QBO New Features October 2023

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Hector: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Katz Pollock, the original, the one and only Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia, CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks.

Hector: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, [00:00:30] we're going to talk about the firm of the future. What's new in QuickBooks? October 2023. Hi, Alicia, how are you?

Alicia: Hey, Hector, I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Hector: Very good. So there's a lot of things in this article that we've already covered in the past, in the last couple of episodes. So we're just going to talk about the new things that we haven't covered yet. The articles a little bit longer than this, but we talked last week about the QuickBooks bill [00:01:00] payments, which is probably one of the biggest news in the world of QuickBooks in many years. So a lot of these things are going to seem rather small. But one of the really cool things that happened with payroll specifically, is that you have the ability to change the mapping on individual payroll items and payroll taxes. So that's great. So you can have a richer chart of accounts. You can have a richer and a richer balance sheet. But what happens when your history [00:01:30] looks a certain way? You're going to remap those payroll items to new expense accounts or to new liability accounts. And you want, let's say, the last quarter, to be consistent or the last year to be consistent. So now QuickBooks introduced the ability to batch update historical transactions. So your profit and loss and balance sheet is consistent throughout. So that's a huge feature. And it allows you to choose [00:02:00] it by date which is really awesome. So the first attempt to this, which I think really released about a month and a half ago, you could you have to you could only choose for specific date forward. So you would have to say July 1st forward.

Hector: Now you can actually have a beginning and an end date. So if you want to go back and just do January 1st and then remap and update and then do February and then remap and update and do March, I mean, obviously you wouldn't remap again and remap again because [00:02:30] you would create inconsistencies, but this batch feature can do up to 200 transactions at the time. Okay. So before they added this date range, you, you could you could go back and say do from January 1st. But if you didn't know and most people are just not going to know, you know that there's more than 200 transactions. It would only go backwards and update up to 200 transactions. And then you get stuck going, oh wait, what the heck happened here? Why is there inconsistent in my in my profit and loss and [00:03:00] balance sheet. So. Interesting enough instead of fixing the whole the whole issue, which is just do unlimited transactions, like why stop it at 200 different conversation altogether. But so the patch that they came up with is we'll give you a date range. So maybe you can do a worst case scenario a week at a time or a month at a time. If you have more than 200 transactions that you have to sort of remap and go backwards and and change the mapping from payroll item to account. What [00:03:30] are your thoughts on that, Alicia?

Alicia: Well, I mean, it still strikes me as a workaround, but considering I would use this historic update and it wouldn't work, and I didn't know why, the fact that it would only do 200 transactions. Now, at least there is a way to go back and say, okay, I'll do it three months at a time and take a couple passes to get it updated. So thank you for at least a fix.

Hector: No, totally. I mean, long story short, we haven't had this for years. So being able to control [00:04:00] when you remap something and like this would be awesome in your inventory items and your service items and that sort of thing, because with it seems to be a little inconsistent depending on the item type, on which ones go backwards and fix historical. And you don't get this like dynamic date range where you can pick specifically which which periods you want the remapping of the item two accounts to happen. So I hope that the rest of takes takes a hint [00:04:30] from this and looks at the ability to update again, payroll to account mapping as well. In this. With this level of detail, you.

Alicia: Just gave me an idea. I would like to see this ability in the products and services that when you change a product and service and map it to a new category, now you have the ability to change the history, but it does the whole history, which doesn't really affect your back taxes, because all you're doing is just moving things from account to account. It's still an expense, [00:05:00] but oh my God, it would be so nice to be able to say, I just want to do this for 2020, for the current year and not the whole entire history.

Hector: Especially current like current. That's the biggest deal. Like, hey, last year it's done the current year, but I will qualify something. You said it won't affect your taxes if someone goes in there and changes a payroll mean not a payroll, sorry, a product or a service item from an expense account to a balance sheet account. Of course it'll change your financial statements. It will it will jack them [00:05:30] all up or vice versa. So you do really have to be careful, you know, at least keeping it in the same report, keep it all in the PNL or keep it on the balance sheet so it doesn't change fundamentally what's being displayed. One thing that's important to point out, because I know at this point accountants are getting super excited because they may have misunderstood this. You cannot change the source account of a paycheck that's still cannot be done. That's still the limitation that has [00:06:00] once a paycheck is created, the source account, the bank account that you paid from, it's permanent. And any adjustments you have to do weird journal entries and workarounds and clearing accounts. So it's only for the specific payroll items or the taxes.

