QuickBooks Online September 2023 "Small" Updates

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

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, we're going to talk about a whole bunch of little things that Alicia and I found in QuickBooks Online in the month of September. New things, things that caught our attention. Let's start with you, Alicia. What have you found?

Alicia: Sure. Well, my favorite thing is when I'm using QBO and I find something new. I mean, I know that strikes terror in the hearts of some people, but for me, it's exciting. And so I tend to post about them in my blog and on Facebook. I call it Look What I Found. And so this was kind of my look what I found list for the last, last month or so. So the first thing is a tiny little thing, but really helpful. And that is when you click on the plus new button in the upper left hand corner, you can now add a new customer, a new vendor, a new project, or a new product or service right from the plus new menu so you don't have to go to the center first and then do the new. You can essentially just do it right on the fly. So I thought that was a nice touch, really subtle, but really, really helpful. Another thing that I noticed is when you are working in QuickBooks Online's payroll, there's now a new button. So when you go to payroll and then look at your employees list, there's some rectangles across the top and one of them says, edit payroll items. And so what this means is that you can now work with your pay types and make a new pay type and then instantly apply it across all of your employees. You do not anymore have to open up each employee and then add that new pay type. So it's a great new way of thinking about it from the high level.

Hector: As I mentioned before, these are the little things in QuickBooks payroll that start restoring my faith in QuickBooks Online payroll, like, you know, all these tiny little things that make your life easier. Because if you've got 2 or 3 employees, you know, I just click on each one and fix it. But like a lot of clients that have 50 employees, 100 employees, and they all of a sudden they added a new bonus structure. And to go into each one by one to add that it's really painful. It's like one of the reasons why I say, See, I told you you should have stayed in QuickBooks desktop payroll for that. So yeah, totally. Now, one thing I found, Alicia, and I think you found this too, is. When you go into bank feeds, some banks say standard feed, it's like a new little label or tag that the bank accounts have. Standard feed just as standard.

Alicia: We don't know why.

Hector: Yeah, we don't know why. And it hasn't been clear exactly why is that or if it's a fluke or if they're going to eventually remove that. And maybe by the time this this episode airs, they'll realize that calling it standard feed confuses people and they just remove it. Who the heck knows? I do have a theory. Okay. What's your theory? Well, some people are saying, well, QuickBooks Online is going to have this new, like advanced feed or enhanced feed, and you would have to pay for that or something like that. And it doesn't sound right. Honestly, what I think is standard feed and whatever the other non standard feed is, is going to be the differentiator between the banks that sync all the stuff. Bank statements, check images, deposit images and the banks that don't. That's my theory. It's really not that complex. It's not really conspiracy theory. It's more like, Hey, make it easier for the people to know if you're just getting transactions or if you're getting something more than transactions. As you know, some banks allow you to bring extra stuff and some don't. And it's not really 100% sure when you connect to them which ones are going to have it. You kind of just have to connect it and see if if the extra stuff comes in.

Alicia: Yeah, I kind of like that idea because some of that extra stuff is attachments or check images or statements. But I'll be curious to know if you're accurate on that because right now even my PayPal says standard feed and PayPal doesn't have statements, but my other banks do have statements and they all say standard feed. I know that in Australia they have a distinction between a standard feed and a direct feed. And I'm wondering if this was an Australian programmer who slipped some code in accidentally and they're trying to figure out how to get rid of it. That's my theory. You know.

Hector: Even even outside the realm of downloading statements and checking images and all that stuff, there are two ways to connect to the banks. Some banks have their own API, and the way you know is because when you connect the bank from QuickBooks Online to Bank of America or Chase, you get a new window from Chase.com from Bank of america.com that sort of pops up and requires this additional authorization. You log in through their website and you tell them, yes, it's okay for Intuit to pull information from your bank, whereas some of the other banks don't have that API and they use what's called the web scraping mode, where basically QuickBooks programed every single local bank or whatever for QuickBooks to log in and sort of scrape the website for the latest transactions, which is which explains why some banks only give you 90 days worth of transactions or 45 days or 120 days or whatever. It's because of whatever the bank allows the user to see when they log in to the website, that's what you're limited to. Whereas whereas like Bank of America and Chase, they use the API, you notice that you're able to go back sometimes two years or three years worth of data. So maybe, possibly standard feed versus whatever the other feed is has to do with something like that, I'm not sure.

Alicia: So anybody who's listening to this who came in in the middle of this conversation, this is all theory. We are just speculating. These are not actual answers to the big mystery in front of us all.

Hector: Yeah. I mean, what I'd like to thank Intuit for for giving us stuff to talk about when we're bored. Bored, ever. Exactly. Alicia, what else have you found?

