Ian Fincher on Getting QuickBooks Right the First Time

Ian Fincher

Ian Fincher sees the same mistake repeatedly. A New Orleans business owner sets up QuickBooks quickly, gets busy, and two years later realizes the entire chart of accounts is a disaster.

Accounts are misnamed. Transactions are categorized incorrectly. The owner doesn't actually know whether the business is profitable.

This is fixable. But it's painful to fix. It requires reviewing months of transactions and reclassifying them.

It costs thousands of dollars to fix something that would have taken one hour to set up correctly initially.

Your chart of accounts is either your foundation or your mess

The chart of accounts is the skeleton of your financial system. Every transaction goes into an account. Accounts roll up to categories.

Categories roll up to financial statements.

If your chart of accounts is wrong, everything downstream is wrong.

Ian Fincher recommends starting with a clear structure. Assets and liabilities are obvious. Cash, receivables, inventory, equipment, loans.

But expenses? Many owners just start adding accounts as they need them.

A better approach: plan the structure. Revenue accounts: service revenue, product revenue, other revenue. Operating expenses: salaries, rent, utilities, marketing, insurance.

Cost of goods sold: materials, labor. Then break each category into subcategories.

This structure should match how you actually want to analyze your business. If you run multiple locations, you might want separate accounts for each location's rent and utilities. If you have multiple product lines, separate accounts for each line's cost of goods sold.

Ian Fincher works with clients to map this before they set up QuickBooks. Not during. Not after.

Before. Because once you start, fixing it is exponentially harder.

Why QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop matters for your business

Ian Fincher is familiar with both versions. They're fundamentally different tools that serve different purposes.

QuickBooks Online is cloud-based. Multiple users can access it from anywhere. It integrates with your bank automatically.

Transactions match and reconcile faster. It's best for small businesses with remote work or teams that need simultaneous access.

QuickBooks Desktop is installed software. More complex features. Better for manufacturers, construction companies, or businesses with complicated processes.

Many New Orleans business owners choose Online because it's simpler. And it is. But Desktop might actually be better if you're doing complex job costing or inventory management.

Ian Fincher recommends Online for most small businesses. But he's explicit: this is a choice you need to make consciously, not default to.

Classes and categories: the metadata you can't add later

This is where Ian Fincher sees owners get stuck.

QuickBooks has a feature called Classes (in Desktop) or a custom field (in Online) that lets you tag transactions with additional metadata. Department. Location.

Project. Cost center.

Many owners never use this. They just record transactions and call it done.

But if you have multiple locations, you lose the ability to see location profitability. If you're tracking a specific project, you lose project profitability. You lose visibility.

Ian Fincher recommends setting up Classes at the beginning. Then requiring every transaction to be classified. It takes five seconds per transaction.

But at year-end, you can instantly see profitability by location or project.

This information is worth far more than the minimal time it takes to record.

User permissions aren't paranoia, they're control

QuickBooks lets multiple people access the same file. This is necessary for businesses with teams.

But it's also dangerous if permissions aren't set correctly.

Ian Fincher recommends a clear hierarchy. The owner or accountant can edit everything. Managers can record transactions but not delete them.

Front-office staff can record certain transaction types but can't modify payroll.

This protects the books. Someone makes a mistake, you can see what changed and who changed it. Someone gets tempted by opportunity, the system doesn't give them full access.

For a nonprofit in Orleans Parish, this is essential. Financial controls are a governance requirement. User permissions in QuickBooks are part of your control system.

Ian Fincher also recommends using QuickBooks' audit trail. It shows every change, who made it, and when. This is invaluable during audits and for detecting errors.

Set up QuickBooks right once. Then you have clean, reliable financial information forever. Do it hastily, and you'll be fixing it for years.