Certified Payroll Training Class

How to Fulfill Your Certified Payroll Reporting Requirements - 2 hour webinar - $89.00 per person. Click here for more info.

Buy QuickBooks:

quickbooks users

← Older posts

QuickBooks 2012 Announced

Published September 7, 2011 | By Nancy Smyth

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:
  1. You sometimes need to pay for inventory before you receive it
  2. You want to preserve your item receipt date even after you get a bill
  3. 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?

14 Comments

Preventing Embezzlement-General QuickBooks Controls & Procedures

Published February 9, 2011 | By Nancy Smyth

tips for preventing embezzlementSmall businesses are particularly vulnerable to theft simply because they don’t have the resources or security controls in place to stop them.

Employee theft is extremely common; unfortunately, we hear about it or read about it in the newspapers all of the time.

While it is fair to say, most people don’t steal, embezzlement does happen; so it only makes good business sense for you to consider what you can do to minimize your employees’ opportunities to steal.

Below are some general internal procedures that many business owners who use QuickBooks can implement quite easily.

Who should be the QuickBooks Administrator? As the business owner, you should create the QuickBooks Admin account and password and be the Administrator for your own QuickBooks company data file.  All too often we have seen or heard  from many business owners that their CPA or QuickBooks ProAdvisor is the Administrator of their QuickBooks file and that they don’t even know what the Admin password to their own data file is;  quite frankly we do not agree with this practice.  Your books are YOUR books, just like your business is your business.  You should not give that kind of control to anyone.

We have heard of instances where the business owner and the CPA/ProAdvisor has had a “falling out” and the business owner cannot perform even the simplest of Administrator functions because they do not know the Administrator password and the former CPA/ProAdvisor will not tell them what that password is.  This results in the business owner having to pay for password retrieval.

Set Up the External Accountant User. QuickBooks 2009 and newer has the ability to create an External Accountant User.  Create two different External Accountant Users, one that is actually for your accountant and one that is for you.  Learn how to use the Client Data Review tool to monitor what is going on in your QuickBooks file when you aren’t there to see.

Who should know the Administrator password? Your CPA/ProAdvisor or in-house bookkeeper should know what the Administrator password is; otherwise you could be pulled off the jobsite to perform menial tasks.

The Administrator Account should NOT be used when entering daily transactions. The Administrator account is a special purpose user account and should be treated as such.

Each QuickBooks user should have their own QuickBooks user login account. As the QuickBooks Administrator you should create a user account for each person who will have access to your company data file, this includes a user account for yourself which you will use when entering transactions.  When you create user accounts you are the one who controls who can access what information.

A word of caution for Enterprise users, the permission setting in the Enterprise version are much tighter than in Pro or Premier and you do need to be careful when setting up user permissions or you can effectively prevent an employee from performing the tasks that you do want them to be responsible for.

When should the Administrator Account be used? We recommend that you use the Administrator login account when reconciling the monthly checking and credit card accounts; and then on an “as needed” basis, as there are times when it is required that you, your CPA, or bookkeeper must be logged into QuickBooks in single-user mode as the QuickBooks administrator – such as changing companywide preferences in QuickBooks or granting permission for a third-party application to access your QuickBooks company data file.

Set closing dates and use the Closing Date Exception Report. On a monthly or quarterly basis, after you have reconciled the bank and credit card statements or after the quarterly payroll tax reports have been completed; set a closing date with a password; closing dates are found from the Edit menu -> Preferences -> Accounting -> Company Preferences tab.  This will prevent accidental or unauthorized changes to previously reconciled transactions, because only those people who know the password will be allowed to make changes, and get them into the habit of using the memo field to indicate why a cleared transaction was changed.  You can then run a Closing Date Exception Report, found from the Reports menu -> Accountant & Taxes -> Closing Date Exception Report.

