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How Does QuickBooks Attached Documents Handle Security?

Chief Mechanic · March 19, 2011 ·

QuickBooks Attached Documents Manage Users
QuickBooks Attached Documents addresses the need for security by providing 4 levels of application permissions across 8 areas of QuickBooks functionality under an account overseen by a single user.

Users log into Intuit’s secure servers using an email address and password. While we’re on the subject of security, there’s one small drawback: the password is not case-sensitive and is therefore not considered a strong password.

A QuickBooks Attached Documents subscription is managed by a Company Administrator, the sole pre-defined role supported by the service. A user with the role of Company Administrator can:

  • Edit the business profile
  • Add other Attached Documents subscriptions
  • Update the current subscription

Here’s a screenshot of the screen to add a new user, which shows the range of security settings. After a user is added, security settings can be modified by clicking on the Manage Users button in the upper right of the browser screen, followed by editing a specific user. You can only manage users from a browser-based interface, not from within QuickBooks itself. The Setup and Manage Users menu selection will only open browser access to Attached Documents.

Quickbooks Attached Documents Add User

The service supports 4 levels of application permissions:

  • Administrator: can perform all functions and manage users
  • Full Access: can perform all functions but cannot manage users
  • View Only: can view any attachment in any area but cannot add new attachments and cannot modify or delete existing documents
  • Custom Access: controlled access across 8 functional areas

Necessarily, the user with the role of Company Administrator must have Administrator application permissions, but other users can have Administrator application permissions as well. While those users will have powerful capabilities, they won’t have the powers specific to the role of Company Administrator, such as editing the company profile.

The Custom Access permission is used to control access to documents in functional areas of QuickBooks. Custom Access supports 8 functional areas:

  1. Sales and Accounts Receivable
  2. Purchases and Accounts Payable
  3. Checking and Credit Cards
  4. Time Tracking
  5. Payroll and Employees
  6. Inventory
  7. Sensitive Accounting Activities
  8. Company Documents

Within these 8 areas, there are 4 capabilities:

  • Add: this is a global permission; if a user can add an attached document, he can add it to any area
  • View: this permission allows a user to look at but not modify or delete a document
  • Modify: this permission necessarily includes the View permission
  • Delete: this permission is only available to a user with Modify permissions in the same area

Users assigned a Custom Access level can make use of their capabilities (i. e., Add, View, Modify, or Delete) on lists and transactions associated with that area of accounting. A user can be assigned to more than one area, a necessity in a small firm that still wants to set some restrictions on document access.

Before examining how Custom Access applies in specific areas, it’s important to understand how access to files in the Document Inbox is controlled. Any user with View permission in any area can see all unattached documents in the Document Inbox. Custom Access can’t take affect until after a document is attached and put into a specific area. Therefore, for documents requiring controlled access, care must be taken to start the upload process by attaching them from within QuickBooks. If you elect to upload a document to the Document Inbox and attach it later, it is viewable by any user with View permissions until it is attached to a list item or transaction.

8 Functional Areas

Let’s review which lists and transactions are associated with specific areas. Note that a list or transaction type can appear in more than 1 area. For example, the Other Names list appears in both the Sales and Accounts Receivable and the Purchases and Accounts Payable areas.

Sales and Accounts Receivable: Customers, Other Names, Fixed Asset Item List, Estimates, Sales Orders, Invoices, Sales Receipts, Credit Memos, and Payments.

Purchases and Accounts Payable: Vendors, Other Names, Fixed Asset Items, Bills, Bill Credits, Bill Payments, Credit Card charges, Credit Card credits, and Purchase Orders. Note that Checks – which represent a different transaction type – cannot be seen unless the user has View permissions in the area of Checking and Credit Cards.

Checking and Credit Cards: Vendors, Other Names, Fixed Asset Items, Checks, Deposits, Credit Card charges, and Credit Card credits. Note that users with View permission can see documents attached to transactions in bank or credit card accounts but cannot see documents attached to the bank or credit card accounts themselves. Note also that Transfers are not included in this area.

