Since the introduction of QuickBooks 2000 in early January, we’ve been putting it through its paces. In this article, we'll discuss the new features and how they change the way you'll work with the program. In some areas, I feel the program has lost ground, but in other areas there is some real improvement.

Since there are still many unresolved issues with QuickBooks, I've added a wishlist of improvements needed from Intuit in versions of QuickBooks.

Probably the first thing experienced users will notice about QuickBooks 2000 is that it looks very different from any previous version. It has a Quicken feel to it with "Centers" and Navigation bars on the sides of the screen.

The first thing you will notice when loading version 2000 is the new interface. There are several significant changes to note. You may first notice that the menus have been rearranged. In the 2000 version, the menus are arranged by function similar to the tabs in the old QuickBooks® Navigator. The Navigator has been replaced with Centers that provide interactive, customizable snapshots of your company’s financial position.

The other major change is the elimination of the Iconbar, replaced by the Navigation Bar. The Navigation Bar is a cross between the old Navigator and the Iconbar. It serves much the same function as the Iconbar but does have some significant differences. Clicking on the Customize button displayed at the bottom will allow you to customize the Navigation Bar.

To add a new function, select it on the left side of Customize Navigation Bar and click ‘Add>>>’. You can also rename the items (except for the bold ones) or remove them from the Navigation Bar. The Navigation Bar can be minimized or maximized and you can place it on the left or right of your screen. The "Slide open" setting makes the bar slide open to expose the text when you mouse over the icons.

The names of some of the menu items have been changed as well. For example, what used to be called ‘Other Lists’ is now called ‘Customer & Vendor Profile Lists’. Also, you can no longer move menu choices to the ‘Other Lists’ or ‘Other Activities’ menu. The menu choice for Preferences is now under Edit instead of File. There are several name changes for reports as discussed below. 

Some activities, lists, reports, etc. can be added to the Navigation Bar even if they are not a choice on this screen. For example, say you want to add ‘Receive Payments’ to the Navigation Bar. You can do this by opening the Receive Payments screen as normal (now under the ‘Customers’ menu) and clicking ‘QuickAdd’ on the Navigation Bar. 

The Navigation Bar has several disadvantages over the Iconbar. For one, you cannot remove entire categories. Even if you have the Payroll preference set to No Payroll, you cannot remove the Employees category from the Navigation Bar. Another disadvantage is that you cannot rearrange the Navigation Bar as you could the Iconbar. QuickBooks will decide which category everything belongs in and in what order.

One of the things we like about QuickBooks 2000 is a new feature called ‘Centers’. There are several different centers, some of which will be discussed later. The Company Center displays various facts about your business such as current account balances and an income and expenses graph. There are several drop-down lists on which you can choose to see different facts about the company, or to see a different time period for what is displayed.

Centers have Alerts that show in the upper right corner of each center. An alert is a reminder that something may need to be done now or in the near future. For example, some alerts remind you to backup your data file and other alerts remind you to deposit payroll taxes or file payroll forms. However, there is no way to modify existing alerts or add your own.

Another very nice new feature in version 2000 is the ability to sort most of the lists by any column in the list.

For example, say you have eight Items with the same first several letters, but they are scattered over the entire item list. The list can be viewed with subitems indented (hierarchical view) or without (flat view). You can view the item list in flat view and sort by item name and they will be listed together regardless of their type. This feature can be extremely useful, especially on long lists with several items that have similar names. This feature is not available on all lists, however. For instance, the Purchase Order list cannot be sorted.

You can also sort the Customer list by any of the columns. For example, you can sort by customer name, the amount owed by each customer, the job status, or by the estimate total. To sort by a column, click on the column heading. Click again to change from ascending to descending. To return to the ‘original’ order, click on the diamond in the upper left corner of the list.

Decision Tools is a new function located under the Company menu. This function includes discussion on several business topics including how to manage receivables and developing a credit policy.

Intuit has increased integration with other programs in version 2000 Pro. As with version 99 Pro, you can merge letters using QuickBooks data exported directly to Microsoft Word and you can export any report directly to Excel. In 2000 Pro, you can synchronize contacts between QuickBooks and Microsoft Outlook or Symantec ACT! This function allows you to synchronize names on the Customer, Vendor or Other names lists with Outlook and ACT!

Intuit is also increasing its focus on E-Commerce and E-Finance by offering several new optional features in QuickBooks. You now can create and manage a web site from within QuickBooks®, buy and print postage, accept and authorize credit card payments, get a lease online and send direct mailings. The best of these is the ability to process credit cards. This allows you to throw away your credit card terminal, and process your payments directly from within QuickBooks. The costs are very low compared with other credit card merchant accounts and it’s completely integrated. We’ll do a future article about how all this works.

Intuit has made several changes to version 2000 relating to payroll. Some of them are very nice. Others are not being accepted very well by users.

