The ideal bookkeeping client:

1. Has fantastic communication skills i.e.

• Answers emails within 24 hours or indicates when emails will be answered
  
• Answers our questions about their accounts in a timely manner
• Likes to have meetings to discuss their accounts
• Encourages communication between us and their accountant
• Communicates changes in their business
• Let’s us know when they’re not happy with something we’re doing

2. Is super organised

• Supplies information & data on time
• Sticks to deadlines and due dates that we set for them
• Doesn’t’ leave everything to the last minute
• Understands the importance of paying their tax & super liabilities on time and does so

3. Supplies a complete set of source documents - all sales invoices, expense receipts/invoices, cash receipts, bank statements etc.

4. Does their own data entry and uses their chosen accounting software for invoicing and tracking expense & bill payments

5. Is courteous

• Doesn’t call us at any time of the day expecting us to do a job for them with very short deadlines – understands that work needs to be booked in and that there will be a waiting period
• Understands that we have other clients and other work and that sometimes their work may not get processed immediately
• Doesn’t question everything we do

6. Pays our invoices on time and doesn’t constantly question our pricing

7. Has a basic understanding of the running of a business and all that it entails

8. Has a basic understanding of the tax system and how superannuation works, or if not, is willing to learn

9. Is open to suggestions to change certain aspects of their business operations including trying new software and apps

10. Refers our business to colleagues or friends

Do you agree that these characteristics make an ideal bookkeeping client? Tell us about your ideal clients and the characteristics that make them so wonderful (or perhaps not so wonderful!)

To get started with “File Transfer”, the AUSkey administrator in the practice has to update your ATO Transactions permissions in Access Manager in the portal. 

BAS & Tax Agents will now be able to lodge:

• Payment summary annual reports and
• TFN declarations.

Over time, the ATO will be expanding this function to enable lodgment of a wider range of reports and files – see here for more information on the ATO’s plans for expanding the file transfer function.

The ATO reports that you will enjoy the following benefits from using their new file transfer function:

• the ability to upload large files without needing to split them
• the option to compress files to reduce the upload time
• the option to send multiple files as a single compressed file
• the ability to receive confirmation that your data has been received
• your reports will be checked for format compatibility and data quality; and you will receive an acknowledgment report showing the results
• reduced risk of errors and faster processing times.

Let’s hope that this new function lives up to its claims and isn’t frought with connection issues as is sometimes the case with the portals these days. Hopefully as BAS and Tax Agents we will see real time-saving benefits in our practices as the functionality in the portals develops and improves.

Late last year we acquired a new client who was using cloud accounting software (no need to name the software – irrelevant to our story) and had been doing so for over a year. We were engaged to process his quarter 2 BAS and then maintain the file from that point onwards, including reconciling his accounts on a monthly basis and processing all future activity statements. We completed the Q2 BAS noting that we had to do quite a few adjustments etc. to the accounts to raise the correct figures but expected nothing less as it was the first time we had worked with the file. Now it’s worth noting that this particular client has 6 bank accounts plus a credit card account which is quite unusual as most businesses would only have 1 to 3 accounts at the most. Nonetheless  each account is connected to it’s individual bank feed and all works well……..or so we thought!

So here’s the picture so far, all bank accounts have been reconciled via actual bank statements as at 31st December 2012 and the Q2 BAS has been lodged. All good? Yep – great actually considering none of the bank accounts had ever been reconciled since the start of the file (groan). So a few weeks ago we “visited” the client’s file to process bank reconciliations for the month of Jan 2013 as per our client-BAS Agent agreement.  That’s when the proverbial sh#t hit the fan! We compared bank statement end of month balances to those in the file for each account – none of them were correct (groan again). Upon further investigation we found that large chunks of data had been “dropped” from each of the bank accounts which was the cause of the incorrect balances. We were able to manually input the data and reconcile the accounts but this meant that what should have taken no longer than an hour, ended up taking us a lot longer much to dismay of our client.

Since January, this has continued to happen in this client’s file and is an absolute pain in the you-know-what! Which bank is it you ask? That’s the one, “Which Bank” but actually we’ve had similar experiences (not to such a wide extent) with other banks and other cloud-accounting based clients. “Data dropping” as we like to call it, is a very real problem. These clients know that we will check their files and ensure that all bank accounts are reconciled to their actual bank statements, not just via the bank feed and so they aren’t really worried about this bank feed issue even though it’s a nuisance for us! So this leads me to ask some questions about bank feeds:

• What about cloud accounting users who do not have a bookkeeper over-seeing their file – are they relying purely on the data coming via the bank feed to establish their accounts and process their BAS without checking it because in their minds it is now all automated and therefore correct?
• Cloud accounting software would be nothing without the functionality that bank feeds brings to it and this is a major selling point for many users. That said, isn’t is reasonable for users to expect that they can rely on the data in their files especially when they are paying for it?
• How many users’ files out there contain inaccurate data due to faulty bank feeds?
• How many users believe that just because the accounting file “reports” that bank accounts are reconciled that they actually are reconciled in terms of matching real-life bank statements?
• Whose  fault is this – the banks or the software? Who’s going to fix it?
• Shouldn’t the software creators be warning users that bank feeds are not always accurate and that they should check their data regularly?

