Even More New March 2024 QBO Features

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

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, we're going to talk about what's new in QuickBooks [00:00:30] online. March 2024. We're going to talk a little bit about some features that were discussed in the In the Know webinar. That was March 14th, and then we're going to discuss the rest of the listed features that were added into the firm of the future article for new features on March 2024. But first, we have another review. Alicia, you mind reading the review for us? Sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So this review was left on Apple Podcasts and it's titled My Happy Place as a Qbo geek. And they gave us a [00:01:00] five star rating. And it says from insider knowledge about new Qbo features to in-depth expertise from two trainers at the top of the industry, this podcast is a must listen for QuickBooks Proadvisors. So thank you, Judson for that great review.

Hector Garcia: Perfect. Let's start talking about a couple of features that were mentioned in the In the Know webinar on March 14th, and we couldn't cover it on the last episode because of time. So we'll start [00:01:30] covering those. The first one and the big one, which actually it's I think it's a big one, period, especially for accounting professionals, is because one thing that we've always disliked about QuickBooks online, especially on the payroll side, is how little control we had. Essentially with QuickBooks Online Payroll and 1099, we always felt that we're ceding the control over to Qbo. And as an accountant, we really have not that much power to change and edit things. But now they have given us finally, 1099 [00:02:00] corrections and ten nine corrections are interesting. So once you file your 1099 via QuickBooks online and it has been accepted and processed through the IRS, you will now see a little correct link next to your archive history of your 1099. And when you click on correct, you will actually be prompted to be able to change the dollar amount or any of the information of the 1099 after you filed it. The awesome thing about [00:02:30] this is corrections are free. I remember traditionally when I made a mistake in payroll, I had to one get on a chat or get on a call to request some sort of correction. Three pay like 150 bucks. I actually find this extremely refreshing from into it. Uh, being able to make corrections on 1099 for free. Anything else you learned about this, Alicia?

Alicia Katz Pollock: And that pretty much sums it up. But this was one of the reasons why in the past, I wasn't able to use Shabbos 1099 filing. And the fact that now you can make the corrections [00:03:00] is really helpful. The one thing to really realize, though, is that you can't run your 1099 and then go, oops, I forgot something and then go in and change those. You do have to wait until after they have been accepted. Two forms get filed on your behalf. When you make a correction, the original form gets voided with a corrected checkbox and they file a new form so that I'm really happy that they do that. The corrections also are only available until May. That is something [00:03:30] that Intuit is working on because, you know, the IRS could say, well, you know, you need to be able to go back three years. So that's something that they are working on putting into place. But right now you can make your corrections between February and May.

Hector Garcia: Now with this concept of the new the two forms that I talked about in the webinar, it wasn't 100% clear to me if we actually get copies of the two forms or we only get copies of the corrected one. So we'll we'll test this as soon as we have a client to do a 1099 correction for myself [00:04:00] or Alicia. I haven't done any. I don't know if you if you have. Um, but we'll go back and check and double check exactly what, uh, what what we get.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, the one more thing that I want to add about that is, if it's a matter of that, you forgot to 1099 somebody. You don't have to wait until everything else has been cleared. You can do as many different 1099 runs to add people as you want to.

Hector Garcia: Right? So this is not a correction. This is just a late filing you're saying. Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly.

Hector Garcia: And something else worth mentioning. The the 1099 correction feature is not for you [00:04:30] to correct a 1099 that you processed in a different way. It's only to correct the 1099 that you processed via QuickBooks Online Payroll. It's not like, uh, track 1090 9.com or tax 1090 9.com where you can go and create a 1099 correction or a W-2 correction or a 941 correction for something you created somewhere else. This is for you to create, uh, correct, something that you process via QuickBooks directly. Now, the other thing they talked about is automatic payroll check matching with bank feeds. [00:05:00] Now at first I was like this is really a non feature. Like bank feeds could always match a transaction when it's the same dollar amount and the same date. But when I looked at the screenshots they showed an example where maybe you have two paychecks that have the same net amount, very common if you pay the same employee every week, or multiple employees that get paid the exact same amount and they have the same W-4 information or whatever. So what ends up happening is prior to this change, if there was one or more paychecks [00:05:30] with that dollar amount, or maybe even a totally different transaction that happened to have the same dollar amount as the paycheck, it would show up as one of the possible matches when it comes to bank feeds. But now QuickBooks online is smart enough to know this specific transaction that is coming through bank feeds is actually a paycheck. And it's not just a paycheck, it's the paycheck. So I like that because it it reduces the amount of errors that we get when we do matching in bank feeds. Any any thoughts about that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Of course. Um, [00:06:00] the first one is that it's what I like about this is that now it doesn't even show up on the list of transactions. They just go straight to the categorized tab. However, on the other hand, the one thing for me that was tricky about that is I use QuickBooks checking for my. As my payroll bank, and I always keep an eye on what's cleared and what hasn't cleared yet. And so it was. And I don't think this is specific to QuickBooks checking, but I actually liked [00:06:30] seeing when the payroll cleared because then I knew what was happening with my bank balance. And so now I don't have the visual confirmation. It just is happening behind the scenes for me. So I wind up actually going and looking at the register to make sure that I have a cleared box checked and that everything has been taken care of. So on the one hand, it's a big help because it's saving me a step. On the other hand, because I'm obsessive compulsive and I want to see that they have cleared. Now I'm still going and looking. Maybe I'll get used to [00:07:00] it.

