Office Accounting 2009 Simplifies Tax Season

By David H. Ringstrom, CPA

Microsoft Office Accounting 2009 is now available, and has the potential to greatly simplify tax season for you. Many CPAs end up retyping clients' accounting records into tax software programs because in many cases accounting and tax programs just don’t “talk” to each other easily, until now. Office Accounting 2009 ships with a new Tax Integration Add-in that makes it easy to get your clients data into TaxWorks or UltraTax. You’ll also find that Office Accounting 2009 includes more than 30 new reports, which will give your clients even more ways to quickly analyze their data.

U.S. only: The Tax Integration Add-In is designed for U.S. versions of Office Accounting only, and is not available in the U.K. versions.

Configure the Tax Integration Add-In

The Tax Integration Add-in initially requires a few one-time steps:

1. In Office Accounting, choose File, Utilities, and then Manage Add-In Packs.
2. As shown in Figure 1, click the Enabled checkbox for the Tax Integration Add-In, and then click OK.

Figure 1: Click Enabled for the Tax Integration Add-In within the Manage Add-In Packs dialog box.

3. After a moment, you’ll be prompted to restart Office Accounting so that the change will take effect. As shown in Figure 2, a new Income Tax menu will appear, along with as a Map Tax Lines button, when you restart the program.

Figure 2: A new Income Tax menu appears when the Tax Integration Add-In has been enabled.

Map Tax Lines

Once you enable the Tax Integration Add-in, you can then map the chart of accounts to the tax software of your choice:

1. Choose Income Tax, and then choose Map Tax Lines, or click the Map Tax Lines button on the Office Accounting toolbar.
2. Initially the Tax Line fields shown in Figure 3 will be blank until you download the tax lines. To do so, click the Download Tax Lines button, and then make choices from the lists shown in Figure 4:

Tax Year: You’re currently limited to the 2007 tax year, but additional years will be available at appropriate dates in the future.

Tax Software: This list currently contains three choices: TaxWorks, UltraTax, and Office Accounting. The choices you make here affect the Company Organization Type list.

Company Organization Type: If you choose TaxWorks or UltraTax as your tax software, you can choose from these types of returns:

o 1040 – Sole Proprietor

o 1065 – Partnership

o 1120 – Corporation C

o 1120S – Corporation S

The Office Accounting choice only allows you to map fields to 1040 – Sole Proprietor.

Figure 3: You can map each account to an income tax return line once you download the tax return lines.

Figure 4: This dialog box allows you to specify your tax software, as well as income tax return.

3. After you complete the three fields, click the Download Tax Lines button. The tax line information will download into Office Accounting, and then a confirmation prompt will appear.
4. As shown in Figure 3, you can now map each account on the chart of accounts to a corresponding field in your income tax software. Click the Save Mapping button periodically to save your choices, and click Save and Close when you’re ready to leave the Map Tax Lines dialog box.

Export a Tax File

Once you map the chart of accounts to your tax software, you can export a tax file at any time:

1. Choose Income Tax, and then Map Tax Lines.
2. As shown in Figure 3, confirm the date range you wish to export, and then click the Export Tax File button.
3. Choose a name for the export file, and then click Save. A sample of the resulting tax file for TaxWorks is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: A tax import file for TaxWorks will look similar to this.

Important: You must manually import the resulting tax file into your tax software by carrying out the appropriate steps within that program.

New Reports

Office Accounting 2009 includes more than 30 new reports. You can access these by choosing Reports, and then looking in the corresponding submenus:

·Company:

oYTD Profit Compared to Last Year – This report is a profit and loss statement that report periods this year versus last year.

oSales Tax Collected This Quarter –Although it’s named Sales Tax Collected This Quarter, you can choose any reporting period that you wish, and run this report on either cash or accrual-basis.

·Customers and Receivables:

oOpen Invoices By Due Date: This report displays a list of all unpaid invoices, sorted in due date order.

oMost Profitable Customers: This report shows which customers generated the most profit on a gross-margin basis.

·Sales:

oToday’s Sales By Customer: This report shows sales for today, but can also reflect sales for any period that you wish.

oYTD Sales Compared To Last Year: This report compares sales for a report period this year to the same period last year.

·Vendors and Payables:

oToday’s Vendor Payments: This report details payments issued to vendors today, or for any date range you choose.

oAmounts Due to Vendors: This report lists all unpaid bills in Office Accounting.

·Inventory:

oInventory Items With Negative Balances: This helpful report makes it easy to identify items that have been oversold, or perhaps have incorrect inventory quantities listed.

oMost Profitable Items: This report helps you identify products that have the largest gross margin.

·Cash Basis:

This new category makes it easy for your clients to run many reports on the cash-basis, since most Office Accounting reports default to accrual basis.

oBalance Sheet

oIncome Statement

oTransaction Detail by Account

oGL Report

oSales Tax Liability

oTransaction Detail by Tax Code

oSales by Customer Summary

oSales by Customer Detail

oSales by Item Summary

oSales by Item Detail

oBudget for Profit and Loss

oOnline Sales by Customer Summary

oOnline Sales by Item Summary

·Jobs and Time:

This new report category includes five reports:

oProfitability by Job Summary

oProfitability by Job Detail

oJob Estimates vs. Actuals Summary

oJob Estimates vs. Actuals Detail

oJob Progress Invoices vs. Quotes

·Income Tax:

This report category appears when you enable the new Tax Integration Add-In, and includes two reports:

oIncome Tax Summary

oIncome Tax Summary - Cash

Toggle Reports: Unlike some accounting packages that require you to choose between cash or accrual-basis accounting, Office Accounting lets you run reports on either basis. As shown in Figure 6, reports that include a Report Basis field can toggle between cash and accrual.

Figure 6: You can toggle certain reports between cash and accrual-basis.

Keep in mind: Budget and inventory reports are not available in Office Accounting Express 2009, while Online Sales reports only appear when you enable the Online Sales feature in Office Accounting. To do so, choose Company, Preferences, and then choose Enable Online Sales within the Online Sales tab.

Co-Branding Capability

The Tax Integration Add-In is just one way that you can tailor Office Accounting to your practice. Another is the co-branding feature that enables you to create a customized version of Office Accounting that includes your firm’s name and embeds your firm’s website within the Resource Center. If you’re not yet familiar with this feature, you can learn more at the Microsoft Professional Accountant’s Network web site (membership is free), as well as in this article.

Convert Your Clients from QuickBooks

Office Accounting’s Data Migration Wizard, shown in Figure 7, makes it easy to convert your clients accounting records from QuickBooks to Office Accounting. To do so, choose File, and then Close Company. Choose Import Data from QuickBooks, and then follow the on-screen instructions. Keep in mind that you may need to download an Office Accounting update to take full advantage of the QuickBooks conversion process.

Figure 7: You can quickly migrate clients from QuickBooks to Office Accounting.

 

David Ringstrom heads an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm serving clients nationwide since 1992. Long ago David recognized that either you work Excel, or it works you, so much of his work involves creating Excel-based tools to streamline accounting and other processes. David shares his knowledge with others as a freelance writer, professional speaker and technical editor, and is proud to have served in the United States Navy.

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