How To Give QuickBooks Feedback

Warning: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Hector Garcia: Welcome to the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Katz Pollock, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

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

Hector Garcia: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, [00:00:30] we're going to be talking about giving QuickBooks feedback. Hey, Alicia, how are you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey, I'm great actor. How are you doing?

Hector Garcia: Good. So this was your idea? Um, you have you have a strong belief that in the last three months that I've observed that, too. There's been tons of fractured feedback in social media about, uh, specifically about things in QuickBooks online or things with Intuit in general. Some of the connected products like, um, QuickBooks checking and payroll [00:01:00] and, and QuickBooks Bill pay and all these things that have felt like just an avalanche of changes and new features in the last three months. And you believe that, um, we as an accounting community haven't really had the conversation around what is the best, most proper way to give feedback that is effective. So number one, they listen. They understand. Number two, that they actually take action. Right. And let us know what the [00:01:30] status is. And most importantly, I think, Alicia, you've been privy to what the feedback gathering process is. So if you enlighten us on that, I think it allows us to kind of understand, you know, how the feedback is handled. So with that, uh, you know, take it away.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Well thank you. I mean, the communication with Intuit really has to be a two way street. And ideally, Intuit is is using us as bookkeepers and trusted partners to improve the product. And we know that they've been [00:02:00] doing a lot of changes under the hood. And it's had some probably from their end, some unintended consequences. And I've been reading on the socials just an increasing frustration with the product and with the experience. And so I was hoping to be proactive, to kind of smooth the to pave the way and smooth the communication so that Intuit is getting good, actionable feedback and not just a lot of blowback that they have to react to.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I think.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I think, I think one of the things we need to mention is, [00:02:30] uh, sort of the format or the way, the initial way to give feedback. So I think the, the, the best, most simple way to give feedback is going to be in product, because in product is going to be most, most, uh, contextual. Because when QuickBooks gets a piece of feedback, they know which screen you're in. So when you say the save button is not working or something like that, okay, there's a save button all over the place in QuickBooks. So, you know, even if you're missing information, hopefully the context helps [00:03:00] a little bit. Um, in the in the product most feedback screens and this has been a bit inconsistent. They will also be a little camera icon where you can take a send a screenshot as well. I strongly recommend that when you do send the the the feedback, just because you don't know who's reading it and you don't know if this is the first time they read this, specific feedback is if you can take a screenshot and maybe with your snipping tool, circle the area that they need to kind of focus in, it's going to it's going to create just much, much, much better context. [00:03:30] Um, also, I think it's important that you not just say, you know, my application of payment is not working, that you maybe explain a little bit of the background of what you were trying to achieve. Just say, hey, I had this open bill that, you know, that was originally matched through the bank and they unmatched it. And then I tried to apply a payment. And it looks like if you give a little background about the things that you tried to do, that also helps quite a bit. So it does put a lot more onus on you as the feedback giver to try to be a little bit more specific and do the screenshots. [00:04:00] And hopefully with the snipping tool, you can do, uh, some, uh, some annotations. But that's kind of the, the best way to start doing it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The more specific you are, the better. You know, what Intuit is experiencing is, for example, and I'm being specific in my feedback to you is when they first started rolling out the new reports, people would go there. They'd be kind of like like shocked by like, oh my God, this is so different. It's not what I'm used to. I don't know what to do. I'm leaving. And then [00:04:30] when you go back, it puts up a, it pops up a feedback saying, well, what was your experience? And most people are just going, I hate this. And then leaving. And so 75% of the feedback that Intuit is getting is completely unhelpful. They need to know what's not working. Why isn't it working like you said, what what have you tried? And so if you can be specific, I'm running the transactions list by tag report and I'm finding that the amounts are negative when it's on a credit [00:05:00] card instead of positive. And then that actually gives them somewhere where they can go look, they can run the report, they can see what the problem is and then know what to do. And that's a huge help to them. The more detail we give, the better.

