Seaside CPA wrote:I'm referring to Makbo's comment about the excel file may or may not match their books. It came straight from their books, so it would match.
The spreadsheet is a snapshot in time. There is no audit trail, no closing date, no easy way to drill down and confirm why numbers may vary widely from the prior period, no way to confirm if bank statements reconcile to the numbers you have. It's actually worse than a static PDF report, because you might not even notice if a fat-finger error changes something.
It's kind of like a tax return consisting of individually-typed PDF pages, vs one prepared in a software program that ensures internal consistency, has diagnostics, etc.
Obviously one can use a spreadsheet instead of the actual QB file, but it is not the best tool for the job - as in, a spreadsheet is not designed to be a bookkeeping system. And since I don't have any technical problems accessing my client's QB files, I go with the best tool I have.