Monitor Accounts Receivable Reports. Implement a procedure that by a specified time on Friday that you receive an Open Invoice Report, found from the Reports menu -> Customers & Receivables -> Open Invoices.  You should review this report and then leave it for your mailroom clerk for Monday morning, so that she can make notes of payments received during the week and return it to you after mail time on Friday.  You can then compare the previous week’s report to the current weeks report for any discrepancies.  For example, the mail clerk indicates that payment for Invoice number 1001 was received on Tuesday, but the current Open Invoice Report shows that it is still outstanding.

Monitor your Accounts Payable Reports. Don’t leave it up to someone else to decide which bills get paid and which ones will be delayed….you could be in for an unpleasant surprise!

How often does your company pay its bills – weekly, bi-weekly, monthly?  Implement a procedure in which you receive an Unpaid Bills Detail Report, found from the Reports menu -> Vendors & Payables -> Unpaid Bills Detail by a specified time on a certain day of the week with the current bank balance indicated.

Review the report and YOU decide who gets paid and who doesn’t; maybe even make a few phone calls if cash flow is tight.  The day before it’s time to pay the bills, ask for the current bank balance and make any necessary adjustments.  Leave this marked up report for your Accounts Payable clerk for the morning that they are to cut the checks.  Keep in mind that taking advantage of early payment discounts could help pay for other upcoming bills.

Third Party Tools – Check out AuditMyBooks, a QuickBooks 3rd party tool, which double-checks your accounting records for problems.

The suggestions contained in this article are not designed to turn you, the business owner, into an untrusting boss but rather are suggestions to help you maintain control of your business and its financial affairs.

1 Comment

Lesson 1-Getting Started; FREE QuickBooks for Contractors Training eBook

Published January 7, 2011 | By Nancy Smyth

Well it’s Freebie Friday again here on the QuickBooks for Contractors blog.  With the new year, we have a whole bunch of NEW ebook lined up to offer you.  We hope you enjoy them and that you’ll take the time to leave us a brief comment as to what you think about them.

And now, with no further delay………….this week’s ebook is………..

QuickBooks for Contractors - Getting StartedLesson 1 – Getting Started; Introducing QuickBooks Premier Contractor Edition.

Lesson 1 – Getting Started is intended for new QuickBooks users or users who feel that they would like a “refresher” course and will:

  • Discuss why you need to keep books for your business.
  • Discuss why you need to keep books from the IRS’s point of view.
  • Using Forms and Registers to record transactions.
  • Teach you how to navigate the program.
  • Introduce and discuss the various “Lists” that QuickBooks has available and what their purpose is.
  • Discuss how much “bookkeeping and accounting” knowledge you must have.
  • Moving between QuickBooks Company data files.
  • Exiting the program and backing up your data.

This eBook is an introduction on how to use QuickBooks in the commercial/government construction industry. Its main objective is to introduce you to the basic features in QuickBooks.  You’ll learn about the types of information you need to track in your business, and you’ll see how to enter that information and track it in QuickBooks. By the time you complete the eBook, you’ll have a good idea of all that QuickBooks offers, you’ll be familiar with the most common tasks, and you’ll know where to find information about more advanced features.

Sound interesting?  If so, request your own copy by clicking here.

Leave a comment
← Older posts

Other blogs:

Search…….

Loading

FREE 30-Day Trials

Request FREE 30-day Trials of QuickBooks add-ons for Certified Payroll, AIA Billing & Payroll Wage Management.
Free 30 day trials of QuickBooks integrated add-ons for certified payroll, aia billing and weighted-average overtime
February 2012
S M T W T F S
« Jan    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829  
Top 10 Blogger Award Toolbox for Finance

Also Find Us On:

On Toolbox for Finance



As Featured On EzineArticles

Biznik - Business Networking
Intuit QuickBooks Gold Developer

The QuickBooks for Contractors blog is a free QuickBooks Support & Training resource provided by Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc.


Copyright 2000-2012. All Rights Reserved.


Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc. has been an Intuit Developer Network member since 2001; first as a Premier Member and then one of the first thirteen (13) developers to complete the Gold Developer program requirements in 2006.


QuickBooks® and the Gold Developer Logos are trademarks and or registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., displayed with permission.
For use with U.S. version of QuickBooks only.


 Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor since 2000