As accountants, we are our clients’ most trusted business advisors. What may surprise us is how many of them also turn to us for technology advice. But it makes sense,  since they are used to asking us which bookkeeping and other programs to use, they’ll also turn to us for advice on how to use it, and how to implement the infrastructure and business processes that surround bookkeeping software.

Business finances + personal finances = not a great situation especially when all the business’ financial data is in an accounting software such as Quicken and intermingled with personal finances. In my last blog I wrote about exporting data from an Excel spreadsheet into QuickBooks.  How do you move everything over from Quicken to QuickBooks? You can convert a Quicken file to QuickBooks through the Easy Step Interview built into QuickBooks. The conversion copies your Quicken data to a new QuickBooks company file. Your original Quicken data file doesn’t change so you can continue to use it. After converting your Quicken file, you will have two sets of data: your original, unchanged Quicken file and your new QuickBooks company file to use from that date forward.When you begin to set up any new company file in QuickBooks, make sure to have the following on hand:

Here we are - 2009 already half over. To us in the accounting world that is six months of data a business has accumulated. What if your client decides they want to switch to QuickBooks® now instead of waiting for the new version to come out in the Fall? To top it off, you get dizzy from all the data that’s kept on an Excel spreadsheet separate from their accounting system. How do you merge it so it will make sense in QuickBooks and all of your financial information will be in one place? First off, decide how much of this data is important to your client. If it’s an absolute necessity to bring the over the history, there are tools that can help you merge data from Excel to QuickBooks. Log onto http://marketplace.intuit.com/v2/f-data-synchronization/software-solutions.aspx and look at your choices to bring over mass data into QuickBooks from another QuickBooks file, Microsoft Excel and or other applications that data may be kept in.