[19] – Invoice from PSA to Accounting

Welcome to PSA Impact, your podcast for all things PSA, RMM, and MSP, with your hosts Rayanne Buccianico and Chris Tim. Learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiency within your MSP business. Let's listen in. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of PSA Impact Podcast with your hosts myself Chris Tim and my co-host Rayanne Buccianico. We are an independent PSA podcast series designed to help MSPs all over the world on all things PSA.

You can get your questions answered by us and learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiency in your MSP. You can get in touch with us on all the social networks and as usual we'll put the links to those groups on the show notes. So with me is Rayanne. How's things going with you, Rayanne? Things are going great here, Chris.

How are things on your side of the pond? Good, not too bad, thank you. Just before the call we were both saying how busy we are and how tired we are. I think this lockdown is pretty much getting to everyone at the moment so I don't know if you're feeling the same. Of course, I think everybody's feeling the same.

We're just muddling through and doing the best that we can with what we've got, right? Absolutely, absolutely. So Rayanne, what are we going to talk about today? I know there's been a lot of discussion around finance and accounting and billing codes and all that kind of stuff. So I thought maybe we could have a conversation around some of that stuff today.

Oh, great. So we finally get to talk about one of my favorite topics, right? Absolutely, it can't always be mine, right? Okay, so yeah, there's a couple of things I wanted to chat about. One client came to me and they had an unusual request, right?

So they have all of their contracts in their PSA and they've got them at the contract level and you've got the list of services. So they offered one of their customers a 10% discount on the contract for the remainder of the calendar year and they wanted to show it as a separate line item. So here's what they were doing. They would run the monthly invoices in Autotask, send it off to QuickBooks and then open up the invoice in QuickBooks and then manually enter a discount line in the invoice in QuickBooks. Well, that works, but it's not the best plan because one, now your invoices in Autotask doesn't match your invoice in QuickBooks.

So that's problem number one. Problem number two is that it's a very manual process. So I suggested, you know, Chris, how at the top of the services page in Autotask, you can say, I want to give this discount and it will just populate the discount, right? So that wasn't good enough because they wanted to show the line item discount. And if you put that, you know, 10% discount at the top, it's just going to change the extended prices all the way down the side.

And so the customer would never actually see the discount other than the lower amount. So I thought, well, what could we do to change this? Our solution was, and tell me if you have a better solution. Our solution was to create a service and we call it Courtesy Discount. And then we put that service on the contract with a negative amount and that reduced the overall monthly contract.

And so at the monthly approve and post process, you see service, service, service, discount, and then the invoice comes out with the proper amount. Have you done anything like that? That's a very interesting way of doing it. I probably would have gone down the route of maybe setting up some kind of, you know, material code with a discount on it and then adding it as a charge against the contract. I suppose that could work too.

Yeah. I mean, exactly. Or a product or something called discount and then just add it as a charge against the contract because that, again, can just show you can have your invoice with all of your services on it and then just another line item that's either some kind of material code or some kind of product, whatever, that just says discount and it's got a minus figure against it. So potentially that could work, but I like the way that you've done that. I think it's a really cool way to do it as a service as well.

So when we transfer the invoice from Autotask into QuickBooks, the invoice comes in with the line item discount already there and now we can automate it because this particular client is using QuickBooks online and so, you know, you tick the boxes to have the credit cards and the ACH options checked and then to automatically send the invoice right out of QuickBooks so that it's got the payment link. So it really ended the manual process of wait until the invoice gets into QuickBooks, then open up the invoice, then add the discount, then manually send it. So this way we were able to just automate the entire thing and know that the invoice was coming through with the proper amount and would get sent automatically to the customer. Cool. Just something you mentioned on there about bringing that minus figure through into the accounting tool.

Now I know from experience in the older days and some of the older accounting packages, when you bring in a minus amount, it actually creates it as essentially a credit or a credit note on the system. Does that still happen with QuickBooks online or how does that side of it work? QuickBooks will not accept a negative invoice and it will not turn it into a credit memo. It will simply error out during the transfer process. However, this is not a negative invoice.

It's just a negative line item on an invoice with still a positive amount due. So that's why QuickBooks will accept it. Okay. So as long as you've got some positives on that invoice, it'll just treat it as a negative line item? Correct.

As long as the overall amount of the invoice is a positive, if all of the positives are larger than all of the negatives, then it'll still go through. Okay. That's cool. Okay. That's a good one to know and I think a lot of people ask that question from time to time in terms of what happens with negative line items that come through.

So it's good to know that. I'm assuming that's the same with QuickBooks online or QuickBooks desktop. It's the same on both of them or do they kind of operate slightly differently? Well, so I think it's worth mentioning that if your negative items do exceed your positive items, then unfortunately at that point, what you will need to do is go into QuickBooks and create the credit memo because there's not going to be any way to push it from Autotask into QuickBooks. QuickBooks simply will not accept it.

