A conversation with Kellie Parks: Automating accruals with Accruer

At FinOptimal, we build automation tools that solve real pain points for accounting professionals. Recently, our own Tom Zehentner sat down with Kellie Parks, founder of Calmwaters Cloud Accounting and a leading voice in cloud accounting, for a live demo of Accruer. The focus? Eliminating spreadsheet headaches by automating accruals directly inside QuickBooks Online.

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“For the Period” Accounting Without the Manual Pain

Kellie started with the big question: what exactly does Accruer do?

Tom summed it up like this: “It gets you out of spreadsheets for prepaid expenses, deferred revenue, fixed assets, and payroll accruals. Just write ‘for the period’ in the transaction description and Accruer takes care of the rest.”

No extra logins. No toggling between systems. No clunky templates. If it hits QuickBooks and the description includes the right phrase and date, Accruer automatically posts, prorates, updates, and reconciles.

Why This Matters

In the U.S., many small and mid-sized firms still operate on cash accounting, even when accruals would better reflect financial reality. In Canada, as Kellie noted, accrual accounting is standard—even for small businesses. Wherever you are, accruals are essential for providing real financial insights, not just compliance bookkeeping.

Accruer supports firms in making that leap into advisory services. It produces accurate, audit-ready schedules without the manual slog. You can push out pro forma financials, get future-dated entries onto your P&L, and clean up legacy messes quickly. Accruer even respects locked books and catches up adjustments in the first available open period.

Built by Accountants Who Code

FinOptimal didn’t launch with the goal of being a SaaS company. We created Accruer because we needed it ourselves. Our Managed Accounting team used it internally for years until we invested in productizing Accruer and sharing it with the world!

Today, Accruer automates journal entries down to the penny, and it’s built to fit into the workflows accounting professionals already use. It uses the QuickBooks Online API, so there’s no screen scraping or browser extensions. And because it integrates with any app that syncs to QBO, like Ramp or Bill.com, Accruer runs automatically when your data lands in QuickBooks.

Fixed Assets? Done.

Accruer also handles fixed asset depreciation. There’s no need to write "for the period" unless you’re overriding defaults. You set up depreciation by account, define a useful life (yes, even one-month depreciation for those in a rush), and Accruer automates the rest.

Reporting and Reconciliation That Actually Works

Accruer’s reporting module provides clear visibility into accruals. You can generate rollforward schedules, review audit trails, and reconcile directly to QuickBooks. Each journal entry includes a memo that links back to the originating transaction, which makes audit prep fast and easy.

Kellie nailed it when she said, “This directly solves a pain-in-the-butt problem. Actually, it’s not even a problem—it’s just something we shouldn’t be doing manually anymore.”

Standardization That Scales

Tom also pointed out one of Accruer’s most underrated strengths: standardization. Every accountant has their own “coaching tree” from past firms. That leads to multiple templates, inconsistent processes, and training headaches. Accruer collapses those differences into one repeatable method. All clients follow the same rules. All files look the same. Everyone moves in the same direction.

This makes it easier to onboard staff, train consistently, and deliver a polished, scalable service.

Want to give it a try?

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