Hector Garcia: I do want to add some context. Uh, when Alicia said you go back, uh, I think she kind of means that some screens still have a button that lets you see, like, the classic version of that screen. So reports is a good example. In some cases, the new estimates [00:05:30] and the new invoices are a good example. So there's some situations where um, you can go back essentially to go look at the old view or the old style or the old, uh, version of a certain screen, but that's not, um, across everything. Like sometimes you'll be like in the new build screen and you don't have a way of going back to classic view, and there's no going back to it. Like, you have to work within what you have, and then the feedback has to be given within what you're looking at.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So let's actually take a minute and [00:06:00] talk about all the different places and the ways that you can give feedback. So the one that we just were discussing is when they're beta testing a new product or a new layout or a new interface, if you go back to the original view, it always asks you, well, what was your experience? And so that's specific to why what's not working and why did you leave.

Hector Garcia: But I'll add a note to that. Sorry. The new invoice and the new estimate does give you a pop up where you can rate it from 1 [00:06:30] to 10 or put a happy face and add a note. But the reports, they took that away because it was taking so much time for people to opt out of that thing. Uh, because people accountants were giving feedback some other place saying that going back from classic view to, to modern view, um, like just going back to it was taking an extra step. So they actually took away the automatic pop up requesting for feedback in the reports. So you won't see that specifically on reports anymore, or at least as of right now that I'm testing the file. [00:07:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's probably also because they were getting useless feedback. Oh this sucks, I hate it. It's not what I need. And I'm going back. Correct?

Hector Garcia: Correct. I can't find the information. I don't like it. Go back to the old reports. That's the type of stuff that they were seeing. So so on the specifically on the new reports, on the on the modernized reports, there's actually a, an actual text on the top right of the reports that it's in blue and it says give feedback. And when you open that it says, uh, tell us what you think of the report. Builder. That's what it's called. So, so specifically with reports [00:07:30] you you. The only way to give feedback is to click on give feedback and and keep in mind that there's there's two ways to give feedback in QuickBooks online generally. One is you can click on the gear menu and then under profile click feedback. That's generic feedback. And that one is not contextual enough to allow the for it to go to the specific people that are working on that area of QuickBooks. So that goes to the generic feedback team. And again, if you do it through there, which is fine, make sure you do penny screenshots and [00:08:00] notes and specifically to what screen you're looking at. I would even venture to copy the URL of the of the screen you're looking at and paste it on the feedback. So when they paste it back in their side, they can kind of test to try to see the same thing you're saying.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's brilliant. That's absolutely brilliant. Um, so that that gear feedback up under the gear and then to feedback is kind of the main centralized feedback. It also does have a little camera in it which is supposed to take a screenshot for you. But for me that has never [00:08:30] worked. I don't know if it's just my computer or if the feature doesn't work, but that is the main place to go and when I leave feedback there, I also sign mine. I put in parentheses this is Alicia or something like that, or like Hector, you've said that you'll put your contact information in there if you want to be reached. And occasionally I have had people, um, that from their development team write back and say, oh, well, this is something that we're working on, or, hey, we need more information about that. And they have actually reached out to me.

Hector Garcia: I actually put my cell phone [00:09:00] sometimes, not every time, depending on the type of feedback, but when I'm giving feedback of something that's fundamentally broken that you know that, like me as a shareholder, not just as an accountant and as a, as a, as a user or as a, you know, group, you know, Facebook group leader or whatever. Um, as a, as a shareholder, I don't want my, you know, my investment and into it to be to have an embarrassment over something being broken in accounting. So I would say something like, hey, this report is actually omitting this specific piece of information from the accounting. [00:09:30] This is crucial. This is broken. Uh, here's my cell phone. If you don't understand it, this requires immediate action. So sometimes and of course, saying my name and have a little bit of clout and, you know, probably causes people to react a little bit more. I'm not I'm not saying that every single person that puts their cell phone number in there is going to have a direct phone call from the, from the team. But I'm telling you, I've done it as much as that, and I've gotten phone calls within the hour of me putting that. So someone definitely is reading that, okay, that's actually going through and reading it because, you know, there's [00:10:00] no but that says, hey, detect when Hector sends feedback and puts a cell phone number like someone's reading it and going, oh, this is this seems to be important. This person is putting their their contact information.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Hector and Alicia don't get our own links unfortunately. Yeah. So so just to so to recap that this segment, there's three different places to leave feedback. The main one is up under the gear. The second one is contextual that when you're on a certain screen that there'll be a little feedback inside that screen. And that actually goes directly to their product development [00:10:30] team that's responsible for that feature. And then there's when they're beta testing and they'll and you leave it, then they'll ask you to feedback. So those are the three fundamental ways of of leaving feedback.