Time Tracking: Other Names and Timers.

Payroll and Employees: Employees, Other Names, Paychecks, Payroll Liability Checks, Liability Adjustments, and Year-To-Date Adjustments.

Inventory: Items, Vendors, Other Names, Fixed Asset Items, Bills, Bill Credits, Bill Payments, Purchase Orders, Item Receipts, Inventory Adjustments, and Build Assemblies.

Sensitive Accounting Activities: Accounts, Journal entries, and Transfers. Note that users with View permission can see documents attached to general ledger Accounts, but to also see documents attached to transactions in a particular area, View permission for that area is required. For example, to view a document attached to a Check, a user must have View permissions in the Checking and Credit Cards area.

Company Documents: Documents attached to the company file itself via the Company Information window.

This last area is not an accounting function similar to managing A/R or A/P. Instead, it includes more general corporate documents that are connected to accounting and recordkeeping. Documents here include those attached to the Company Information via the Company->Company Information… menu selection. A screenshot of this point of attachment is shown below. Examples of documents that might be attached here include corporate organization documents such as articles of incorporation, bylaws, or meeting minutes.

QuickBooks Attached Documents Company File

A few examples of how applying security in QuickBooks Attached Documents will illustrate the power and flexibility of this security model. First, consider the need to upload bank statements but to restrict access to selected individuals. Bank statements attached to the Account are only viewable by users with access to Sensitive Accounting Activities, so the specific bank account to which the statement applies is the best point of attachment. We don’t recommend bank statements be attached to other list entities, such as Other Names, because documents attached to those lists are accessible to other areas.

Next, consider the need to upload payroll tax forms. If every user requiring access to the payroll tax forms will also have access to the Sensitive Accounting Activities area, one good point of attachment might be the liability account to which the tax form relates. Another approach might be to treat these forms as Company Documents, and attach them to the Company Information. A workable but slightly less desirable method would be to create employees representing the tax agency as placeholders and attach tax forms to the relevant placeholder employee. However, even though a tax form is often accompanied by a payment to a Vendor, we don’t recommend attaching a tax form to a Vendor because documents attached to that list item would be accessible to other areas, such as Purchase and Accounts Payable.

Both of these examples illustrate an important concept in making use of security in Attached Documents. Start by attaching a document to an area with the greatest restrictions and only attach it to other areas as required. If you attach a document to areas that include lists or transaction types that overlap, you may end up making the document available to a wider audience than you originally intended.

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How Do I Resort Lists?

Chief Mechanic · September 11, 2010 ·

Lists are one of the foundations of QuickBooks, and from time to time they can become out of order.  That’s when they need to be resorted.  Some common indicators that it’s time to resort your lists include:

  • the list itself is out of order
  • an element is missing
  • new entries in a list appear at the top of the list instead of in their sorted order
  • you can’t turn on the account number preference
  • selecting a Customer:Job, Vendor, or Employee in a Center fails to display existing transactions for that name
  • Names don’t properly auto-fill when entering a Name filter on the Advanced tab of the Edit->Find… function

Resorting any list will undo any special order you’ve applied to the list, and this activity can’t be done in multi-user mode.  It’s always a good idea to backup your company file before undertaking an action that can’t be undone.

There are 8 lists that can be resorted. They are:

  1. Customers:Jobs
  2. Vendors
  3. Employees
  4. Other Names
  5. Accounts
  6. Items
  7. Memorized Reports
  8. Memorized Transactions

Since this technique is often used to address possible data corruption, we’ll outline the most efficient technique to resort multiple lists, but you can also choose to resort an individual list by opening up a Center and right clicking on a list element.

