Printable Version

Issue: The Desktop Accountant - January 2001

January 2001

Here is your complimentary copy of The Desktop Accountant, our periodic newsletter with tips and tricks for using QuickBooks and QuickBooks Pro.

News and Views

Intuit recently released QuickBooks 2001. In this issue, we review the product and let you know what we think. In short, we're very impressed with this new version and we're recommending that everyone immediately upgrade. See the complete review below.

The Sleeter Group’s 2001 Accounting Technology Workshop Series - We’re busy preparing for our 2001 season of seminars. This year we will offer a NEW workshop option. In addition to our 2-day Technology Workshops, we’ll be offering six THREE-DAY CONFERENCES. All of our seminars will feature new topics on QuickBooks, Online Accounting, E-commerce, Web Stores, Business Analytics, and Vertical Market solutions. The conferences add a full day of Marketing and Managing your practice! We’ll be posting more information and the actual dates and locations to our website soon. If you've been to one of our workshops in the past, come again this year because we'll have a completely new agenda including all the changes and new functionality in QuickBooks 2001.

The Sleeter Group certifies QuickBooks consultants. Through our network of certified consultants, we provide thousands of small business owners with the training and support they need to maximize their accounting systems. To obtain certification, consultants must pass a rigorous examination that tests their knowledge of QuickBooks, accounting and computers. For details about the program, or to find a consultant in your area, go to our website.

Last but not least, your success is what we are all about. Please feel free to drop us a line and let us know how we can be of greater service to you (newsletter@sleeter.com)

Small Business Accounting Software Usage – Poll

We recently polled over 70 accountants who provide small business accounting consulting. We wanted to know which software products were being used by their clients. Although responses are still coming in, here are the preliminary results:

This table shows that 97% of users are still using QuickBooks and 46% are still using version 99. Although this is a very small sample of the total QuickBooks user base, it appears to confirm our impression that many users did not upgrade to QuickBooks 2000. However, we received several comments that accountants are moving all their clients to version 2001 without hesitation. This is good because it means accountants and consultants should have a resurgence of demand from clients wanting help with the new version. In short, when QuickBooks users upgrade, it's good news for the QuickBooks consulting business!

As far as online accounting products, we also see that very few people have moved their accounting systems to online products. I suspect the main reason for this is that people are waiting for solutions to the many problems I mentioned in the last newsletter. Also, to be fair, the online products are really just getting out there so many people are still just evaluating.

This Month's Newsletter Topic is:

"A Review of QuickBooks 2001"

I hope you enjoy our tips! Drop me an e-mail with your comments.

Doug Sleeter

Changes in QuickBooks 2001

If you are not familiar with the changes in QuickBooks 2000, we suggest that you first read our March 2000 article on those changes because this article builds on that one. Click on the following link or go to http://www.sleeter.com/newsletters/march2000/march2000.html to view or print this article.

Visual Interface

Navigation & Desktop Views

One of the first things you will notice is that the Iconbar is back! In fact, it has even been improved. Notice on the screen below that the icons for “Vendor Detail Center” and “Memorized Reports” expand so you can see the entire description. Also, if you have too many icons to fit onto one line, the Iconbar does not wrap onto a second line as in previous versions. Now it scrolls off the side of the screen. The Navigation Bar is still available, too, but it has been renamed the “Shortcut Bar.” In addition, there is a new navigation tool called the Open Windows List. This allows you to quickly switch to any open window with a single click. All the Navigators open and operate faster in version 2001.

Any of the navigational tools can be turned off. You can use all of them together or none of them.

There is a new preference for customizing the general look and behavior of QuickBooks. It’s called Desktop View and you can open it from preferences, or you can open it by selecting “Customize Desktop” under the View menu.

QuickBooks 2001 allows you to display multiple windows or just one window (maximized). Our preference is multiple windows so that you can see several different accounts or reports at the same time on your screen.

The Color Scheme preference allows you to pick an overall color format. You also go directly to Windows Display and Sounds Settings from this screen.

Another great new feature is the ability to open previous company files by selecting them from the File menu. QuickBooks lists the last few companies you have most recently used allowing you to open any one of them without going to Open Company and navigating through your directory structure. You can set the number of previous companies that show on the list (from 1 – 20).

General & Integration Features

Enhanced File Backup

QuickBooks 2001 has improved the file backup process to make it easier to use. You will see the following screen when you choose Backup from the file menu.