So yeah, so you would have to enter that credit memo because sometimes that happens, right? Someone calls and cancels a seat or cancels a service and then you have to issue that credit and that credit memo will happen inside Autotask or that credit will show up as a negative amount at the approve and post process and you can invoice a negative amount in Autotask but it's never going to go anywhere. Then somebody will have to go into QuickBooks to manually enter that credit memo. Interesting. Talking about how stuff comes out of Autotask and goes into QuickBooks and all that kind of stuff, let's talk around billing codes and how billing codes translate into the accounting package.

I know there's always so much confusion around it because Autotask has the option of a general ledger account and then you have a billing code name of some clients. You've either got a material code name or you've got a work type or you've got a service code. With you being the kind of accounting expert on this, can you talk to us around how does stuff actually get into QuickBooks and how does it get interpreted once it kind of gets in there? Sure. First things first, the general ledger code that you see in the billing code screen goes nowhere.

Why it's there? I have no idea. But I have done integrations with Autotask to Sage 50, Great Plains, Mass 90, QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online and not one of them uses that box. Have you found any uses for the general ledger code in the billing codes because I have not. From a point of view of bringing it through to an external accounting package, no.

What it's there for is that is if you were doing all of your billing out of Autotask specifically and you wanted to know where your labor has been posted again. So the same as you would do if you were to run that report out of your billing platform, you can run that report and say, well, I can see that this labor item was posted against this GL code or whatever it is from an Autotask perspective. So you could do that. But you're right. The same integrations I've seen on every single external accounting package doesn't use the general ledger account.

And to use my favorite saying on this, it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot, really, as far as the external accounting package is concerned. I love that phrase. I may have to borrow that from time to time. You can have it. It's all yours.

Great. OK, so moving on, we have then we have the external code, right? So there's a if you're going to the billing code screen, you've got the general ledger code and you have an external code. So the external code has always come in more handy with other integrations such as Sage 50 and Great Plains. It's also available as an option with the QuickBooks Online integration.

QuickBooks Desktop does not use it, but QuickBooks Online, you do have the option of using it. That's generally not how I do it. When I'm doing the integration between Autotask and QuickBooks Online, I will use the billing code option. This gives me an awful lot of control over where things end up. So I may end up with a few more billing codes than you might otherwise expect.

But I like to make sure that the invoices land at a certain place on my general ledger in the accounting system and that billing code is directly mapped to an item code or a product code in QuickBooks. And that's the way the integration has always worked. Whether you're in QuickBooks Desktop or in QuickBooks Online, Autotask is mapping directly to the items or the product codes. So you have the item list or the product list, and those names must match exactly, right? They have to have the same characters, same spaces, same punctuation, same, same, everything.

And then if it is not there, then Autotask will create it and it will point to an account like the Autotask Other, I'm sure you're familiar with, that things just land in Autotask Other. And that's your cue to go into your QuickBooks and say, okay, I need it to no longer post to Autotask Other. I want this item to now go to this other general ledger account. Interesting. You know, that's something I think that everyone gets confused about.

And when I'm talking to people about, you know, how to bring stuff out of Autotask, I'm always saying to them as well, use the name of the billing code. And, you know, I never use the external code. I don't think I've ever entered an external code in my life in Autotask. And pretty much I've never put anything into the general ledger accounts column either, because I just literally don't see the point of doing that, you know, if you're going to be mapping it into an external accounting package. So, and you're right, what you need to do is kind of have that one-to-one mapping.

So go, you know, if you've got something called, you know, a material code called hardware, or you've got a, you know, a work type called remote support, then you need to have the exact same mapping in your accounting tool. And whether that is QuickBooks Online, or QuickBooks Desktop, or even Xero, or Sage, or any of the great ones that people use, you know, it needs to have that same, you know, mapping structure that it has in all of those tools as well. Yeah, it should be noted, though, that the Sage integration relies solely on the external code and cannot be used that the name of the work type, or the name of the service, or the billing code would not go anywhere. It would just kind of fall flat on its face. So interesting that you mentioned Sage 50.

I mean, I don't know if you guys over that side of the pond, you know, encounter Sage 50 a lot, but it's actually something that a lot of customers that I'm dealing with in the UK are still using. Although, thankfully, it seems like, you know, a lot of people are moving to the newer, more modern tools like either QuickBooks Online or Xero is a really big one over here. But do you see a lot of people over there using Sage or any of the Sage products, Lime50 or any of the others? We don't have that many, or at least I don't run into that many. I used to support Sage when it was Peachtree.

I supported that for years and years, probably from the mid-1990s until the early 2010s, somewhere in that area. And I maintained my partnership with Sage all the way up until, I want to say, 2016, 2017, because I was helping Autotask with their actual integrations. They didn't understand Sage, so they would outsource a lot of those integrations to me, and we used a third-party connector called Boomi. And unfortunately, I think it only ever worked with the US version of Sage. So, how are the UK Sage users getting their invoices into Sage from Autotask?

Absolutely. So, Sage over the years have kind of bought a bunch of different companies, right? So, Sage or Peachtree, as it was called in those days, it isn't really the same as what Sage or SageLime50 is over here, right? It's a completely different product. I think it's, you know, like a lot of companies, over the years, they've acquired different accounting tools and they've branded them as Sage, but they're essentially not the same product.

But over here, from a SageLime50 perspective, there is actually a tool, which you can just go into Google and search for it. If you do AT to Sage, AT and then the number two, and then Sage, it's written by a British company that does exactly that, right? It just takes all the invoices out of Autotask and chucks them into Sage, into Lime50 specifically, as well as anything like purchase orders and that kind of stuff. It's only a one-way sync, so it just brings everything out of Autotask. Really, really great little tool.

So, yeah, you know, it's a great thing to check out. I know there is a trial version you can have a look at. But yeah, a company up in sort of, you know, the northern part of the UK. And that's the only one I know of that actually does, you know, integration to SageLime50. But like I said, I mean, it's really only the, certainly the larger MSPs and what I would call, and I don't mean this disrespectfully, but kind of the older or the old school MSPs that are, you know, maybe been around for a long, long time and have used Sage in their business and just either haven't changed or can't change or whatever it is, and they're still using Sage.

But it's becoming less and less and I'm seeing it less and less. The people I'm talking to now are all using things like QuickBooks or Xero or one of those. So, personally, I use Xero in my own business as the tool that we, you know, we invoice out of. But, and I think it seems to be more in the UK, there seems to be more people using Xero, which I believe is an Australian product anyway. But for some reason, you know, QuickBooks here just doesn't seem to be, at least in my experience, I might be completely wrong.

And there's probably people shouting at us now while they're in their car or wherever they're listening to this podcast going, well, of course, we all use QuickBooks. But in my experience, I don't see that many people on QuickBooks in the UK. Right. And here we are primarily QuickBooks in the U.S. and I very rarely run into the Xero customer. There are some Xero users here in the U.S. and unfortunately, I don't know enough about Xero to be able to take them on and be able to help them with their accounting or I can help them set up their chart of accounts, I can help them do a lot of things.

But as an ongoing concern, I just don't think that it would be the best use of our time to try to maintain, you know, a set of books on a monthly basis for that, for Xero. Yeah, absolutely. And seeing as we were talking about tools that integrate, it's probably worth mentioning some of the others as well. We're talking about Xero. You know, there's a bunch of tools that integrate with Xero that bring invoices out of all the task into Xero.

So two that come to mind is Wysync and the other one is Cloud Depot. Again, both Australian companies. Wysync also has integration with QuickBooks online, I believe. But of course, there is the built-in QuickBooks online integration with directly in Autotask anyway. So if you were a QuickBooks user, you probably wouldn't need to use Wysync for that, although they do have, Wysync does have an integration for QuickBooks online users as well.

I did know that and Wysync got their start with their ConnectWise integration to QuickBooks desktop and QuickBooks online. So they were really able to, you know, make their integrations mature before they started branching out to other PSAs like Autotask. And now they're starting to branch out with other, you know, accounting systems too. And I believe they are also Australian, right? Wysync?

Both Wysync and Cloud Depot are both Australian companies. So Cloud Depot used to be called My Accounting Toolbox. Right, that's the one I was expecting to hear. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they, that's what they used to be called and I think they rebranded it.

We should probably get those guys actually on the podcast, you know, both of those two companies. I know we've had a, you know, a bunch of other vendors recently on our podcast. So yeah, it would be interesting to get those guys on and get their take on how their integrations work. But just, you know, if anyone knows of anything else that we haven't mentioned, then, you know, they'll reach out to us and let us know, but those are certainly the ones I know of. But to be honest, I don't know too many people using, that have got the QuickBooks online that are using Wysync, right?

Most people that are using QuickBooks online just use the built-in Autotask stuff. When I say built-in, I know it's a third party, but it's kind of an Autotask thing that they set up for you. And it works really well. Plus, they also have the purchase order sync and the expense report sync now too. And the integrations, I think, have as many features as the QuickBooks developer API allowed them to build, you know, so there's not really any features that are missing or lacking at that point.

When the invoice comes into QuickBooks and it looks exactly as you would expect it to look, of course, it still looks like a QuickBooks online invoice and not an Autotask invoice, but that you end up getting used to. So you can always email your invoices to your customers out of Autotask if you like the look of the Autotask invoice better, but of course, it won't come with the payment link to the payment portal. So there's give and take on both sides. Yeah, absolutely. And I get asked that question quite a lot as well in terms of, you know, what's the best way to do it?