The first 4 lists are collectively referred to as Names or Entities, and there’s an easy way to resort these 4 lists:

  1. Open the Write Checks window by clicking on Banking->Write Checks or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
  2. In the Pay to the Order of field, click Ctrl + L
  3. Opt to include inactive list entries by clicking the Include Inactive checkbox
  4. Click the Name button and choose Re-sort List from the menu
  5. Click Ok to resort the lists
  6. Uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox

The screenshot below shows the combined Name list in Step 4:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Resort Name List

Our related article explains how to provide easy access to this combined list of all Names.

Resorting the Chart of Accounts and Items lists follow similar procedures, except each of these lists will have to be resorted individually.  To access the Chart of Accounts, click the Lists->Chart of Accounts menu selection or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A.  To access the Items list, click Lists->Items.  Opt to include inactive list entries, resort the list from the button in the lower left of the window, and uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox before proceeding to the next list.

Resorting Memorized Reports and Memorized Transactions are similar to the above steps, except there’s no need to include inactive list entries since they’re not allowed on these lists.  To access Memorized Reports, click the Reports->Memorized Reports->Memorized Report List menu selection; to access Memorized Transactions, click Lists->Memorized Transactions or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T.

After resorting lists, close and reopen your company file (.qbw) to insure that all changes are successfully written to disk.

Resorting lists is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

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How Can I Display a List of All Names?

Chief Mechanic · September 5, 2010 ·

In QuickBooks, Customers, Customer:Jobs, Vendors, and Employees are called Names.  In transaction entry screens, the selection of a Name is filtered to include only the type of Names normally associated with that transaction type.  For example, when entering a Vendor Bill, the selection of a Name is filtered to only include Vendors.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to be able to review a list of all Names in one place, especially when trying to follow a consistent pattern if an entity appears on more than 1 list.

To display a list of all Names, follow these simple steps:

  1. Open the Write Checks window by clicking on the Banking->Write Checks menu selection or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
  2. In the Pay to the Order of field (ie, the check payee), use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L to display a list of all Names
  3. Add the Name List window to the Icon Bar by clicking on the View->Add “Name List” to Icon Bar… menu selection
  4. Assign a Label and Description to the new window
  5. Optionally, change the default icon selection that will appear in the Icon Bar to represent the Name List
  6. Click Ok

You now have a list of all Names in an easy-to-access window. The list provides a consolidated window of 4 pieces of information: Active Status, Name, Name Type, and Balance Total.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Name List

Note that the Write Checks window was used to access all Names because a check can be written to all of the different Name types and by-passes the filtering set by QuickBooks on different transaction types.

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What Distinguishes a Reimbursable Expense From Other Expenses?

Chief Mechanic · September 1, 2010 ·

A reimbursable expense is an expense that you expect to invoice to a customer or client either at the actual cost or with a markup.  QuickBooks includes features to distinguish reimbursable expenses from other types of expenses and to track which reimbursable expenses have in fact been invoiced to a customer. 

For more information on handling reimbursable expenses, see our related articles on enabling automatically invoicing customers for reimbursable expenses, invoicing a customer for reimbursable expenses, removing expenses from the list of billable expenses to be invoiced to a customer, and finding out which reimbursable expenses haven’t been billed to a customer.

In QuickBooks, the 4 principal ways to record expenses for a business are:

  1. Recording a vendor bill using the Vendor->Enter Bills menu selection
  2. Writing a check using the Banking->Write Checks menu selection or Ctrl + W keyboard shortcut
  3. Recording a credit card transaction using the Banking->Enter Credit Card Charges menu selection
  4. Via a General Journal entry using the Company->Make General Journal Entries… menu selection

When you record an expense using 1 of these 4 methods, you can associate line items on the transaction with one or more Customer:Jobs.  Doing so will enable you to analyze both the expenses as well as the revenues from a job.

When you add a Customer:Job to a line item on a check, vendor bill, credit card charge, or General Journal entry, QuickBooks will automatically put a check mark in the Billable? field.  That check mark in the Billable? field indicates this is a reimbursable expense to be invoiced to a customer or client.  If it’s not, simply remove the check mark by clicking on it.