Hector Garcia: Right. The third one when you're mentioning and the third one is when it actually pops up when you yes, when it pops up it says, hey, give feedback. Yeah, I would definitely give feedback on those, especially when the pop up was cost on an action that you took where you actually went back and said, I don't like this version, give me a better version or whatever. [00:11:00] So those are probably the best time to do it. Just going back to the classic mode won't fix the problem, because I'm going to tell you something. From the last two years or so, Intuit state hasn't been, oh, people are going back to the classic mode. Therefore, we should not move forward and progress this feature into the next thing. All it does is maybe slows down a little bit. But basically when you see a major change in the screen, the changes, it's coming. Okay. So now so now we need to make sure that that they [00:11:30] work around this change and you just make it fit. Like for example the new invoices. I really haven't met any accountant that has said I love the way the new invoices look like like, I think that almost every accountant that has at least more than one year experience using QuickBooks online didn't like the change.

Hector Garcia: Um, this has been happening for maybe two and a half years where they've been testing the new invoice and estimates sort of. Look, um, they're not going backwards. They're actually trying to push this, um, uh, forward as fast as possible. [00:12:00] There's been some delays, and we've talked about that in previous podcasts where, you know, the sales tax wasn't working properly and some of the additional custom fields weren't working properly, but they're moving forward towards the new the new version of invoices, even though I didn't like it that much at first. They've made some fundamental changes, like, for example, to the table, they made it more like the old table then. Now it makes it a little bit more pleasant to work with. And now, you know, I'm sort of. So used to it. I no longer sort of dread the new version of the old version, so [00:12:30] that feedback is going to make the product better, and it's it's more valuable that you're giving the feedback live rather than just saying, I hate it. And and like like just keeping your opinion to yourself. Sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So now let's talk about what happens with that feedback. So now I'm going on what I've been told. And many of these are things I've been told more than once. But there is a TV monitor somewhere on the Intuit campus where every time you put feedback [00:13:00] up, at least under the gear, it rolls up on their TV set and there's somebody monitoring this, and that's how they know immediately if there's outages, all of a sudden they'll start getting complaints that, you know, things aren't working. Um, it's also where they can look for patterns that if there is heavy usage on one particular feature at one particular time, they can see who's doing what and when and then what they do at the end of the week is they compile all the [00:13:30] feedback that has been gathered, and they have a meeting every Friday, and they go through all of the feedback and they figure out, okay, well, that's just user error, that's user error, that's user error. Oh wait, here's a problem. Oh wait, here's five people who had that same problem. Oh, this is an important problem. The more people who give feedback about one specific issue, the higher up it goes on their priority list. So by the time this Friday meeting comes around, they look at what their priorities are. Where are [00:14:00] they going to put their attention on making the corrections or fixing features, or improving the experience? That's how they set their agenda for development for the following week.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. And one of the examples in terms of like pattern gathering, and I would venture to say at this point that they probably are applying some AI into just sort of looking at this feedback and, and because obviously saying the report is unreadable, hard to read. Uh, the font [00:14:30] size is too small, it's too gray, not big enough, not bold enough. Like those six pieces of feedback would be difficult to group into into a into one unless a human being is actually reading every single one of them and grouping them together and, you know, and reading thousands of feedback that's coming in per hour. So I'm sure AI is using patterns to say, okay, look, these six things seem to be the same type of feedback, although they're using different words. Now, prior to, you know, us [00:15:00] understanding how AI works, I used to be like in the conferences, I used to be, um, I used to be the one that tell people, listen, this is the very feedback that all 200 of us are going to give. You're going to go into Qbo, you're going to click on the feedback and you're going to say, on this screen, we need a larger font size. I don't want anybody to have any variations say the exact same thing on the invoice. Larger font size, use the same six words, seven words. And then what ends up happening is, you know, they'll be able to pick that pattern up really quick. So prior to AI, [00:15:30] you know, the rudimentary systems that would pick up patterns would require the same keyword per se. I think more like the way Google works. You know, it's all keyword based. And the AI can now take multiple concepts that are sort of semi related and group them together. So it's getting better. Um, you know, identifying patterns.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Do you know that they're using AI to run through these or do you think that they're just I would imagine that they're using a spreadsheet and and doing search [00:16:00] patterns.

