It may seem like Intuit came into the auditing and financial management market a while ago, but Scott Cook and Tom Proulx think otherwise. Founded in 1983, Intuit started with the personal finance management software, Quicken. QuickBooks for SMEs was then released five years later, gaining an impressive 80% market share in a relatively short period of time. However, it was not until October 2013 that Intuit released QuickBooks online, offering more responsiveness and comprehensive functionality for online use.
New Features
QuickBooks Online is a testament to how far the software has come, in a relatively short history. Let’s overview what’s new in QuickBooks Online that can help your SME capitalize on the accounting management software even more.
Pinned Notes
Pinned notes is a relatively new feature to QuickBooks Online, but one that will definitely bode well with SMEs. With this year’s edition, you can now conveniently pin important files, notes, and reminders in the customer, client, or agency tabs. This add-on feature allows you to pin and view important tasks, notes, and reminders by simply clicking on the ‘Pin Note’ box. This will make the specific notes appear in the upper right corner of your QuickBooks layout. That being said, you can only pin one note per customer, vendor, or agency. If you’re making financial reports, you can also attach one note each with them too.
Time Tracking Features
QuickBooks has also made improvements on their income tracking functionality. For instance, they have integrated a Time and Expenses option in the money bar which allows users to view expenses, unbilled records, and their billable time. Hence, for each client, there is a Time and Expenses bar to consolidate all outstanding bills. While this feature is not essentially ‘new’ to QuickBooks, it has only been recently added to the online version of the software.
Creating Invoices In QuickBooks Online
You can now create Invoices from the income tracking tab as well, a much needed addition that most SMEs were anticipating. Through this add-on, your outstanding customer bills will be automatically added, which you can easily customize anytime, by clicking on ‘Choose Billables’ and selecting the relevant invoice items. You can also create selected item invoices for Sales Orders with the latest edition.
Updated Features
Billable Time
The Billable Time and Costs has been updated where you can now see small flags on tabs that indicate the total number of outstanding entries. Hence, in case you forget to check the spreadsheet or a specific tab, you can always view the flags on relevant tabs to save considerable time. Also, the Reminder Window has been tweaked so that it now offers increased space, variety in fonts, and ‘To Do’ lists, giving you a convenient add-on reminder whenever you access QuickBooks Online remotely. That being said, working on a smaller screen won’t be as fun as you’ll have to zoom in and out every now and then.
When you’re editing specific entries and unknowingly make a mistake, you will get a warning message that indicates that the item quantity or rates are not correct and may disturb the account balance. In other words, where it would take you hours to amend a mistake in your entries, it will now take a matter of seconds!
QuickBooks Inventory Center
The Inventory Center Filters have also been improved where the filters now display both active and inactive items on the lists you choose. You can also add PO numbers of customers in the Customer Center of the transactions tab, giving you the benefit of creating more creditable invoices and reports with real time integration.
File Sharing
Last but definitely the most impressive improvement of them all; is that QuickBooks Online has updated the file sharing functionality among its users. For instance, if you share files with users on Customers and Sales, you can now filter data to appear as summary count. As for file sharing with vendors, you can view the money bars, clicking on which will reveal the finer details. As a result, you can limit the visibility of sensitive and potentially confidential data.
The Bottom Line
QuickBooks Online offers a more intuitive layout backed with improved data integration and security features, allowing you to perform more responsive entries and transactions in real time. Overall, the improvements and new features were much needed, and will definitely improve the user experience and reporting of small businesses. If you have questions or need help, just give us a call at 866.949.7267.
