#tlb services

With the changing of the seasons comes the release of the new versions of QuickBooks.  For those of you on Enterprise (with an active maintenance plan), you will get the 2012 version sometime starting around the middle of September.  For those of you on Pro or Premier, you will have to choose (and pay) to upgrade. 

QuickBooks started a program this year to allow you to “lease” Pro or Premier on a monthly basis.  Here is an article about that:  http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2011/02/quickbooks-plus-subscriptions/  If you use this feature, then you will also get the new version automatically (and have already seen some of these features added). 

For the first time I can remember, a new version of Point of Sale won't be released until next Spring.

Remember also that Intuit “sunsets” old version of QuickBooks in the Spring after a new release in the Fall.  So next May, those of you still on 2009 versions will no longer be supported.  This is an issue if you use payroll, credit card processing, QuickBooks email and online banking. 

So – here are some of the highlights of changes coming:

Multi-user:  Many more functions will be available in multi-user instead of single-user.  (BIG WIN as far as I’m concerned!)

To-Do List:  Doesn’t seem that sexy, since most user’s don’t use it.  However, it has been enhanced to make it really functional.  Now you can use the list a lot more like a real to-do list with status’ and alerts.

New Centers:  Two new centers have been added – Inventory and Leads.  I’m not sure if they are both Enterprise only.  Leads is a new concept in QuickBooks which will help you keep potential customers separate from actual customers.

Calendar:  I like this one – because I started on Quicken and always used the Calendar as my main screen.  A calendar view has been added to QuickBooks that shows transactions and to-dos!

Utilities:  New features have been added to condense your file, create a new copy starting from a certain date, or create a file from an existing file.  These are good when you’re file is huge and really bogged down.

Excel:  Love this!  Now you can create a “link” from an Excel export report to Excel to allow you to “Refresh” from within Excel, as well as keep format changes you’ve made in Excel for the next time you import!  Sounds like Statement Writer, but perhaps more straightforward.

Help/Search:  A search bar has been added to the Icon Tool bar which is very, very slick and helps to find things (transactions, lists even Help information) very, very quickly.

Inventory:  Lots of changes here – both inside QuickBooks and in the Advanced Inventory tool.  This area I’m not sure about which are Pro/Premier and which are Enterprise…more to follow on that!

Pricing:  Now QuickBooks will ask you if you want to have it change prices automatically when a product cost changes.  Also, more Price Levels.

 Images:  You will be able to load images in your Inventory list.

Receiving:  Big change here.  You have the option to separate the Item Receipt date and the Bill date.  This is supposed to be a tricky function – so proceed with caution.  Lots of chatter about it on the QuickBooks blogs.

Advanced Inventory:   For those of you unfamiliar, this is a service add –on for Enterprise that adds multiple locations (among other things) to your QuickBooks Inventory.  Cost is minimal for those who have these issues.  Big changes here – that I’m super excited about:

FIFO Inventory:  Huge change!

Serial Number/Lot Tracking:  Apparently an “either/or” choice, and features are not robust, but LONG needed in my opinion.

 There is a lot more – and I’m sure I’ve not mentioned what will be your favorite feature, but hopefully, this has gotten your juices flowing.  I’ll send out more when I get my hands on the final version.

I was recently asked by with a large multi-national organization to help them solve a problem with standardizing their accounting systems in multiple countries.  The problem was that each of these country organizations was fairly small, and didn't do a lot of transactions, so deploying the Corporate accounting systems wasn't cost effective. 

Ultimately we settled on deploying QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions across more than 20 countries in Central America and Europe. 

I have just returned from training the users for the European programs, which included staff from Romania, Armenia, Albania, Kosovo, Poland, Georgia and the Ukraine!  What am amazing group of these people were. 

In the course of our four day training we not only learned how to use QuickBooks Enterprise solutions - in very advanced ways, we hashed out complex international accounting concepts and differences to develop a standardized approach for this organization.  And....the training was conducted in English - a second (or third) language for the participants!  What an amazing opportunity!

I also discovered that the QuickBooks ProAdvisor program is well respected across the world.  We met with, and worked with a ProAdvisor in Kosovo who will help with continuing support of the central Europe staff.

Enterprises multicurrency features, and the flexibility to set up remote access to multiple companies and multiple users halfway around the world made this project possible.