QuickBooks 2012 release announced by Intuit. Learn about new features and functionality. Last year we published a 142 page eBook on the features found in QuickBooks 2011; see what we have in store for the 2012 version.
Well folks, it’s that time of year again. Intuit announced the launch of QuickBooks 2012 on Twitter early this morning with a link off to an official Press Release indicating that it would be available to purchase beginning September 26 directly from Intuit websites.
As an Intuit Beta Tester I’ve been working with the QuickBooks 2012 Premier Accountant version since the middle of July.
Below is a list of just some of the new features and functionality that Intuit is saying that you can expect to find in QuickBooks 2012, per their announcement – plus some other things that I thought were important for you to know about; this list does NOT include everything that is new and/or improved. We’ll be releasing more information in the upcoming days.
Features found in QuickBooks Pro, Premier & Enterprise 2012
- Batch Invoice for Time and Expenses – select multiple customers with unbilled time, items, expenses and mileage and create invoices for all of them in a couple of clicks.
- Batch Timesheet Creation – enter the same timesheet information for multiple employees or vendors.
- Integrated Help – a simple, single interface to help QuickBooks users with questions find the right answer or get to someone who can help.
- Inventory Center – the new Inventory Center looks and feels like existing Customer, Vendor and Employee Centers. A list of inventory items are displayed on the left, with details and transactions relating to the item on the right.
- Lead Center - the new Lead Center is a feature that allows users to manage their leads/prospects in QuickBooks BEFORE they become customers. It allows you to assign statuses to your leads and you can easily convert them to customers when the time is right.
- Memorized Transactions Improvements – you can now select specific memorized transactions to be entered, as well as additional frequency choices.
- Purchasing Center – a new QuickBooks 2012 Purchasing Center is an ecommerce site that leverages the purchasing power of all QuickBooks users to enable purchases at discounts you would not otherwise be able to obtain. There is a “matching engine” that will search your purchases and make recommendations if there is an item available at a lower price.
- QuickBooks Calendar – provides a calendar view of important transactions for your business; overdue transactions, and tasks that need to be completed. Displays the dates that invoices/bills were created or are due. Displays To Do items that must be acted upon.
- Shared Report Templates – allows users to share their own reports with other QuickBooks users as well as provide the opportunity to consume report templates from the cloud. You will also have the ability to provide reviews and ratings on the reports template and search the right template from the cloud.
- Simplified Excel Integration – provides better integration with Microsoft Excel. You can already export reports to Excel, but with this new feature, you also have the option to update data in existing Excel worksheets, preserving formulas and format changes.
- Improved Condense Feature – allows you to remove transactions before a specified date OR remove ALL transactions from a data file while keeping your Lists, Preference settings., or subscription settings.
- Improved New Company Setup – target at users who are brand new to QuickBooks and makes the creation of a company data file easier and faster.
- Create a Credit Memo from an Invoice – allows you to create a Credit Memo based on an existing invoice to save you time from having to retype everything.
Features found in the QuickBooks Premier Account & Enterprise Account Versions ONLY
- New Accountant Center – includes easy access to all accountant functions, making it easier to find things and provides Quick Access to accounting tools.
- Create a New Company File from an existing Company File – designed to help accounting professionals speed up the process of setting up a company file for a new client, for example if you already have an existing client data file that has all of the preferences, chart of account items, etc. that are a match for your new client; the Create from Existing Company File Feature lets you use another data file as a “starter copy” to create the new file.
- Period Copy – is a new option in the Condense Data feature that allows you to make a copy of a company data file for a specific date range.
- Improved Accountant’s Copy – more customer and vendor credits will import back to the client.
Features found in QuickBooks Enterprise 12.0 ONLY
- Automatic Price Markup – choose whether to have QuickBooks change any sales price automatically when the cost of an item changes. QuickBooks will calculate and show your existing percent markup based on your existing cost and price and price for each item. You can edit the markup percent, cost, or price at any time.
- Enhanced Inventory Receiving – the QuickBooks item receipt and bill have been split into two transactions. This solves the following three issues that QuickBooks users deal with today:
- You sometimes need to pay for inventory before you receive it
- You want to preserve your item receipt date even after you get a bill
- You need to receive inventory from one order on multiple item receipts and/or pay for them with multiple bills.
- FIFO Inventory (First In->First Out) – will now be available as an alternative to Average Cost Inventory costing. You can choose between the two methods, choose a date to start using FIFO, and even return to average cost at any time.
- Find & Select Items – “Faster Forms Completion” is a new feature that makes it significantly easier to find and enter items into sales forms using information in any item field – including custom fields. This feature is available in Invoices, Sales Receipts, and Sales Orders.
- Serial Number/Lot Tracking – this is an Advanced Inventory – ONLY feature that lets users track individual instances of an Inventory or Assembly Item by assigning a serial number or lot to it. The QuickBooks User will be able to track the purchase, assembly, transfer, sale, and return of a Serial Number or Lot. For recall or warranty purposes, users can find the location(s) of an item with a specific Serial Number or Lot, whether its on their own shelves or already in a customers’ hands.
Download a QuickBooks Pro/Premier 2012 QuickBooks Pro/Premier 2012 Fact Sheet.
