Sending Quickbooks information to your Accountant.
If you are using Intuit Quickbooks Desktop for your bookkeeping, you may at times need to send your Quickbooks information to your accountant. There are two ways to accomplish this:
Back up your company file and send us a copy of that backup
Create and Accountant’s Change File, and send us that file (preferred)
Think of (1) as sending us a snapshot of records for us to look at. Critically, with this method any adjustments we make you will then need to make on your copy at home, either manually or by importing a Quickbooks General Journal Entry File.
Think of (2) as giving us access to your books, so that we can make adjustments. This help article addresses (2).
Please note: these instructions are for newer versions of Quickbooks. If you have an older version that doesn’t have the email option, click here for different instructions.
Creating/Sending Accountant’s Change Files
Step 1
Click once on the file menu, then hover your mouse over “Send Company File” then “Accountant’s Copy” then “Client Activities” then click “Send to Accountant”.
If you would prefer to send us the file manually, select “Save file” and follow the prompts. Then, send us the resulting file via www.PeterDelaney.com/Send
Step 2
The Send Accountant’s Copy window will open. Click “Next”.
Step 3
Set the Dividing Date. After creating this file you will not be able to make changes before the Dividing Date, and your accountants will not be able to make changes after the Dividing Date, it splits your company in half so your accountant’s can work on the past, while you keep posting the future. These restrictions are lifted once we send changes back to you.
Choose “Custom” and set the Dividing Date to the date your accountant requested, if they specified. If they did not, these are the best dates for certain common tasks:
For a tax return, put the date 1 day after the close of the tax year. So for the tax year ending Dec 31st, 2020 you would select January 1st 2021.
If your accountant is looking at your books during the year, select the day after the end of the last month. So if it is currently December, you would select December 1st, so your accountant had access to all dates up to the end of last month, plus the first day of the current month.
When the date is selected, click “Next”.
Step 4
Input your accountant’s email address, and then reenter for confirmation. Below, enter your name and your email address.
Step 5
Create a password for the transfer file. Currently Intuit requires a password with a capital letter, a number, and a special character (like ! or @). If possible, use the same password that you use to access your Quickbooks file normally, because we may already have that password in our records.
Important: you must communicate this password to our office either by calling or emailing or we will be unable to access the file.
Step 6
Quickbooks will warn you that it must close all windows to create an Accountant’s Copy. Click “OK”.
Step 7
Quickbooks will ask you to wait a moment while it creates and sends the file.
Step 8
Quickbooks will let you know that everything went through successfully and remind you to provide your accountants with the transfer password you created in step 5.
We will receive an email at the address you put in for us in step 4, with a link to download the file, and you will receive an email at the email you put in for yourself in step 4 that your file successfully sent.
Note, at the top of your Quickbooks file it will now read “(Your Quickbooks Company Name) (Accountant’s Changes Pending.)
Next, we work on the file you sent us, and then send you back our changes. For instructions on receiving/accepting those changes please click the link below: