Managing client subscriptions

Keeping an eye on your client’s requirements

As companies grow, so do their needs. What worked for them in the past may not work as
well in the future, so they might come to you to reevaluate their QuickBooks Online
subscription level or update their payment details.

How can you and QuickBooks Online help?

As a ProAdvisor, you can help your clients monitor their usage limits to see if they’re using
the best subscription level for their needs. If they want to change their subscription level, you
can guide them through the steps. If you pay for your client’s subscription, you can change
their subscription level from the Subscriptions and billing page in QuickBooks Online
Accountant.

The QuickBooks Online ecosystem is constantly evolving to meet your needs.

Your current experience may differ from what you see here.

Learning outcomes

In this lesson, we’ll cover:

 Managing client subscriptions in QuickBooks Online Accountant

Make sure you cover the highlighted suggested learning material to pass your next exam
attempt.

Topics

 Checking clients’ subscription levels

 Checking clients' usage limits
 Changing a client's subscription level
 Changing the payment method

Checking clients’ subscription levels

There are a few options to check your clients’ current subscription levels.

Select the tabs to find out more.

 The Client list

 The Subscriptions and billing screen

The easiest way to check a client’s subscription level is by hovering over the qb icon in the
Clients menu from QuickBooks Online Accountant. This reveals the client’s QuickBooks
Online and QuickBooks Online Payroll subscription plans and shows if they have a current
subscription or if their subscription has been canceled.

While the Client List can give a quick glance at client subscription levels, you can find more
details about clients’ billing information from the Subscriptions and billing screen, accessible
from the Gear icon in QuickBooks Online Accountant.

The Subscriptions and billing screen organizes the clients into different tabs as described
below.
  The Accountant-billed subscriptions tab shows the subscription status and
QuickBooks Online subscription level for the clients whose subscription costs you
pay. Here, you can see the current estimated monthly total for each client’s
subscriptions
 The Client-billed subscriptions tab shows the subscription status and QuickBooks
Online subscription level of clients who pay their subscription costs directly to Intuit
 The Billing details tab provides an overview and a monthly breakdown of your
QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online Payroll subscription charges on behalf of
your clients. You can also update your payment details, which we’ll cover later in the
lesson

 The Revenue share payouts tab is where you can sign up for the Revenue share
program and track payout details once enrolled

ProAdvisor tip

For more information on the billing options, check out the Billing options lesson.

Checking clients’ usage limits

Monitoring your client’s usage limits allows you to see if they’re using the best subscription
plan and advise them when it’s time to make a change.

The table summarizes the usage limits for QuickBooks Online, but for more information,
check out the Usage limits in QuickBooks Online and the User roles and access rights in
QuickBooks Online articles.

QuickBooks Online plan limits

Simple Start Essentials Plus Advanced

Classes and locations (combined) N/A N/A 40 Unlimited

Chart of accounts 250 Unlimited

Billable users 1 3 5 25

Other user types (unbilled)

Accountant 2 3
Reports-only N/A
Unlimited Unlimited
Time tracking-only N/A Unlimited

Tag groups 40 40 40 Unlimited

To check the client’s usage limits, follow these steps:

1. Open your client’s QuickBooks Online

2. From the Gear icon, navigate to Account and Settings
3. Select the Usage tab

As the Usage limits screen above shows, this client is approaching their limit for classes and
locations, so they should consider upgrading their subscription level.

What do the categories mean?

Usage limits apply to the following items in QuickBooks Online:

 Billable users are admin, standard, and custom users. You can see that this client currently
has zero out of a possible five users in their QuickBooks Online Plus account
 The chart of accounts is the backbone of accounting software. All assets, liabilities, income,
and expenses are recorded here in an account or subaccount. This client has plenty of scope
to increase their chart of accounts entries if needed. For more information, check out the
Customizing the chart of accounts lesson
 Tags are customizable labels that let you track transactions however you’d like. You can tag
most transactions. You can learn more about tags and tagging in the lesson on setting up and
using tags
 If the client has location and/or class tracking enabled, you’ll also see how many
classes/locations they use. Class tracking can be set to specify one class to an entire
 transaction or a different class for each detail line of a transaction. Location tracking allows
for one location to be assigned to the entire transaction. For more information, check out
the Location tracking and Class tracking lessons

Changing a client’s subscription level

If you and your client decide that they should change their QuickBooks Online subscription
level, you can help them do that.

