Track Your QuickBooks Adjustments as Thoroughly As Possible
When adjusting your clients’ QuickBooks files you need to make your adjustments as easy to track as possible. Not only does this tracking provide you with solid work papers for your files, it also protects you if the client mistakenly accuses you of “messing up” their data files. Use the following methods to track your modifications to a client’s QuickBooks file:
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Use an Accountant's Copy
Adv. Tip - Accountant Copy Tip
The Accountant’s Copy is a special copy of the QuickBooks file your client creates and sends to you. The Accountant’s Copy allows you to work while your client is working with very few limitations for either you or the client. After you make modifications to the client’s data file, you can export your changes for the client to import. The export/import report provides a list of the transactions you added, edited, voided and deleted, the action you took, the specific edits you made to the transaction and the debit/credit impact of your changes on the General Ledger. The Accountant’s copy even tracks changes to list information. Also, since you can create only one Accountant’s Copy at a time, your modifications to the client’s file can’t become intermingled with the client’s modifications – a sticky problem that happens with the Audit Trail if you make your edits while logged in as the Administrator.
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Use the Audit Trail
Adv Tip - Audit Trail Note
If you make your modifications using a unique QuickBooks username, the Audit Trail will track your modifications separately from other users. The Audit Trail does track deleted transactions as well as the entire history of modifications to the transaction. That makes the Audit Trail a powerful report and, on the surface, an ideal report for accounting professionals to track their modifications to the QuickBooks file. However, consider that unlike the Accountant’s Copy, the Audit Trail does not track changes to list information.
Adv Tip - Audit Trial Tip
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Print Journal Entries
Adv Tip - Journal Entries Note
If your edits were limited to Journal Entries, you can easily print a report showing all of the entries you made. If you mark all of your entries “Adjusting Entries” you can create an Adjusted Journal Entries report. If your client uses an edition of QuickBooks that doesn’t have the Adjusting Entries option, you can create a Journal report modified by the Entered/Last Modified date for the day you entered the entries.
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