Other Resources

RESOURCES:

• Forums
• Newsgroups
• Tools
• Time Tracking

Forums

In forums, user groups, news groups or whatever they are called, people can post questions. Answers (if any appear) are provided voluntarily by other forum participants whose capabilities run the full spectrum. A few are the most highly qualified people, many have excellent business experience, and there are others. If you enter a forum, observing these points will make your visit more effective: 

1. Look before you leap. Read the instructions and look around to see what is there. Then browse through the recent messages. Your question may have been answered last week. 

2. Questions should be stated in QuickBooks terms. Users often know what they have in mind, but state the question in their own terms or in words so general that they could be discussing any one of several different actions in QuickBooks.  This may result in no answer or the wrong answer. 

3. Topic for your message should describe (in a little space) what you are trying to do. QuickBooks is not the topic of your message, it is the topic of the entire forum. 

4. New topics need new messages. Please don't piggyback. If you have an inquiry that is a new topic, do not post it as a reply to a message an existing thread (string of messages). 

5. Most people use their full real names. Participants are just people like you. On the other hand, junk e-mail sources (spammers) scan these groups to add names to their lists. Some people add distracting text to their e-mail addresses and say in text which characters to remove.

http://www.helptalk.net/accounting is a forum in a web site, which is supported by advertising, where you can drill down to a QuickBooks section. On May 14, 1999, this site went on line, as a successor to www.helptalk.net/accounting/.  Messages come up very quickly when you click on them. A simplified listing format shows topics and date of the most recent posting.  Message display features the advantage of listing the original message plus any replies, and runs across most of the screen.

CompuServe has a QuickBooks section in the Accounting Vendors Forum. That is nice if you are otherwise a CompuServe customer. The route is GO ACCTVEND and find QuickBooks. People using the service on the time-limited plan need to know some tricks for efficient use of this Forum. 

Intuit's official forum site is reachable from http://www.quickbooks.com. Questions may be posted and answers received.

Newsgroups

These require you to use newsgroup software like Outlook Express or Agent. http://www.deja.com/usenet/ has archives of all recent posts. Here are the most important ones for QuickBooks users: 

biz.comp.accounting is covers the subject the name implies. It is the primary newsgroup for QuickBooks posts. Topics may be matters of fact, procedure or opinion. The newsgroup is moderated meaning a moderator reviews each message and deletes spam and off topic posts. The principal moderator is Florida CPA Mike Block. 

alt.accounting is a newsgroup that is not moderated. The topic is anything to do with accounting, so it has many posts on QuickBooks. Messages appear quickly, without waiting for a moderator. However, spam (junk mail), off topic material and obscene language often appear.

Tools

By far the largest and fastest growing list of QuickBooks Add-ons and companion programs on the web is at http://www.blocktax.com/quickbooks-addons/index.html.  This extensive list of products integrate with QuickBooks for data conversion, reports and many custom industry applications.

Time tracking

Bill Power, studio848@yahoo.com, http://www.studio848.com features time tracking, contact management, invoicing, and other tasks, and will export data to QuickBooks.