ProOnGo Blog

Setting up credit cards in QuickBooks is almost as easy as using them; you can create credit card registers and sync them with your online banking for accurate and up-to-date information (not to mention less data entry) in less than ten minutes. All you need to know is where to go.

QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop look a little different, but the process is the same. Here’s how to set up a credit card in QuickBooks Online using QuickBooks Online Banking (we’ll get to desktop in a moment):

You know the Banking tab? Hover over that and select Registers. To create a new register, you simply need to enter in a new name and click OK

QuickBooks will lead you from there. When it asks “What type of account would you like to set up?” you select Credit Card and hit ‘Next.’ On the next screen, make sure the button by ‘Yes’ is filled, and then hit the ‘Finish’ button. QuickBooks will then lead you through a wizard that syncs your credit card to the register you created.

In QuickBooks desktop, the setup is similar.

Go to the Banking tab, then select ‘Use Register.’ Or, just press ctl+R. Enter in a name for your new credit card register, and click OK. QuickBooks will ask you if you want to set up the register.

Click Set Up and fill in the requested information.

Next, set up QuickBooks Online Banking and  sync your online banking information to this register. To do so, go to the Banking tab, then hover over Online Banking. Select ‘Set up account for online services.” From the first window that pops up, assign the card to the account you just set up.

Hit the ‘Next’ button and follow the prompts – QuickBooks will need your online banking information, and once you provide that your transactions will appear in that register.

Easy peasy!

Did you know: ProOnGo syncs directly with your company cards, so you and your employees can edit, categorize, and add receipt images to your QB credit card transactions from any smart phone, any where, and at any time. Check out ProOnGo’s Credit Card Sync.

Your Employee Center in QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Pro can be as detailed or as bare as you like. We bet that the day that you add a new hire to your team, is a pretty busy day — you probably didn’t get around to filling in every imaginable employee-related field in QuickBooks — and that’s OK. However, may we suggest that at a minimum, you should type in the employee’s email address in their employee details?

Why, you ask?

You are probably thinking “why would QuickBooks need to know, or care, what my employee’s email address is?” It’s not going to send them emails, is it?

The answer for why you should bother filling in the email field in QuickBooks might be non-obvious: most Intuit App Center apps that integrate with your employee list need to identify the employee in some way, and the most common detail they look for is the email address. Once you enter in that small detail, a whole world of apps is at your fingertips. For example, you could use ProOnGo to instantly reimburse your employees for their expenses. Want to know more? Check out all the ways we integrate with QuickBooks.

If you’re finally thinking about joining the other 4 million small businesses using QuickBooks, welcome to the party! QuickBooks is definitely the most comprehensive accounting package for small businesses, offering  wide-range of products and services to support all different types of businesses. This is why the choice of deciding which version of QuickBooks is right for you can be challenging.

There are three different versions of QuickBooks Online that you can purchase and modify with QuickBooks Payroll add-on. Below, we’ll briefly breakdown what each of the three main packages has to offer and if it’s right for your business.

Online Simple Start

Online Simple Start is a great primer to give you a good idea on what QuickBooks is and how to use it. With Online Simple Start, you can create invoices, track sales and expenses, track payments and accept credit cards. It is the most basic of all the QuickBooks Online versions so it lacks key features like Online banking, which will force you down the path of manually entering in your credit card transactions into QuickBooks Credit Card registers.

So if you’re looking for more advanced business functions like Online Banking, Payroll and Time Tracking, you might want to look at other versions of QuickBooks. But if you’re looking for a version of QuickBooks that will allow you to feel out the system and get in the habit of recording some basic business tasks, Online Simple Start is a great option to consider.

Online Essentials

Online Essentials is more geared towards everyday businesses that need access to their books from any computer. Online Essentials does supports Time Tracking, Managing and Billing Customers, Online Banking, which helps eliminate manual entry, and also allows users to Print Checks, Create Invoices, Create Estimates and manage Bills. Online Essentials will even give you unlimited phone and email support and supports the QuickBooks Payroll Add-On.

However, if your business tracks inventory, needs to associate Customers with corresponding expenses, you might want to consider a different version.

Online Plus

Online Plus is the whole QuickBooks shebang. That means with Online Plus, you’re able to track inventory, associate Customers to expenses, create purchase orders, and access all of the features of Online Essentials. Online Plus also gives the ability to create and prepare tax forms such as 1099s. And just like Online Essentials, Online Plus supports the QuickBooks Payroll Add-on.

Managing small business books can be quite a challenging task, but with the right tools you can make sure you spend less time managing your numbers and more time making them go up.

Did you know: ProOnGo syncs your expenses to QuickBooks online. Check out all the ways we sync to QuickBooks Online!

ProOnGo syncs with QuickBooks to make expense reporting even easier. Here’s a list of the QuickBooks fields we support in ProOnGo that come directly from your QuickBooks company file:

1. Chart of Accounts
   In ProOnGo, this is called “Category.” Assign the correct expense account to your expense.
2. Customer:Job
   In ProOnGo this is referred to as “Client.” Link billable expenses to the correct customer:job to save when billing your clients in QuickBooks
3. Items
   ProOnGo pulls all of your Items from QuickBooks so that you can assign them to expenses.
4. Vendors
   Assign the correct Vendor from your QuickBooks Vendor list.
5. Type
   Is the expense Billable or Not Billable?
6. Payment Type
   Was the expense paid for with cash, or a card? A check?
7. Classes
   ProOnGo supports classes in QuickBooks. If you aren’t using classes in QuickBooks, just leave this field blank.

There you have it! Now you know how to assign categories from your QuickBooks to your ProOnGo expenses. Remember, ProOnGo syncs seamlessly with QuickBooks, so any category you assign in ProOnGo will be reflected in QuickBooks.

