Collective Accounting FAQ

Besides creating a streamlined member experience, your Dashboard is more powerful than ever! With Collective Accounting you’ll see your income, expenses, and other financial insights in your Dashboard. Plus, you’ll have more powerful reporting capabilities. With easy-to-read graphs and the ability to adjust reporting filters in real time, you can make well-informed decisions that help you grow your business.

Collective Accounting also includes invoicing and digital payments. Simplify your workflow by invoicing directly from your Dashboard and receive payments through credit card or ACH transactions.

Collective Accounting is a standalone product that is separate from QuickBooks Online. This means that rather than having to log into QuickBooks for your bookkeeping needs, everything will be conveniently located in your Dashboard. 

To ensure a smooth transition and uninterrupted bookkeeping services, we will be migrating all of your QuickBooks transactions to Collective Accounting. After September 30th, your bookkeeping will be managed through Collective Accounting. After October 31st Collective will discontinue subscription support for Quickbooks Online. 

Your level of bookkeeping service isn’t changing and monthly bookkeeping will still be part of your Collective membership. The most significant change that you’ll experience is a more convenient experience. Previously, you had to log into a separate platform to review your bank activity, access financial statements, and send invoices to your customers. Now, all that information has been centralized in one easily accessible location – your Collective Dashboard.

The migration period will begin on September 5th and end on October 2nd. You can expect to be migrated during that time period. 

We’ll send you an email notification letting you know that you’ve been migrated and that Collective Accounting is available in your Dashboard. This notification will also prompt you to accept the updated Terms of Service and connect your bank accounts via Plaid, which you’ll need to do before you can start using your new features.

It’s important to accept the Terms of Service in a timely manner for several reasons. First, if you don’t accept the Terms of Service, you will not be able to access Collective Accounting through your Dashboard. This means news features like enhanced reports and invoicing will be unavailable to you. 

Second, our accounting team cannot resume your bookkeeping services, like categorizing your transactions and reconciling your accounts, until you accept the Terms and link your bank account. Delays in your bookkeeping services could cause a delay in receiving your quarterly tax estimates and closing your books at the end of the year, in preparation for tax season.

Linking your bank accounts to Collective Accounting through Plaid is just like linking your bank accounts in QuickBooks – it ensures that your business transactions are downloaded to Collective Accounting. Having your bank accounts linked also enables our bookkeeping team to categorize your transaction quickly and for you to see your financial transactions in real-time.

Plaid is a third-party tool that enables you to securely connect your bank accounts to Collective Accounting. Connecting your accounts enables Collective Accounting to download your transactions in real-time, making it easier to keep your bookkeeping up to date. Plaid uses best-in-class encryption protocols, secure cloud infrastructure, multi-factor authentication, and around-the-clock monitoring to protect users’ data.

Our accounting team cannot provide bookkeeping services through Collective Accounting until you link your bank account. To avoid disruption to your bookkeeping and quarterly tax estimates, it’s important to link your bank accounts in a timely manner. 

Collective Accounting enables you to access your bookkeeping, invoicing and financial reports and insights right from your Dashboard- making it easier for you to run your business. 

We’re also excited about the enhanced reporting capabilities, like the ability to filter your reports by custom dates, view income and expense trends over time, and compare your expenses by category- all with a click of a button.

Collective Accounting includes the three most important reports that every business needs: the Profit and Loss Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. You also have access to the Trial Balance, giving you a birds-eye view of the closing balance of all your accounts for the selected time period. 

Report customization is another exciting feature of Collective Accounting. Not only can you filter your reports based on a specific time period, but you can also choose custom date ranges to suit your needs.

Collective Accounting goes beyond basic reporting. It also shows you snapshots of your business’s financial health. Within the Bookkeeping Dashboard, you can see a snapshot of your Profit and Loss, Cash Flow, income, and expenses. In the Income and Expenses sections, you’ll see snapshots of your income and expense trends over time, giving you valuable insights about your business. 

Collective Accounting’s invoicing feature is included in your Collective membership, as well as the option to collect digital payments.

With our newest invoicing addition, you’ll be able to create and send invoices directly from your Dashboard as well as collect payment through credit card and ACH. Other invoicing features include:

• Email invoice reminders 
• Setup automatic invoice reminders
• Setup recurring invoice payments
• Securely save client payment information for future processing
• Issue refunds for payments 
• Track open, overdue, and paid invoices 

Credit card and ACH payments will be processed through Stripe, which employs best-in-class security tools and practices to maintain a high level of security for your customer payments. Stripe is a certified PCI Service Provider Level 1, the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry. 

To collect payments you’ll need to create your own Stripe account (or link an existing one). This account will be owned and maintained by you and Collective will not have access to it.

Member data is captured by our accounting team using an internal tool, called Collective Hub, and uploaded into an Amazon Web Services S3 bucket. We follow the principle of least privilege with S3, as well as our other systems at Collective, meaning the only people with access to your data are those that need access.

Once in S3, the files are encrypted, versioned, and backed up to help ensure that there is no data loss or exfiltration. We also keep detailed logs of who accesses which files for accountability and to aid in investigations.

Your accounting team will have access to your data during your migration. Our Accounting team is held to strict confidentiality and all employees must review and adhere to our Information Security Policy to ensure that your data remains safe. In some cases, our engineering team may also have support-level access if required to resolve a technical issue.

After the migration, your accounting team will have access to your data. In some cases, our engineering team may also have support-level access if required to resolve a technical issue.