Migrating to QuickBooks

Contributed by Farzana Rasheed

The Liberia Expats Group can be a useful resource. 

I posted a message to announce we were looking for a Quick Books trainer on 18 June:

NATC is looking for a short-term consultant to train our administration/finance staff (1 person) in the use of QuickBooks and to help us to migrate to QuickBooks. The duration of this training and migration should be 1 month. 

I got a few random responses, including a couple from some local companies: International Institute of Computer Studies and 3B PROMOTION GROUP. I asked both of them to send proposals but to this day, I haven't heard back. 

Feeling frustrated yet again with this Group's irrelevance, I got a call from a fellow who explained that his wife was a QuickBooks expert. We set up a meeting with the wife who turns out to be a smart young girl, an MBA in Finance from Pune University, India. The discussion went well and, we have already started the training.

The trainer was a bit surprised that we were investing time and resources in training our local staff but, I explained to her that we do things slightly differently than the majority of Indian and Lebanese businesses here. In other words, our local staff have key positions and responsibilities at our company. 

I am quite excited about switching to QuickBooks. The objective is to migrate 3 years of data so we can a have solid record, to start using the new software for accounting, to use the software to create documents such as invoices and receipts (we are now doing it manually), and to start analysing our books, so to speak! 

Why are doing manual accounting, you might ask? Well, the software that was originally being used by NLTC, our predecessor, crashed and, we could not find an original copy. 

We also initiated an in kind relationship (a swap for IT support with Accounting services) with an accounting firm but it never materialised. It was quite frustrating since we thought we were dealing with a professional entity. 

Six months into the year, I am glad I am finally able to attack this target of migrating to an accounting software. I am also looking forward to seeing our staff benefiting from this training.