s daily schedule, customer service reputation, and inventory. Our list only scratches the surface of QuickBooks Pro’s utility. However, these top five uses should help spark your imagination.
Customer Service
Handling customer concerns is always a juggling act. Although QuickBooks Pro can’t get on the phone with them, the program does a lot to help you manage clients without losing focus. You can write and pin important notes for easy access, monitor overdue invoices, and keep all contact information within reach. The Customer Snapshot gives you all of your customer’s vital data a single screen. These features allow you to handle a customer without having to pause and hunt for vital data. QuickBooks, of course, also has advanced email capabilities, which we’ll cover in more depth later. It takes more than this to build a reputation for excellent customer service, but these tools are important for any busy professional.
Shipping
Stopping to handle shipping is a pain, especially if you have a lot to send. While most postal services have tried to make the process simpler and easier for businesses and individuals alike, the processes still have significant drawbacks for businesses. Even print and ship online services require separate registration and payment methods. At the very least, you have to drop whatever else you’re doing to go to the company website and complete the entire process there.
QuickBooks saves you a lot of time and effort. Rather than stopping in the middle of your work day to arrange for shipping, you can actually set up the entire process through QuickBooks Pro. QuickBooks Pro is integrated with UPS, USPS, and FedEx, so you can ship essentially anything with minimal effort.
Inventory Control
Whether you sell product as a merchant or simply need to keep your office stocked with vital supplies, inventory is an intrinsic part of bookkeeping that not all bookkeeping programs allow access to. QuickBooksPro integrates inventory control with bookkeeping through a handful of vital features. Not only can you create orders, but you can schedule reorder points. Most importantly, you can keep an eye on your inventory levels so you know exactly when you should arrange for a fresh shipment.
Communication
QuickBooks Pro has more email capabilities than most third party programs, which is important when you’re trying to handle the minutiae of commission details. QuickBooks allows you to go well beyond basic email notices. You can add multiple attachments, include information about a particular customer or job, and look into previous messages about the same transaction. Best of all, you can fully customize your email templates. This makes communication with customers, vendors, and partners vastly simpler, clearer, and more professional. Whether you need to add a header, branded images, unique signatures, or a combination of all three, QuickBooks Pro can handle your needs. Good communication is essential to not only good bookkeeping, but good business management, so these advanced email features are anything but frills. They give you the tools to respond to immediate issues as part of a continuous workflow, negating the need for constant program switching.
Business Improvement
Ultimately, any program your business invests in should improve your business’s value. However, very few offer the kind of advanced insight QuickBooks products allow. QuickBooks Pro has some of the most advanced reports of any bookkeeping software on the market. Premade templates allow you to analyze a situation quickly. For more in depth reviews, you can customize your report parameters yourself. Not only can you build your own, unique reports, or rely on the existing templates, but you can access a range of industry-specific report templates built by other QuickBooks users. These reports allow you to see everything from profit and expenditures, to customer rankings, to income trends. You need to see what’s going on inside your business in order to make efficient changes. QuickBooks takes advantage of their bookkeeping program’s insight to benefit you and your plans.
There’s an overarching benefit to our list that benefits all businesses. Small businesses, however, have the most to gain. Together, all of our points add up to dramatic time savings. Cutting back labor hours is important. It’s even more important for the owners and managers of small businesses need to multitask. Top ranking employees’ ability to perform multiple roles is essential for any business’s success. By trimming back the effort required to ship materials, communicate with partners, and successfully manage customers, QuickBooks Pro and its many uses can be an invaluable investment. After all, QuickBooks Pro is more than just bookkeeping software.