Select the headings to find out more.

Things to consider before changing a subscription level

Before changing the client’s subscription level, especially when downgrading their
subscription level, you need to make sure that you and they considered any implications, such
as:

Feature Downgrading means losing some features in your client’s current QuickBooks
s Online plan.

Make sure the new QuickBooks Online plan meets their needs. Check out this
comparison chart to see what clients will lose when they switch.
Third- Changing a plan might affect some third-party apps connected to QuickBooks
party Online. This happens when the new plan doesn’t support the feature the client app
apps works with.

Review each affected client’s apps by selecting Apps in the left-hand navigation
in QuickBooks Online Accountant, then selecting the Client apps tab.

Plan ProAdvisor and Direct discounts continue when upgrading or downgrading a

discount
s client’s subscription level for the duration of the discount period.

The discount rate doesn’t change—but the base subscription price changes
according to the upgrade or downgrade.
Revenue If your client downgrades or upgrades their subscription during their first paid 12
share months, your payout will be adjusted accordingly. However, downgrading won’t
payouts remove your payouts.

Changing an accountant-paid subscription level

If you pay for the client’s subscription plan, you can only change their subscription from
QuickBooks Online Accountant. To do this:

1. Navigate to the Subscriptions and billing screen from the Gear icon
2. Select the Accountant-billed subscriptions tab
3. Then, from the down arrow in the Action column, select either Downgrade or
Upgrade

4. Then choose the preferred subscription plan and follow the on-screen steps to
complete the process

Changing a client-paid subscription level

If the client pays for the subscription, either you or they can update their plan from their
company file. To do that:

1. Select the Gear icon from the client’s file and choose Subscriptions and billing
 2. Choose the preferred option from the current plan’s box

3. Then follow the on-screen steps to choose the right subscription level and finalize the
process

ProAdvisor tip

As a ProAdvisor, you’re in a great position to assess your client’s evolving business needs.
Remember: You can use the New Client Checklist to help analyze a client’s needs and
recommend the appropriate QuickBooks Online subscription. You can find out more about
the subscription levels from the lesson on identifying the right QuickBooks Online
subscription.

Changing the payment method

If you or your client needs to update the payment method, it’s easy to do that.

Select the tabs to find out more.

 If you pay for the client’s subscription

 If the client pays for the subscription

If you pay for your client’s subscription, you can update the payment method from the
Billing details tab of the Subscriptions and billing screen by selecting the Edit billing
information button.
If the client pays for their subscription, they have to navigate to the Subscriptions and
billing screen from the Gear icon. They then need to select the Pencil icon next to the
current payment method.

Knowledge check

From here, where would you go to check a client’s usage limits?

 Open the client’s QuickBooks Online company, select the Gear icon and navigate to
the Usage tab in Account and Settings
 In QuickBooks Online Accountant, go to the Gear icon and select Subscriptions and
billing
 In QuickBooks Online Accountant, select Edit client from the Actions column
 Open the client’s QuickBooks Online company, select the Gear icon and navigate to
the Subscriptions and billing

 Product Training QuickBooks Online


Managing your team
Divide and conquer

If you work with a team of accountants, you may need a system that allows you to divide the
work between the team members while ensuring that your own data is protected.

How can QuickBooks Online help?

The Team menu in QuickBooks Online Accountant is a hub for your team members, known
as firm users. It makes it easy to review and edit their details or customize what data they can
access from your firm’s books.

The QuickBooks Online ecosystem is constantly evolving to meet your needs.

Your current experience may differ from what you see here.

Learning outcomes

In this lesson, we’ll cover:

 Assigning and managing access levels for your team in QuickBooks Online
Accountant

Make sure you cover the highlighted suggested learning material to pass your next exam attempt.

Topics

 The Team menu

 User roles and access rights
 Adding and editing users
 Managing users

The Team menu

Admin users can open the Team menu from the Your Practice area of the left-hand
navigation:
The Team menu has three tabs: Users, Roles, and Certifications.

It opens at the Users tab by default. This displays an overview of each firm user’s role and
status. From here, admin users can also edit a firm user’s personal information and role.

Select the headers for an overview of the other two tabs.

 Roles
 Certifications

The Roles tab allows you to view, manage, and create roles for your firm users.

We’ll look at how to assign users to roles—and how to create new roles—later in the lesson.

