If you're an accountant, bookkeeper, payroll professional, or just deal with financial software, this free app might just change everything.
Why? How often have you had to show a client how to do something within QuickBooks, Sage or some other accounting software because they only need to do it once in a while and you have to keep repeating yourself and explaining the process once a quarter or once for every new client.
Well, what if instead you could send them a beautiful user guide that looks like this and only took you a total of 41 seconds to create? And yes, you only have to create it once and then you can share this with as many clients as possible.
What we're doing is taking a look at a free app called Scribe, the easiest way to create user guides whether that's for your clients or maybe even for yourself or other members of your team.
So let's take a closer look at what Scribe is and how easy it is to use. Scribe produces a easy to follow guide showing us step by step what the user needs to do including where they need to go, where they need to click and even highlighting on screen what they need to do.
But best of all, I didn't create any of these titles. I didn't add this little orange circle. I didn't tell it to click here. In fact, all I had to do was go through this process and just do it myself once and in a matter
of seconds it's produced this professional looking guide. But better yet, now I can go
and share it with as many clients as I need to. I can send it directly in an email.
I could add it to my website so that all of my clients can take advantage of this particular process but Scribe has gone one step further. If I come over here and select guide me what it will do is actually open up my QuickBooks account so I can follow along.
How easy is this to have the user guide on screen so I can follow along?
So yes, I've logged into my QuickBooks account. I need to come up here and select new and then it's telling me to select journal entry and then I need to come over here and select US dollars. I have the complete user guide on screen so I can follow along while I'm in the application itself.
Now if I need to, I can always minimize this if I want to just focus on my QuickBooks account here and I can pop it up whenever I need to.
Scribe also gives me the ability to move this to the other side of the screen. So if I need to focus on something over here but what a fantastic way to follow along these steps that maybe I only need to do once a quarter.
But best of all, you look like the amazing service provider because you are the one who's created this easy to follow user guide. So let me show you how easy it is to create your own Scribe.
With the Scribe extension installed, you'll find it here in the top right hand corner of your browser. And all I need to do is click on that to start my own recording. But just before I do, I want to show you something really cool.
Here you can see that there are already 58 other Scribes that are related to QuickBooks. If I select this option here, I can view from the gallery. And here's just an example of some of the other guides that are already created, meaning you might not even have to create the specific guide.
You might just be able to share one of these other ones that have already been generated. But let's go back and create our own guide from scratch. So all I need to do is select start recording and now it is recording everything within my browser.
Now on the bottom left hand corner you can see that these are the controls letting me know that it is recording my actions. Now you'll notice that there is no timer on screen and that's for a reason because it has nothing to do with how long it takes me to record this Scribe. It is only recording my actions so I can wait and delay
and wait for something to load or a report to generate. It's only going to record the things that I click or things that I enter in. So let's follow along with our previous example. I'm going to click on new.
I'm going to come over here and select journal entry. I'm going to come to this dropdown and select US dollars and then I'm going to come over here to the journal number and I'm going to change that number.
And maybe as a last step, I'm just going to pick the right account that I want them to find.So there's the Wise account. At this case, I'm going to stop my Scribe in our example.
All I need to do is come down here and select the controls and I can hit this complete recording option. Now, the other options available to us we can always pause our recording if we need to set up something in advance.
We can of course delete this Scribe and start again. For pro users, there is a smart blur feature and this may be helpful to you when you're dealing with sensitive accounting information.
Remember, everything that I'm showing you is included as a part of the free app but there are some additional features for pro users. Lastly, we can move these controls to somewhere else on the screen if they happen to be in our way. But in our example,
I'm going to select complete the recording. And what it's going to do is it's going to open up my user guide in a new window so I can review these steps and edit them as needed. Now it's even given me a great title, How to Create a Journal Entry in QuickBooks Online.
Of course, everything here is editable so I can change them if I need to. In this example, it's a total of 10 steps and it took me two minutes to record.
Of course, I spent some of that time explaining it to you but this number can also be very comforting to someone who receives the user guide letting them know how long it should take them or at least give them an estimate.
As we scroll down here you can see that it's recorded everything including the specific page that I was on. And yes, this is a clickable link. So you are giving someone an interactive guide that they can go directly to a particular website or a specific area within the accounting software.
Down below, yes, I clicked on new, and then I clicked on journal entry, and then I selected the US dollars. Now remember, it's going to record absolutely everything. So in this step, I did click on the journal number field and then I did hit backspace on my keyboard and hit the number nine.
Now, this is not something that I want them to do every time. So I'm going to choose to edit this. I'm going to select delete this step, I'm going to say delete and then maybe I'm going to come up here and I'm going to say click this text field and enter a unique number.
Maybe something along those lines. So you can always come up and either correct and add more detail. But remember, it's going to record every single step including adding this very helpful orange circle letting people know where exactly to click.
When I'm happy with my edits all I need to do is hit this copy link and I can share it with anyone that I like. Of course, there's other features available to me as well including adding another page or duplicating this or moving it to a team folder.
So I can share these with others, but for now, I can come up to the top of the screen and select Done editing and now my Scribe is ready to go. You'll also notice that it will even reduce the total number of time depending on any steps that you've removed.
Already, we're now down to less than a minute which is going to be incredibly comforting to anyone who receives this guide. But more importantly, think about how much time you have saved.
You've recorded this guide just once in less than just a few minutes and now your clients can take advantage of it again and again for years to come. Now, here within my free Scribe account, I can manage all of my user guides here, so I can quickly and easily share them with anyone that I want.
And if I need to go back and edit a guide maybe I just need to update one particular step, I can easily do so as well. Here's an example perhaps that I want to share with my team how we are going to share particular files with our clients.
And again, as we saw before it's incredibly easy to follow step by step, a visual guide telling us exactly where we need to click
and what we need to do. And keep in mind, if you don't want to share the link with others you can also export any of your guides in PDF format.
So if you want to create your own library of user guides or maybe upload them to a particular site or some other service that you use you can do that with your Scribe guides as well.
In addition, if you are looking for further inspiration or maybe just finding a Scribe which has already been created, you can go to the gallery where you'll find nearly 200 pre-made Scribes.
You'll also find a collection of page templates because remember, you can create a Scribe page which contains multiple different Scribes
or multiple different user guides to keep your clients or your customers on the same page. And if you're wanting to learn even more ways on how you can use automation with your business, be sure to click on this video next where I show you
additional tools that will make your day so much easier.
