Automating Email Reports from QuickBooks

An accounting system is essential for every business to track funds flowing in and out of their business processes. In the not so distant past, bookkeeping was handled through files and registers. File stacks were bundled on office shelves like debris for years, and it was a Herculean task for bookkeepers to check closed accounts. Moreover, keeping papers for such long periods was not practical. The integrity of bookkeeping methods was debated in the early 2000s when instances of massive financial fraud came to light.  Then, the idea of digital bookkeeping was thought to be a myth. Technology birthed the Accounting Renaissance, where digital applications, on premise and cloud replaced papers and files. QuickBooks is one such example, known to small and medium scale businesses across the globe.

Turn the Pages Back

An accounting system developed and managed by Intuit in the early 2000s, QuickBooks started with an on premise DOC version that was installed on either a personal machine or a hosted server. The Digital Wave helped QuickBooks claim a large chunk of small-scale customers, but left gaps in the standard aspects of traditional accounting standards. Then, a series of version updates and patch releases enhanced the product and turned it into a cohesive accounting system. Intuit has integrated QuickBooks with a handful of tools and web applications.

Every Penny Counts

When you are beginning a business, every penny counts. You have to accomplish more with less and ensure you pick the correct tools to operate your business. Most stakeholders need to see reports daily to ensure projects are on schedule.  Accounting tools have different templates for reporting, which can be customized and sent across as pdfs or excel sheets.  The following are some major QuickBooks reports that stakeholders see as critical to their SMB:

·         Profit & Loss Report

·         Balance Sheet

·         A/R Aging Summary

·         A/P Aging Summary

·         General Ledger

Detailing accounting data is complicated. Customers and bookkeepers spend an innumerable amount of hours capturing information and then spend additional hours building out customized reports. To address the restrictions of their product, Intuit created advanced reporting, which is incorporated with QuickBooks Enterprise 14 R6P and higher for those with a functioning Full-Service Plan.

Email the Reports Out

This module helps customers set up a schedule to email reports at the needed frequency (i.e., daily business reports to staff, weekly money-related reports to managers, monthly budget reports to customers).  Generally, not everyone in the company has login access to Accounting systems to view financial statuses, particularly Account Receivables. In this case, scheduled reports are convenient, and can save a ton of time and provide an understanding of the organization's budgetary execution to date. Scheduled reports eventually influence better business choices that can add to future development and achievement. The key benefits of implementing QuickBooks Email Report Automation are:

·         Custom reports

·         Improved productivity

·         Better communication

·         Report compliance

·         Secured accessibility

Automate the Process in a Controlled Way

QuickBooks schedules predefined report templates that contain sensitive financial data that cannot be exposed. Stakeholders and the Accounting Department face the dilemma of segregating the data, so as not to send full reports to all team members. 

QuickBooks doesn’t allow the creation of custom reports or scheduled emails; thus, an intermediary database can do the job. QuickBooks has open APIs for different entities including reports. We at DBSync help our customers integrate QuickBooks with databases and various other cloud and on premise applications. The database, integrated with QuickBooks, can be in line with QuickBooks reports, and required information can be sent across the recipients based on business preferences. DBSync has email connectors that can be used to send emails based on the defined trigger criteria. Your QuickBooks database and email connector can be knitted together in an integration platform for controlled automation of email reporting. This helps when sending QuickBooks reports to selected recipients only.

Conclusion

Data is a crucial factor in driving business decisions. Decision-makers at different levels need to have access to customized reports that save time and effort. Automation of reporting distribution helps make for a sustainable organizational environment where stakeholders can focus on developing the business. 

An accounting system is essential for every business to track funds flowing in and out of their business processes. Technology birthed the Accounting Renaissance, where digital applications, on premise and cloud replaced papers and files. There are many benefits to automate parts of the process like emails..

Data Integration for HR Performance Review Applications

HR Performance Review, at its core, is to review the performance for the past review period and more importantly, set the goals/expectation for the forthcoming review period. Often the essential and critical second part of the performance review is not performed because people get stuck with the first part and disagree on the results and performance grading. The performance review time is often painful for both employees and managers alike. This leads to willful postponing of the review by both parties and done at the last minute hastily is often poorly documented.

Sounds familiar, this is a common scenario on both corporates and start-up world. There are a lot of tools available for managing the HR Performance Review. Integrating these tools with the core customer relationship/work/task/Account management tools/software and other tools used to carry out the needed tasks to achieve the goals will help to navigate the Performance Reviews smoothly.

Why there are disagreements in Performance Review

• No or not clear goals/objectives set in the first place
• No intermediate performance reviews – The manager and the employee discuss the objectives and results at the end of the review period and there was no chance to alleviate any differences early
• Lack of Candid feedback – We as humans generally lack the skill of objective feedback giving on the goals that have not been met. We often think that such feedback is negative and demotivates the other person. We would like to sugar coat the feedback with other stuff. The problem is we are not helping the other person, actually, we are causing damage to their careers. The other person has spent considerable effort on this task and they deserve to know the feedback. The earlier we provide the feedback, it will be good for them to learn and adapt.
• Another main reason is the lack of data. Most of the time the results for the review period is subjective and not quantitative. This might be because
• The data is not readily available
• No time to collect/prepare the data even when data is available
• No common perspective on the results (The manager says it’s half empty and the employee says it’s half full)
• Remuneration changes always at the back of the mind.