Hector Garcia: I don't know for a fact that they are. I'm just saying I'm assuming that at this point they have they have the technology to do that.

Speaker3: Sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, so and so that's why the more specific you are with your with your words, the better results. And the sooner that we're going to see things. And, you know, you've heard me joke on, on this podcast before about flood that feedback. You know, if there's something that we collectively would like to see happen, you know, I would love to see, you know, somebody on [00:16:30] social say, hey everybody, post this feedback. And then we all go post that feedback. You know, like my, my big thing that's front of mind from what we were just saying about the invoices, is the fact that all of the actions that you take on an invoice, on the new invoices are under this tiny little action button that you can only see if you click manage. But those are the things we do with invoices that need to be at the root level and available just immediately from the buttons. So everybody should flood that feedback and let them know [00:17:00] that in the new invoice experience, you have to click on manage and then click on actions in order to copy an invoice. And it just shouldn't be hidden and it shouldn't be that hard.

Speaker3: Okay.

Hector Garcia: So that's essentially our ask. You know, use the important feedback. Be specific. Um, if there's new screens, be the screens. Make sure to use if those pop ups come up use those or use the specific input. In feature feedback, which is not in the gear menu. This is actually exposed. [00:17:30] Um, so that's that's the the structure feedback. Let's talk about some of the scattered feedback that people give out there. So we have Facebook groups like I run a group called uh, cube-e Power Users that has 15,000 plus users. Alicia runs a group called QuickBooks Online Training or something like that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Training for QuickBooks users.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, training for QuickBooks users. That has over 10,000 users. Um, and then users tend to sort of vent their frustrations in there. The challenge with that is, even though I can tell you at this point, [00:18:00] there's enough Intuit employees looking at the power users, um, the power users group, just because I've given people feedback, uh, manually, like over a phone call or a resume. And I would say something like our Facebook group was talking about that and they would say, yeah, I know I read. Yeah, I know I've been reading. Yeah, I know I've been looking. So, so obviously, um, there are some users, some Facebook users in these groups that are reading that's that's a good thing. That's a healthy thing. Okay. We [00:18:30] want we want, uh, QuickBooks employees to be in these groups because because through these conversations and the the trends of these conversations, they can understand how users are feeling. So I am not going to discourage using Facebook groups for that, because I can tell you at this point, Facebook groups are a great tool to give feedback. The problem is that it's dependent on the 2 or 3 employees that are reading it, and then those people have to then put it in some other database, or take it with their heads to the Friday meeting or whatever it happens to be. It's not, [00:19:00] um, it's not structured enough for the actual product managers to see. So it's usually more like the leaders that are looking at this.

Hector Garcia: And I got to tell you honestly, most of the time, even the Intuit leaders don't understand the nature of the feedback. Like they understand that people are frustrated about something, something to do with invoices, but they don't understand the specific mechanics of this drop down menu used to give me this option and no longer it gives me this option, or now it takes three clicks to get into this option. And then when I click and I save it and I go back to it, it doesn't save sometimes, like the specific [00:19:30] mechanics of how like these buttons are working, especially when they're mocking with the design of the software itself. Uh, it goes over the heads of some of the leaders, because that's not what they're doing. Like the leaders are more worried about, hey, you know, our accountants, you know, moving out of QuickBooks online into some other solution because we messed up, messed up something big time or, you know, uh, the price increases, you know, how how are they really affecting, you know, the users at the end, like they're looking at more of the sort of high level stuff when it's specific things having to do with the product. That's where the impact of feedback [00:20:00] works as well. There's also other places I looked at feedback. I've been seeing feedback in Reddit quite a bit. I I'm in the QuickBooks Reddit group channel, whatever it's called.

