Customer Case Study: Infinite Savvy, Inc.
Infinite Savvy Establishes Professional Image with QuickBooks Online Edition
QuickBooks Online Edition and wireless Internet service are a one-two punch for Infinite Savvy. The Online Edition offers Anytime, Anywhere Access via the Internet that allows the company's partners to handle all their business accounting needs for their up-and-coming custom programming firm.
Whether he's in his home state of Texas or traveling in New York, Scott Murry is looking for more than a java jolt when he steps into a Starbucks coffeehouse. Infinite Savvy's Co-Navigator is seeking a place to manage his business.
The one-year-old Infinite Savvy develops custom business intelligence software for accounting and property management systems. The small development shop supports a handful of real estate and property management clients who are seeking a technological edge in the highly competitive real estate market.
As part of the small, mobile Infinite Savvy team, Murry wears multiple hats. He is responsible for business development, sales and consulting, as well as business and financial management. Partner Crista Bock heads product design and development.
A little more than a year old, the co-partners launched their new company with no capital, no office and no clients-but they had lots of confidence in their market experience and knowledge. Both had spent years in various managerial positions at Realm, a leading software and service firm for the global real estate market.
Pre-launch Business Requirements
With their broad business experience, Murry and Bock knew their company needed to appear reliable and professional to their clients. Infinite Savvy would be competing with long-established firms with excellent reputations. To win business, Infinite Savvy had to portray a sophisticated image and live up to its name.
Murry and Bock had financial management requirements, too. The company's accounting support had to be Internet based and flexible enough to accommodate Infinite Savvy's virtual office working environment. Having no central, brick-and-mortar office, Infinite Savvy's key personnel work from multiple remote locations, including their homes, coffee shops and hotels. Bock and Murry needed constant access to key business management reports, such as invoices, personnel time sheets and financial records
After searching the Internet and reviewing online financial products and services, Infinite Savvy chose QuickBooks Online Edition because of its robust accounting features, professional reports, flexibility, pricing and accessibility.
QuickBooks Online Edition is QuickBooks accounting software that is not installed on a computer or local server. Instead, small business owners access QuickBooks Online Edition over the Internet using a web browser and a high-speed Internet connection.
Businesses like Infinite Savvy are drawn to the Online Edition because it combines QuickBooks' robust accounting features with flexibility and convenience. QuickBooks Online Edition's Internet-based accounting allows companies to manage their finances from multiple locations and to collaborate remotely.
Infinite Savvy was extremely interested in the Online Edition's Anytime, Anywhere Access. "When we started the company we needed something that was easily accessible," says Murry. "We didn't have a server or an office, and we needed an application that both partners and contractors could connect to from multiple locations."
Now when Murry travels to his monthly meetings in New York, he drops into a Starbucks and logs into QuickBooks Online Edition through his wireless Internet service. He can create and send invoices, log billable hours and pay bills-whenever and wherever it is convenient for his schedule.
While Murry is sipping a latte in the Big Apple, Bock can also access Infinite Savvy's Online Edition account from Texas and review the company's financials. Even though the partners are miles apart, they can collaborate together through the Online Edition.
Contractors and Infinite Savvy's CPA have limited access to the Online Edition, too. The company's CPA logs in from her office to review the financials once a month. And the contract programmers can access the account from their homes and submit time sheets and billable hours through the Online Edition's Time Tracking feature.
With QuickBooks Online Edition, Murry can provide limited access to contract programmers. The contractors can only reach the Time Tracking feature, which lets them select a category, identify their hours as billable or nonbillable and associate the hours with a specific client.
"I run a report on the contractors' hours. Crista reviews it, and then I create client invoices," says Murry. "The whole process is very low maintenance."
QuickBooks Online Edition also removes the hassle of scheduling data back ups. The Online Edition automatically backs up Infinite Savvy's data at no extra charge within Intuit's highly reliable data storage system. The system has multiple safeguards that keep the company's critical business financial reports secure and protected.
All QuickBooks Online Edition data is stored on "mirrored" disks. This means that each time Murry adds or edits data, it is written to two hard disk drives. Even if one drive fails, Infinite Savvy's team can reasonably expect no noticeable degradation in performance. The back up system also employs a third hard drive to which QuickBooks Online Edition data is periodically copied. This protects against any problems that might affect the mirrored disks. For even further safety measures, the Online Edition engineering team performs backups to tape each night.
Time-saving Short Cuts
 Since adding QuickBooks Online Edition to Infinite Savvy's business processes, Murry has found a host of time-saving shortcuts. Using the features available in Online Edition for handling recurring transactions has been a significant boon.
Recurring transactions are those that happen at specific intervals, such as monthly rent or services, yearly membership and so on. Rather than filling these out again and again, QuickBooks Online Edition's Invoice Automation allows Murry to set up a new charge, credit, or sales receipt that repeats according to a schedule. He decides how to structure the recurrence schedule so that it meets his needs.
Murry can select the recurrence to occur daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, and he can define a precise date range over which he wants the recurrence to occur. He can also select whether or not he wants QuickBooks Online Edition to tell him when recurring transactions occur.
Invoice, class and account type features have also streamlined Murry's accounting demands. Infinite Savvy does monthly invoicing, and Murry has been extremely pleased with the way QuickBooks Online Edition allows his business to categorize billable and nonbillable expenses.
"I love the fact that I can enter an invoice with billable and nonbillable expenses. When I process the invoice for the client, only the billable expenses appear. But I can review the nonbillable expenses to better understand how profitable each account is."
The ability to classify accounts is another useful feature for Murry. During the year, he classifies revenue and expenses that he and Bock incur. At the end of the year, Murry can run reports that show him all the numbers he needs to evenly split the company's profits between the two partners.
The account types are also handy for income tax calculations. Murry uses the Profit/Loss report to track his company's expenses and deductions. "I didn't have to do a lot of adding and subtracting. I can quickly view what items are deductible," he says.
First Impressions
Murry says QuickBooks Online Edition has also lived up to his company's first requirement — portraying a sophisticated company image to clients. "QuickBooks Online Edition makes us look like we are a professional, well-run shop. We are essentially a two-person organization that looks like a very large, experienced organization. We have professional reports and invoices for our clients, and we can stay on top of our projects and finances."
Murry entered QuickBooks Online Edition with no previous QuickBooks experience but a sound accounting background acquired from working with numerous CFOs. Bock approached QuickBooks Online Edition with a limited accounting background, and high standards for software development.
Both Murry and Bock are extremely pleased with QuickBooks Online Edition. It was flexible enough for Murry to create his own familiar account templates. And Bock was able to easily follow the accounting workflow with the straightforward charts and well-designed navigation tools.
QuickBooks Online Edition has been so easy to follow that Infinite Savvy has made use of Intuit's free product support only once. When Murry phoned to ask about invoice setup, he was able to immediately reach a knowledgeable Service Consultant, who had a ready answer for his question.
As a company that understands the demands of designing software, Infinite Savvy pays QuickBooks Online Edition the highest compliment, "On a scale to 1 to 10, I'd give it a 10," says Murry. "We have been very impressed with what Intuit's developers have done with the product."
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This case study represents the individual experience of one customer. Intuit does not guarantee that results will apply to all customers.
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