Consulting Lifecycle

We Help You Choose the Right Solution

Moving to a new accounting or retail software solution can be an intimidating process. As part of our service, we make the research and decision making stage of this process as easy and painless as possible by providing both a needs assessment and a live custom demo.

Needs Assessment

We like to know all about each client’s current processes and find out what QuickBooks can and cannot accomplish for them upfront. There is nothing worse than being told a piece of software can do everything you want, getting it installed, and finding out it really doesn’t have the functionality you expected. Managing and discussing expectations are a huge part of what we do, and we don’t take this stage lightly.

The Needs Assessment process does just that. First and foremost, we manage this process by listening to you. We spend time finding the right QuickBooks product for your business. Once we hear what you are seeking and understand your situation as well as business, we explain the features of the product and why it will work for you. If you have options, we like for you to know them all. We know that businesses are not cookie cutter, so we treat each opportunity as as a custom solution.

Live Custom Demo

We perform a live custom sixty-minute demonstration for either QuickBooks Enterprise or Point of Sale via our online meeting tool. You and your team log into our computers where we show you how QuickBooks will work for you. The demo follows the needs assessment portion of our process and discusses solutions for the various functions that your business needs the software to solve. The first half of the demo is used to show you the things you asked to see, and the second half of the demo opens the floor to questions.

After the Custom Demo, we recommend our clients take the proposed solution for a spin. We can offer thirty-day free trials of QuickBooks Point of Sale, QuickBooks Enterprise, and QuickBooks Online. We want our clients to feel genuinely comfortable with the solution, and sometimes putting it in your hands is the ticket.

Pre-Implementation Consulting

Once we’ve done your Needs Assessment and the live Custom Demo, we can perform what we call Pre-Implementation Consulting. This paid consulting work is where we start the process of customizing your QuickBooks solution prior to your purchase. Sometimes clients want us to put in their chart of accounts and service or inventory items, along with some sample transactions to see how reporting would work. Other times it’s doing research about an external layer of complexity like a website platform integration, integrated CRM, outside bolt-on, project management software, or a complex conversion.

This consulting is used to determine how customer data looks in QuickBooks or how external solutions will work for our customers, and it helps to set expectations on the process. Doing this step shows how the software works with your data, and it tends to alleviate questions about how add-ons will work.  It also defines where data comes from and who and what system is responsible for each piece of the puzzle moving forward. This makes our implementations as smooth and pain-free as possible, which we enjoy as much as our clients do.

Implementation and Ongoing Support

Each one of our clients receives a custom implementation plan with due dates, homework, and a definition of who is responsible for what. We have regular check-in meetings and phone calls, and we meet our deliverable dates.

After implementation you can enjoy our knowledge and expertise as a resource for as much or as little time as you need. Want a weekly check-in for a couple of weeks? No problem! Just quarterly? We can do that too. We’re here to make your new software solution sing for you, and we have many customers who can vouch for their good experience with us.