Hector Garcia: And this is cool because this relates to two areas of QuickBooks payroll and bank feeds. So now like they're talking to each other. So that's always a good thing. Yeah. Um, the next thing they talked about and they went into detail on this on the, on the In the Know webinar on March 14th, is the ability to batch edit multiple payroll items. And this is really interesting because you can have multiple payroll types, you know, like hourly, uh, salary or maybe a specific deduction [00:07:30] or a specific addition. And instead of having to create the item and go into each of the employees to add it manually, it's really cool. You can actually create a payroll item type, select a whole bunch of employees at once, click on batch assign or bulk assign, and then every single employee gets added that payroll type. You can also add that payroll type with a dollar value, which is actually pretty cool as well, which means you could also, uh, change multiple, [00:08:00] uh, pay type pay amounts across multiple employees and also increase based on a percentage or a dollar amount. Uh, some all the employees paychecks all at once. So I thought this was pretty cool. I personally haven't tested it yet. Well, if we find any quirks or any other delights when it comes to that, we'll definitely report on that. Alicia, anything to to say about that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I love the ability that you can now just say, all right, I'm going to give all of my employees their [00:08:30] a 3% annual raise, or I'm going to say 5.5% annual raise. And then just go ahead and blanket do it all in one shot and not have to go in and edit every single employee individually. So and I've used it.

Hector Garcia: And it's not just all employees, it's a group of employees. So if I have ten employees, I get a 3%. I select those ten. 3%. Boom. If I got five, I get 5%, I select those five. And if I got three, they get 10%. I select those three and boom. So it's not like it's not all employees. [00:09:00] It's it's a bunch of employees that you should select in the screen prior to bulk editing or bulk adding. Yeah, it's great. Anything that has the word bulk or batch to me like that, if that fills my heart with joy. The next thing they talked about is this is what it actually says. Quote, simplify order management and visibility with commerce, end quote. Now, unfortunately, this is not a feature that you can actually test [00:09:30] really well unless you actually have like 2 or 3 e-commerce, um, channels connected to QuickBooks and have the new products and services experience that has the new variants. So it's very difficult to discuss because I don't have it in any of my files. I think Alicia is probably on the same boat, but what it looks like from the article and the picture is you might have multiple products and some products you sell through Amazon and Shopify, some you only [00:10:00] sell through eBay, some you sell through eBay and Amazon, and you're going to have a clear indication of whether or not those products are sold in those particular channels. And the reason why that is important is because, especially when I worked with e-commerce people, is that, um, e-commerce accounting is not just, okay, how do I account for the money coming in? It's also, hey, my item has a price change, my item had a description change.

Hector Garcia: My item has variance. Now. Now I [00:10:30] sell this version of this product in blue or red, black or whatever. And in Amazon I don't change the listing. What I do is I add variants to it. So in the past before being able to add variants, you had to create entirely different products to match each variant, and you had to map your variant product with your Amazon product or whatever. And this whole thing is a nightmare and it still is a nightmare. By the way, even if you use web agility or like even with QuickBooks e-commerce, it's going to be a nightmare for a while until they figure out how to standardize this. [00:11:00] But this looks like the first major attempt to to sync your item list in QuickBooks with your e-commerce item list and have it, uh, be seen in a very, uh, easy, identifiable way so you can know what is what. And most importantly, variants like you have one major item, and then you have the different colors and the different sizes, all lumped and grouped into the same product. So you don't confuse them with a different product or have [00:11:30] them as different items. What are your first thoughts about this?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I'm really happy to see what the new product layout looks like, that there's the it's essentially the products and services grid, but with a whole new layout, all new fields, e-commerce integrations. And we know that Qbo is committed to becoming a commerce center for people who sell products, that it will be the universal source of truth for your stock [00:12:00] levels, instead of having to use third party apps. So step by step, screen by screen, product by product, they are changing the whole, uh, the, the whole experience. And it's going to be a probably a couple of years of evolution. But, you know, every time they change one little thing to it, it is becoming easier to use and more powerful.