I could go on and on but am conscious of the length of this blog so I’ll bring it to a halt. To summarise, I think it’s important for cloud-based accounting users to be aware that you cannot trust the data coming to your files via bank feeds. Unfortunately as it stands currently the technology isn’t perfect. Until it is, I advise all cloud-based accounting users to religiously check their bank accounts via actual bank statements and not to just rely upon the data coming into their files via bank feeds. If you don’t know how to reconcile your bank accounts using actual bank statements then engage a good bookkeeper to do this for you – at least then you’ll know that your figures add up bank feeds or not!

As an aside, the client in our story told us that if we had not brought this is issue to his attention, he would have gone on blissfully unaware that his accounts were “not really reconciled” (even though his file showed him that they were)and would have lodged his BAS using the data from his file – scary stuff! Attention ATO, this stuff is happening!

Have you had similar experiences with faulty bank feeds? Were you aware that bank feeds are not 100% accurate?

PS – “BoxFreeIT” have written an article about this topic and we are featured in it along with other bookkeepers – here’s the link to the article for interested readers: Check Unreliable Bank Feeds in Xero, Saasu: Bookkeepers

Despite repeatedly being asked to send all business documents for any accounting period, some of our clients either provide us with only a handful of receipts or don’t provide any receipts at all, forcing us to create their accounts purely (or mainly) from bank statements.

There I’ve said it! I kind of feel better already (she says in the bookkeepers’ confessional).  Bookkeepers and BAS Agents around the globe are now passing out in disgust lol!

Seriously though, I know that this isn’t acceptable and the reason I’m losing sleep over it is because I know that allowing this situation to occur in some way puts our practice and it’s BAS Agents at odds with the Code of Conduct via the Tax Agent Services Act 2009. In short, we are sinning against the Code of Conduct! I wrote about the specific areas of the Code of Conduct that relate to this issue in a previous post – “Honesty & Integrity” and “Competence”. See that’s just it, I don’t feel that we are being honest at all when dealing with these clients’ accounts without first sighting their source documents. We need to sight the source documents – show me the source documents! I feel like we’re just making up stories and it doesn’t sit well with me.

Now what to do – what should I do? Short of sacking these clients (and yes, this is an option), I really don’t know what to do. I’m hoping by writing this post that other bookkeepers/BAS Agents might come out of the woodwork and admit that this happens to them too. Perhaps together we can work out a solution. Hopefully we can because I’m tired – I need some sleep!

Does this happen to you? Do your clients fail to provide all source documents? What do you do about it? Any suggestions appreciated

• Put “next, previous” buttons at the top of the bank feed list as well as the bottom so I don’t have to scroll back down to the end of page in order to move to the next page or go back.

• Ability to add attachments to emails sent to customers and suppliers. Please! Please!

• Reconciliation window – ticked transactions are saved so they remain when moving in and out of the reconciliation page. Currently, they are not saved and the reconciliation process has to begin again if I move away from the rec page.

• Ability to start typing in “account drop-down” in “Add sale”, “Add Purchase” and/or “Add Journal Entry” and have it auto-recognise the account name instead of having to scroll up and down the list to find the appropriate account.

• Ability to bulk email sales invoices to multiple customers i.e. select multiple invoices and then click “email” or “send”.

• Reports – font too small once printed – hard to read – please make the font larger! (Some of us are older and don’t have great eyes!)

• When there is more than one line item on an invoice, Saasu doesn’t calculate the remaining balance of the invoice once I have entered the first line item. At the moment I have to manually calculate the remaining balance. It would be good if I could enter the total amount at the top of the invoice and then have Saasu show me the remaining balance once I’ve entered the first line amount.

• Ability to add contacts on the fly without having to move to the “Add Contacts” window. This would be a great time-saver!

• There is an inconsistency throughout the whole program regarding the appearance of the calendar when clicking on a date entry. The calendar appears in some pages but not in others e.g. the Payroll Summary report – dates have to be manually entered. This also happens in the “Add Journal Entry” window. Not sure if this is perhaps a browser issue??

• Addition of ‘Other” or “Non-Business” contact type in contacts set-up (current options are customer, supplier, partner).

• Ability to select more than one pay when reconciling payroll payments for multiple pays in the bank feed window. At the moment I can only choose one pay at a time.

• Ability to select more than one sales transaction if a bulk payment was made via a payment gateway (in bank feed window) i.e. more than one sale is part of a lump sum payment into the bank but these sales are from various customers.

• Ability to “select all” in bank feed window and reconcile all transactions at once (for those accounts where data all goes to one account)

• Ability to start typing either the business name or name of a person related to a business in the contacts area of the sales and purchases home pages and have that name auto-recognised. At the moment the list will jump to the first letter I type but I still have to search for the contact I want.

• Superannuation Reporting: I’d like to see another column added in the “View Payroll” window that shows super contributions for each employee. Also, it would be great if there were actual superannuation by fund and by employee reports. At the moment I have to choose “Pay Item Summary” report and run the report for “SGC Super” which works okay except for when clients have set up multiple super funds in which case, I have to print out separate reports for each fund. This means printing lots of paper and not producing very useful reports. It would be good if this data could be reported on one page showing the total at the end!

These are some of the things I’d like to see changed and/or improved in Saasu. Hopefully, some of my wishes will come true as Saasu develops its new platform in the coming months.

Do you use Saasu? Do you have any other items you could add to my wish list?

What do you think? Are conferences beneficial to you as an accounting professional? Do you think you need more technical education as a BAS Agent?

Free download: BAS Preparation Checklist. It’s yours to download and use any time you like

Auto Superannuation Payments from Xero on Vimeo.

Processing Payruns from Xero on Vimeo.

Employee portal from Xero on Vimeo.