Business Challenge:

Bonnie J. Nagayama, CPA is the president of McWilliams & Associates Inc (DBA For the Love of Business). She is a small business consultant, author, and professional speaker on QuickBooks® Accounting Software. McWilliams & Associates, Inc. has provided resources to improve knowledge and skills in the use of QuickBooks®. Their main customers are accountants and their small business clients who need business and financial assistance with QuickBooks.

Despite the success of Bonnie’s company, there was always a concern about storing documents and files for their customers. There were often piles and/or baskets of filing to be done in the office. They had to schedule some time to organize these into file cabinets on an ongoing basis and then at year's end, they needed to put all these documents into boxes, put them into storage, and make file folders for the new year. In addition to the expensive storage, it was also very time consuming as well as difficult to organize these documents and difficult to find the file when they need it.

Solution: SourceLink

In order to solve their problem, Bonnie decided to find an electronic, easy to implement, and easy to adjust to solution. Additionally, since Bonnie’s business mainly focused on QuickBooks®; she hoped to find a QuickBooks® Add-on solution that could be integrated seamlessly with QuickBooks without any extra effort. After spending much time on research of document management systems for QuickBooks®, Bonnie attended a CPA trade show in Los Angeles where she found SourceLink from Personable, Inc. The result was a cost effective solution that met her other requirements.

Founded in 1999, Personable, Inc. offers a hosting service for QuickBooks and develops add-on software to facilitate QuickBooks users. SourceLink is the Document Management System developed by Personable which allows accounting professionals to attach related source documents to QuickBooks® records. For example, accountants can keep track of written agreements or contracts by associating them to a customer record in QuickBooks®.

SourceLink is a unique program. A floating window, that stays on top of all windows, allows users to attach related documents to QuickBooks® records. The process of linking documents is as simple as adding an attachment to an email. With a click of a button accountants are able to attach, detach or view documents associated with the current QuickBooks® record.

Business Benefits:

SourceLink not only met her previous requirement, but Bonnie also found out that SourceLink can help accountants shift from their old paper filing habit easily because there is an option of SourceLink where every time a user enters a transaction or any supported data, SourceLink will pop-up a window and ask her if she want to link this transaction to some files.

Furthermore, in SourceLink Bonnie can add a note to the transaction with linked files. This lets her keep track of things more efficiently!

"This affordable QuickBooks® add-on is a great way for small businesses to get into document management,” says Bonnie. “In addition to linking a file of any type that has an associated program that can display it, this tool also has the ability to add “sticky notes” using the “MyNotes” and “Hot Notes” features to a QuickBooks® record (many transactions and lists)."

With SourceLink, there are no more piles of papers or boxes to go through in Bonnie's office - all the documents for every transaction record are just one click away.