Unfortunately, there’s presently no way to set the default for the Billable? field to being unchecked for those organizations who want to simply assign expenses to customers and not seek reimbursement.  Leaving this field checked won’t interfere with associating expenses with customers; it’s an important detail if your organization does want to use it to track reimbursable expenses. In either case, with a Customer:Job associated with the line item for the expense, you’ll be able to use QuickBooks to perform job profitability analysis, more commonly known as job costing.

The screens for each of the 4 principal ways to record an expense are shown below.  Here’s the Enter Bills window:

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Enter Bill Reimbursable Expense Tab

The Write Checks window:

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Write Checks Billable

The Enter Credit Card Charges window:

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Enter Credit Card Charge Billable

And the Make General Journal Entries window:

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Make General Journal Entries Billable

Note that the field where you enter the Customer:Job on the Make General Journal Entries window is actually called Name because General Journal entries can be recorded for an entity that isn’t a Customer:Job, such as a Vendor, Employee, or Other Name.

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Does QuickBooks Have Limits On the Number of List Items and Transactions That Can Be Entered?

Chief Mechanic · August 26, 2010 ·

Yes. There are 2 kinds of limits: physical and practical. Let’s consider each in turn.

QuickBooks faces these physical limits:

  • 2 billion transactions
  • 10,000 accounts in the GL chart of accounts
  • 14,500 names (customers, vendors, employees, and other names – combined)
  • 14,500 items (which include inventory items)
  • 10,000 classes
  • 100 price levels

The above list highlights the most important physical limits of QuickBooks; it’s not an all-inclusive list. The physical limits of Enterprise Solutions are considerably higher. For details on all of the physical limits of both QuickBooks and Enterprise Solutions, consult this Intuit knowledge base article.

To find out how your own company file stands relative to these limits, press F2 from within QuickBooks to display the Product Information window. On the right side, you’ll see the List Information. In this example, the company file has 134 (out of 10,000) GL accounts, 217 (out of 14,500) total names, and 106 (out of 14,500) Items.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Product Information  List Information

There are important practical considerations as well. According to Intuit, QuickBooks is designed for small businesses with fewer than 20 employees and $2 million in annual revenue. However, those are general guidelines. Bigger firms reliably use QuickBooks. What impacts whether you should use QuickBooks or its more powerful relative, Enterprise Solutions, is the size of your data file today and how that data is expected to grow over the time period for which you want to keep all transaction data in 1 file.

Intuit suggests estimating 2 Kb per transaction and projecting the size of your data file over several years. Keep in mind that a sale paid for with 1 check results in 3 transactions (invoice, payment, and deposit), and each AP transaction results in at least 2 (vendor bill and payment). This estimate does not include the data that list elements themselves (e. g., customers, vendors, or items) will add to overall file size.

In our experience, the performance of QuickBooks can degrade if overall company file size exceeds 100 Mb. Intuit suggests a practical limit of growth of 15 Mb per year (or about 7500 transactions).

As a company grows, QuickBooks includes a utility to remove fully paid and reconciled transactions in a process referred to as “cleaning up.” This process reduces the size of the QuickBooks company file. That’s why it’s important to consider the time period you’ll keep old transaction data in your company file. If you’ll clean up your company file every 18-24 months, the number of transactions you can store without hitting the practical limitations of QuickBooks will be considerably greater.

Some longtime QuickBooks users engage in a process of making a backup copy of a company file and then cleaning it up with a cutoff date. The backup copy preserves history transactions for those rare instances where they may be useful, but the company file for everyday use has been cleaned up and no longer includes stale, fully paid transactions. That results in improved performance.

The guidelines on practical limits we’ve discussed here aren’t unbreakable rules, and the limits are influenced by factors we didn’t mention, most notably the hardware performance of the computer on which you run QuickBooks.

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