Hector Garcia: And Alicia, you're there too. So sometimes you see, you know, sort of random feedback there. I doubt anyone from Intuit is reading Reddit. There's also stuff in Twitter. You know, if nobody from Intuit follows you, you know, they might, they might they might not look at that. Uh, sometimes they tag QuickBooks, sometimes they don't. It's just all over the place. I got to tell you, like, if I had a preference and it might be biased, it would be like [00:20:30] Alicia's or my group in Facebook because we can read that feedback. And sometimes we'll see that somebody wrote a feedback. And the feedback itself is not structured in a way that it could make sense to a product manager. So sometimes we'll add a comment saying, oh yeah, this particular screen, because of this button, this was changed recently. And sometimes we'll, we'll, we'll, you know, snuff out what's essentially not, you know, feedback. It's more of a user error like what do you say peacock or peacock. Right. The problem exists between the user [00:21:00] and the keyboard. So so in the Facebook groups which are a little more interactive, we can discern the difference between okay, this is broken in the product versus this is more like a bookkeeping problem that you have to sort through. Um, and then when you actually see people responding to that specific piece of feedback, that feedback might be something that that sort of bubbles up, unfortunately.

Hector Garcia: And this is a big problem, Intuit doesn't have its own feedback system. Okay. Like they have they have that that what feels that [00:21:30] what I mean by that, it doesn't have an interactive feedback system that the users can see what's happening. It just has that little void, the little black void where you go in there and you give a feedback and you don't know what happens until something actually happens. Whereas whereas I think we're into a benefit, we're quite a bit. Give me a second, Alicia. Where where it would benefit quite a bit is when we give this feedback, it would be nice to go to a place where we can actually see all the feedback that we have given. We can see if it's been read, we can see if it's if if it's been grouped with [00:22:00] other types of feedback, we can see if it's been sent to a product manager to work on. We can see if it's been identified as something they're working on, maybe something with a timeline and a and a roadmap. And then somebody saying, yeah, we identified this will be something we can fix. And then, hey, we actually fixed it. That would be incredible. Like we have the QuickBooks users are so excited and so passionate that they would go in there. They would upvote. They won't suggest repeated feedback if somebody. Already working on something that's missing, and I don't know why Intuit doesn't have [00:22:30] that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That used to be there, that there used to be when you put in feedback. And I don't know if I'm talking ten years ago now, you used to put in feedback and it would actually bring up a list of topics and say, is your topic related to any of these? And then you could upvote the ones or add comments to an existing thread. And they did away with that. And I think that would be kind of the kernel of what you're talking about, if they could pull that forward again, because I think that transparency is really helpful, that if I give a a piece of feedback [00:23:00] and I can see that 200 other people have had the same thing, that gives me the peace of mind of knowing, hey, I'm not alone, that hey, Intuit's going to have to look at this because there's a significant number of users that are affected by this. So I love your idea. I love the of the idea of having a feedback site where we can go look up problems and see where they're at and see what they're working on. That kind of transparency would go a long way, right?

Hector Garcia: Plus, you know, where it helps quite a bit if somebody has [00:23:30] taken their time to write a detailed set of feedback and put screenshots, and I'm having the same problem, like it would be a waste for me to go through the same exercise. I could just look at it and go, I'm having the same problem upvote. And then basically that allows me to save those 15 minutes of good feedback and spend it in other type of feedback. So the problem is, you know, we might get a lot of users feel frustrated that they're giving too much feedback and they're not seeing enough action. And the and the reality [00:24:00] is, because we might be all be giving redundant feedback because we don't have a system like this, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Now. Fortunately, I've been putting in so much feedback for so long that I get the satisfaction of seeing things that I suggest happen and come into play. And again, I'm specific, you know, like when the reports when the new version of the reports came out and the rows were really wide and they had a line between them, I was specific, okay, you don't need that much white space. And please take out the hard rule between each row. And they did [00:24:30] and they're gone. So you know it. They do. Listen, I mean, way back in the day, I guess it's not even relevant anymore. But you know, there's a confirmation message that pops up every time you complete a transaction. For a while, it was right on top of the plus button, which used to be in the center. And so it would cover up your ability to do your next action until that went away. And so I complained about that. And literally the next day they just dropped it down an inch so that it wasn't covering up the button. And I know that was because of [00:25:00] my feedback.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I know, but the other challenge you have is like, you remember that. So like you and your mind, you believe your feedback works. But when, when, when every user that has given feedback ever, um, either through just like don't don't remember anymore because there's no way to look at the feedback you have given, um, can recognize that the feedback has been has been heard, and they automatically think that they don't listen to feedback or they don't care about customers. I remember with desktop software and QuickBooks desktop [00:25:30] obviously had this. You had release notes that basically said, hey, version three, we added this, version four, we added this version five, and that became a permanent record. So like you could never like QuickBooks desktop users could really never go back and say into a never listens because you can go back and look at the release notes and you can see all the things that they fixed over the history and that that's permanent record, permanent history. Okay. Like with right tool, for example, as a developer, I have a permanent record of every single thing that we have added to every version, everything we [00:26:00] started. Yes, it's a very long list, but if anybody will come to us and say, hey, you guys are not listening to feedback, you can say, well, you can look at the history of every change that we've made and every update that we make, and I can beg to differ. So Intuit, I think, wants to say that to users. Hey, by the way, this that's not true. We we don't ignore you. We don't don't listen to you. The problem is they don't have a place to go show the progress that they've made. Like, we have to remember all these things.