In QuickBooks® 2000, you are now required to subscibe to the Basic Payroll Service (formerly Tax Table Update Service) in order to process payroll. This means you MUST have an Internet connection, and you MUST subscribe to the service before you can even start using the payroll function. When QuickBooks 2000 was first released, we were told that it required a separate subscription (at $72 each) for each Employer Identification Number (EIN), but Intuit just recently changed this policy so that you only need one subscription for each registered copy of QuickBooks®. This is good news for people who process payroll for several different clients. However, accountants are required to give Intuit the EIN numbers for every client for whom they process payroll. This is a real issue for accountants who don't feel they can give this information out without permission from clients.

Tax tables must be downloaded from the Internet and there is no option to receive the tables on diskette or CD. Users must also log on to their web site and check for new tax tables every 45 days or payroll will stop calculating taxes.

Intuit has added a new payroll report called ‘Employee State Taxes Detail’ which is designed to help prepare state tax deposits and returns. The report is full of great information, but there is still no way to print state payroll tax forms.

The Pay Liabilities screen has changed slightly. The default sort for the liabilities is now ‘Payable To’. In addition, the liabilities are now calculated for a period of time instead of all transaction up to the ‘As Of’ date. This speeds up the process of showing the liabilities now due, especially for companies with a lot of payroll transactions. On the other hand, if you had a liability held over from a prior period, this amount would not show by default. That could cause a problem for some users.

Sick and vacation hours can now be accrued for employees based on hours worked. In the following screen notice that Dan Miller is set to receive 3 minutes for each hour worked.

QuickBooks® will now accrue two hours vacation time for every 40 hours worked.

This next enhancement may justify upgrading to QuickBooks® 2000 Pro all by itself, especially for companies who have lots of employees. It is called ‘Summarize Payroll Data in Excel’. When you click on this option (under the Employees menu), QuickBooks® loads up Excel and opens a spreadsheet with several pivot tables already created. You choose what period of time you wish to look at and click on Get QuickBooks® Data. Be forewarned though, the transfer of data from QuickBooks to Excel is very slow. I tried it on a data file that had 1400 payroll transactions and it took 8 minutes to transfer to Excel.

There is now a separate list for Sales Reps. It is found under Lists, Customer & Vendor Profile Lists. You can add any Employee, Vendor or Other name to the Sales Rep list. You can also use five characters for the initials instead of just three. Because of this change, ‘Sales Rep Only’ is no longer a choice as an employee type. There is also a new preference related to this change in the Payroll & Employee Preferences. Immediately above the box for the Employee Template is a check box called ‘Mark new employees as sales reps’.

Customer Centers

QuickBooks® 2000 has a customer center which shows various information about your customer base. With the drop down arrows you can choose what information you would like to see and for what period of time.

In addition, there is a Customer Detail Center, which shows information about an individual customer.

Another new feature regarding sales and customers is the addition of several new fields that can be added to the footer of Sales Templates. The new fields include Subtotal, Sales Tax, Total, Payments/Credits and Balance Due. The specific fields that can be used varies depending on the type of template you are using. An Invoice template is the best example.

For companies that often receive one payment from a customer, but want to apply the payment to several jobs, the next feature is crucial.

With QuickBooks 2000, when you enter more than one payment from the same customer, using the same check number, this check will print as a single check on printable deposit slips and the deposit summary.

For example, if you receive $2,800.00 from Pelligrini Builders in payment of two jobs, you’ll need to enter two Receive Payment transactions as shown below.

After entering the two payments to allocate the check to the two different jobs, add these two payments onto your next deposit as shown below.

Although both payments show on the screen version of the deposit, only a single transaction appears on the printed deposit slip.

As you can see on the deposit slip below, only the single check appears. In order for this to work, you must enter the same check number on both payment transactions.

Other minor enhancements to the Sales and Customers area include:

Expenses & Vendors

Though there is no Vendor Center, there is a Vendor Detail Center, which works very much like its Customer counterpart.

Bill Payment Stubs

QuickBooks can now print Bill Payment Stubs in a batch for all bill payment checks within a specific date range. The information is presented somewhat better than on a transaction history report.

Reports

There are several minor enhancements to reports, including:

• You can now print registers directly from a register window. At the top of the window, there is a print button.
• Journal entries can now be printed directly from the journal entry window.
• Several report names and report category names have changed. For example, the category ‘Project Reports’ has been renamed to ‘Jobs & Time’ and what used to be called ‘Other Reports’ is now ‘Accountant & Taxes’. Several reports have also been moved. For instance, some of the reports under the old heading ‘Other Reports’ have been moved into a new category called ‘Banking’.

Report Finder

Summary

However, there are still several pressing problems in the program that we think Intuit should put at the top of the priority list. Here's our list.