Hector Garcia: And something I'm excited about, which hasn't even I haven't even seen a beta version of this or anything like that. But this was [00:12:30] talked about in QuickBooks connect October of last year or November or whatever it was. Um, so it should be coming soon, which is the ability to do sales orders. Right? So you can so you can enter a sale that hasn't been fulfilled yet. So you know exactly what's pending to be fulfilled. And then once you ship it, you convert it from a sales order to an invoice. And you can know the difference between pending work and completed work. And that's something that that QuickBooks desktop users are going to emphatically keep desktop. Um, [00:13:00] if they if they manage inventory because QuickBooks online doesn't do that. And this particular announcement said simplify order management, not simplify the product and services list. The problem is the screenshot that we saw is only the products and services list. We haven't seen the quote order management portion, which would require sales orders, pick pack ship workflows, that sort of thing. So more on that as we get more information. But it sounds like it's already been announced, which means it's it's in the works.

Hector Garcia: We're going to see it uh, very [00:13:30] soon. Now the next thing they talked about is in Qbo advance, we have this function called workflows that allows you to create sort of stops in the sequence of tasks so one user can do one thing, finish up, wait for the next user to do the next thing, finish up and move up. Sort of like the approval hierarchy. And we've we've had for a couple of months the ability to like somebody creates a purchase order and then somebody else has to approve it before it, it can be sent or converted to a bill or whatever it happens [00:14:00] to be. Now they added this concept of sequential approval. So before you can add multiple approvers where, hey, Hector or Maria can approve this purchase order, but now we sequential approvers. It has to be Hector who approves it, and then Maria, who approves it right in the back of it. So that's a difference, right, Alicia, like you work with some mid-market clients where that's particular important distinction. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Before the you only really had one approver, but [00:14:30] it was based on criteria like if it was for these clients, send it to this person or if it was for these dollar amounts, send it to this other person and you could set those criteria. But there was still only one approval. What's different here is that you can have one person approve it, and then it will send it to the next person for them to approve it, and then to the next person for them to approve that this is necessary. There's a lot of companies that have to have it approved by different departments or by, [00:15:00] you know, the the person who's writing the bill and then the person who's approving it and then the person who's actually shipping the product. So or, you know, whatever it is, but you. Uh, this definitely is a game changer. What I want to see is I have a client who needs it for invoices. So, hey, Intuit, make do this exact same thing with their invoices. So somebody makes the invoice, somebody looks at it and makes changes to it, and then they send it to somebody else for the approved before the send. That's [00:15:30] a feature that I really, really want to see. Right.

Hector Garcia: And I'm going to go into a 45 second mini rant. I think they need a CPA, uh, supervising these features as they get released, because nowhere in any of the documentation tells you what is the accounting impact to transactions that are pending in these workflows. And the big problem I have with this is you create the transaction and it's pending a workflow approval, but it posts into your accounting. And that's a big challenge because [00:16:00] sometimes we're doing approval workflows for, for for financial controls, for internal controls, so that money doesn't leave when it's not supposed to leave. But sometimes we do approvals to make sure it doesn't post into our financial statements. So that stuff has not been flushed out yet, like they're still just working on, hey, how do we get approvals to move the transaction forward? But they have not discussed what is the financial impact for pending transactions?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, what I would think they would need to do in that case if you [00:16:30] didn't want it to post, is that you'd have to do a purchase order instead of a bill or an estimate instead of an invoice, but that doesn't really represent what's actually happening.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, but in QuickBooks desktop, there's this thing called a pending invoice, which is non posting. It's an invoice. It looks like an invoice but it's non posting in QuickBooks online. Uh, I know if, if there was such thing as an unapproved invoice or unapproved bill, it's still an invoice. It's still a bill. It still affects receivables. It still affects [00:17:00] payables. It's still impacting your financial statements. So like Intuit has to either document exactly how these workflows affect your accounting. So your comptroller your CFO understands how this works or give the user the control that says, hey, unapproved transactions don't post or unapproved transactions do post like I want to be able to control that or know what the financial impact is, because I'm never going to be able to sell this to mid-market if I can't be clear about how this works. And again, mini rant. [00:17:30] Probably too geeky for most people, but I think it's important, especially for the larger type clients, that you are going to sell Qbo or the idea of Qbo advanced to. The next thing they talked about is actually kind of brief is now we have more control in apps that are connected to QuickBooks online. Traditionally, when your client added an app, a third party app, only your client could disconnect it. Now, accountants have the ability to disconnect an app, which is it's huge. Not that big, [00:18:00] but it's huge because sometimes it just takes too many phone calls and instructions to tell the client, please disconnect this thing. You know, Intuit is trusting us enough that the client trusted us to be added. As an accountant, we can be trusted to make the executive decision to turn the darn app off because it's destroying my books. Right. Um, so what do you think about that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: There's so many times where I've had to reach out to somebody else in order to launch an app, or disconnect an app, or get access to the app. And the fact that the accountant user is now going to just be a trusted app [00:18:30] user is pretty monumental. So I'm pretty happy with that one.