On this screen you can easily select the location and name of your backup. With earlier versions of QuickBooks, the backup process was particularly confusing to novice users so we expect this new interface will reduce the number of “lost” backup files.

Sales & Customers

Spell Check Your Forms

QuickBooks 2001 provides a spell check function so you can check the spelling on your forms before saving or printing them. This function works on invoices, estimates, sales receipts, credit memos, and purchase orders. Turn this feature on and set your desired options in the Spelling preference.

If you select the first option, QuickBooks will check every sales form before saving or printing the form. This can be annoying until you build the list of words in the dictionary. You can also spell check a form by clicking the ‘Spell’ button at the top of the form.

The spell check feature works much like spell check in any other program. You can Replace the highlighted word with one of the suggestions listed or type in the correct spelling manually. You can tell QuickBooks to Ignore this occurrence or all occurrences of this spelling. You can also Add the word to QuickBooks’ dictionary so that it will be recognized in the future.

Price Levels (Pro Only)

In QuickBooks Pro 2001, you can create price levels that can be applied on invoices or cash sales. You can see your list of Price Levels by choosing Price Levels from the Lists menu.

For example, if the ‘Base Rate’ for Labor is $40/hour and commercial customers receive a 10% discount on all labor, you could set up a Price Level called Commercial and define that to be a 10% discount.

The figure above shows how to set up a New Price Level for Commercial customers who receive a 10% discount.

Then, when you add a “Commercial” customer to your customer list, you can tag that customer’s record with the Price Level they receive on sales.

Assign a price level to a customer in the Additional Info tab of their customer record.

When you create an invoice for this customer, QuickBooks automatically applies the 10% Commercial discount.

You can manually choose a price level by clicking on the drop-down arrow beside the rate and selecting the desired price level.

Preferred Payment Method

You can enter a preferred payment method for a customer on the Payment Info tab of their customer record.

When you use “Receive Payments” to record a payment from a customer for whom a preferred payment method is entered, QuickBooks automatically fills in the payment information. Of course, you can manually override this information if they pay by another method.

Processing Credit Cards Directly from Sales Forms

With QuickBooks 2001, you can process credit cards over the Internet directly from Cash Sale forms and from the Receive Payments screen. To set this up, you must first sign up for a QuickBooks merchant account. The fees are very reasonable, and even cheap compared with most other Internet merchant accounts. To learn more about the fees and to sign up, select the Customers menu, then select Accept Credit Card Payments and then select Process Credit Card Payments.

Once you’re set up, you can process credit cards by clicking “Process credit card payment when saving” on the Receive Payments screen, and on the Cash Sale screen.

This displays the Process Credit Card Payment screen where you verify the credit card information and then send the transaction to the credit card company for processing.

After a successful capture of funds, QuickBooks will display the results of the transaction, which can be printed for your records.

If the card fails to clear, you can process the card on the following day (deselect the “Process credit card payment when saving” box today and select it again tomorrow) or you can enter a new credit card number and try to clear the transaction again.

After you’ve successfully processed the credit card transaction, the funds for the transaction show up in Undeposited Funds (unless you selected to “deposit to” another account). At the end of each day, you’ll use the “Make Deposits” function to group each type of credit card together onto a single deposit. The QuickBooks merchant account automatically groups all sales during the day onto a single deposit in your bank. Of course, you’ll see separate deposits for American Express, Discover, Diners Club and VISA/MasterCard.

Faxing & Emailing Invoices

You can now fax or email invoices directly from within QuickBooks.

Faxing invoices requires a subscription to the eFax faxing service (www.efax.com). Your invoices are faxed via the Internet using a service called eFax Plus. You can take advantage of a free trial of the service, after which you need to sign up for an eFax Plus account. The service costs $4.95 per month plus $.05 for each 30-second fax transmission to U.S. fax numbers.

To fax an invoice, select the down arrow to the right of the Send button at the top of the invoice. Then select Fax. QuickBooks will fill in the information on the Edit Fax Information screen illustrated on the right. The From and To information is copied from the Company Information screen and the Customer:Job setup screen, respectively.

You can also email invoices directly from within QuickBooks. You don’t have to purchase a service to do this. Of course, you must have an email address and an Internet connection. The invoice will not be an attachment. It will be included in the body of the text below the E-mail Text.