Alicia: Yeah. And boy, do I wish that you could change the bank account because I have a video of a workaround when you forgot to remap your checking account because there's two different places to do it. So one of the problems that a lot of my business owners come across is they get a new [00:06:30] bank account, they set it in the payroll settings, but they don't change the mapping in the accounting section down at the bottom. So even though the payroll really came out of the correct place where they wanted it to in QuickBooks, it's in a different checking account. And if you wind up in that situation, don't panic. The actual fix is simply to in the checking account where the payroll really did come from, don't categorize it as wages in the category. Put the bank account where it where QuickBooks thinks it came from. [00:07:00] That way you're not double counting your you're not double counting your payroll, and you can zero out the balance in the checking account appropriately. And I have an instructional video on how to do that. But going back to something that you just said, Hector, about the mappings, the ability to do the dates, actually this you just really hit on the use case for this, that with the new ability to remap your payroll items. It used to be that QuickBooks insisted [00:07:30] that some of the line items be liabilities and some of the line items be expenses, and didn't give us the ability to specify where we wanted them to go. And that's what they did change in the last couple months. And the ability to now just say, I only want this in the current year forward is actually really important because if we did just do it in the history, then we would actually change our balance sheets from previous tax years.

Hector: Yeah, absolutely. [00:08:00] Trying to think of a case in which QuickBooks would traditionally force you to make this an expense account, but you would want to have it as a balance sheet account instead. So it could be something that shows up as a benefit on a paycheck. But at the end of the day, just it will get it gets cleared out. In what way, shape or form or the employee is going to pay it. Something like that could be could be a use case. Can you think of any others?

Alicia: Yeah, I've had this come up with several of my employees, and [00:08:30] I'm also trying to rack my brain to remember exactly what it was, but it was an employee benefit that was forcing them to map it to the liability instead of the expense where they wanted it to see. And when they were paying out to the agency, they were just just coding it straight back to the expense category so that it zeroed itself out, kind of like a clearing account, which is technically what the liability is for. But it was really clear that there was a residual at the end of this, and only [00:09:00] part of it was getting paid out. So there really was a true expense involved. And so this is that solve for that scenario.

Hector: Yeah. The one that I can think of that's sort of like that hybrid is I don't know if you know this, Alicia, but in tax, a company is allowed to pay an employee the face value of life insurance up to $50,000 as a benefit. But some companies that have the contract with the life insurance companies, where [00:09:30] they allow the employee to purchase more than the 50,000, 100,000, 200,000, a million, whatever. And that difference would be a benefit that it gets paid. It gets paid through the company, but it's eventually taken out of somebody's paycheck. So this is a situation where a line item like, like insurance will show up as a deduction to a paycheck, one part of it, and it will show up as a completely company paid benefit on the other part. But [00:10:00] when you actually go out and pay the vendor, it's one unified payment. So I can totally see how something that feels like the same category could be used in 1 in 1 way or the other.

Alicia: Yeah. Anytime you find yourself making a journal entry in order to correct the payroll mapping, this is your innovation right there.

Hector: Totally. And so definitely, I think I'm going to make a blanket statement here, because I've been a very big critic of payroll for a very long time. And the criticism [00:10:30] comes mostly from. Just my love for QuickBooks Desktop Payroll. It's like QuickBooks Online Payroll by itself without something to compare it to. It's a pretty good it's a pretty good system. I mean, like generally it's not very problematic. I mean, in the last five years, the hardest thing has always been like making corrections and having to get on a chat or call someone, like going backwards and fixing mistakes, because that has always been a headache. And [00:11:00] accountants were so used to like fixing our own mistakes, like it just takes so long to explain to someone else what the mistake is. And then the QuickBooks tech support team and payroll, like they're trained to like, avoid making as many changes as possible because it just adds more risk, like the more variability you add to any payroll, especially that's already happened. You already made the payment to the government, whatever it is, the more it lends itself to a potential error and into it, it's just not very clear. [00:11:30]

