Receiving Quickbooks changes back from your accountant, after sending an Accountant’s Change File
This article is part two of two articles related to allowing your accountant to work on your Intuit Quickbooks Desktop file. Please read part 1 at this link before reading below.
Please see steps below to incorporate our changes into your company file. These directions relate to instances when our office sends you our changes via Intuits Servers. If we have instead sent you a .QBY file, follow the steps below but in Step 2 select “Import Accountant’s Changes from File” instead of “Import Accountant’s Changes from Web". Then, navigate to the file we sent you.
Please note: these instructions are intentionally very step by step, we show you every window we expect you to see. Don’t be intimidated by the number of steps (16) because each one only takes a moment.
Step 1
When we have finished our adjustments to your file, you’ll receive an email like the one on the right indicating our changes are ready to download.
Don’t click on anything in this email, just go and open your Quickbooks Desktop File.
Step 2
Click once on “File” and hover your mouse over “Send Company File” then “Accountant’s Copy” then “Client Activities” then “Important Accounatn’s Changes from Web”.
Step 3
A list of changes will be shown. You can scroll through to review all our adjustments.
When you’re ready, click “Incorporate Accountant’s Changes” at the bottom of the window.
Step 4
Quickbooks will alert you that it must close all windows to import Accountant’s Changes. Click “OK”.
Step 5
Quickbooks will require you to back up your company prior to importing changes. Click “OK”.
Step 6
The “Create Backup” window will open. Select “Local backup” if it is not already selected and then click “Next”.
Step 7
Quickbooks will ask you where to put the backup file. Click “Browse”.
Step 8
The “Browse for Folder” window opens, this shows all the folders in Windows. You can put the file anywhere you like, but for now we’ll assume you use “Documents”.
Double click “Documents”.
Step 11
Quickbooks may warn you again that you are saving your Backup file to the same hard drive as your Quickbooks file. Click “Use this Location”.
Step 12
Quickbooks Desktop Information window will open, letting you know where you saved the backup. Click “OK”.
Quickbooks will alert you that a PDF of our changes was created in the same location as the company file. Click “OK”.
Step 13
You can now close the Incorporate Accountant’s Changes window by clicking “Close” in the lower right corner of the window.
Step 14
Quickbooks will ask if you’d like to set a Closing Date Password. Click “Yes”.
Step 15
The Accounting Preferences/Company Preferences window opens. At the bottom of this window click “Set Date/Password”.
Step 16
The Set Closing Date and Password window opens. Change the closing date to the last day of the accounting period that just closed. If you’re working with our office, this should be set to the last day of the period covered by the most recent Tax Return. So, if you file on a calendar year and we just completed your 2020 Tax Return, set this to 12/31/2020.
If you file on a fiscal year, set this to the last day of the most recent fiscal year.
Add an easy to remember password. This password is not used for security. Instead, anytime you try to post a transaction in a prior year (most often done in error) Quickbooks will warn you, and ask you to input this password in order to post the transaction.
Don’t worry about forgetting this password, it can be changed at any time by coming back to this window via Edit/Preferences/Accounting/Company Preferences.
Click “OK” then click “OK” in the Preferences window. You’re done!
Step 9
Quickbooks will warn you that you are saving your Backup file to the same hard drive as your Quickbooks file. Click “Use this Location”.
Note: Quickbooks issues this warning because if your computer dies, your Quickbooks File and Quickbooks Backup File will both die with it. For a better backup solution, move the Quickbooks Backup you are creating to an external hard drive, a thumb drive, or any form of online storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, ect.)
Step 10
The Save Backup Copy window opens, confirm the location of the backup by looking at the top of the window next to “Save in” then click “Save” in the lower right corner of the window.