thinkQuickBooks

helping right brain professionals navigate the left brain world of accounting

Archive for the tag “QuickBooks Canada”

06 Aug 2013
10 Comments

Intuit has relaunched the QuickBooks Community forum!

As of yesterday, it’s new and improved! Well, at this point we can say it’s new 😉

https://community.intuit.com/

There are nine ‘topics’ to choose from. The first six topics relate to the US versions of QuickBooks. The last three topics are specifically for QuickBooks Canada, QuickBooks UK, and QuickBooks en Español.

If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll notice that the topics have been revised. Intuit is perhaps trying to make the language easier for the majority of users to understand (for example, ‘Customers & Getting Paid’ instead of Accounts Receivable). If you click on the QuickBooks Canada topic, you’ll probably notice that ‘Sales Tax’ is not a subtopic. I noticed this right away and definitely think it should be added back!

It appears Intuit has some kinks to straighten out, and I’m sure they’re working on them. Members don’t seem to have access to their old questions and answers. And referring specifically to the QuickBooks Canada topic, the ‘Unanswered’ questions seem to all be ‘asked about a year ago!’ That said, it’s early in the changeover and it looks like Intuit is gradually adding back content.

Opinions on the new platform aside, the community forum can be a great resource to get pretty much any question you have answered. A lot of QuickBooks gurus hang out and provide answers, generally because they love to serve and help other members with their books. You can also search the database for older questions and answers (a note about searching… right now, you have to type your search into the ‘Have a Question?’ field at the top of the page. You’ll then be taken to the results page, and the field will now be labelled ‘Search.’ Here you can search for another topic). You can also browse tags which you will see on the right hand side of the main page.

I’d love to know what you think of the new forum. And if you have a suggestion, you can contact Intuit directly. Look for the ‘Send us Feedback’ link at the bottom of all forum pages. Embrace the change!

Advertisement
Posted in QuickBooks and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
31 Jul 2013
32 Comments

Why is my previous QuickBooks GST/HST ‘File Sales Tax’ journal entry incorrect?

ISSUE: the journal entry that QuickBooks automatically creates when filing sales tax is not entered correctly. The most common problem is missing tax items. You may also see missing information on the memo line, and you may even see the tax items switched around.

This happened to one of my clients this week. He noticed an ‘unassigned tax amount’ when attempting to ‘file sales tax.’ He clicked on the amount and it took him back the journal entry that QuickBooks had created for the previous sales tax filing. We then started to uncover some strange errors…

Here’s a screenshot of what a normal FILE SALES TAX journal entry should look like:

Correct JE for File Sales Tax

And here are two screenshots of the incorrect FILE SALES TAX journal entries discovered in my client’s file:

Incorrect JEIncorrect JE #2This is a known issue. QuickBooks senior tech support tells me it’s essentially random. It started with the 2012 R12 update and the 2013 R4 update. It’s considered a critical issue with moderate severity and high impact. The engineers are working on completely removing this issue. 

SOLUTION: Go back to the incorrect journal entries that QuickBooks created and manually correct them. Review previous, current, and future tax filings carefully.

My advice until Intuit works on eliminating this potential problem is to keep current with your updates and CHECK YOUR ‘FILE SALE TAX’ WINDOW CAREFULLY BEFORE FILING! Watch out for unassigned tax amounts. If you have any, drill down on the amount. If you end up in a previous ‘File Sales Tax’ journal entry, and you spot something wrong, you’ve likely encountered the ‘File Sales Tax’ bug! You will need to correct the journal entry by entering the correct tax items. If you discover information missing from the memo line, correct that as well. You can refer to previous filings for missing information.

NOTE: these errors carry over to the next sales tax return. If you discover more than just the last “File Sales Tax’ journal entry incorrect, your previous filings with the CRA could have errors.

Other tips for spotting errors in the File Sales Tax window: Manually multiply line 101 by the tax rate in your province for a ballpark figure of what line 103 should be. Drill down on line 103. Look for a balance leading into the period. This will be zero if you have not made changes to your sales after your last filing. Drill down on line 106. Again, look for a balance leading into the quarter. This will also be zero if you haven’t made any changes to your purchases after your last filing.

Be careful when troubleshooting your sales tax, and always make a backup of your file before making any changes.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve run into this particular bug!

Posted in CRA, QuickBooks and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
18 Jul 2013
2 Comments

‘Find a Local QuickBooks Expert’ site shutting down in Canada!

This weekend, the ‘Find a Local QuickBooks Expert’ search wizard for Canada will be gone. But it’s only temporary! In September, a new and improved site will be launched. Here’s the announcement:

Find an Expert

I couldn’t be more excited about this development! We are definitely behind our US counterparts in this regard, so this is very welcome news. I’ve been asking about and hoping for a better site for years! Here’s a peek at what the Canadian site looks like now:

7/19/13 UPDATE – FEATURE NOW GONE! I was hoping to add a screen capture of the site today but they took it down a day early! Here’s the link anyways: http://www.intuit.ca/en/intuit/findexpert_index.jsp

And here’s a link to the US site:

http://proadvisor.intuit.com/find-a-proadvisor/search.jsp

The links take you to the welcome pages, not to the search results. The differences when you actually perform a search are astronomical!

Complaints about the Canadian site aside, this is an awesome tool provided by Intuit on both sides of the 49th. I have connected with a few clients because of it, and the long-awaited improvements will be great for Canadian ProAdvisors and clients alike.

Posted in QuickBooks and tagged , , , , ,

Post Navigation

Newer Entries →