Hector: It's never been very clear contractually as to like when there's a payroll error, like who is liable for this error? How do you how do you identify who made the error? Was it the client? Was it the accountant? Was it QuickBooks payroll? So obviously that always created a big consternation in their in their support team. So the support team was almost always trying to convince the other person not to make a change that went backwards. Just just just do it different moving forward. And accountants were so used to like having this control [00:12:00] and payroll has always sort of felt like they're taking this control away from us. And these innovations that we're starting to see, like correcting, correcting a paycheck or correcting the payroll item or choosing where the payroll item goes to. Now, as accountants, we're feeling like they're giving us more power. And accountants, we're not really not not big, powerful beings outside of accounting. So like having control over our books is essentially what gives us that, that feeling that we have any power [00:12:30] or control of stuff.

Alicia: Yeah.

Alicia: I mean, it's been interesting because in a way, payroll has been controversial because it was so limited and it was had such big guardrails that a lot of people just didn't want to use it. And honestly, it has really evolved over the last couple of years. So if you haven't checked it out, you should. And you know, here's something that I've noticed in the last two months. I did two different Shbg to Shbg payroll, desktop to Qbo [00:13:00] conversions. And now that payroll does convert over, I have had two different clients where they're they're saying all the wrong things here, sorry, where their desktop payroll was actually set up wrong and calculating wrong. And we bring it over to Qbo. And it's like telling them, no, you can't pay on that schedule, you have to pay on this schedule. And my clients are like, I don't that's we've never done it that way. And it turns out that Qbo was correct, and they've been [00:13:30] doing it wrong in desktop for years, because you had so much control of desktop that if you didn't actually know what you were doing, you could set up something wrong and literally never know. And so that's what I'm finding moving people over, is that they've been doing it wrong. And was forcing them to do it right.

Hector: That's interesting. So when you convert from QuickBooks desktop to online with payroll, built in online runs is its integrity checks and lets you know if something doesn't jive. Yeah, [00:14:00] I love that. That's great.

Alicia: Yeah, I had a client who's been paying their state taxes on the wrong schedule for the last five years.

Hector: Do you do you remember if that was elite, QuickBooks Online Payroll, or was it like any any payroll? Because I know the elite one is the one we're into. It gives you like a $25,000 penalty guarantee, and they're a little bit more anal during the setup process to make sure that it's correct. Do you remember if that was elite?

Alicia: Well, you're going to find the same result no matter what version you are using. But that is the reason to actually at least [00:14:30] start with elite when you're getting set up. Because if you do have any penalties or issues, they do pay them for you. So I always encourage my clients to go through to start with elite, go through a whole quarterly cycle until you've paid out your quarterly taxes. If you're on a quarterly schedule, make sure that everything's hunky dory. You've paid a couple, you paid your federal, you've paid your state. It's all working, and then you can downgrade if you no longer need all of those features.

Hector: Yeah, that makes sense. So, Alicia, [00:15:00] you were excited about one specific thing in this article. What was that?

Alicia: That was the ability to make budgets for balance sheets. So this has always been a conundrum for me because my business owners think about their loan payments as an expense, not a liability. So when they're doing their budgeting, they want to be able to accommodate their loan payments and other liability payments. Now, this still isn't going to exactly address that issue, [00:15:30] but they are coming out with budgets for balance sheets. So if you are trying to make a plan for how much money you want to have in your checking account and making and your payoff schedules for your liabilities, or how much equity you want to see for each of your partners. You now are going to have that ability to do some planning around your balance sheet as well.

Hector: Now we're recording this on the last week of October [00:16:00] and in my QuickBooks Online Advanced files, I don't see the ability to set up budgets for balance sheet. The firm of the feature article doesn't give you a date, so I assume it's classic Intuit phased out I mean facing in the feature, but not telling anybody when, when and who and how do you have any information on this?