Speaker3: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You know, the the. We were talking about the bell [00:26:30] a couple of weeks ago having release notes pop up where every week they tell us all, even the tiniest little tweaks that they've done, where they just give us a running list of all the changes that they've made in the software that week and have it up under the notifications bell so that we can go see what's new, what's been fixed. Because one of the things that I also see from reading the forums is people are like, oh, QuickBooks doesn't do this. Well, yeah it does. And they changed it, but because you already dismissed it out of hand, you [00:27:00] never saw that it actually they fixed it and changed it. And so that's one thing with QuickBooks is you can't just make your decisions about how it is and what it does because it changes right out from under you. And so, you know, I had somebody complain that the 1099 wizard, you can't do corrections. Well guess what? As of 2024 you can correct your 1099. But unless you actually give it a chance or read the articles or take my class, you don't know it's there. You know there's not there's not enough fanfare.

Hector Garcia: Now. [00:27:30] And when you say when you say, read the articles, we're specifically talking about going into firm or the future, clicking on what's new and then clicking on every month edition of What's New in QuickBooks online. And because there's there's two articles you want to be reading, you know, QuickBooks online, new features and improvements for the month of December, January, February, all that stuff. Another one you want to be looking at, which doesn't seem to be exactly monthly, but it seems to be like every other other month, which is the, the, um, the feedback [00:28:00] from accountants. Uh, this is do you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mean you mean your feedback, your feedback in action.

Hector Garcia: Your feedback in action. So there's two articles you want to go to firm of the future and basically subscribe to and listen and read every month, which is the monthly what's new in QuickBooks online, which is for both accountants and end users. And then your feedback in action, which is specifically, uh, feedback from accountants. And then once you start reading those, you start realizing that, oh yeah, they are listening to accountants. There's some very specific accounting needs in [00:28:30] your feedback in action. I recommend looking at that again, because you said I got very frustrated once with with a particular area of QuickBooks and completely dismiss it, and I haven't seen it in six months. Hey, maybe maybe what you wanted it's there already you know.

Speaker3: Mhm. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And also the in the no webinars every month. That's where they talk about the new features and the big changes. Not these tiny little tweaks but the big changes. So that's Intuit doing their best to communicate with us. But I can't tell you how much I really like your idea of a weekly [00:29:00] release notes. Just like all the tiny little things that they're fixing on the back end that helps us. So hey.

Hector Garcia: I don't even know if weekly I don't know if weekly is going to be a thing. I mean, because I don't know if they do changes in a weekly basis, but at least every single time something changes, you know, hey, release notes, we change this, we change this, we change this. That will help us to.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sometimes they're teeny tiny little things. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: But but the underlying problem, which is a whole nother issue here, which is, is really us giving [00:29:30] feedback to Intuit in general, which is there are multiple versions of QuickBooks online out there. I mean, I'm not talking about like simple start and essentials. I'm saying even multiple essentials companies can have, their bills could look different across three different company files. So that makes it particularly challenging because you can have, for example, somebody in Facebook goes, you know, this thing is broken with the bills, this button doesn't work or something. And then somebody will reply and saying, that's absolutely wrong. I'm looking at the bill screen and that's not working. What the problem [00:30:00] is you're both looking at two different bill screens. Yeah, that's a problem.