What we can do

• Set SMART goals
• S – Specific, Stretch
• M – Measurable, Meaningful, Motivational:
• A – Achievable, Attainable, Accepted, Agreed upon
• R – Realistic, Relevant, Reasonable, Rewarding, Results-oriented
• T – Time-Based

Most of the problems can be solved by setting SMART goals. Spend a reasonable amount of time in setting the goal and most importantly, get the agreement from the employees. The critical part of SMART is time bound. The lesser or more granular will be more helpful. Having multiple goal setting might be a problem, and most companies now agree that three months is a perfect period for goal setting.

• Always have a parent goal – Every goal should be linked to organizational goals. This is to make sure all the goals are meaningful and in relation to an organization directive.
• Midterm reviews – Have at least one or more mid-term reviews.
• When setting up the goal, both the manager and the employee might have agreed on the goals but there might be some criteria/scenario overlooked and needs tweaking.
• There might be a change in the business direction and hence there might be a change in the objective.
• Make sure the employee is making progress in the right direction
• To see if the employee need any help
• The final review and rating is not a surprise
• Data Centric – The performance review should evolve itself.
• Build your key business management, work/task management tools, and other similar tools with also Performance Review in mind. We should be able to extract data/dashboards/reports from them which should be indicative of the employee performance. Such data helps in
• Avoid misinterpretation
• A common scale to measure all employees
• The employee understands they stand and no arguments
• Documenting results becomes easy and automated
• Separate the Performance Review into 2 parts
• There will be a remuneration part associated with the review. There will be arguments because the performance review/rating is associated with that. We can separate the review into 2 parts
• The first one on the feedback for the past review part and most importantly the goals/objectives for the forthcoming period
• The second one is on remuneration and can be done separately at a different time.

How Data Integration can help

We are from DBSync, so data integration to improve business is core to our mission. We are market leaders in integrating the cloud and on-prem applications. Integrating your business and work management applications with the performance review process/tools will help you in a long way in

• Setting clear objectives which the employees could relate to and will breathe in, day in and day out. The goals/objectives should be relevant to the job and responsibility of the employee. The integration helps in setting the goals and even refer or relate to the key business objectives. The goals or in other words in the same terminology which your employees understand.
• Define key metrics as evaluation criteria. Integrating the performance indicators with key business metrics helps everyone understand the progress they are making and how it contributes to the overall business.
• Keeps the team focused – Automatically calculating the Key Performance Indicators/Performance metrics, comparing them with the goals and notifying the team appropriately will keep the team well aware of what has been achieved and how much more has to be done to reach goals. This awareness keeps the team focused on achieving the goals
• For example, DBSync can integrate your HRIS system and your ticketing system (JIRA for example). If you have on time resolution or SLA Adherence defined as a Key Performance Indicator, DBSync can help fetch the current performance level against the goals and it will be very helpful for the team to know how they are doing against their business goals and also for their supervisor to know any deviations very early and mentor/manage the team back to the right ways.
• No result documentation – Since the key metrics are integrated, there is very less effort in documenting the results.
• Continuous Evaluation – The results are open and viewable to everyone involved. It is available all the time and helps in making the necessary adjustments.
• All are on the same page – No explanations or discussions needed to understand the results. The results are interpreted in the same way by everyone

We would like to help

Set SMART goals and enable your HR performance review to get the business results from your business applications. This will help in the smooth and purposeful performance review process and achieve its goal of aligning everyone to the organization objectives. We at DBSync help organizations integrate the cloud and on-prem applications. We can certainly help in integrating your business applications with your performance review process/tools.

Accounts Payable Automation with DBSync

Why AP Automation?

This is one of the common questions that we come across if a company should invest in automating their Accounts Payable process. Well, the answer is, many companies out there do this!

Let’s face the fact that many companies do face a lot of challenges handling this part of the business and list out a few significant problems

·         Poor data entry – With many departments involved during the procurement of materials, the data is provided through unstructured data like emails, documents, OCR, RPA, etc. How to keep track of all these without any human error intervention?

·         Approval process – With different levels of approval needed during procurement, people often have to wait for a timely response to process the requests. This is a significant roadblock of mid-sized companies stretching their wings wide.

·         Storage – When most of the organizations running on “Cloud” these days and organizations with non-digitized systems, storing the documents and retrieving them is a challenge.

·         Handling Fraudulent Remittance– Even with all restrictions and compliances in place, there are organizations that still face issues with paying the suppliers before the receipt of materials on double payments. In the healthcare domain, there are organizations working with receiving paper invoices due to HIPAA compliance where they can step into different digitized methods of addressing this issue.

·         Time & Cost – Looking at the above significant challenges the primary concern for any organization would be on time and cost. How much time is spent to address these issues and investment does an organization have to continue with their current business model?

