• Bank Statements and Reconciliations: All Bank statements for each end of month and Bank Reconciliations for each month (list of outstanding checks and deposits)
• Credit Card Accounts: All Credit Card Statements Used for Expenses (if any)
• Merchant Processor Statements: MC/Visa, AMEX, etc
• Any Other Loans / Lines of Credit: Current Balance outstanding as of end of month prior to conversion
• Payroll - Current reports from Payroll Processor
• Accounts Receivable - List of Open Invoices as of month end
• Accounts Payable - List of Unpaid Bills as of month end
Remember - It is all in the set-up! If the QuickBooks file is set up wrong, everything snowballs after that – it can be garbage in, garbage out. Getting it right is so important.
Another pointer – sometimes it is not easier to convert a Quicken file to QuickBooks. Reason being, if data has been mis-posted, the Chart of Accounts is a mess, etc…it really doesn’t reduce the amount of set-up time to convert it. If that becomes the case for you setting up a new client, it is still easier to export the lists from a prior financial application such as Quicken – Chart of Accounts, Vendors, etc…and clean those up in Microsoft Excel, then import them into QuickBooks. If past transactions are necessary to be imported, you can clean up the data in Microsoft Excel and use one of the import tools that I have discussed in previous blogs to bring the data over to QuickBooks.