The Certifications tab allows you to track firm users’ ProAdvisor certifications and their
expiration dates.

User roles and access rights

Apart from the Primary Admin, who has access to everything, you can manage your firm
users’ access rights by assigning them to a role.
Each role provides a different level of access to the different areas of QuickBooks Online
Accountant.

Access to specific clients and their books is managed separately, and firm users can be
assigned clients regardless of their roles. We’ll look at assigning client access later in the
lesson.

You can either assign a user to one of the available predefined roles in QuickBooks Online
Accountant, or create a custom role. Custom roles give you even more control over what firm
users can see or do because you can customize the levels of access for each area in
QuickBooks Online Accountant.

Select the headers to explore assigning and creating roles.

 What standard roles are available?

 How do you create a custom role?

When you’re assigning a firm user to a role in QuickBooks Online Accountant, there’s an
extensive selection of predefined roles to choose from. This table gives you more information
about each role:

Role Description

Company admin Users assigned to this role can see and do everything in
both the Your Practice and Your Books areas of QuickBooks
Online Accountant. They can also edit company info and
manage Subscriptions and billing. Therefore, not everyone
should be an admin user.

Standard all access Users assigned to this role can see and do everything in the
Your Books area of QuickBooks Online Accountant. They
can also access the ProAdvisor and Work menus and view
company info.

Standard all access without payroll Users assigned to this role can see and do everything in the
Your Books area of QuickBooks Online Accountant,
excluding anything to do with Payroll. They can also access
 the ProAdvisor and Work menus and view company info.

Standard limited customers and Users assigned to this role can only see and use features
vendors regarding sales and customers and expenses and vendors
in the Your Books area of QuickBooks Online Accountant.
They can also access the ProAdvisor and Work menus and
view company info.

Standard limited customers only Users assigned to this role can only see and use features
regarding sales and customers in the Your Books area of
QuickBooks Online. They can also access the ProAdvisor
and Work menus and view company info.

Standard limited vendors only Users assigned to this role can only see and use features
regarding expenses and vendors in the Your Books area of
QuickBooks Online. They can also access the ProAdvisor
and Work menus and view company info.

Standard no access Users added to this role have no access to the Your Books
area of QuickBooks Online Accountant. They can only
access the ProAdvisor and Work menus, as well as view
company info.

To create a custom role:

1. Navigate to the Roles tab in the Team menu and select Add role
 2. Enter a Role name and Role description

3. Use the dropdowns to set the required levels of access for each area

4. When done, select Save role at the bottom of the page. Your new custom role is now
ready to assign to your firm users

Adding and editing users

The Team menu makes it easy for you to add new and edit existing firm users.

A firm user can be anyone who needs access to client data. They can be full-time employees
of your accounting business, but they can also be tax preparers who aren’t part of your team,
for example.

To add a new firm user, select the Add user button. To manage an existing firm user,
select Edit from the Action column.
A firm user’s profile has three sections: Personal info, Roles, and Access to clients.

Select the headers to learn how to complete/edit these sections of a firm user’s profile.

Personal info

When adding or editing a firm user, you can enter or edit their name and email address from
the Personal info section.
Roles

In the Roles section, you can assign the firm user to a role from the dropdown. Any custom
roles you’ve created will appear in this dropdown, underneath the predefined roles.

Note that even with admin privileges, you can’t change your own role.

Once you’ve selected a role, you can see detailed information about the access/permission
levels for the selected role in the dropdowns underneath.

Opening a dropdown will give you a detailed breakdown of the user’s permissions in that
area of QuickBooks Online Accountant.
Depending on the selected role, you may be able to add or remove access to some areas from
the dropdowns to customize the firm user’s permissions further. To do this, use the
checkboxes where they appear.
Access to clients

The last section of the profile—Access to clients—is where you can select which client(s) the
firm user has admin access to.

Note that, while you can customize the level of access each firm user has to your firm, you
can’t customize the level of access to client files. This means that the user will see
everything, including the client’s payroll.

Can clients see which firm users have access to their books?

No, this information is only visible to your team. Clients don’t see the names of firm users
who have access to their company files.

When you’ve finished configuring the user’s profile, select Send invitation to invite them to
join your team.
If you’re editing an existing user rather than adding a new one, the button will read
Save instead.

Managing users

Managing users
If needed, you can also view user activity and delete users who no longer need access to your
file.