Last year, I put together a 142-page eBook on the new features and functionality of QuickBooks 2011. Expect to see the same type of in-depth overview this year. Sign up for email or RSS feed updates by using the options in the “follow” toolbar on the right.
Based on the information above, are you looking forward to getting your hands on the new version?
Another new feature in QuickBooks 2010 is the ability to create your own “Favorites” menu – I have to admit my first thought was “ok is this an accounting package or a web browser?” I’m beginning to get very confused.
It could be just me and the fact that I’ve used QuickBooks for a very long time (since version 1 in DOS) – but I do have to ask……….
How many different ways do I need to have in order to get to the exact same place?
I mean, come on now, we have:
- the normal menu’s that have been around forever
- keyboard shortcuts (or am I the only one who still remembers and USES them)
- the Home Page (which we can customize)
- “centers” for Customers, Vendors, Employees
- the Icon Bar with shortcuts to this, that and the other thing……..
isn’t this new “Favorites” menu a bit of an overkill? What’s next – a utility like “Speedial” which I use in Firefox to organize all my Favorites?
I guess what I really don’t like is the fact that QuickBooks is getting so “busy that it’s making me dizzy” with all the graphics, icons, shortcuts, etc. I for one used to really like the older more simple interfaces.
If you want to remove the Favorites menu from the top of QuickBooks, first click on the View Menu and uncheck the Favorites Menu option.
But not everyone is like me, so let’s go and explore the Favorites menu.
When you click on the Favorites Menu option, the first thing that you see is a “Customize” option
From the Customize Favorites option, be prepared to be totally overwhelmed from the amount of “shortcuts” you can choose from, use the vertical scrollbar to view all your choices. When you see something you want to add in the Available Menu Items side, click on it to select it and then click the Add button.
This will add the item to the Chosen Menu Items side.
Sometimes I have a rather odd sense of curiosity about things – and I wondered exactly how many “Available Menu Items” there were in the Premier Account Edition that you had access to —— would you believe it was an astonishing 507 items? Of course there were many that were totally redundant; for example the Chart of Accounts was listed 3 different times:
- Under Lists -> Chart of Accounts
- Under Accountant -> Chart of Accounts
- Under just plain “Chart of Accounts”
And I could add all three instances to my Favorites menu
Frankly I think that being able to add the same item 3 different times is a “bug” and I’m going to report it as such.
But back to my original question ————
How many different ways do I need to have in order to get to the exact same place?
Not a “favorite” in my opinion.
The Add/Edit Multiple List Entries is another new feature in QuickBooks 2010; where you can work with Customers, Jobs, Vendors, Service Items, Inventory Parts or Non-Inventory Parts. I can see this as being a very useful feature, and so far my favorite new feature in 2010.
New QuickBooks users will be able to quickly add these list entries (speeding up setup time) and existing users can also benefit when they need to update say their item list with new pricing, change preferred vendors, change Expense or Income Accounts.
Access this feature from the Lists menu -> Add/Edit Multiple List Entries to display the following window. Using the List drop down menu, you can select to work with the following Lists – Customers (and Jobs), Vendors, Service Items, Inventory Parts, and Non-Inventory Parts.
Let’s say for instance, that I wanted to work with my Service Item (Cost Code) List, I would select that list from the drop down menu (1), and then I would want to click the Customize Columns button (2) to be able to work with all the specific elements within the item (3). Once the Customize Columns window (3) is open I can see a list of available columns that I can work with as well as the chosen (default) columns.
I would probably want to select or choose to work with all of the columns that are available – and I would do this by clicking on each item in the Available Column (1) and then click the Add button (2) – this action moves the item element from the Available Column to the Chosen Column window.
Once I had moved all of the Available elements to the Chosen Columns, I would click OK
I would also want to move things around so that the columns more accurately matched the layout of the actual Item Record
Once I had arranged the order of my Chosen Columns, I would then click the OK button so that the flow of data entry would be more consistent with how data would be entered if you set up the items individually.
Once you have the Item List entries displayed, it’s very easy to update costs, change expense accounts, preferred Vendors, etc. and save all the changes with a click of the button.
For example, let’s say that you wanted to change the Expense Account associated with ALL of your items, you would first click into the first cell that contains the Expense Account and using the drop down menu that appears – change the account.
Next, right click the newly selected account and choose the Copy Down feature. This will replace ALL of the existing entries with the new account.
And ALL of your Expense accounts have been changed to reflect the new one that you just selected. Very cool!
As with all good things – there are also bad; and by that I mean that we start running into problems with Customer & Vendor record elements that aren’t accessed through this process. Now this doesn’t mean that the feature is worthless, it just means that you can enter most of the basic information but will still need to edit Customer, Job, and Vendor Records individually to complete the rest.
In the Customer/Job List, you cannot access the following elements:
- From the Address Info Tab
- Ship To Address
- Email Cc info
- From the Additional Info Tab
- Preferred Send Method
- Price Level
- From the Payment Info Tab
- Preferred Payment Method
In the Vendor List, you cannot access the following elements:
- From the Address Info Tab
- Email Cc info
- From the Additional Info Tab
- Billing Rate Level
- From the Account Prefill Tab
- Account selection