This is where Automating your Accounts Payable with different online tools, and available integration platforms help to ease running a business 

·         Start planning and research on what are the online tools that are available which can help you address the issues that as an organization that you are facing. Taking advantage of having specific applications to manage and utilize efficiently is the first step to resolve your problems.

·         Having an xRM (This is an extension of CRM like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, which are very configurable and metadata driven setup) in the house would help a business to segment many parts of the company. An xRM solution to a business not only manages Customers but also track everyone doing business with you. Building a customized CRM or having a platform which addresses these would help organizations to have data entry at one point and maintain all their records at one single system
I do understand just having an xRM / CRM wouldn’t resolve how you can automate AP, but that’s a start for any organization who is looking to roll-on for the first time.

·         Organizations would sure have an ERP or an Accounting tool to manage their financial data. Taking off some load on what accounting does is an excellent step to get things on track in saving a lot of time and cost.

·         They are using online applications to tackle warehouse, shipping and packaging, a delivery confirmation. Etc is part of any organizations now that are looking to streamline their business. Using specific applications to manage different segments of the system will ease the business and help to track the progress easily within an organization.

·         For Healthcare sectors, adhering to multiple compliances would be a challenge and using different digitized way to transfer data outside of the organization can be done over emails, secure FTPs, secure ways to payout can be addressed.

Well, talking all of above on how can one automate AP and multiple business segments. That’s why an organization would need a solution provider to help you integrate and have all these data manage across different platforms. Automating AP would ease business in generating vendor bill’s, maintaining the item receipts, tracking shipments, managing inventory, automating payments, etc. without much human intervention and human error.

Auto scheduling of payments, send out reminders, getting the best of the systems to manage approvals are at ease automating your largest business sector. All these can be done when you look out for different applications that are handling these exclusive tasks for you. 

These would ensure your accounting is not involved in every step of the process. As the data can be shared across multiple systems, accounting would never be a bottleneck for any of your queries. And to make sure this happens, integrating your data with the platform can ensure you are in the right direction.

There are many surveys conducted helping us to understand that close to 35% to 40% of time and cost is reduced having AP automation.

With Data accessibility you can generate all kinds of reports and dashboards to be on top of your business and making use of different BI tools to understand how things are working out for you at different segments. 

Integration tools out in the market help you connect different applications and all data available across the multiple systems. One can question why should someone choose so many applications and have an integration setup between them. Well, my answer to them will be “ how easy is it to live in a four-wall room when you are piling up.”

Integration platforms can make sure you don’t go through the hassle of maintaining data with multiple entries in different applications. There can be real-time integration to make data more available across the organization.

You can get many integration platforms but DBSync being in the elite club of iPaaS space proving integration solutions connectin a variety of on-premise or cloud applications is subscribed and recommended for automating Accounts Payable. With many templates explicitly built to integrate different applications that I have mentioned above, they can offer a solution to the problem of an organization. Having a platform which can be leveraged to solve multiple issues of an organization can be fulfilled through integration, and I firmly believe these folks can do it.

What is CRON and how it can greatly help you schedule Cloud Workflow jobs

Introduction

Cloud Workflow presents a scheduler that allows automating the execution of a task over time. The corresponding schedule can be defined via a menu, where the user selects the necessary time expression or via a CRON expression.

This article explains what a CRON expression is, and how to create a valid one for Cloud Workflow.

What is CRON

CRON is a time-based software utility, usually available in Unix-like machines, which can be used to schedule the execution of computer tasks.

According to Wikipedia, the origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for time, χρόνος (Chronos).

The Unix version of CRON uses a file named crontab, where all automated tasks are listed, accompanied by a time tag, which defines the execution rule.

Advantages of using a CRON expression

Although not always so evident, CRON expressions can be beneficial when defining repetitive tasks. The syntax is straightforward and gives the user a good command over the automation of tasks.  

Even easier, the Cloud Workflow’s Scheduler uses only the time section of a CRON expression.

How to add a CRON expression in Cloud Workflow

Adding a CRON expression in Cloud Workflow is straightforward. From the Repeat menu present in the Scheduler, select CRON and then add your CRON expression in the CRON Expression text box.

CRON expressions

The diagram below summarizes the time section of a CRON expression.

Source: Wikipedia

As the reader can see, the time section of a CRON expression consists of five fields, representing minutes, hours, day of the month, month, and day of the week, in that order.

The possible values for each field are defined in the figure above — a star or asterisk (*) represents all possible values.

Some examples of the time section of a CRON expression are:

1 0 * * *

With indicates the first minute, of the first hour, of every day, of every month, of every day of the week.

1 0 1 * *

The above expression has added 1 to the day of the month field. Thus, it indicates the first minute, of the first hour, of the very first day of each month.

1 0 1 1 *

The above expression has added 1 to the month field. Thus, it indicates the 1^st minute, of the first hour, of the 1^st of January.

1 0 1 1 6

The above expression has added 6 to the day of the week field. Thus, it indicates the 1^st minute, of the first hour, of the 1^st of January, which must be Saturday.

It should be noticed that the Scheduler accepts standard CRON expressions. Non-standard CRON commands, such as @yearly, are not considered.

To learn more, please visit our site - DBSync