Increase Your Billings by Handling Tasks Your Clients Hate

By David H. Ringstrom, CPA

You may not realize this yet, but Office Accounting 2007 offers you at least two ways to provide value-added services for your clients — and  generate more revenue for your practice. The first is the Payroll Center, which allows you to manage payroll for multiple clients at wholesale prices. The second is the Fixed Assets Manager. Many of your clients would rather visit the dentist than deal with payroll or depreciation, so this could be low-hanging fruit for you.

This is not Your Father’s Payroll – web enabled and collaborative

Imagine this: on payroll day you print pay checks for all of your clients in one pass on blank check stock. What? No more keeping track of multiple stacks of checks? No more wrong checks in the printer? No worries about running out of checks on payroll day? No need to keep any of your client’s checks on hand at all? Or even better, after processing payroll let your clients print checks from their location.  You might actually want to start offering payroll as a service to your clients.

To access the Payroll Center you need to use the Accountant View feature in Office Accounting 2007. You can learn more about this feature in my article Collaborate Electronically With Your Clients in Microsoft Office Accounting 2007. In a nutshell, your clients can enter pay information like hours, earning and new employees from their location and then notify you that their payroll information is ready.  They you login from your office, verify their information and process the payroll, staying in control.  Print the checks from your office or allow clients to print their own.  Clients can continue to do their day-to-day work while you process payroll. If you haven’t seen the Accountant View yet, follow these steps:

1.      Click Start, and then choose All Programs.

2.      Choose Microsoft Office, and then Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 Tools.

3.      Choose Accountant View.

Figure 1: The Accountant View enables you to manage payroll for multiple clients from a single screen at a wholesale rate.

Smart: Most of your clients won’t stumble across this feature, but you’ll want ready access. Right-click on Accountant View in the menu above and choose Pin to Start Menu.

Pricing and Capabilities

Ah yes, the inevitable question: what does this cost? Relax: you’ll pay a $99 annual subscription, plus a monthly $9.95 for each client. In return, you receive the following benefits:

·         Access all of your clients’ data from a single screen

·         Print checks for all of your clients at once on blank check stock

·         Or let clients print checks from their location

·         Receive automatic reminders when payroll-related tasks are due for a client

·         Automatically updated tax tables and forms

·         Choose whether to share payroll tasks with your clients

·         Print pre-filled, signature-ready payroll tax forms

·         ADP’s industry leading support is free and unlimited as an accounting professional.

·         File tax forms and payments electronically (additional fees may apply)

Keep in mind that the fees you pay are at a wholesale rate and are billed directly to you.  You set the rate for your payroll services with your clients.  Or if you prefer, you can recommend clients subscribe directly to the services through ADP, which offers two service levels:

·         ADP Payroll costs $169 per year, and includes tax calculations, workers’ compensation tracking, check printing, direct deposit file generation, signature-ready tax forms, and timesheet integration. Electronic filing of tax forms and payments is available for an additional $60.

·         ADP Total Payroll is priced on a per processing basis, such as $27 per check run for 5 employees if checks are printed onsite. In return ADP files all tax forms and makes all tax payments. Additional fees do apply for check delivery, direct- deposit, new hire reporting, multiple-state filings, and W-2 processing, among others.

As you see, you can have as much or as little involvement on payday as you wish. In addition, your clients have the option to manage payroll completely in-house, leverage your services, or entrust most of the payroll activity to ADP. It’s easy to sign up online for this innovative payroll service — it’s another feature that strongly distinguishes Office Accounting from the rest of the pack.

Fixed Asset Management

Mention the words depreciation and amortization to your clients and you’ll typically trigger either blank stares or convulsions. Most clients opt to have their tax advisors handle depreciation calculations — and they’ll gladly pay you to do it. Many accountants use a third-party program to calculate depreciation, and then manually post resulting journal entries into their clients’ accounting software. Fortunately Office Accounting Professional offers a robust tool — you just have to know where to look for it!

Important: This feature is not offered in the free version of Office Accounting, known as Office Accounting Express. However, most of your clients that have depreciation and amortization will already need one or more of the other features offered in the Professional version.

Follow these steps to enable the Fixed Asset Manager:

1.      Choose File, and then Company Setup.

2.      Click the Add-In Packs.

3.      When the Select Add-In Packs window appears, enable the Fixed Asset Manager and then click OK.

4.      Restart Office Accounting.

Once you enable the Fixed Asset Manager, a new Fixed Assets choice appears on Office Accounting’s main menu, just to the left of Help. The Fixed Asset menu includes these choices:

·         Fixed Asset Manager enables you to calculate depreciation on several bases: federal, book, AMT, state, and other. As shown in Figure 2, you can add or dispose of assets, and post depreciation directly to the general ledger.

·         Suggested Schedule is a report that computes depreciation for all assets for five years from the starting year that you specify. This report includes depreciation for the current fiscal year, accumulated depreciation, and the net book value of assets held at the end of the fiscal year.

·         Depreciation Projection is a report that provides depreciation for all bases. You can project prior, current, or accumulated depreciation, as well as net book value, for any period that you choose.

·         Fixed Asset Help gives you ready access to documentation regarding the Fixed Asset Manager.

Figure 2: The Fixed Asset Manager provides a bird’s-eye view of fixed assets.

Good news: You can import fixed asset data from other programs into the Fixed Asset Manager. To do so, choose File, and then Import from within the Fixed Asset Manager.

In addition to calculating depreciation, the Fixed Asset Manager enables you to track additional information about assets like serial #’s, support agreements, warranties, etc. This enables you to easily manage every aspect of your client’s fixed assets. To get started, follow these steps:

1.      Choose Fixed Assets, and then Fixed Asset Manager.

2.      Choose Settings, and then Managed Fixed Asset Support Lists.

From there you can make these choices:

·         Location List enables you to specify locations for assets, which might be a street address, or perhaps a department name.

·         Property Tax Code List can simplify the annual ad valorem tax return filing by allowing you to classify assets according to your local government’s methodology.

·         Disposal Type List includes some typical methods, such as casualty, exchange, retirement, and sale — you’re free to add to this list as needed.

·         Asset Type List enables you to classify assets in any fashion you wish.

These support lists are just a fraction of the asset information you can track. As shown in Figure 3, the Fixed Asset screen from which you add new assets tracks an array of information.

Figure 3: The Fixed Asset Manager tracks a variety of data regarding assets.

For more information on Payroll Center for Accountants, Fixed Asset Manager or other features of Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, visit www.OAisbetter.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Microsoft.