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accountants and bookkeepers

Save time preparing BAS with Books Review

By QuickBooks Australia

June 23, 2022

What is Books Review?

Books Review is an exclusive tool just for accountants and bookkeeping professionals in QuickBooks Online. Books Review aims to help you to deliver accurate and timely accounts and activity statements to prepare for BAS lodgement to the ATO.

The Books Review dashboard allows you to see the status of all your clients bookkeeping work. It consolidates all the various steps that you would normally undertake to complete a BAS all in one location in QuickBooks Online.

Did you know: Using Books Review can save as much as 40% of your time on BAS preparation for quarterly lodgement deadlines*.

There are four distinct stages in Books Review to help you prepare for BAS lodgements.

1. Transaction Review

Before you start Transaction Review, you can firstly check that all your books are up to date by reviewing transactions in the Transactions area in QuickBooks Online.

The Transaction Review stage in Books Review surfaces any anomalies without needing you to dig around to find them. Any unusual transactions are highlighted for you to explore, therefore saving you time during BAS preparation.

The default time period in Books Review is the latest quarter, which you can change to a different quarter or month view if your client lodges BAS on a monthly basis.

Open Issues highlights any anomalies which may appear under:

Uncategorised transactions
Transactions without payees
Transactions without GST
Undeposited funds
Unapplied payments

A unique feature of Books Review is Client Requests where you can send your clients a direct message for any additional information without needing to send an email. For example, you may need to request bank statements or clarification on specific transactions. You can view all existing requests or create a new client request.

Design your own Checklist

You can create your very own unique checklist by adding shortcuts to your end of month/quarter/year reports, tasks and locations in QuickBooks. This will help you to build your own workflow for you and your team.

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2. Account Reconciliation

The next stage in Books Review is Account Reconciliation. This area allows you to reconcile various accounts including bank accounts, credit card and ATO accounts.

Outstanding Transactions highlights any items that may need your attention including uncleared transactions.

Similar to the Transaction Review stage, you can also customise shortcuts to help with your workflow.

3. Final Review

The Final Review stage in Books Review provides a last overview of unusual or unexpected balances. This prompts you to look at any items which may need adjustments under Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable.

4. Wrap Up

Traditionally, when advisors complete their BAS preparation workflows, they generally need to jump around their client’s QuickBooks file to perform a number of steps. These steps can include exporting reports to serve as workpapers, sending reports to clients for their records, closing the books to prevent transactions from being added or changed and lastly entering the required values into the GST Centre to produce the BAS.

To help streamline the BAS preparation process, the Books Review Wrap-Up tab brings these key tasks together in one place.

The Wrap-Up tab allows advisors to:

Export BAS Workpapers
Send report packs to clients
Close the books for the period
Navigate straight to the Prepare BAS workflow in the GST Centre
Create customised shortcuts to support the workflow

In summary, Books Review can help to save you time by providing you a step by step workflow to prepare your client’s books for BAS deadlines.

What do advisors love about Books Review?

Alee Cochrane is a Bookkeeper, Certified Trainer, FCPA and FIPA member and part of the QuickBooks Trainer Writer Network.

Alee is the Director of Total Bookkeeping & Business Solutions providing bookkeeping and business solutions to businesses in need, helping them achieve their goals and assisting them in putting processes in place that allow for further growth.

“One of my biggest tips for using the Books Review area in QuickBooks, is that you can actually mark individual transactions. And from within that section you can ask the client to say what it’s for, so you can get the additional information you need to complete the work.”

Watch a ten minute video of Books Review in action

*Disclaimer: This is based on an Intuit study of 56 interviews and observations with accountants and bookkeepers using Books Review for BAS preparation in QuickBooks Online in 2021.

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