QuickBooks 2012 Announced

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?