How to make your accounting software payoff

Most Small businesses use QuickBooks and or Peach Tree to prepare their books and records. Some try to perform the necessary bookkeeping tasks themselveswhile others employ bookkeepers. At the end of the year these same companies employ a CPA to prepare their tax returns from these very books and records. Unfortunately, many business owners and bookkeepers are not current with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and tax regulations. Nor do they know the difference between the two. Thus, when a small business has to convert from one to the other to either prepare a financial statement to borrow or expand there business they will have to engage a CPA to prepare the conversion. Moreover, in many cases the entries made by an outside CPA to prepare the tax returns never find their way into the books and records of the company causing the Company to be totally reliant on the continuity of the third party providers. Consequently, by not  not requiring that all adjustments made by third party providers get included at the time of creation , along with the supporting documents,  valuable and costly information becomes lost permanently.  This becomes extremely worrisome if ever the company needs audited financials, is being audited by federal or local tax authorities, etc.

The above scenario is usually created because many business owners feel that they are saving money by not engaging an experienced CPA who knows how to configure the software properly while at the same time developing processes and procedures that insure compliance with both tax and GAAP accounting so that when the final entries are made the data can be automatically created to prepare GAAP reports or directly uploaded into tax software in a manner whereby the returns are like ivory soap 99.99% pure. Sounds impossible or too good to be true maybe a few years ago but today these small software packages can do what is being done for some of the larger businesses throughout the world who utilize , to name a few, SAP, Oracle. PeopleSoft, Great Plains, etc. All you need is a CPA that understands the capabilities of the system and knowledgeable enough to work with your existing CPA and or bookkeeper who do not or choose not to involve themselves in this manner. The investment to implement pays dividends in the future.