You choose the default text for faxes and emails by clicking on Edit Template or by selecting the Send Forms preference.

Receiving Payments Online

If you sign up for the Online Billing Service, you can receive payments online. To learn more, click the Tell Me More button in the Edit Email Information screen illustrated above. To receive online payments, click on the Download Pmts button on the Receive Payments screen.

Expenses & Vendors

Default Checking Accounts

Arguably one of the most requested features was the ability to choose default checking accounts for checking transactions. In the My Preferences screen of the Checking preference, select the default checking account for the listed accounts.

Be aware that despite this preference, if you go to one of these checking transactions while you have a bank account highlighted on the chart of accounts, and the chart of accounts is the active window, QuickBooks will still default to the highlighted account. There is no way to force QuickBooks to always use the default account under all circumstances.

To set the default checking account for payroll, click the Company Preferences tab on the Checking preference. The reason this is on the Company tab is that only the Administrator is allowed the change payroll preferences. Therefore, if you’re not logged in as the Administrator you won’t be able to change the default payroll checking account.

Longer Reference Numbers

QuickBooks 2001 allows for up to 20 characters in the reference field on bills and bill-credits. Notice that the fields have been rearranged to accommodate this improvement. This is a major improvement for people who receive bills with long invoice numbers.

Automatic Discounts in Pay Bills

Another long-awaited feature is automatic discounts for bill payments. To set up QuickBooks 2001 to automatically take discounts go to the preferences for Purchases & Vendors. Choose ‘Automatically use discounts and credits’ and select the Default Discount Account.

With this setting, your bill payments will automatically include the discount according to the terms of the bill. For example, in the screen below, you can see that QuickBooks automatically calculated a 1% discount for the Lew Plumbing bill. The terms on the bill were set to 1% 10, Net 30 and since the payment date is before the Discount date, QuickBooks automatically took the discount.

Note that QuickBooks still displays bills in the Pay Bills screen based on the Due Date, not the Discount Date. Because of this, it will still be easy to accidentally miss available discounts since bills may not show up in the list until after their discount date has past.

Improved Bill Credit Application

QuickBooks 2001 has improved the way you apply bill-credits to bills. On the Pay Bills screen, you no longer see negative amounts for credits. Instead, when you select a bill to be paid, if that Vendor has an open credit, it will automatically apply the open credit to the bill before creating the payment. Note: this only happens if your preferences are set to automatically use discounts and credits. Otherwise you’ll have to manually apply the credits by clicking “Set Credits.”

On the figure above, Ace Glass has an open bill-credit for $50. When the first bill was selected, QuickBooks automatically applied the credit to it and entered $50 into the Credits Used column. Note that the credit will be applied to the FIRST bill you select for that vendor regardless of the bill date, or any other ordering of the bills.

If you need to override the way QuickBooks automatically applies credits, click Clear Selections on the Pay Bills screen. Then, select the bill to which you want to apply the credit and click Set Credits.

On the Discounts and Credits screen you can click the credit you want to use and enter the amount you want to apply in the Amt to Use column. This allows you to split a credit between the two open bills. This screen also controls discounts on the Discount tab.

Another important new feature of the Pay Bills screen is that you can display a bill by selecting it on the Pay Bills screen and then click Go to Bill.

Also, you can now specifically assign check numbers to checks created from the Pay Bills screen or mark them To Be Printed.

At the bottom of the Pay Bills screen, click Assign check no. and then click Pay & New. QuickBooks shows the Assign Check Numbers screen where you can specifically assign the check number for each bill payment. This is especially useful when you’ve handwritten checks and you’re recording payments in QuickBooks “after-the-fact.”

Payroll

Payroll Setup Wizard

There aren’t many significant changes to Payroll features in QuickBooks 2001 but the payroll setup has changed significantly. There is now a Payroll Setup “wizard” similar to the Easy Step interview that takes you step-by-step through the process of setting up payroll items, accounts, employees, vendors, etc. However, just like the Easy Step interview, the Payroll Setup wizard is of dubious value. A typical user would naturally assume that completing the screens in the setup wizard would produce a complete and proper setup of their payroll. However, even when you’ve completed the Payroll setup, you’ll still have several lists to edit, and items to create. So why have a setup wizard if it doesn’t do everything you need? I don’t get it.