Hector Garcia: The next thing is it's called new KPI insights in your business, which basically means when you're in the dashboard and you click on Customize Layout, you have new widgets per se that you can add into your dashboard. Alicia, what, uh, what are you hearing about that or what are you seeing about that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: The dashboard is really evolving. Even just in the last few months, it went from having two tabs for Get Things Done and a business [00:19:00] overview into one dashboard instead. That's just called home. And now you have the ability to customize it by adding in different widgets, or turning on and off and even dragging them and rearranging them. And the new KPI insights. There's three of them. One is your accounts receivable, one of them is your accounts payable, and then the other is a mileage tracker. So if you are using the mileage features and you have people using their workforce app to track their mileage natively inside [00:19:30] Qbo, you now have a graph so that you can see how much driving people are doing. That's pretty cool. I don't think a lot of people are taking advantage of the mileage functionality. It used to be that only the primary user could use it. Then they opened it up to company admins, and now you can have employees actually tracking their mileage in multiple vehicles.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I think I think the challenge with that is the user still has to open the app and go start tracking [00:20:00] and this and that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: No, that's not true. You actually you can set, for instance, on your iPhone, you can set the app that it takes advantage of the gyroscope inside your qbo not inside your Qbo, sorry, inside your iPhone. And the second you go like more than ten miles an hour, it does start tracking your mileage for you. So you do have that option of automating it. You don't have to start and stop it.

Hector Garcia: But but a but a start tracking mileage. It's it means GPS enabled. So if you're an employee [00:20:30] using your employer your personal iPhone to do this with essentially that means you could be tracked everywhere you go. So if, if, if you were going to enable some sort of like always track everything, all the employees would have to have separate phones just for business and leave those at home and only take those out to business. And immediately as that phone starts moving, everything's going to be tracked. So that's going to be interesting because I'm not sure how many employees. We would just be happy to just turn on, hey, hey, just track [00:21:00] everywhere I am even in off hours type of thing. So that's a that's an interesting one. I would love to explore that further and kind of see what the consequences of that is. But that that is interesting for sure. I think it's a good it's an interesting proposal to think about for sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And just to reflect on what you're saying, if you really have a lot of employees who are using this, you're probably better off with a mile IQ account or one of the external trackers. This really, I think, was envisioned for the owner or some or, you know, a small business where the you've [00:21:30] got 1 or 2 people who are driving on site to clients, not for actually tracking all of your employees. So I would really, like you said, focus on the utility of it. And if you are doing mileage reimbursements, then yes, it's something that would be helpful. But if you're not doing mileage reimbursements, it's not something that you need at all. The next announcement was a new keyboard shortcut. If you are running QuickBooks payroll and you want to start a payroll run, you no longer have to go [00:22:00] to the employees and then go click Run Payroll and then get into the payroll module. You can just now do control alt or control option. You like run payroll I don't know, I guess the R was already taken. So they went with the the you and I love it because I can be anywhere and I can just go straight into the payroll. And then the approval process button is right inside that window as well.