Alicia: Well, I have noticed that when you go to make a new budget, it asks you what kind of budget do you want to [00:16:30] make? But the only option is profit and loss. So they've got the placeholder there to turn on the option for budgeting. So we know it's coming.

Hector: It's coming now, I do wonder because we covered this in a previous episode. You can now import budgets into Qbo plus. And this is a plus feature I mean the budgets balance sheet budget is a plus plus feature as well, not just advanced. I wonder if we'll be able to import balance sheet budgets as well. And if you have all the same features of grabbing last year [00:17:00] and adding more to it. I mean, thinking of taking last year's PNL to build next year's budget, that makes sense. I wonder if taking last year's balance sheet to make next year's balance sheet is something that would make sense, because that's it's just so different. Like like, I'll be honest with you, I've been practicing for 15 years and I've done maybe 3 or 4 balance sheet budgets, and the purpose of it, at the end of the day, was to [00:17:30] show or prove that we weren't going to run out of cash, but in reality, beyond that, it wasn't something that just something a lot of people don't plan for. Budgets. Do you have experience helping people set up balance sheet budgets specifically, maybe outside of QuickBooks, of course.

Alicia: Yeah.

Alicia: I mean, for me, it almost feels like an exercise more for forecasting and kind of seeing where we're going and trying to hit some targets more than a practical exercise for, okay, what are we going to do [00:18:00] to reach this number, which is the activity that you get from doing it from a. A profit and loss budget. I still have this fantasy. The thing for me, that and it's just part of accounting. It has nothing. It's not a problem with QuickBooks. It's just a problem with accounting. Is that your your payments out for your liabilities, show up on a cash flow statement and they don't show up in either one of these reports. So there's that limitation. And so that's why I still [00:18:30] put a fake loan payment line item on in my expenses, just to use it as a holding tank for budgeting so that we can take a look at your spending and making sure that you're not overspending. You don't actually use it. Your budget versus actual for that loan payment expense account is always zero, but at least you can allocate your funds.

Hector: Yeah. The the fundamental issue that budgets have in business is [00:19:00] that it's not the same thing as cash flow planning. And in most, most human beings, when they when they're told budgets for this budget for that. Really, what they mean is don't run out of money if you have to pay for that, which is a different concept altogether. That would a financial statement budget is. So the challenge is and this is been a white whale that maybe software, many, many software companies have been chasing for years is like, how [00:19:30] do we solve the issue of people saying, I need a cash flow projection, a cash flow planner? But when they say the word cash flow or they say the word budget, it means the same to them. People really don't understand the distinction. And I wonder if now that we will have a, a, a balance sheet budget and after a couple of months of people using it and feedback if into it will finally learn. And I don't mean it negative like they haven't learned that [00:20:00] it's just no one has learned this on like how to properly solve the issue of cash flow planning that many people want and need. But the solutions are out there. None of them really feel like they work well.

Alicia: What about the Cash Flow planner in QuickBooks? I mean, doesn't that solve that problem? Because you can look at it, you can see how much cash you have. You can see when it goes up, when it goes down, when it goes below zero, and when it goes below a threshold that you set. And you can actually [00:20:30] add in all of these expenses in there because they're all hypotheticals. So you can future forward your upcoming payments and see how it affects your cash flow. So that works.

Hector: Well, there may be a different conversation because if you actually if you actually go out there and watch YouTube videos or listen to podcasts or have or read conversations on Facebook or the Facebook or the groups, [00:21:00] there's tons of conversations about almost everything that QuickBooks has. But like, no one talks about the cash Flow planner. No one complains about it and no one praises about it. It's almost like it's is it? That's the thing. I think nobody uses the cash flow planner. Like, seriously, like the usage percentage, the amount of people that actually use the cash. It must be so small. And I think this is one of the places that people look at, and they're so intimidated by it that they don't even dare to, like, criticize whether [00:21:30] it works or not. It's more like, I'll get to that next month, but nobody actually gets to it. What is it about the cash flow planner that doesn't attract people to it?

Alicia: Well, I actually just recorded a class about the Cash Flow planner, and yes, it took me two years to get around to taking a look at it and using it and showing people how it works. And you know what? It's kind of useful, but you do the things that it does is it will look.

