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?
Freebie Friday’s are all about valuable Free eBooks and eGuides, sometimes they are eBooks that we’ve created and other times they are eBooks that we’ve found on the web that we feel are valuable and could be of interest to you.
Back in the “old days”, when you purchased QuickBooks it came with a manual – yup, that’s right I said a manual – an actual honest to goodness manual bound as a softcover book. I have a bunch of old ones hanging around.
QuickBooks doesn’t come with a printed manual anymore, but there are manuals available in eBook form – downloadable pdf’s, you just have to know where to look for them.
You can find manuals for QuickBooks Premier, Enterprise, and Mac versions straight from Intuit’s support area at http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Articles/INF12758, once this page loads click on the plus sign next to QuickBooks 2011 Guides – and you’ll find them.
You can also get eGuides for older versions of QuickBooks from this same link for QuickBooks 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any eBooks or eGuides for QuickBooks Pro users, but you can download the Premier version eGuide or use the built-in Help.
Premier users can also find the link for this eBook directly within the QuickBooks software, by going to the Help menu -> choosing Learning Center Tutorials -> and clicking on the What’s New tab.
Have a great weekend and check back next week to see what is being offered on Freebie Friday!
Verifying the accuracy of the certified payroll reports that you can generate from QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise versions – IF you also subscribe to Enhanced Payroll, is a must for anyone in the construction industry.
I’ve been watching the posts on the Intuit Community Forums about the alternate, substitute U.S. Department of Labor WH-347 certified payroll reports that can be generated if you have QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise AND an Enhanced Payroll Subscription. It seems like many people want to know how to generate the reports, if the reports are approved through the DOL (Department of Labor), why they have suddenly stopped working, how to issue “No Work Performed Reports”, and how to tell if the reports they are generating are accurate.
This article will focus on the requirements of the U.S. Department of Labor form WH-347 and how you can check to verify whether or not the reports from QuickBooks are accurate BEFORE you submit them – so that you will be paid in a timely fashion; we’ll be focusing on:
- Section 4 – Day & Date – Hours Worked Each Day
- Column 5 – Total Hours
- Column 6 – Rate of Pay
- Column 7 – Gross Amount Earned
- Section 8 – Deductions, and
- Column 9 – Net Wages Paid for Week
Columns 1-3 are pretty straight forward and each row of information relates to a single employee and a single Work/Trade Classification.
Section 4 – Day & Date – Hours Worked Each Day
In this section you are to report by day and date the number of hours (straight time and overtime) a specific employee worked, under a specific Work/Trade Classification on the job that you are generating the report for.
Column 5 – Total Hours
The total number of Straight and Overtime hours that the employee worked (for a specific Work/Trade Classification) for the week in question.
*Column 6 – Rate of Pay INCLUDING Cash Fringe Benefits
In the “straight time” box for each worker, list the actual hourly rate paid for straight time worked, PLUS cash paid in lieu of fringe benefits paid. When recording the straight time hourly rate, any cash paid in lieu of fringe benefits may be shown separately from the basic rate. For example, “$12.00/.40″ would reflect a $12.00 base hourly rate plus $0.40 for fringe benefits. When overtime is worked, show the overtime hourly rate paid plus any cash in lieu of fringe benefits paid in the “overtime” box for each worked or “$18.00/.40″. This is one of the biggest faults of the certified payroll report generated by QuickBooks – if you pay the fringe benefit rate in cash to the employee as part of his/her hourly rate of pay you MUST manually update this information each week.
Column 7 – Gross Amount Earned this Job and ALL Jobs
Enter gross amount earned on this project. If part of a worker’s weekly wage was earned on projects other than the project described on this payroll, enter in column 7 first the amount earned on the Federal or Federally assisted project and then the gross amount earned during the week on all projects, thus “$163.00/$420.00″ would reflect the earnings of a worker who earned $163.00 on a Federally assisted construction project during a week in which $420.00 was earned on all work. These amounts can easily be verified by looking at the Employee’s Paycheck Detail in QuickBooks.