And I think it's really personal choice. You know, I know a lot of people who send everything out of Autotask just because it makes sense, because, you know, they're clicking on the button, they're processing the invoices and they might as well send it from there anyway, you know, and then others who will say, no, let's just bring it into the accounting package, you know, QuickBooks or Xero or whatever and send it from that tool. And that's exactly how I do it. So all of the invoices that I send to my customers all come from Xero, but ultimately they start in Autotask, right? So I set everything up in Autotask and I personally use Wysync and I just use Wysync to bring everything out of Autotask, push it into, you know, into Xero and then I send the invoices out from Xero.

And for the same reason, like you said, because then that has all of the payment link information on there. You know, in the UK we use DirectDebit, so I think you guys call them ACH or something like that. So it's, you know, we have all the links on there, the credit cards, PayPal, all that kind of stuff. So it makes a lot more sense from my point of view to send it from there. But I know quite a few people who just send out the Autotask invoice and I'm quite happy with sending that out.

So cool. So one other thing I actually wanted to ask you about, Diane, and it's kind of on a completely different topic, a completely different subject. Have you noticed there's a new little add-on into Autotask and I just wanted to kind of get your take on it. It's the sort of in-app board or whatever they call it. So right at the top right-hand corner next to your name, there's a little green slider button that you can say whether you're in or out of the system.

Have you played with it? Have you seen it? What do you think of it? I have seen it. I haven't spent a whole lot of time playing with it.

I suspect that it ties into the dispatch calendar so that you know who's in or not in. Am I on the right track with this? What do you know about it? From what I'm seeing of it right now, and again, people might know differently, I haven't seen where it's tying into the dispatcher portal. All I see is it's an in-app board and you can see who's in and who's not.

Now I don't know whether that's something that Autotask will eventually bring into the product, but at the moment, all I see is an in-app board and you can now see whether that person's in the office or out of the office. So just a quick interjection, one, you have to be logged into Autotask in order to be in, right? And that is assuming that every worker has Autotask open every moment that that person is working for the day. And I suspect that it also came out when we have a bunch of remote workers, right? So you've got people working from home all day long and who's in the system and who's not in the system, so that's what a good in-out board is perfect for, right?

I used to work in real estate and we had an in-out board that when you came in in the day, you would move from the out to the inside. It was literally a whiteboard with lines on it and you would just check yourself in and out, you know, so that people, the receptionist would know whether you're somewhere in the building or not, you know, when a phone call came in for you. But, you know, in this world of remote workers that we're all experiencing, I see why that might have made it to the top of the priority list for development. Absolutely. And I think that's exactly the reason it was brought out at this time and that's exactly what it's for, right?

Because you can say, I'm not in the office or I'm not in front of my Autotask, I'm not logged into it at the moment, whatever the case might be, you know, and then somebody in the office can, you know, simply hover over the Autotask button and then from the home there's an in-out status and you can then see who's in, who's out, all of those kind of things. So I think it's a really cool little feature, you know, I think they're going to develop it a lot more. But, you know, I think it was one of those that there was a little pop-up that came up sort of the day before saying it was going to be in the product and then there it was. But I didn't see anything about it beforehand or anything about what it was. And, you know, because in my business it's just myself really that uses all the task, you know, I know where I'm in or out.

So I think for smaller companies, I can't see how it's going to be of massive benefit to them, but certainly for larger companies and those that have, you know, a huge remote workforce, I think it's going to be a really, really cool feature to have. Right. The more I think about it, the more I think I like the feature. And you know, and of course, I mean, I just showed up one day, probably in the last week or so. Yeah.

And I, you know, I noticed it, it's hard not to notice the big green dot right next to your name at the top of the screen. But I, you know, I really did not do a whole lot of investigating, but I think I'll check out that in Outboard, especially because we do have, you know, some remote workers here in our office. And you know, it might be interesting to see how often everybody is logged in. Absolutely. You know, and I'd be very interested to get kind of other people's take on it as well.

If there's any other, you know, of our listeners that are actually using that and can see a huge amount of benefit in it or, you know, whatever your comments are on it, let us know. We're on all the socials. You know, we have a Facebook page. We have a Twitter, you know, LinkedIn, all that kind of stuff. You can visit us on our website, which is psaimpact.net.

You can go there and leave us a message. And on there is the links to all of our socials as well. So it's been a really fun, interesting conversation, Ray. And I've certainly learned a lot and I hope everybody else has. Well, I certainly enjoyed it.

Thank you very much. And so I guess until next time. Yeah. And like I always say, there's only one thing left for me to say, and that is your PSA is the key to your MSP success. So go out and make an impact on your world today.

Remember to stay safe, stay healthy and stay sane. Thank you for joining us today on PSA Impact. We hope you've learned something and that you'll join us next time when we answer new questions posed by our listeners.