Hector: You said kinda. You say kinda you.

Alicia: Well, [00:22:00] because you have to go in and you have to manipulate it like it will look at your spending patterns. So if it sees ongoing spending patterns, it will project them forward. And if you're using recurring transactions, it will incorporate them and accommodate them. But then you have to go in and say, well, I expect this client to give me this lump sum in three months from now, and I know that I'm going to have this expense coming in three, four months from now, and you actually have [00:22:30] to sit there and take the time to. Make it work, but it does what it does pretty well.

Hector: Yeah. That. What? We should dedicate an episode to? Cash flow planning, I think. I think there's just a lot of stuff, but the one thing.

Alicia: Yeah, exactly.

Hector: But the one thing that's really innovative about this, and not many companies have done this and this is for you. The 98% of people that haven't even touched cash flow planner. After you have your banks reconciled and all your banks are connected [00:23:00] to online banking. And that's that's sort of like the, the crux of it. Like you have to have almost like real time bank reconciliations. You have to have all your banks connected. You have to have all your invoices created. You have to have all your bills created. You have to have the terms set up correctly. You also have to assume that customers will pay in time. You have to assume that you will pay in time based on terms like once. It's like perfect scenario is set up and you open [00:23:30] Cash Flow planner, cash Flow Planner will actually take repeated expenditures that you are. You are not creating via bills already like it sees that you spend $10 in Microsoft every month. When you look at the next month, it will make the assumption that you're still subscribed to that per se, and it will create those projected expenditures. So with those projected expenditures, with the assumptions that customer will pay you within the terms, with the assumptions that you would pay your bills in time, with the assumption that [00:24:00] the beginning balance sheet is correct and reconciled. If all that stuff is a perfect storm, it is sort of there. Then the cash flow planner is kind of useful.

Alicia: Well, here's where it does get useful is that let's say you have an invoice and your customer is already overdue. You see it on your aging summary, but you don't see it in your cash flow at all because it hasn't happened yet. So this allows you to actually say, well, yeah, I know I have this overdue invoice and I [00:24:30] know it was due on this day, but I haven't been paid. I expect to get it paid on this day, and then you can actually put that date in the cash flow planner without editing your invoice, and see where the invoice really is going to hit your cash flow. That is useful.

Hector: That is useful because you're not you're not changing the underlying reality of the transaction. It's a different non posting area in Cuvio. So we started talking about balance sheets and budgets and we completely went [00:25:00] off the rails talking about cash flow.

Alicia: Planning as always, which.

Hector: Is not which is not a new feature, which is not a new feature. It's just like it just like it reminded me of that. The third thing we'll talk about, we'll touch on this quickly because it's actually kind of a small feature, but very useful. It's called the workflow run history. So if you're using Qbo advanced and you're looking at any particular workflow, you look at all the workflows that you have automated, you can now click on it and view the history and [00:25:30] see how many times a workflow was used and when and what the status of the of the workflows are. And that's very useful, very, very useful. I mean, anytime you show history audit trail, it's going to be very useful. And I'll add a quick note. I was talking to Mark, the developer right tool, my partner in our app, and we were talking about all the things that we kind of loved and hated about Qbo. And he pointed out, based on his experience working with many accounting [00:26:00] software, is that Qbo audit trail is one of its biggest strengths. It's the fact that it's not just a database of what you see, but it's a database of what you see and everything that happened up to the point for you to get there and. This specific area that's fairly new. The automation and workflow for advanced, it was only sort of a trigger. Like you press this button and then it and then it sets up your future [00:26:30] triggers for for workflow. But now being able to go back in history and see every time a workflow was used, you can actually now study whether or not the workflows are saving you time, whether or not they're being triggered correctly, whether or not you know they're being used often enough to maybe justify advanced or whatever it is. So I think that's very powerful. Having that sort of audit trail to your workflows is powerful as well.

Alicia: Yeah.

Alicia: It's also going to help you identify your bottlenecks that if you have a workflow where you're waiting for somebody for approval [00:27:00] and they're like, oh, I never got the notification, you can actually look back and say, oh yeah, no, we sent it to you two days ago at 8:45 a.m.. Go check your spam.

