12Jul 2010 by Nancy Smyth

Calculating & Displaying Fringe Benefits on a Certified Payroll Report

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?, The "Sunburst" Website
One of the biggest causes of confusion for contractors working on government funded construction projects is “how to calculate and display fringe benefits” on a certified payroll report. In recent months, I have repeatedly seen posts from QuickBooks users on the Intuit Community Forums asking how the fringe benefit rate is calculated and then displayed on the Certified Payroll Report in Excel, which is now a standard function of QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise when used in conjunction with Enhanced Payroll, and I really haven’t seen any good responses.  Hence today’s blog post. Background: Contractors who work on government funded construction  projects are required to pay their employees a “prevailing” rate of pay; based on where the project is located and the type of work they are performing.  This “prevailing rate…
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08Oct 2009 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2010 – Email Marketing, No Windows Vista or 7 Support

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?
Email Marketing is something else that Intuit has built into QuickBooks 2010. From the Customers menu choose Email Marketing OR from the Online Services choose Email Marketing.  Your default browser will launch. The first thing that I noticed about this was that it was very slow and then I got this error message that explained it all! Firefox is my default browser and this requires Internet Explorer.  {sigh} So I followed the instructions and copied the url from Firefox and pasted it into Internet Explorer, unfortunately it was even slower to load in Internet Explorer and instead of the error I received I received another window wanting me to install an Active X component. So I go ahead and indicate that I want to install the Active X component and…
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06Oct 2009 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2010 – New Customizable “Favorites” Menu

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?
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…
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05Oct 2009 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2010 – Rapid List Entry (Add/Edit Multiple List Entries)

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?
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…
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02Oct 2009 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2010 – New “App Center”

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?, QuickBooks Add-Ons
So what is this Intuit Workplace App Center? Well the Intuit Workplace App Center is where you can buy or try for free, 3rd party software that lives on the web rather than on your computer. Otherwise known as "hosted" or SaaS (Software as a Service) programs that you don't own, but rather pay a monthly fee to use this software and all the data is stored on servers owned by Intuit. Anything that you can currently try for free, will most likely incur a monthly fee for continued use at some point and unless you are connected to the internet you cannot access anything that you have stored in them. The App Center is accessed via the Icon Bar at the top of QuickBooks When you click on the…
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29Sep 2009 by Nancy Smyth

Best Practices – Upgrading to a new version of QuickBooks

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?
Whether you plan to do the QuickBooks installation and/or upgrade yourself or hire an IT person to do it for you, below is a list of "QuickBooks Upgrade Best Practices Tips" to help you through the process. Some might consider these instruction to be an "overkill"; but it will allow you to KEEP your current version of QuickBooks while running tests in the new version - before you make the final commitment to upgrade. It will also alert you to any potential hardware issues that you might encounter. I have installed QuickBooks 2010 on 4 different computers and am having issues with my Vista SP2 Dell Vostro laptop. Read all of the information about the installation/upgrade procedure that you can get your hands on to make sure that you choose…
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28Sep 2009 by Nancy Smyth

Review-QuickBooks 2010, Easier Registration with possible “glitch”

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?, QuickBooks Corner
QuickBooks 2010 registration seems much more automated, with as much as possible being handled online.  In most cases, this should mean that users who upgrade will have to input less data, which will save them time and trouble. However, there's a potential problem that can occur in Steps 3-5 that you need to watch out for.  If you begin registration and have a file open, the data in the file will automatically populate the registration fields. If the open file doesn't contain the information you need to use for registration this could be troublesome.  I had a "test file open when I began the registration process".  So in MOST circumstances this should not be a problem. If you notice that this is happening onscreen, delete the incorrect data and then fill in the correct data. …
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27Sep 2009 by Nancy Smyth

What’s New In QuickBooks 2010?

QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?
I'm sure you all have been reading snippets of information on the web and quite possibly you've been receiving marketing literature from Intuit about the release of QuickBooks 2010. Well, it's official. You can order QuickBooks 2010 beginning September 28, 2009 - directly from Intuit or through the Affiliate Page on our website at a discount of 10-20% - visit https://www.sunburstsoftwaresolutions.com/order-quickbooks.htm Usually, with the official QuickBooks release announcement, we also release  our own independent "Annual Review" of the new features (and what we think of them) that are in the new version of QuickBooks. Our Review of What's New In QuickBooks 2010 will not be so timely this year, we have had a VERY tight time frame in which to test and work with a Final Release version - just…
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26Sep 2009 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 2010 Available to Purchase 9/28/09

General QuickBooks News, QuickBooks 2010 - What's New?
For those of you who aren't aware, QuickBooks 2010 will be available for sale beginning on Monday September 28, 2009. We are an Authorized Intuit Affiliate - which means that you can purchase QuickBooks at a discount using a special Affiliate Link from our site. Beginning Monday September 28, 2009 visit our Affiliate Page for additional information and information on discount pricing. Watch for news about our Annual QuickBooks review right here on our blog beginning next week. Disclaimer: As both a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and Intuit Developer Network Gold Developer, I do not recommend that you upgrade right away as there are usually some problems and it does take Intuit a couple of months to get everything all squared away. What we usually do recommend is that if you…
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