Accounting Articles
Remote Access from WebEx Helps CPA Firm Win at Bookkeeping
By: Bill Teague
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For CPA and QuickBooks ProAdvisor® Brett Cleaver, Remote Access is not just a feature. It's a part of his business model.
The QuickBooks® Remote Access feature, powered by WebExTM, is available to users of
QuickBooks Premier Accountant Edition 2005. Typically the user receives a one-year license, at no additional cost,
upon purchase of the QuickBooks software.* At this level, users can access any QuickBooks file. Users can also upgrade
to WebEx services that can access a clients' entire system – which is the way Brett and his colleagues prefer
to use the capability.
New Business Model
Over the last year and a half, Brett has built his practice around a THREE PRONG approach to provide clients with a high-value service with better rewards for client and practitioner.
- With permissions granted by their clients, his firm gains access to the client's online banking information and credit card information.
- They access all of the client's records via the WebEx Remote Access capability.
- They provide frequent review of transactions as they are being categorized and recorded.
Old Business Model
Brett and his colleague, Eric Malamud, CPA, each have decades of experience in public accounting. Time and again, they saw how under a traditional approach, the CPA would be distant from the bookkeeping to focus on the big picture. The CPA would typically review the work of the company's staff bookkeeper once or twice a year, when it came time to run financial statements or prepare taxes.
Then, the CPA would come up with a raft of questions and adjusting entries to clean up the books to allow for the creation of reports or the tax return.
The result? Financials that came too late to be of much use in managing the business – and a high percentage of
tax return extensions.
Remote Access Helps Put Bookkeeping First
Without the Remote Access component, they would not be able to achieve in which careful transaction to bookkeeping for clients has resulted in a winning solution for success.
"We have access to the entire desktop to almost all of clients," Brett says. "All of our regular monthly and
quarterly clients we connect to, we have acces to the whole desktop. It's what the client decides to allow."
WebEx the Right Tool
While the insight into their business model came first, Brett says WebEx turned out to be the right solution. "To do what we want to do, Web BEx is a useful tool," Brett says. "We're using the upgraded WebEx program."
Brett says they've had experience with other remote access solutions, but typically they required purchase of the software package for both accountant and client. And setup was complicated.
"With WebEx, I can set up any client by talking them through the process on the phone in five minutes or less," Eric says.
Bank Recs a Breeze
Depending on the client, accountants in Brett's firm access client records via WebEx one or more times a week to every day, he says. "We have one million-dollar plumbing client. Before we took on the account, the company that was having such a problem with its books that it was paying, on average, $1700 a month in charges for bad checks."
The solution? "Now we do a bank reconciliation three times a week," Eric says.
"A person doing a bank rec by hand can easily take two to four hours," Brett explains. "We can complete it in two to four minutes."
The difference? "WebEx access means we don't have to query the client at any turn," Brett says. "We just use WebEx to access the bank records and all the client's records. And the client gets the reconciliation before the bank can put the monthly statement in the mail."
* Remote Access capability, powered by WebEx, is available with QuickBooks Premier 2005 (all versions).
Internet access is required. One 12-month, single-user subscription of Remote Access Service is included with QuickBooks
Premier 1005 at no charge, valid for customers who purchase and install QuickBooks Premier Edition 2005 software
before December 31, 2005. Twelve months of service begins at the time of installation of Premier Edition software.
After 12 months, Premier Edition users can subscribe to the service for a fee. Fees apply for additional subscriptions.
Terms subject to change.
Bill Teague is Managing Editor of the Intuit® ProConnectionTM newsletter and Web site. For many years he was an Editor and Associate Publisher at Harcourt Professional Publishing, which published CPA Digest, Tax Accountants Weekly, and other publications for accountants.
Last Updated: 01/17/2005
