Many businesses unknowingly spend a lot of time manually entering data into QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online. This is often the result of being too busy to evaluate current processes as well as a fear of having to learn something new. Below are three quick steps that any business can quickly undertake to determine if they can free up valuable resources by no longer doing manual data entry.
Step 1: Identify Where Manual Data Entry is Happening
Meet with all QuickBooks users and have them identify data that they manually enter into QuickBooks. Also ask them to estimate how much time every month they spend doing each data entry task. Tackle those with the largest number of man hours first. Below are some ways Transaction Pro Importer users use our tools to save time:
- Website Sales
- Point of Sale Systems
- Time Activities
- EDI and Fulfillment Activities
- Calculations done in Excel and then manually entered as Journal Entries
- Bank and Credit Card Statements
- Receipts from a Lockbox
Step 2: Identify Where the Data is Coming From and Determine What Options Exist to Receive the Data
After identifying a process, see how the data is currently being received and if any other options exist. Ideally, see if you can download a flat file in either an Excel, csv, or txt format. If it appears that you cannot, it is worth contacting the other party to see if there are options that may not immediately be evident.
Step 3: Request a Free Trial of Transaction Pro
We offer free trials of our products so that you can test them prior to purchasing with no financial commitments. Transaction Pro’s products are a simple mapping exercise, and you do not need to be an IT person in order to use our products. We have a Desktop product to use with QuickBooks Pro, Premier, or Enterprise and an Online product to use with QuickBooks Online.
Download a free trial of either version here.
As our tools work with industry standard formats, often it is just a simple matter of mapping the import file columns to the QuickBooks fields on the Transaction Pro mapping screen. However, if your file does not contain all the data required by QuickBooks, we offer many options that will work around this that include but are not limited to:
- Setting a Default Value: An example of where this can be helpful is if the Customer or Vendor Name does not exist in the import file, but the file is all from the same Customer or Vendor.
- E-commerce Options: When selling products online, additional fields can be added for items such as Shipping, Discounts, and Taxes.
- Cross Reference Options: QuickBooks uses names as the primary list identifier. Sometimes other software applications will use account numbers. We have cross reference features available for Customers, Vendors, Employees (Desktop version only), Items, and Accounts (Desktop version only) to assist in linking these list items between the two systems.
Since our products work with Excel, formulas or macros can be written to reformat any file. If you are unsure if your file will work with Transaction Pro Importer, feel free to send it to us at support@transactionpro.com. Be sure to indicate if you are using QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online and which transaction or list type you want to import into QuickBooks.