Hector: That's a great point. That's a great point. Because that was the whole thing with invoices, right? You send the invoice, the customer says, I never got it. You're like, no, no, no. 8:57 a.m.. We send the invoice.

Alicia: And in fact, you.

Alicia: Viewed it. I can see that you viewed it.

Hector: That you viewed it, you looked at it and you ignored it. Right. So like there's also that there should also be that level [00:27:30] of scrutiny and audit trail for your employees and your internal workflows. And I think we have a fourth thing that we wanted to mention, Alicia.

Alicia: And this one is actually going back to payroll and all of the mappings. They are now making an automatic default that when you are setting up your local taxes before, every time you added in a new local tax, it would ask you what the frequency is. And now it just looks at all your other local taxes and says, oh, they're all quarterly. Okay, I'll [00:28:00] make this one quarterly too, unless you want to change it. So, you know, very, very, very subtle little validation on a field, but very helpful.

Alicia: Exactly.

Alicia: And you are fond of saying every second counts.

Alicia: Yeah, exactly.

Hector: And there's this thing that's not really kind of not new, this new feature. It's just an announcement. It's like if you have Chase, you're going to have to disconnect it and reconnect it. For some reason, it looks like QuickBooks is sort of mocking with the Chase connectivity. And by the way, the mocking is not [00:28:30] necessarily a bad word. I'm just saying that, you know, maybe they're trying to improve the the bank feeds that come from Chase into QuickBooks online. So if you have Chase connected, you can have to reconnect every single one because Chase will stop feeding information into qbo, which maybe sort of explains the things that a lot of people are complaining in the Facebook groups, which is the fact that when you when you download transactions through Chase, now, Chase no longer is showing in the details in the sort of bank memo, the [00:29:00] last four digits of the account that you're transferring with. So when you deal with transfers, let's say you have a business that has four bank accounts and they're moving money back and forth, or maybe the owners transferred money into her bank account, or the owner is putting money in the in the business. As bookkeepers, when we look at the last four digits of the from account or the two account in a transfer, then we know how to classify this. We know this goes to distribution. We know this is a transfer to [00:29:30] this other account for some reason in the last couple of months. And it seems to be inconsistent, like some people are getting it and some are not. These bank memos from Chase, from Chase Bank are not bringing those last four digits. So it's a nightmare. You have to log in into Chase.com and see the transactions manually or look at it on the paper statement. So maybe possibly, you know, this whole reconnection thing is them trying to fix it. I don't know, I'm speculating at this point, but.

Alicia: Well, I think this is a good [00:30:00] opportunity for flood that feedback. Let them know that if you are having trouble with your Chase connection and you are reconnecting it, and then all of a sudden you don't have the same bank memos that you had. If they used to work, they could work again. So head up to the gear, go to feedback and say, give me my Chase Bank memos back, please.

Hector: I wonder if that's a problem or a bank problem. In either case, it would have to be Intuit who contacts the bank, because now you're going to be able to call Chase and say, hey, can [00:30:30] you fix my bank feeds? Right? I'm not going to happen.

Alicia: That's not going to happen.

Alicia: No. Yeah. I mean, and Chase historically has been one of the most reliable of the bank feed connections. And so the fact that it has been going down has been kind of, you know, concerning. And now hearing that they're having trouble with the bank detail, I don't want to hear this. I want Chase to continue to being one of those excellent, consistent feeds. So I hope this all gets worked out absolutely well. [00:31:00]

Hector: This is the last episode we record before QuickBooks connect the the big event for QuickBooks. So hopefully on the next episode, we will be talking about all the things that Intuit will announce. And it will be it's like the Super Bowl for the unofficial QuickBooks accountants.

Alicia: Yeah.

Hector: The the new things, the new things that will be announced by by QuickBooks.

Alicia: You're either going to hear a whole lot of really long episodes from us, or just episode after episode after episode, because we're going to have so [00:31:30] much to talk about.

Alicia: We will.

Hector: So with that being said, Alicia, thank you very much for being here, and we'll see you on the next one.

Alicia: I'll see you in the next one.