ProOnGo has a work flow designed especially with businesses in mind. Employees submit expenses to managers, who approve or deny the expenses. We know that isn’t always the end of an expense’s journey, though. Sometimes the manager has to submit to the CFO, or another manager. Then that manager sends the expense off to their manager, and so on until the expense finally gets reimbursed.

ProOnGo lets you add as many levels of management as you want.

Here’s how to use it:

Start at the Employees Tab of the web portal.

Click the bright yellow “Add Employee” button, and enter in your employee’s information. They’ll be asked via email to confirm.

By now you may have noticed the ‘Add Admin’ button in the Employees tab and are tempted to click on it. I should let you know that there’s a difference between a Manager and an Admin. An Admin has the same rights and access as the creator of the account, most notably access to QuickBooks information, whereas a manager has the power to approve or deny the expenses of only their employees.

Once you’ve created the manager and they’ve accepted your invitation to get access to the account, they can add employees under them by going to the settings tab and clicking the “Add Employee” button. If the employee under them also has employees under them, the setup is the same.

Or, you can add sub-employees to a manager’s account for them, by clicking the “0 Employees” button next to a manager’s name. From that screen, click the ‘Add Employees’ button and add an employee as you normally would.

Here’s a pro tip: If you go into the settings of an employee by clicking on the gear tab, you can set an “expense limit” for that employee. The amount you set is the amount up to which the employee doesn’t have to seek expense approval. Say you set the employee’s expense limit to $2500. He can approve his team’s expenses up to $2500 without getting further expense approval from you, his manager. Then you can send them straight to QuickBooks.

Now your managers have managers, and your employees have employees. Now go, start filing expenses!

If you’ve spent enough time in your credit card register in QuickBooks, chances are you’ve been bugged by missing merchant names. Oftentimes the merchant name appears in the memo of a credit card transaction, but the Payee is left blank.

ProOnGo has you covered. One aspect of our new credit card sync feature is vendor guessing. ProOnGo will take the vendor name from the transaction and assign it as the vendor name/payee so that you don’t have to key in a thing.

All you have to do to set up is check a box.

Check the box next to “Guess Vendor If Not Present” and you’re set!

ProOnGo will then automatically take the vendor name from the transaction’s memo and assign it to the Vendor Name in ProOnGo, and by extension the Payee name in QuickBooks! Then, from the ProOnGo Expense mobile app you can edit the payee (or any other field) from any smart phone, and send the changes off to QuickBooks. You’re so tech savvy.

There’s a lot of information about QuickBooks out there, so it’s hard to figure out where to start when you want to learn more about using QuickBooks. A lot of that information comes from blogs, either run by individuals or companies whose products are QuickBooks-related. All of these are great, but the following is a list of three QuickBooks blogs that we thought stood out among the crowd:

1. QuickBooks and Your Business

This independently run blog has been providing QuickBooks help and guidance since 2010. They infuse technical QuickBooks information with cheerful personality, recently taking time out to wax poetic about New England springs. No offense, New England, but ice fishing in March sounds like winter to me!

The articles on QuickBooks and Your Business are easy to read but certainly not dumbed down; there’s some real valuable information in there. Recent blog posts include information on hiring a book keeper, upgrading QuickBooks, fixing your company file, and accounting information dealing with double-sided transactions.

2. The QuickBooks Specialists’ QuickBooks Help Blog

This blog, written by Ruth Perryman is straight to the point. QuickBooks users write in questions and Ruth aptly and concisely answers them. The questions are more on the technical side – dealing with errors and “How do I” type questions, so if you’re looking for the answer to a specific problem, this is a great blog to visit.

There is general information on this QuickBooks blog, however, which is relevant to everyone. This blog updates for QuickBooks product updates and changes, and keeps you up to date on the status of the QB features you’ve come to know.

3. “QuickBooks, Excel, Cash Flow, and Technology!” Nerd’s Blog

This blog run by Nerd Enterprises offers a ton of really helpful how-to’s that cover all versions of QuickBooks, from Online to Enterprise and back again. Along with articles containing information on taxes, organization, and how-to’s, among many other articles.  There are some fairly niche articles, too, like advice on recording the expense incurred by having a storage unit, so if you have an unusual situation on your hands and need specific information, you should definitely consult the Nerd Enterprises.

If you’ve been to Intuit App Center to look for QuickBooks add-ons, you know that the community there is growing by leaps and bounds.  We’re proud of our history there – we’ve been on Intuit App Center for quite awhile now – and your feedback keeps making us better.

One thing you might not know, though, is that many of the apps on Intuit App Center can work together.  Check out the following video that demos how ProOnGo Expense and AuditMyBooks help small business owners make quick work of their end-of-month financial clean-up.

Hey Everyone

Two big changes over the past two days; standalone odometer fields for Android and Blackberry and we improved our server speed yet again.

Awaiting approval from AppWorld and just launched on Android yesterday are the new versions of ProOnGo Expense that now have standalone fields for Odometer readings. Users now have a designated field for all of our supported platforms, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android, as well as the ProOnGo Web Portal.

We also improved the server speed as well as implemented a little trick so you can view your receipts faster inside the Web Portal– went from launching a parent window to launching a lightbox with your receipts inside the web portal. This allows us to load the receipt behind the scenes, before you even click on the receipt link.

We’re continuing to improve our mileage support and the speed of the application/Web Portal so if you ever have any suggestions, feel free to drop us a line: Support@ProOnGo.com

Due to popular demand, we have added Annual subscription packages for ProOnGo subscibers. Some prefer paying annaully as opposed to monthly subscriptions so if you fall into that crowd, you’ll be pleased with our new subscription page: http://www.ProOnGo.com/subscribe