Sneak Peek at QuickBooks 2009

I just completed my ProAdvisor certification for QuickBooks 2009 and here are some enhancements you can look forward to if you are deciding whether to purchase or upgrade to this latest version:

1)QuickBooks Messenger – QuickBooks has entered the realm of IM. You can chat with your coworkers while within the same data file.

2)Live Community – Opens to the right when you start the program. It shows a run of forum questions and allows you to enter questions of your own.

3) Multi User Enhancements - A top complaint I get from clients about QuickBooks is the fact that you must be in single user mode for many tasks. QuickBooks has now enabled some tasks, such as making a back-up, in multi user mode.

4) Multicurrency Feature – This one makes sense because even small companies are doing more and more international business. A quirk about this feature is that you cannot utilize foreign currency with existing customer and vendor records. You must set up those customers and vendors as new records in order to start them with transactions in foreign currency. This is because all the prior transactions for the "old" customer/vendor were recorded in the home currency before multicurrency was enabled and any new transactions under the "new" customer/vendor will be recorded as foreign currency.

5) Enhancements to Online Banking – I have found online banking within QuickBooks to be hit or miss. In many cases, it is just easier to enter transactions manually than to struggle with downloading and and entering/matching transactions from within online banking. Perhaps they have fixed some of the issues in the new version.

6) Company Snapshot Screen – I think that QuickBooks may have copied this from Peachtree because I noticed that Peachtree 2008 has a similar feature. This is a screen that gives you a “snapshot” of your business with an income and expense trend graph, account balances, a listing of customers who owe, vendors to pay, and reminders.

7) Create a Website - The ability to easily create your own website FREE through Intuit online services. The free trial is for 30 days and then it is just $4.99/month after that to maintain.

8) External Accountant User – When an Accountant user is designated, automatic permissions are set up that are similar to the Administrator's permissions. A couple of differences are that the Accountant does not have permission to view sensitive customer information such as credit card numbers and this user is the only one with access to the Client Data Review feature in the Pro, Premier, and Enterprise versions. I am really looking forward to using the Client Data Review because I think it will be a huge time saver and make it much easier to locate and correct errors in the books.

9) Intuit Statement Writer - Unfortunately this feature is only available in the Accountant's Premier edition and Enterprise edition. It links QuickBooks data with Excel so that us accountants can produce top notch customized financials for our clients. When the data in QuickBooks changes it automatically updates the linked financial statement in Excel.

I have to hand it to QuickBooks...they DO listen to feedback from accountants and customers and implement those suggestions into future program versions. For a one stop shop accounting program, it really is the best thing out there at a reasonable price.