Alicia: So I've been playing a lot with budgeting recently. And so part of the thing, some of these are things that I've found and some of these are actually more new product announcements. So budgeting is found in QuickBooks Plus and in QuickBooks Advanced. And in plus, one of the things that I noticed is that there is now an actual toggle. So if you're building a new budget based on your actuals, in the past, you would have to say, do you want to base it on last year's actuals or this year's actuals? Now you can actually go back and forth between them. So I've actually been working on a budget this week and I was able to see what it looked like last year and see what it's been this year and then make an educated estimate for where I want it, where I want it to go. So I really thank you. Thank you for that switch in the in that date toggle. So that was the first thing that I noticed.

Hector: Well, the only thing I'll add is people that develop like software developers that develop any sort of budgeting software don't seem to like sit down with someone that works with budgets and kind of see what they do. So much of like dealing with budgets is copy and pasting last. Here. Like. Like there's so much what was last year? Let's just do 3% more than last year or let's take the year before and the and last year and see what the trend is and just make that some of it. So much of it is looking at what happened before to project the future. And in some cases what's happened like sort of mid year like some people will budget for the rest of the year based on what happened between January and June. And I feel that these all the software companies, not just QuickBooks, they like don't don't get this like they they don't they think that when people do budgets they just want to like type stuff in a gazillion fields in a spreadsheet. And that's the last thing that anybody wants to do. So like, they take so long to do these, you know, sort of copy and paste templates from the previous year. So I love that Intuit is getting closer and closer to it, but I do think that if you just. Watch somebody work with budgets for a couple of hours. Watch 2 or 3 people. It'll blow your mind. As a software developer, the opportunities that they are specifically on budget and budget manipulation.

Alicia: Sure. Well, I mean, I think they have been doing some research because in QuickBooks Online Advanced, they did announce that they are enhancing some of the budget features. So, for example, some of the things actually one one thing that is actually in plus you can now import your budgets into plus. So if you do have your budget in a spreadsheet, you don't have to start from scratch. You can import it.

Hector: Wait, hang on. Importing budgets into QuickBooks Online used to be an advanced only feature, right? Yes. So you're telling me that QuickBooks for what seems to be the first time ever released something in advance and rolled it back it back.

Alicia: To plus.

Hector: Another episode? Previously we talked about rolling back bills and bill management into simple start start. Now. That's interesting. I like that. I like that a software company would feel so confident of all the new things that they're releasing on their sort of Top end edition where they feel confident that some of the fundamental things that were only available in the Top End edition now sort of like you can now move it down because you have enough value on the other stuff. So I like that. I really wish that this this is a trend for QuickBooks. That would be amazing. So that's a huge win for plus users being able to import your budgets from a CSV or Excel file. Yeah.

Alicia: On the other hand, when they're backwards engineering some of these things, I'm glad because if they're raising the price on all the different versions, they got to give us some new features to, to justify those price increases. So with this one, I'm very I'm satisfied for sure. One of the things that they mentioned is upcoming and it's not released yet and there's no release date, but they are working on budgeting for balance sheets as well. And, you know, think about your loan payments. I mean, that's my wish list is one of my problems that I have when I'm doing a budget is that it is all based on the PNL, but your loan payments all affect your balance sheet. But if you're trying to do a budget based on your spending, you kind of need to know how much you're putting towards those loans, mortgage payments, loan payments. And so if they're going to listen to us, I want them to listen to this. I want Placeholder Fields for things like liability payments so that I know that it's coming out of my cash. So almost like a budget for a cash flow forecast, I guess, but. I have clients who do a workaround of a dummy expense field so that they can put in there a budget for their payments. And so I think this is something that would help.

Hector: In another episode, previous episode, we talked about the fixed asset manager and how you can create fixed assets and it will project out journal entries to be posted in the future. These journal entries are going to post debit expense, the depreciation expense, and they're going to credit or reduce your asset, your fixed asset via accumulated depreciation. I wonder if they'll be able to link these two things where you have the fixed asset manager adjusting against a balance sheet item and you have revenue revenue recognition, adjusting against the balance sheet item if they're going to be able to tie the the, the process of doing a budget for a balance sheet and all these other advanced features are that already have projections to specific changes into the balance sheet. So that's interesting because.

Alicia: If they were going to get fancy with it, they would take your revenue recognition and your fixed asset manager future payments and put them in your actuals for you. Now, now that's thinking, Hey, Intuit, that was a good idea. Put that one in. Right?

Hector: True. True.