Speaker3: You know.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Would it help to put your company ID in the feedback so that they can see which company and which server and which release you're on?

Hector Garcia: Yes. Well yeah. Right. Like you don't know which release and which server because that information is not public. But yes, if you put your company ID, the specific company ID that you're having the problem in that feedback, that should make it easier for them, because then they could reference it and go, oh yeah, they're still in the old version, or they're in the new beta version. [00:30:30] Um, like for example, the new there's a new version of the products and services screen. I don't know if you if you've seen it. Alicia. Um, it's called beta. Okay. Like when you go in there, you look at products and services, it says beta. So it's very clear that it's a new version, but only some of the company files have it. So, you know, so the challenge is you can give feedback on on this screen or even publicly say, hey, this thing is broken. And then other people might not even have access to it. And then and then people are fighting online [00:31:00] with each other because they think the other person is talking about some user error issue. And the reality is that you have different versions of the screen. This is why the screenshot is such a crucial part of the process.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I mean, this for me is a challenge that I come across all the time with my books that the lessons are written on Craig's landscaping, which tends to be very stable, and they only update it when something's solid and good to go. But then the lessons or the exercises are based on brand new files [00:31:30] from the Intuit Education portal, which tend to be all the things that they're releasing in beta testing. And so I actually have to have like two sets of instructions for a lot of the, a lot of the content.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, that's a huge challenge. Uh, anything else with, uh, with feedback, Alicia, anything else in your world having to do with, uh, specifically with feedback?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing that I would make sure of, like you said, is making sure you're not putting in feedback about user error. I've done that sometimes where I'm, I put in feedback [00:32:00] that something's broken and then I realize, oh, shoot, I did this when I wasn't supposed to. Sometimes I go back into the feedback and I say, hey, that thing that I just wrote, never mind. I have no idea if that helps them or that's more confusing.

Speaker3: Yeah, but.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'll.

Speaker3: Cop to it if I.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Do it myself.

Speaker3: Yeah, that.

Hector Garcia: Happened to me once. I sounded the alarms about the new, um, fixed asset manager. Uh, because I didn't realize that it doesn't go back and do past journal entries that it only did future ones. So I raised the alarms that I spent all this time. Adding [00:32:30] the assets and doing this and doing that. I'm saying. But it's not working like nothing is working. The journal entries are not happening, and the problem is I have to wait until the next month, next round for the journal entries to start showing up. So I did this whole dissertation about like why you shouldn't release broken things and this and that. And then I went back and I'm like, I saw that they released a new video on YouTube that explained it, and in the video somewhere it said, by the way, the last entries won't I mean, the last period periods are not going to be entered. It's only for future periods. And I go, oh crap, yeah, that's the [00:33:00] problem. So sometimes you also want to go check the YouTube channel to see if there's been a new video being released about a particular feature, because sometimes they'll mention that quickly. Now, the challenge is that, like as a user, there's so much like so much weight on me to, okay, I got to look at the frame of the future website. I got to look, I got to look at the feature that's on my screen with face value, with no text or no context. I got to go look at a YouTube, uh, channel. I have to interact with people on Facebook to see what their experience is. There's there's a lot of weight [00:33:30] on our shoulders on this. So unfortunately, you know, uh, into it probably gets a lot of feedback. That's, that's user error and, and and like don't don't fear. The point is don't fear entering feedback because of what we said. I'm saying just, you know, just take a look at it first. You know, make sure that you're covering all your bases. Uh, and then and before sounding the alarms, you know, make sure it's not you didn't miss a step somewhere. Um.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Absolutely.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So with that, let's wrap it up. Alicia, what's going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, I [00:34:00] am in the middle of a series of. I just released a new course on the new 1099 Wizard, so they revamped it from the previous years. It talked about this in a previous episode, so I just released my walkthrough video on how to do that. Next week. I'm teaching a brand new course on QuickBooks time, which I've been wanting to teach a course on it since it was tsheets, but it was so daunting. But now that it's in product and part of payroll, I am finally recording that content. So I'm working hard [00:34:30] on that course. And so I'm releasing that one on the 16th, and the next class that I have coming up at the end of January is one of my favorite ones, and it's what I call the year end cleanup for tax time. And what I'm doing in that class is I'm demonstrating how I go through one of my clients files and all the nooks and crannies that I look in for bad data, missing data, incomplete data, um, data errors and everything. So that by the time I run through it, I know that their books are 100% solid and ready for taxes. [00:35:00] So I'm on January 30th teaching that class.