Below are some of the screens in the Payroll Easy Setup:

Notice that when you choose to create a new payroll item, you will have the choice of ‘Easy Setup’ or ‘Custom Setup’. Custom Setup takes you through the same procedure as version 2000. Easy Setup is intended for the most common types of payroll items.

The rest of the screens are similar and allow you to choose other common payroll items. On these screens you simply check the items you want to create and QuickBooks creates them for you. Notice, however, that you cannot setup the details of the items from here, such as the Liability and/or Expense account to use. You must edit the item after creating it to supply that information along with any other special fields. Because of this, it may be easier to create the item with Custom Setup and enter all the required information from the beginning.

Payroll Services

Intuit has made a few changes to the Basic Payroll Service. New subscribers still receive a 60-day free trial subscription and current subscribers can apply their remaining subscription to the new version. In version 2001, you will be reminded to check for payroll updates every 45 days, but you will not be required to do so.

Intuit has increased the price of the Basic Payroll subscription to $129 annually for both QuickBooks 2000 and 2001. The option to pay monthly is not available for 2001.

Reports

General Reports Improvements

Keep Your Place

In QuickBooks 2000 and earlier, when you zoom in on a transaction from a transaction report, make changes to the transaction and save it, QuickBooks takes you to the beginning of the report. Don’t you hate that? QuickBooks 2001 keeps your place in the report after editing transactions. Hurray!

New Options for Header

Reports now include the option of adding a Time Stamp and the Report Basis in the Header. Below you will see the screens where you choose these options.

Notice that there is now one button on the report for modifying the report.

You can see that the Modify Report option includes all customize and filter options from earlier versions.

Transaction Detail Reports

Sort by Any Column

The Display tab of the Modify Report option is somewhat different for Transaction Detail reports. Just as in earlier versions, you can add or remove columns and choose Total by and Sort by options.

One important improvement of 2001 is the ability to sort by any column on the report. The Sort by drop-down list will show every column selected on the list to its left. You can also choose to sort in ascending or descending order. We hope they add the ability to subtotal by the Sort column in future versions.

Rearrange Columns

Another great new feature is the ability to rearrange the columns on a transaction detail report. When you position the mouse over a column heading, the cursor turns into a hand as illustrated below. You can then drag the mouse to the right or left. When you release the mouse button, the column is in the desired location. Notice that you can also change the Sort By column directly on the report.

Memorized Reports

QuickBooks 2001 includes several significant improvements to Memorized Reports.

Reordering Memorized Reports

You can now reorder memorized reports in the Memorized Report List. The report names are now preceded by a diamond that you can click and drag to any position, much like reordering accounts or items.

Grouping Memorized Reports

Another significant improvement is the ability to organize memorized reports into Groups. One of the most practical advantages of this feature is that you can display all the reports in a group by selecting the group and clicking Display or Print. QuickBooks will display or print every report in the group automatically.

There are also other ways to get to your memorized reports. The following menus are under the Reports menu. Notice than any one memorized report or group can be directly accessed without going to the Memorized Reports list.

Another new feature under the Reports menu is Process Multiple Reports.

From the Reports menu, select Process Multiple Reports. Then select one of the memorized reports groups from the popup list at the top of the Process Multiple Reports screen. This is the same screen you will see if you double-click one of the Groups on the Memorized Reports list. Again, you can preview or print any or all of the reports simultaneously.

Summary

Shortly after the release of QuickBooks 2000 I published a list of features that I think Intuit should add to future versions – a QuickBooks “wish list”. Let’s take a look at how 2001 addresses this list of issues.

A/P and A/R Credits don’t apply right.

This has always been a problem and the 2000 version doesn’t address it. When you pay bills in QuickBooks and apply a credit by clicking on the negative amount, there is no specific way to apply that credit to a certain bill unless you only click on the one bill to which the credit should apply. This is tedious for those who have several credits and need to apply each to a separate bill. How about changing the interface on a credit to allow it to be applied to one or more bills directly? It’s even worse on the A/R side. There is no way to apply a specific credit to a specific Invoice if you have more than one credit outstanding for the customer. The only workaround is to immediately apply the credit memo (using the Receive Payments screen) each time you create a credit memo. It would be great if there were a button on the Receive Payments screen that says "Match Credits with Invoices" that displays each credit and allows you to match it with an Invoice.

2001 addresses the A/P part of this almost perfectly. We would still like to apply credits as they are created, but at least the new version helps a lot in this area. However, applying credits in A/R hasn’t changed a bit. Maybe next version.

