S P O N S O R E D
We officially launched Uncat on the QuickBooks Online App Store after getting approved by Intuit in mid-November 2020. Uncat helps accountants and bookkeepers to resolve uncategorized transactions with their clients.
We built Uncat to scratch our own itch – to save ourselves time and make life easier for our clients. We got tired of exporting spreadsheets of uncategorized expenses, chasing clients for information, and manually entering client responses into QuickBooks Online.
We’ve learned a lot over the past year as our accounting and bookkeeping clients have categorized tens of thousands of transactions based on the descriptions and receipts provided by their clients.
The most frequently used tools to get information back from clients about uncategorized transactions:
- Excel spreadsheet
- Google Sheets
- Uncat
The most frequent Vendors for uncategorized expenses:
- Amazon
- Costco
- Wal-Mart
The most frequent ways Customers pay for goods/services that create uncategorized income:
- Venmo
- PayPal
- Square
The average amount of an uncategorized transaction in QuickBooks Online: $601.59
The average number of uncategorized transactions per client every month: 27
The workflow and amount of time it takes to categorize per transaction:
1. Excel Spreadsheet or Google Sheets
- Export transactions from QuickBooks Online.
- Email the client with the spreadsheet or a link to the spreadsheet.
- Remind the client by email or phone or meeting.
- Receive descriptions back from the client in the spreadsheet and separately receive receipts typically by email.
- Copy-paste descriptions from the spreadsheet into each individual transaction in QuickBooks Online and optionally also upload receipts and categorize the transactions.
- Switch between multiple tabs in QuickBooks Online and among multiple clients in QuickBooks Online Accountant.
- Total of about 60 seconds per transaction
2. Uncat
- Instantly sync uncategorized transactions from QuickBooks Online, Xero (beta), and QuickBooks Desktop (beta).
- Automatically notify the client of uncategorized transactions on a recurring schedule – set it and forget it.
- Sync the descriptions and receipts (and optionally class, location, customer, billable, tax, and more) added to Uncat by the client into QuickBooks Online.
- Optionally route transactions to specific client users based on payment accounts and/or uncategorized transaction accounts.
- Categorize transactions for one client or multiple clients from a single dashboard in Uncat. Or let your client categorize transactions and then review and approve.
- Total of about 5 seconds per transaction.
We often refer to the process of resolving uncategorized transactions as “herding cats” for accountants and bookkeepers. It’s why we have a picture of a cat wearing a cowboy hat and riding a pony on our homepage.
As we meet with hundreds of accountants and bookkeepers and get feedback and feature requests, we continue to add more time-saving shortcuts to Uncat to take the hassle out of the monthly close.
Most importantly, the vast majority of clients like using a web application much better than trying to manage an unwieldy spreadsheet that is too often out of date. As one client wrote to their accountant about Uncat, “I like this better.” If the client is happy, the accountant is happy.
Plus, we’ve gotten bonus feedback from many firms that they now have better relationships with their clients because of the regular notifications and reminders that Uncat sends to their clients on their behalf.
As one client wrote to their accountant, “I really appreciate you keeping up to date on my expenses throughout the month and not just at month end.” The accountant had always been tracking expenses throughout the month, but the reminders from Uncat sent on behalf of the accountant made it real for the client.
Feel free to book a demo of Uncat or jump straight to the 14-day free trial. And please let us know what you think so we can keep adding more time-saving features.
Author Bio: Brandon Bruce is the CEO and Co-founder of Uncat.