To do either, select the three dots in the Action column in the Team menu.
Selecting View user activity opens the Audit Log. Here, you can filter the user, time period,
and the events you wish to view.

If you select Delete, a message will appear asking you to confirm if you want to delete the
selected user.
Knowledge check
What role would be most suited to a firm user who’ll only be using
QuickBooks Online Accountant to manage invoices?

 Company admin
 Standard all access
 Standard limited customers only
 Standard limited vendors only

 Product Training QuickBooks Online

1 of 10 Viewed

Using the Books review center

Everything you need, all in one place

Clients rely on their books being accurate to make business decisions. That’s why checking
transactions and reconciling accounts are essential to your period-end workflow. However,
closing all your clients’ books can be time-consuming.

How can QuickBooks Online help?

The Books review center in QuickBooks Online automatically finds errors, incomplete
expenses, and duplicate entries. This makes your typical period-end workflow faster and
smarter. You can easily track your progress for individual clients, or even see it across the
whole practice via the Client List.
The QuickBooks Online ecosystem is constantly evolving to meet your needs.

Your current experience may differ from what you see here.

Learning outcomes

In this lesson, we’ll cover:

 Using the Books review center at period end

Make sure you cover the highlighted suggested learning material to pass your next exam attempt.

Topics

 About reviewing books

 Stage 1: Setup
 Stage 2: Transaction review
 Stage 3: Account reconciliation
 Stage 4: Final review
 Stage 5: Wrap-up
 Tracking progress in the Client List

About reviewing books

Reviewing the books regularly helps keep the books tidy and up-to-date so that clients can
get an accurate view of their finances and make the right business decisions.

The Books review center helps carry out period-end reviews by pulling all the tasks together
into a single place and listing transactions with potential issues.

To start reviewing the books, select Books review from the left-hand navigation of your
client’s company file. Note that this menu option is only available to accountant users
accessing company files via QuickBooks Online Accountant—client users don’t see it.

The Books review center has five main tabs that take you through performing a periodic
cleanup, solving issues, reconciling accounts, reviewing financial statements, finding
problems with accounts and starting balances, and even creating report packages. We’ll cover
these tabs later in the lesson. The center also makes it easy to send client requests and ask for
clarifications regarding certain transactions.

You can review books at any interval—the date range above the tabs allows you to adjust
the period and carry out the books review process when it suits you or your client needs it.
To get more information about what you should review each week, month, quarter, and year,
download a copy of the Accounting lifecycle checklist.

Stage 1: Setup
The first tab in the Books review center is the Setup tab. It provides the checklists and tools
your client needs to review and clean up the company information, settings, balances, chart of
accounts, and bank accounts. This step is vital because it helps to identify any discrepancies
or irregularities. There’s also the option to resolve minor issues with an adjusting journal
entry, if appropriate.

Select each of the highlighted areas to find out more.

Stage 2: Transaction review
The next stage in the books review process is to take care of any problematic transactions.
The Transaction review tab automatically finds errors such as incomplete expenses, and
allows you to categorize transactions that the review identifies.

Select each heading to find out more about how it works.

Stage 3: Account reconciliation
Once you’ve dealt with all the transactions that had issues, the next step is to ensure that all
the accounts are reconciled. The Account reconciliation tab shows the current status of
accounts and the number of unreconciled transactions.

Select each highlighted area for more information.

Stage 4: Final review
The Final review tab prompts you to investigate unusual and unexpected balances and review
the financial statements for accuracy.

Select each highlighted area to find out more.

Stage 5: Wrap-up
The Wrap-up tab allows you to prepare reports, create and send report packages, close the
books, and even create your own additional to-do checklist.

Select each highlighted area to find out more.

Tracking progress in the Client List
The progress tracker icons in nearly all the sections of the Books review center make it easy
to mark the status of each step in the books review process.

However, the Bookkeeping tab in your QuickBooks Online Accountant Client List also helps
to give an overview of the books review status for all your clients.

Selecting one of the icons opens a drawer detailing the status of the different tasks at the
Transaction review, Account reconciliation, and Final review stages.

Knowledge check
Which of the options below does the Books review center help with? Select all
that apply.
 Finding transactions with outstanding issues
 Reviewing business key metrics and trends
 Dealing with unreconciled accounts
 Running payroll
 Identifying discrepancies with accounts and starting balances
 Creating report packages