Hector Garcia: Right. Exactly. So I assume that control alt R or control alt P is used for something else. [00:22:30] That's why they picked they picked the you because that's the next one that makes sense from that sequence of letters. There's three other things that they added in the article which we cannot get into. You tell on, uh, the next. The first one is get all state health solutions through QuickBooks Online Payroll. So back in, uh, QuickBooks connect in October of 2023, they talked about a new partnership with with all state and essentially is giving small business owners access to less expensive, um, [00:23:00] health insurance because supposedly Intuit QuickBooks has the purchasing power to get maybe possibly a better group rate. And I'm hoping that this is not like, like an ACA, like like Obamacare type of insurance. I think this is group health insurance through all state. Alicia, have you have you seen this at all or. It's just conjecture at this point.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, at this point it's just conjecture. But I saw the button that's in there that's ready to go. And I actually want to check it out. I mean, I have company health insurance, but we don't [00:23:30] love our plan. It's through Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield. And it's kind of expensive. And so I want to take a look and see how all states compare to it. I had done this process with the previous provider for the health care solutions, and the prices were comparable to what I was able to get directly on the market. Although the plans before were very slightly different, like there was a limitation that we had to still be in the Or in Oregon in order [00:24:00] to have the health care, otherwise it was out of network. So I don't know if these are all the same plans or if it's a modified plan, but I am myself going to check it out because I always want to know if I'm getting the biggest bang for my buck.

Hector Garcia: So this is on under payroll and the tabs says benefits. And then in my QuickBooks file you get two options. You get health insurance. And it's interesting. It says over 200 plus nationwide and local carriers. [00:24:30] So in this case it's not that all state will be the only one insuring you. It looks like all state is going to be the insurance agent that's going to go fetch, um, a health insurance option. So that's interesting. Yeah. Good for agent.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Or the broker on record.

Hector Garcia: Right. Good for all state. Looks like that's going to be a very good deal. You get exposure to 5 million small businesses. And there's also uh which doesn't say all state. It says guideline under it. So I guess it's a different company also for shopping around um, 401 (K) retirement plan options, both [00:25:00] under this benefit tabs. Now there are the two things I talked about which we won't talk about here because we've already discussed it is the new mineral H.R. Uh, partnership. And they are running webinars and additional educational information for both small business owners and pro advisors so they can understand, you know, what are the additional eight chart management benefits that you get with Qbo now? And they also talked about in the article about the new batch reclassify transactions in bank feeds, which we actually dedicated an [00:25:30] entire episode to in the last couple of weeks or so. So we won't discuss that that. And with that being said, that is in fact all the things that we're going to discuss about March new features. Now, Alicia, we talked about in the last episode that you released a new book. The book is called QuickBooks online from setup to tax time. We'll put links in the show notes. Uh, congratulations. It was ranked number one new release under interesting business intelligence tools. I guess there's no category [00:26:00] in Amazon for accounting or bookkeeping. So rated number one in business intelligence tools. I bought the book. It's excellent. Uh, I recommend that you check out Alicia's book as well. Alicia, give us a 32nd infomercial on that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So this is a revision of a book that I wrote several years ago, and it's the one that, like, you know, kind of brought me and launched me into everything that I'm doing right now. The book is full color. It's rearranged. It's updated where it used to say banking. It now says bank [00:26:30] transactions, you know, all the changes. And it's the book that I use when I teach my boot camp class, my six hour class that this book actually originally was the handouts, and I realized it was cheaper to to publish it on Amazon than it was for me to actually print it out and bind it. And now it's a book that's used by the by the Small Business Administration score programs. Instructors who are doing one day and two day programs use it as their guidelines. And now it's really [00:27:00] available to anybody who's a beginner with Qbo. And so whether it's a bookkeeper who's getting who's new to it, whether you're QuickBooks desktop and you're learning qbo for the first time, and it's an amazing tool for you for that. And it's also a book because it's inexpensive, that if you're onboarding a new client to Qbo for the first time, you can give it to them as a gift. So it's really designed to be to make Qbo less mysterious and more accessible. [00:27:30] And, Hector, what about you? What's going on with you?

Hector Garcia: I'm actually very excited that we're seeing new features in QuickBooks online that were inspired by my app, by Right Tools. So we are actually in the phase of our development program where we're actually removing features rather than adding features, because Qbo is, I guess, inspired by the progress that we we have made, which is which is awesome because then it pushes us, us to continue to develop other things. Right. So [00:28:00] so we're going to call that a win every single time that Qbo adds something new that that we no longer need to support via third party app. That's we see, like most people say, oh my God, Hector, they're copying from you. You know, you should, you know, feel bad about that? I'm like, no, no. The opposite. That means we're that means we're winning in the battle of ideas. That means that we're proving to them that that the users are liking what we're developing. And because Intuit blesses us with messed up pages and errors [00:28:30] and things that don't work all the time, there's basically an unlimited well of things that we can fix with with third party apps. So we're actually seeing that as a positive and not a negative. Um, so I still recommend you check out Right tool, Right tool app if you want to enhance your QuickBooks online experience. So thank you for letting me mention that. And with that being said, we'll see you on the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.