So we are a S-Corp cash basis accounting method. We do not have the traditional MSP tools such as a PSA and at the moment do everything via Quickbooks 2019 ON-PREM. Everything is processed through this system. I have been looking at Invoice Ninja on and off for years and check out videos such as Tom Lawrence’s (Lawrence Systems) use of IN within his operation since he is similar in that he has an on-prem accounting system (kmymoney). I too still prefer to have on-prem quickbooks (I know intuit is trying to pull everyone to the cloud and on-prem will be discontinued, etc) and am avoiding cloud based accounting systems at the moment (I know we can benefit from some cloud to cloud integrations).
So I am again looking at IN. So it is really an awesome tool and I spun up a test server and it really is flawless. IN does indicate they are not an accounting system and I completely understand that and think it is a good decision for them. The problem I can not wrap my head around is the massive amount of double/triple work that will be needed if we go this route. Perhaps others have their accountant do more than we do. We do everything in-house from sales tax, payroll tax, bank rec, etc. Maybe others who use IN hand off a lot of that to their accountant. We do not. Our accountant sees our books once at the end of the year to do the corporate taxes. That is it. Maybe this is the disconnect I am running into.
See below a simple case. Now I know their are a bunch of cloud to cloud integrations to help with this scenario below (IN to QBO via zapier, etc). But since we are on prem no such integration exists except possibly some sort of roll your own import/export with IN…We have not explored that yet but a quick looks shows nothing available.
For instance, in a simple case. We generate an invoice from IN… So at this point QB knows nothing about this invoice so we would need to duplicate that invoice in QB to capture things such as sales tax, etc. A few days later the customer pays the invoice via check. So now we need to go into IN and flag the payment as made but we also need to go into QB and receive the invoice via customer payments so sales tax and revenue get posted to the proper GL accounts. Now there are always options like bank account imports via CSV & QIF but on the revenue side those do not show customer information as to what is being deposited (at least our bank). Bank/CC imports work fine from the expense/COGS side and Tom shows this in his video into kmymoney but the black hole as I see it is the revenue side and importing the proper deposit against the proper invoice in QB.
There are many other scenarios I could lay out (partial payments, recurring invoices, etc) where we see a lot of extra work to go with IN or any other cloud based invoice only system (zoho invoice, etc).
This might not be the best place to post this since others are likely using PSA tools but we do not.
How are others handling this situation who might be using something like IN? I have a feeling that it might be a lost cause and we likely need to go to something like QBO, Zoho, etc which I really do not want to do.
As I type this it seems like I am too old school to make this work (and others will likely respond as such) and likely need to embrace something cloud based. But our books are the last thing I want to be under control of some faceless cloud provider.
Thanks