Alicia: Okay. So something else that everybody has noticed is that the left navigation has been changing under our noses. Um, Hector, do you want to start talking about this one? And then I'll give my $0.02?

Hector: Yeah, sure. So at this point, I think most of you listening should have the option to look at the new left navigation bar. And the new left navigation bar is pretty much the old navigation bar, but but without the business view. Right. So a quick history on the left navigation bar and we could probably do an entire episode on left navigation bars. That would be a really geeky one and an awesome one. The left navigation bar has gone through many transformations. Whatever focus groups into it was listening to kept telling them that there's something wrong with the left navigation bar. Therefore they just kept changing it over and over and over. The latest rendition of the Left Navigation bar prior to this major change that we're starting to see in September and possibly completely rolled out by October, is that there was a business view and an accountant view. The accountant view will look more like the old one that had sort of hovering bubble submenus, whereas the business view was a fixed width and it had this sort of sliding submenu system that drove people crazy. And on top of that it just looked different. Things were tucked in different all different names.

Alicia: All different.

Hector: All different names. Yeah. And the worst part, honestly, to me was like the biggest culprit and I think most accountants will agree with this is the very first thing at the top was called banking. Guess what wasn't in that banking tab. Your bank feeds the stuff that you call banking as a user. Okay. There was something about QuickBooks checking, something about QuickBooks Capital, something about this and that. And I get it. You're going to use your left navigation bar to sell and cross sell your products. I get it. But you're an accounting software QuickBooks. Like do the accounting first. Get that done while me with accurate financial statements then say, hey Mr. business owner you love this financial statements. You're also going to love the other products that we're going to sell you but don't like. Dump the products in my face. And at the same time, there's so many problems with the software and so many other issues. So obviously that that piss everybody off and it just wasn't a good thing. And then even on the fly, they changed and they rearranged those menus. But the entire UI of that business view left navigation bar just most people didn't like it.

Hector: So the solution was it's let's merge the two and by merging just means take a couple of concepts and terminology from the business view and add it to what was the the accountant view and add it to what was the accountant view. And on top of that of having the sort of the new accountant view being the, the law of the land in terms of left navigation bars also have the ability to add custom bookmark marks where you can add any destination quote unquote any destination from any menu in QuickBooks Online right there on your left navigation bar, which was maybe possibly borrowed by or inspired by right tool. Who knows won't won't go in that direction. But this thing with the left navigation bar changing over and over, it's not just an issue for the business owner not liking it or the accountant not liking it or the accountant. Being confused is a big issue. As an educator, Alicia, you write books, you do videos, you know, how often do you have to redo your screenshots?

Alicia: My At this point I have to rewrite my book every year and it's a 600 page textbook with step by step instructions, and I literally have to go through it every September and do the whole curriculum and take all new screenshots. And it's been changing and it's been changing. And you know, I kind of cheated on the business view because I just told people to go up to the gear and change it to the accountant view so that we didn't have to keep explaining to views or show it in two views. Like in all of my classes on my entire website, I have a video called Business View versus Accountant View, which basically says I'm going to teach it in accountant view, go up here to change it. So I can't say that I'm responsible for the fact that they didn't have good adoption, but literally everybody was going up and turning it from business view to accountant view. So I'm not surprised.

Hector: And something just to keep in mind for a short period of time, probably September, October, possibly November, there will still be a business view accountant view switch, but the left navigation bar, once you obtain to have the new left navigation bar, that switch will no longer change the left navigation bar in itself. So what's the purpose of the right with the business view and the accountant view? I really don't know. No, but I will give you something that is sort of kind of look what I found or look. What I figured out is if you are in the chart of accounts and you're in the business view and you create a new account, you get the old pop up to create a new account. When you create a new account in the chart of accounts, you get this new left draw that kind of opens up for you to create a new account. Where if you are in business view, you get the old style of new account pop up window, which is a lot more accounting or a lot more technical, which is kind of weird how they sort of like I think probably mistakenly flipped the script on this one. So if that's still true, I still like going into business view when I'm creating accounts.

Alicia: There's one kind of account that I can only do there that if I'm doing a long term liability, like a loan, you used to be able to put your original cost and your depreciation as subcategories automatically in that window, and that doesn't exist in the new right side experience. So I wish they would bring that little element back. So because I liked it so much that I recreate it manually now.