Accountant’s Review.

The Accountant’s review copy won’t let the accountant make any changes to the data (only journal entries), so it’s useless for most situations. When the client’s data file needs even minor fixing, the accountant must get a complete copy of the data file, meaning that the client must not enter data while the accountant is working on it. This is a critical issue and needs to be addressed.

2001 does not address this problem, but to be fair, it’s a tough problem to keep the accountant synchronized with the client unless the accountant has access to the live data file. I think they should kill the Accountant’s Review altogether since I doubt it can be made to be useful for anything other than depreciation entries and closing entries. The only real solution to accountant’s review is online accounting.

File Size is a PROBLEM!

Maybe the most important issue is that there is no solution to the problem of what to do when data files get too large. There is no partial archive solution, and there is no way to split the file into separate specific years like you can with Quicken. So, every few years (or perhaps even more often), every user has to start over with a new file. This is a rude surprise for many users.

2001 does not address this issue.

Open up the database!

Intuit should embrace the idea of letting developers extend the use of QuickBooks with other software. Currently, the only method of importing data into QuickBooks is through creating iif files. This requires programming expertise and even if you have the ability, who wants to write a program to get data into QuickBooks. There are so many needs out there that cannot be addressed by QuickBooks like Point of Sale, Inventory for Manufacturing, Order Processing, and Non-Profit reports. Software developers would love to create solutions for industry specific issues that integrate with QuickBooks, but without an open database, their hands are tied. Intuit can’t control it all, so why not create a platform for other developers to add the products and services that users need? Why not support XML and other industry standard methods of integration?

2001 does not address these issues.

Sales Tax Reports Need Help.

Accountants need reports showing total taxable sales by invoice number (totals only). Intuit should allow drilling down on the sales figures shown on the Sales Tax Liability report. If you drill down on the taxable sales amount, it should show a listing of invoices (or cash sales) with the total taxable amount of each invoice. Drilling down on non-taxable amounts should show the amount of each invoice that is non-taxable. The report should NOT show line items for each item on the invoice unless the user asks for this detail.

2001 does not address this issue.

No FORM 941B.

Semi-weekly filers receive no real benefit from the ability to process for 941 through QuickBooks if they cannot process 941-B.

2001 does not adequately address this issue. The “Summarize Payroll Data in Excel” function provides a worksheet with the 941B data, but this is not enough. It’s still a big pain to prepare your own 941B.

Floppy Backup’s Often Don’t Work.

For some reason, a very large percentage of users have trouble restoring from floppy backups. Formatting the floppies before using them helps, but there still is a problem and it appears to be a QuickBooks issue.

2001 addresses the human interface part of backups, which is great. We’ll have to do more testing to see how floppy backups that span multiple floppies hold up. I doubt there have been any changes to these intermittent but frequent problems.

Tax Tables should be free - at least for the first year.

If you use the payroll function, you’ve always needed to subscribe to the tax table updates (and pay $129 per year) in order to calculate your taxes correctly. However, with QuickBooks 2000, you MUST subscribe to the service before you can even start using the payroll function. And that requires an Internet connection, which many people don’t have.

2001 addresses this somewhat. You no longer HAVE to verify your tax tables every 45 days. You still have to pay for a subscription though.

Bring back the Macintosh!

Apple has made serious improvements to their product line and there are hundreds of thousands of Macintosh users who want to use new versions of QuickBooks. Version 4 is so far behind that these users are really left in the dust.

2001 does not address this issue.

Even though version 2001 does not address all of the issues above, the improvements are well worth the cost of upgrading. We are very impressed with QuickBooks 2001 because it addresses many of our concerns while significantly improving the most commonly used features.

Sometimes it’s the small things that matter most and Intuit seems to always come through on implementing those small things that make the product easier to use. For example the Iconbar is something that we all got addicted to and it went away in 2000. Now it’s back, and much improved. Also, it’s great to be able to display a bill from the Pay Bills screen and have QuickBooks automatically take discounts and apply credits. These are small features, but very nice improvements that make you enjoy using QuickBooks even more than before.

The improvement in processing credit cards directly from sales forms is also small, but it makes the whole credit card processing feature useable and therefore worth adopting.

The bottom line is that QuickBooks is still king, and it’s not by accident. Intuit did their homework and delivered in 2001!

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The Desktop Accountant
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