Save time by integrating QuickBooks with the rest of your office.

• Author: Stephens, Jr., Thomas G.
• Position: Business Bytes

As a stand-alone application, QuickBooks is the leading accounting software application for small businesses nationwide. Over 3.5 million small businesses rely on QuickBooks to record and track day-to-day transactions. To truly realize all that QuickBooks offers, CPAs should investigate integrating QuickBooks with other applications, such as Microsoft Office suite and various tax applications offered by Intuit and other technology companies.

Integration with Microsoft Office

The Microsoft Office desktop suite of applications is used on 90% of all PCs. Included in the Office suite are desktop standards such as Word, Excel, and Outlook--three applications most accountants use on a daily basis. Fortunately, QuickBooks integrates very well with each of these three applications, allowing users to realize substantial gains in productivity.

QuickBooks and Word

QuickBooks works seamlessly with Word, allowing users to prepare mail-merge letters, customized invoices, and other communications to vendors, customers, and employees. For example, this feature can be used to prepare a letter to all employees advising how much accrued vacation time is available. In fact, such a letter is available as one of many pre-defined templates in QuickBooks. Users can customize these templates and create new ones to meet specific needs.

To prepare mail-merge letters integrating QuickBooks with Word, select Company and Prepare Letters with Envelopes from the menu. Next, choose the nature of the letter--collection, customers, vendors, employees, etc.--and select the names for whom the letter will be prepared. Select the base template for the letter, enter appropriate signature information, press Next, and QuickBooks will create the letters in Word. Users can even edit individual letters if necessary before printing and creating envelopes as part of the seamless integration between QuickBooks and Word.

QuickBooks and Excel

QuickBooks integrates with Excel in many ways that offer substantial productivity gains.

For instance, most QuickBooks users know they can export QuickBooks-based reports to Excel. A lesser known capability is that reports can be exported with Excel's Auto-Filter feature enabled to facilitate finding critical data on the report quickly and easily.

For example, an auditor seeking to locate all transactions entered or edited by a particular user during the period under audit can complete this task in mere seconds. Simply export the QuickBooks Audit...