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:

  1. Back up your company file and send us a copy of that backup

  2. 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).

Creating/Sending Accountant’s Change Files

 
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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 “Save File.”

 
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Step 2

Quickbooks will ask if you’d like to make an Accountant’s Copy or a Portable or Backup file. Choose Accountant’s Copy, and click “Next”.

 
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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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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”.

 
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Step 4

After you select the dividing date, it will ask you where to save the file. Save it someplace you can find it, like your Desktop. Next you’ll see the loading screen show to the right. When it’s completed, you an go find the file on your desktop and send it to us via the instructions at www.PeterDelaney.com/Send