Hector Garcia: Okay. And I heard that you're going to redo your payroll class around February 2nd. So the QuickBooks payroll. So all that stuff you can find in royal wise comm in, uh, in Alicia's education website, uh, in my world, um, you know, we, you know, with right tools specifically because of tax season, we're going to kind of slow down the new features and changes because we don't want to rattle the cage for accounting professionals. So we'll be updating some things in [00:35:30] in our tool. But the big announcement that we made, uh, earlier this week is that we finally have dates, venue, theme and everything for my conference that I'm running in in South Florida. So I'll give you a quick Alicia, you don't know it. So I'm going to tell you right now.

Speaker3: No, I'm looking forward to it.

Hector Garcia: You're hearing this for the first time. So the conference is called reframe. We actually rebranded from the alt accountant conference to reframe. And the the reason why we use reframe is because my [00:36:00] goal is to help rebrand the profession. Like that's my life goal at the moment. Like my job is to make sure that the accounting profession and everything that's attached to it bookkeeping, tax, accounting, technology, all that stuff, it's actually seen as the most fun, creative and forward looking out of all the professions. And unfortunately, you know, even though we do dabble in tech and that sort of thing, accounting is actually seen as more of the predictable, mundane, boring, noncreative [00:36:30] type of thing. So I'm trying to flip it on its head or reframe, you know, what people, how people feel about accounting, accountants and how accountants feel about themselves, the profession and the work that they do. So the Reframe conference will be an it's an annual conference. The 2024 theme is called Influential Conversations for accountants. We're going to be focusing on all the conversations that we have with clients, with vendors, with employees, with other colleagues, [00:37:00] and how to strengthen, uh, our skills and having more effective conversations that actually influence the point of having any conversation is to to take your idea, transmit it to the other person, and get the other person to agree that it's a good idea.

Hector Garcia: You don't have to change somebody's mind, but they have to learn your point of view and the word choices like how you how you talk about it, how you frame it, how you, you know, your branding behind it. You know, how you, how you, uh, prop up its value, how you [00:37:30] explain your reasons why and, and the ultimate goal or outcome of whatever idea you want to transmit. If you are able to reframe that in a way that is effective for the person that's receiving the message, you're going to be much more influential. And with that comes negotiation skills. It comes, uh, you know, giving feedback to vendors even, like, you know, the way you give feedback, um, you know, you can do it in a way that's influential or in a way that they just don't just ignore it. So the whole conference is going to be about improving the communication [00:38:00] skills for accounting professionals, but we're also inviting the sponsors and the vendors to be part of the conversation, too. So all the sponsors are not just going to be sitting on their booth. We're actually going to like, you know, uh, brief all of them on the content and they're going to be participating on the tables, because I think that improving communication is not only for accountants, it's also for our tech partners.

Hector Garcia: Okay. Um, including QuickBooks and Intuit, they got to improve their communication skills, too. And I don't mean individually. I mean like in a macro, like they [00:38:30] have to do it more in a strategic level. But so the conference is going to be in Hollywood, Florida. It's in a beach front property called the Diplomat Resort. Um, all the information about the conference is going to be in, in uh, reframe 2020 4.com. So reframe 2020 4.com, it would be October 24th to October 26th. The conference will be fun. It will be creative and it will be forward looking. And my brother Carlos and I are the host putting it together. [00:39:00] We haven't announced any additional speakers. Uh, because you technically don't need to. This is all going to be about the conversation within the accountants in table group exercises, brainstorming. Um, that's what's so we're very excited about that. We had a very successful conference last year in 2023. So we're so our goal is to top it to make it even better.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well I'm really looking forward to being there. I have FOMO about not being at last year's conference.

Hector Garcia: Perfect. So with that, um, thank you for tuning in to this episode [00:39:30] and we'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.