QuickBooks

Your assistant can pull the aged receivables summary and the detail behind it, then query the individual invoices so it can name the customer, the invoice number, the amount, and the days past due. It reads the same numbers your accountant reads. It posts nothing and changes no balance.

What you end up with. A collections list ordered by how overdue each invoice is, with the customer, invoice number, amount, and due date on every line.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Fix the accounting method and the as-of date before you compare two runs. Cash and accrual give different receivables totals for the same day, and a report with the basis unstated is not comparable to last month's.

Built on: Aged Receivables Report / Get Report - Aged Receivable Detail / Query Invoices / Customer Balance Report

Profit and loss comes in a summary and a transaction-level detail version, and the assistant can read both, so when a line looks wrong it can go straight to the transactions underneath instead of handing you a number to go check yourself. Balance sheet and cash flow come from the same reporting route.

What you end up with. A plain-language read of the month with the profit and loss, cash flow, and balance sheet figures, and the transactions behind anything that moved.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Ask whether the period is closed and whether everything is reconciled. A month read before the bank feed is caught up will look like a story about the business when it is a story about data entry.

Built on: Get Profit and Loss Report / Get Profit and Loss Detail Report / Get Report - Cash Flow / Get Balance Sheet Report

The assistant can read the aged payables summary, list bills with their due dates and outstanding balances, and pull expenses grouped by vendor. Put next to the receivables view, that answers the question behind both, which is what the next two weeks look like.

What you end up with. A payables picture with what is owed to whom and when, and a vendor by vendor total for the period you name.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Have it say whether unbilled or uncategorized transactions were included. A payables total that quietly excludes what is still sitting in the review queue understates what you owe.

Built on: Get Report - Aged Payables / Query Bills / Get Vendor Expenses Report / Get Transaction List Report / Query Vendor Entities

Income by customer, sales by customer, and sales by item are separate reports, and the item report carries cost of goods and gross margin alongside revenue. An assistant can read all three, join them against the customer records, and tell you where the revenue and the margin disagree.

What you end up with. A ranked view of customers by income and of products by margin, with the customers whose revenue is high and margin is not called out by name.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Check that costs are actually recorded against the items before you trust a margin. QuickBooks reports the margin it can compute, and an item with no cost entered will look like your most profitable product.

Built on: Get Report - Customer Income / Get Report - Customer Sales / Get Report - Item Sales / Query Customer Entities / Query Item Entities

The assistant can look up the customer, match the work to items already in your catalog, and create the invoice with the right lines. It can then read the invoice back and fetch the PDF so you see exactly what the customer would see. Small corrections go through a sparse update rather than a full rewrite.

What you end up with. An invoice in QuickBooks against the right customer with the correct line items, and the PDF in front of you before you send it.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Check the customer, the tax code, and the totals on the PDF yourself. An invoice posts to your books the moment it is created, so a wrong one is a correction in the ledger rather than a deleted draft.

Built on: Query Customer Entities / Query Item Entities / Create Invoice / Read Invoice / Get Invoice PDF / Update Sparse Invoice

Bills can be created against an existing vendor with line items and due dates, and payments can be recorded against one or more of them. Worth being clear about what that second part is: recording a bill payment writes the bookkeeping entry. It does not move money out of your bank.

What you end up with. Bills entered against the right vendors and accounts with correct due dates, and payments recorded against the bills they settle.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Review the expense account coding on every bill before it posts. Miscoded bills flow straight into the profit and loss and the tax return, and they are found months later by whoever is doing the year end.

Built on: Query Vendor Entities / Create Bill / Get Bill / Query Bills / Create Bill Payment

Journal entries are available, and they post directly to account balances with debits required to equal credits. The assistant can read the general ledger and the trial balance to find what is miscoded and propose the correcting entry. Whether it posts that entry is a separate decision, and a bigger one.

What you end up with. The miscoded transactions identified in the ledger, with a proposed correcting entry showing each account, its debit or credit, and the reason.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Have whoever owns the books approve the entry, and confirm the period is not closed. A journal entry changes account balances directly, and one posted into a filed period changes numbers that have already been reported.

Built on: Get General Ledger Report / Get Report - Trial Balance / Create Journal Entry / Get Journal Entry

Items can be retired, and the mechanism matters. QuickBooks does this as a soft delete that marks the item inactive, and an item used in past transactions cannot be removed at all, which protects your history. The assistant can find the dormant items first and show you the list.

What you end up with. A list of items with no recent activity, and only the ones you named marked inactive in the catalog.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Approve each item by name and ID rather than by a filter. Marking an item inactive pulls it out of the lists your team picks from when raising invoices, and the API gives no bulk reversal for a batch retired by mistake.

Built on: Query Item Entities / Get Item / Get Report - Item Sales / Delete Item