Section 8 – Deductions
Five columns are provided for showing deductions made from the employee’s paycheck. If more than five deduction are involved, use the first four columns and show the balance deductions under “Other” column; show actual total under “Total Deductions” column; and in the attachment to the payroll describe the deduction(s) contained in the “Other” column. All deductions must be in accordance with the provisions of the Copeland Act Regulations, 29 C.F.R., Part 3. If an individual worked on other jobs in addition to this project, show actual deductions from his/her weekly gross wage, and indicate that deductions are based on his gross wages. These amounts can easily be verified by looking at the employee’s Paycheck Detail in QuickBooks. Remember, ONLY deductions from the employee’s paycheck are to be reported here – Federal Withholding, State Withholding, the Employee portion of FICA and Medicare, Child Support, Wage Garnishments, etc.
Column 9 – Net Wages Paid
This amount should equal the employee’s NET paycheck for the week and should match exactly the amount of his/her paycheck.
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If your final QuickBooks certified payroll report doesn’t look like this wh347, it’s time to opt for a more accurate and less time-consuming option that will truly automate the process for you.
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Many people generate the QuickBooks Certified Payroll report and either manually make changes in it while it is still in Excel, prior to printing the report OR they will print the report and then use it as a guideline for manually completing the actual “fillable report” from the U.S. Department of Labor Website – which is a highly error prone and time-consuming process.
Additionally, QuickBooks does not have the ability to generate a “No Work” performed payroll, so if you need one, and it’s likely that you will, you’ll need to manually complete one of these also using the fillable form from the DOL website.
Manual entry of the same information multiple times in multiple places is a huge waste of time and let’s face it, every time that you have to enter the same information in yet another place the higher the risk of transposition errors which result in rejected reports and delayed payment.
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*Fringe Benefits that are paid to a Union or a bona-fide plan are NOT displayed on the report and the Straight time rate would be displayed as $12.00 and the Overtime rate as $18.00 in the Rate of Pay Column. The certified payroll report generated by QuickBooks inaccurately displays any fringes paid to a Union or bona-fide plan and you MUST manually correct this each week.
We hope you have found this article helpful, if so please leave us a comment.
A reader wrote to ask the following question:
I have a vendor (subcontractor) whose general liability insurance expired. In QuickBooks I was able to produce a check for them. How do I QuickBooks to notify me that their insurance has expired?
Answer:
Unlike some of the more costly construction specific software programs out there, QuickBooks wasn’t designed to prevent us from generating a check to a Vendor/Subcontractor whose General Liability or Worker’s Compensation insurance has expired.
The QuickBooks Premier (or Enterprise) Contractor edition does have a “section” in the Additional Info tab of the Vendor Record where you can enter an expiration date for both Worker’s Comp and General Liability insurance – and if you enter dates in these fields you will get a warning when using a vendor whose insurance has expired – however, it will not prevent you from writing the check, entering the bill, or creating a purchase order.
In other versions of QuickBooks Pro, Premier, or Enterprise; you can create “Custom Fields” to use in the Vendor record – but they will not produce even a warning.
There are several things that you can do – but none of them will automatically “warn” you before the Subcontractors insurance does expire OR prevent you from writing them a check after it has expired.
One thing that you can do is have your Vendors/Subcontractors request a Certificate of Insurance from their insurance company, listing you as a Certificate Holder. That way you receive a Certificate showing the policy period AND you would also be notified if the coverage was canceled or if it expired.
Even having access to this information directly from the Vendors insurance agent isn’t enough if you don’t have a policy and/or procedure in place for tracking this.
While QuickBooks won’t do anything automatically for you, it will provide you with tools (date tracking, report generation, letter creation, Reminders, and To Do Notes) to implement a good system for tracking this information.
Request our FREE eBook – “QuickBooks Tips & Techniques – Setting Up & Tracking Subcontractors Worker’s Comp Insurance”.
This FREE 13-page eBook will provide you with complete instructions for setting up and maintaining a system for tracking expiration dates of Subcontractors Worker’s Comp AND General Liability Insurance.
