ScanWriter Software for QuickBooks

[AZ-Tax]

As I read it, it’s suppose to scan and read bank and credit card statements and enter the data into Quickbooks. I have tried my banks download directly into QB and there is lot of tweaking I still need to do. How does this software know when I take my client to "Jack in the Box" it goes under "meals & ent" or is that programmed ahead of time to look for restaurants I enter to place in the meats & ent acct or category?. Also I have direct deposits from my Insurer's and it reads on the statement the Insurer's name and bunch of other stuff so I curious how the software picks up only the Insurer's name if once again it needs to be programmed ahead of time. What about when I transfer money out to another acct. It says on my statement: Online Transfer to CHK XXXXX1111 (no, not my real acct #). Once again I wonder if the software needs to be programmed with the acct #'s I plan to transfer to. Lastly, is there an option not to actually print the statements but rather convert the statements in PDF files and ScanWriter can scan the PDF file?

Anyone have any experience with this?

[Uncle Sam]

Why is it that the modern generation of practitioners INSISTS upon physically doing things strictly mechanically through a computer software program instead of utilitizing their brains to think and physically take the time to do the mechanical work so they could work around problems on their own?
It's not that I've got anything against AZ here - but it's been a continuous effort of questions on all sorts of chat boards of "how do I do this by lazily relying upon an electronic means rather than learning to do it myself and understand the process and let the program do all the work"?

If it weren't for software programs a good number of you wouldn't be able to do tax work because you'd have to use your brains to think.

I realize I'm quite critical and harsh here but i'm just venting because I just see too much of this reliance on "things" rather than "knowledge' to get you through.

[KBTS]

Why wouldn't you post this question at a QuickBooks forum where there would be a greater chance of someone who uses the product answering? Or try the software developer's website - maybe they have FAQ's or a forum there. I think posting questions on this product here is a bit of a stretch of the intended purpose of this forum.

[JohnH]

I took a cursory look at Scanwriter's web site and I have a guess about the answer to your question. It appears that it imports the data and makes its best guess about how to classify the transactions based on the vendor name or other coding provided by the vendor. There is already some feature like this present with most vendors, because lots of credit cards allow you to download preclassified summaries, and those classifications must originate somewhere. As I look at the year-end summaries, my credit cards do a pretty good job of this - they probably get 90% of the classifications correct.

But the web site clearly says there's a preview screen, so that tells me you probably have to "accept" or "approve" the classifications before the import is completed. This would still save lots of data entry time, but it won't relieve you or someone of the responsibility for making final decisions that the transactions are assigned to their proper accounts.

Another point to consider - I have yet to see a third party product that actually worked seamlessly with Quickbooks. There are always problems, so if you use it be prepared for some surprises. Some of them can be nasty surprises, maybe even locking up the program or corrupting unrelated data. Not saying you shouldn't do it, but if I chose to electronically enter anthing into QB, I'd make myself a couple of solid backups before even beginning.