If you’re a small business using Quickbooks to keep track of your income and expenses you probably share it with your accountant from time to time. If you only need to share the QuickBooks file at the end of the year, when the taxes are due, it’s a fairly simple process. You just create a backup copy of your data file and send it to your accountant for tax processing while you continue to work on the “live” file.
But if you need to share it more often, perhaps with a bookkeeper, you need to be extremely careful that you don’t each make changes to the same data file. If that happens either the changes that you made, or the changes that your bookkeeper made may be lost.
If you may have more than one person, in a different location, working on your Quickbooks file you need to have some sort of file locking process in place so that it’s not possible to have two people updating the file at the same time.
One way of doing this is to just be sure and check with the other person before you make any changes and then be sure to get them the changed file before they make any changes. Setting up a process of checking and double checking will work, but it can be a challenge.
An easier way is to use My Docs Online, with the Desktop Application to access your QuickBooks file. Your file is securely stored at My Docs Online and whenever you or your bookkeeper (or anyone else you designate) opens the file a file lock can be applied that prohibits anyone else from accessing the file while it’s in use.
We’ve got a video that shows how this works here and you can try it out for yourself by signing up for a Free Trial of our Multi-User Enterprise service. Pricing for the service that would secure support two people accessing the file begins at less than $10 per month.
April 15th is rapidly approaching, though the actual tax deadline this year is the 18th. Regardless, the pressure is on.
If you find that you need a hard copy receipt of your membership fees to provide to your you can generate a printable version of your most recent receipt by logging into your account at mydocsonline.com and clicking the “My Account” button.
Once you enter the My Account section you’ll see the Account Information section at the top of the page. In that section you should see a link to View / Print Most Recent Receipt. Clicking that link will provide a printable version of your most recent receipt.
If you have a quarterly membership and need a receipt for all purchases made during the year just email us at [email protected] and we’ll have our accounting group prepare that receipt for you.
Tax time can be chaotic so if there is anything we can do to help please let us know.
We’re in the process of building a number of short “how-to” type videos that are being added to our user support system. These videos are typically less than 2 minutes and cover just a single topic.
We are using YouTube to host these videos and we’ve created a channel to house them all. You can find the My Docs Online YouTube Channel here.
If you’re in business for yourself you know that in small companies you get to wear a number of different hats. One of the hats that I wear for My Docs Online is a QuickBooks hat, meaning that I do the majority of the accounting work.
During the course of a given week I may need to access the QuickBooks file from my home, from the office, or when traveling. There may also be others who need access to QuickBooks so I can’t just keep the file on my computer and hope I have the computer with me all the time.
My solution? Well, it’s My Docs Online of course, right?
(Best viewed Full Screen)
I store the QB data file on My Docs Online and I can access it from wherever I happen to be. The problem with that has always been that if I’ve downloaded the file myself how do I let others know not to use it until I’m through? In the past we’d cobbled together a “check-in” and “check-out” method for accessing the file but it was not a great solution. What we really needed was file locking for QuickBooks so that anyone trying to access the file would know when it was in use.
Well, since we needed functionality we figured you might need it as well so we build it into the new My Docs Online desktop app.
Now when I’m ready to access the QuickBooks file I just launch the desktop app, highlight the QuickBooks file and click the “Lock and Open” button which locks the file and launches QuickBooks so that I can work.
Then when I’m done I reverse the process. I just close QuickBooks, then click the “Unlock and Save” button, which uploads the new file into our account and removes the lock so that someone else can use it. It also moves the file to the top of the date ordered list so that anyone can see that it’s been recently updated.
Being able to apply file locking to QuickBooks has been a real benefit to me while I’ve been testing the My Docs Online Desktop App. If you have the same need for file locking please check it out.
The short answer is a resounding no, at least according to John Lynn, the man behind the popular EMR and HIPAA blog. In a recent post titled, Email is Not HIPAA Secure, John makes a compelling case for why email is not HIPAA secure and lays out the reasons why.
To quote from the article:
There is a way to encrypt email sent between 2 email systems, but so far a standard and mechanism for encryption between all the vast number of email providers has not been established. I won’t go into the details of why this is the case (cost of encryption, standards for encryption, etc), but suffice it to say that almost none of the email systems send encrypted email that would satisfy the HIPAA requirements.
Meeting HIPAA requirements when communicating secure patient data can be daunting task. If you’re in the business of handling medical dictation the rules are pretty clear. You need a secure method of moving both the voice files and the finished transcription documents. If you’re going to transfer those files using a computer you need to be using a HIPAA compliant method of transferring them.
My Docs Online offers a easy way of moving those files, that satisfies those complex HIPAA requirements. For more information please check out our Medical Transcription page.
If you’re really interested in learning more about HIPAA there is a wonderful e-book titled The HIPAA Survival Guide(affiliate link) that is available online. The book, written by Carlos and Deborah Leyva, costs $9.95 and is is a valuable resource. You can purchase and download the book from the HITECH Survival bookstore site.
We’re in the process of building a number of short “how-to” type videos that are being added to our 
If you’re in business for yourself you know that in small companies you get to wear a number of different hats. One of the hats that I wear for My Docs Online is a QuickBooks hat, meaning that I do the majority of the accounting work.
The short answer is a resounding no, at least according to John Lynn, the man behind the popular