Accounting Articles

QuickBooks, Paper and Chocolate ... and QuickBooks Point of Sale

CPA Uses Accounting Skills to Create a Beautiful Store

Intuit ProConnection Really Simple
You can bring these articles to your desktop as soon as they are published.


Already a ProConnection subscriber?
Update your profile and personalize your ProConnection experience.
Update your profile

Not a subscriber yet?
Sign up now for free and start receiving customized newsletters directly to your inbox.
Sign up now

While social media, texting and e-mail are fast, inventive ways to communicate, writing a letter in longhand is not likely a part of anyone's lifestyle if you're under 30 years old. Vicki Petersen wants to change that way of thinking – one letter at a time. Her store, Paper & Chocolate in Dallas, Texas, offers quality papers, writing instruments, custom invitations and even chocolate – all organized and accountable through Intuit® QuickBooks® Pro and QuickBooks Point of Sale. Vicki has taken her background as a CPA and her love of the auditing process, and applied it to one of the most charming, warm-and-friendly stores you're ever likely to find: signed, sealed and delivered.

Two of Her Favorite Things

In today's economy, finding a retail niche that brings in return customers and first-timers is almost an art-form in itself – perhaps as creative as some of the merchandise Vicki Petersen carries in her store.

When she opened Paper & Chocolate in August 2006, Vicki's concept for the store was a classroom approach to bookbinding, an artist haven and a place for writers. Due to space limitations, her idea quickly changed, instead, to a retail space devoted to two of her favorite things: paper and chocolate.

"You've got to have the goods people need that aren't frivolous; instead, I call these 'Everyday Luxuries,'" she says. "I try to put in items people can use for themselves. You can come in here and buy something to make your life pretty, such as hand lotion or a simple vase for your desk, but nothing is insanely priced."

While she carries an eclectic mix of merchandise, the focus is definitely on writing. Entire walls are devoted to boxed notes and cards, journals, notebooks and greeting cards. Gifts and candles are displayed on small tables. The chocolates, displayed beautifully in a glass case, are produced through a provider in Texas.

The heart of Paper & Chocolate – the same space originally designated for the classroom – is the invitation gallery, where future brides and their mothers pore for several hours at a time over books of custom wedding invitations. Proud parents choose brightly colored birth announcements and birthday party invitations. Businesspeople select embossed cards for thank you notes and other correspondence.

Accounting for Taste

It's here that QuickBooks Pro functions as a complete accounting system for the store, while QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) offers the register/inventory assistance a busy product retailer needs. Vicki likes how easy the system is to use, especially in a relatively small space holding more than 16,000 items.

"In terms of people who do not have an accounting background, everyone picks up QuickBooks right away," she says. "Almost everything I do is compatible with QuickBooks, and even my younger staff can input data into the system."

Buying trips, family obligations and other commitments keep her from being omnipresent at Paper & Chocolate, so the remote access features of QuickBooks is another plus. POS keeps going even when she is not at the store, and if she takes a day off, transactions can be seen remotely or even downloaded the next day at the store without losing any information.

"Intuit's presence as a big company offering big-company support speaks to me," she says. "As a CPA, I can call anyone at Intuit or even a ProAdvisor and do not feel as if I'm dealing with somebody who can't respect my level of knowledge."

A POS Workaround

Although Vicki currently has no plans to look beyond QuickBooks for a more robust system, she concedes that some concessions had to be made with regard to keeping track of the orders she places for invitations and printed items that must be outsourced.

She wanted to keep track of her invitation orders through QuickBooks POS, but the system did not work for her because of the way special order items are recognized. As a result, she puts the cost for all items directly into QuickBooks as "non-inventory."

"Although this took me two years to figure out, it's not a significant problem because all of the numbers are in QuickBooks; it's just a different way to account for special orders that bypass the POS system," she says. "There is a category in POS for special orders, but the system generates a new item number each time something is entered. We do so much business on custom invitations that we don't need separate item numbers to keep track of special orders. There would be too much information without using it to make the system more efficient."

For payroll, Vicki uses PayVision Online, a system compatible with QuickBooks. She downloads her staff's hours to the system. TurboTax is used for filing.

Based on its CRM abilities, QuickBooks POS works well for Paper & Chocolate as a database. For example, several of her vendors have special incentives, such as Lollia hand cream that offers a special gift with purchase. Vicki goes through POS to determine every customer who bought the lotion, and then sends these customers a postcard when it's time to come in.

POS's Reports also are helpful, but not for purposes of inventory because she has never taken a full store inventory. To do so would require each greeting card to be entered as a separate item, so quantities are impossible to count. She does use reports for some reorders – chocolates, for example – which she orders every week.

"I don't reorder a lot of the same things because it's important in retail to always have something different coming in," she says.

An Auditor by Trade

Although most CPAs stay in accounting for their entire career, Vicki is ready to admit she always wanted to own a store of some kind, "even in college. I didn't want it to be in an accounting practice. It's just not as much fun as having merchandise and seeing the trends."

At the time, sensibility prevailed, and after earning a Master of Science degree in accounting from the University of Hartford, she went to work for Haskins & Sells (now Deloitte) and then Connecticut General (now Cigna). Moving to Michigan because of her husband's work, she found out Haskins was opening a small satellite office in Saginaw where the firm had Dow Chemical and General Motors as clients. She joined the staff as an auditor.

"Instead of putting people up every night, the firm opened an office there. I loved the audit business because I was always finding out how clients handled their businesses. There was always something different."

The year was 1973, a time when women seldom went into the field to count physical inventory. As it turned out, Vicki was one of the first women on the firm's audit staff. Chuckling about the very low glass ceiling, she says, "Women just didn't go into the plants at that time. An audit required travel and the firm didn't send the women into the field."

Actually, she has only worked for two employers during her professional career, having gone back and forth several times between Connecticut General and Deloitte, the last time of which was in Chicago before moving to Dallas – right when the savings & loan crisis hit. With no jobs for accountants, she did a bit of consulting and was a temporary CFO for one company.

With her love of bookbinding, the plan hatched to develop the classroom concept for bookbinding that later would become Paper & Chocolate, a store that is as successful and innovative as its founder.

Scott H. Cytron, ABC, is a frequent contributor to industry publications covering professional services' industries, including accounting, healthcare, financial planning, collections and debt, and high-tech. He works with many CPA firms to increase their recruitment and retention efforts through communications and marketing strategies. Contact him at scott@cytronandcompany.com.

Last Updated: 09/09/2009