Hector: And the last thing I will add and I agree with you, Alicia, on that 100%, but last thing I'll add is, for the love of God, the sample file, the sample company file, this needs to be aligned with whatever the new strategy is like. Like we cannot have a live QuickBooks online file with a different left navigation bar than a sample file. Because as an educator, I use a sample file to teach people. Sometimes I teach it to. I use it to build entire courses. And you know what's horrible? When you build an entire course on the sample file? And guess what? They were using an old version or a version of the left navigation bar or some buttons or some arrangement of the screen that's obsolete. So like, I would love with confidence to know that at any point in time I open the sample file that's going to be sort of like what QuickBooks is going to look like. So I can teach people and people can follow along and watch a video. I mean, I get it. It should doesn't have to last the whole year. I get that the software changes, but it can't mean it can't just last a month and then that's it. It's obsolete anymore. So like, that's the last thing I'll say about that. And I'm sure, Alicia, you got something to comment about that.

Alicia: Now what you just said, though, is almost counter counterintuitive to it, that if they always have the sample file match the current the current release, then it's going to change a lot. So I almost want it to wait until they've permanently settled on what it's going to look like. But at the same time, I agree with you that it really I sit on both sides because at the same time, like in my textbook, my students are learning on the sample file and then they're creating a new file to do their practice, and the two of them will have two completely different charts of accounts. For example.

Hector: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. And I get that dichotomy here and the fact that this almost seemed like contradicting statements. Look, I think a fundamental problem that QuickBooks has had for years is having multiple versions of QuickBooks that look different, feel different to different users. But as a power user, I don't have the ability to know who has what, whose version is going to be changed to the new version or the old version or what they're testing. So the challenge is that I have is that on every single interaction I have with a customer with QuickBooks Online. Basically it's a potentially a brand new experience because I don't know what buttons I'm going to encounter. And as a trainer, as a consultant, worst thing you can do is sort of like stumble, you know, in the middle of doing a training like, huh, it's not a good look to say, I swear to you, that used to be a button here that did that. And I find myself doing that and just like looking and feeling so foolish. So like, I wish there was more clarity around what versions are where, who's got which version, and be able to tell people, okay, look, this website tells you that you're in cluster number 68 or whatever and you are going to be getting this new version in September, October, November. That would be nice.

Alicia: I have an idea on how to solve the problem. Quickbooks Labs used to be up under the gear and it used to be when they had an experimental feature, you could go in and turn it on and see what you did and give feedback. They got rid of it. I think they should make it back and actually buff it up that they can put up all the different features that are at their minimum value release and all the things they're testing and all the things in beta and let everybody opt into the ones that they use and then try them out and give the feedback because then you're getting real feedback by people who use them. Not everybody's panicked, Oh my God, this is horrible. It's not the same as it was yesterday. You can actually have your own customized interface with the latest and greatest because, you know, I like being on the bleeding edge of the features and testing them out and beta testing them. So I would love to be able to opt in and opt out. I think that would solve a lot of what you're talking about.

Hector: Yeah. And oddly enough, you are. You're using a feature that was just killed like in August or July, which is QuickBooks Live as the solution to solving this problem. So maybe some a new version of QuickBooks Live like, you know, optional beta features or something like that. I mean, I mean if, if they don't want to use QuickBooks Live anymore for whatever reason, like, you know, like they kill the name and that's it, it's not coming back. Just call it beta features or something like that. Just call it beta features. Go in there, turn on the beta features that you want, only the power users or the people comfortable with like, you know, shiny new things like Alicia and I are will play around with it and if it doesn't work, turn it off. I mean, even for QuickBooks technical support for Intuit Support, it would just also be a dream to like actually learn what every screen looks like without having to, like, stumble and think and remember whether or not, you know, the screen used to look like this. Yes. Or they or not. They could simply just turn off. And on those beta features that would be amazing. I agree with you 100%.

Alicia: I actually have a second solution to what if they had a shelf stable and a cutting edge version and different price points? Maybe the shelf stable one is a higher price point and the one with all the beta testing and experimentation is a lower one. That way people can justify the lower price but know that their user interface is going to shift around a lot or they be willing to pay more because it's going to be completely stable until the A solid release.

Hector: I love that idea conceptually, just it might not be compatible with like accounting software, like, like, like the last thing that accounting software users want to hear is, hey, you're in the experimental version, But in the experimental version.

Alicia: We are already in the experimental. Experimental, correct?

Hector: Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I have to say this, sometimes it feels as a QuickBooks online user, there's this like 12 year practical joke that's been played on me the entire time, and I'm just waiting for Ashton Kutcher to come out. Hey, you got punked. That wasn't really an accounting software. That was a big experiment. Yeah, No, yeah, I totally understand that feeling. Right? Because that's essentially QuickBooks is one big experiment, aiming to be a stable accounting software. And at some point in time, I would tell you, as quirky as QuickBooks desktop is and all its difficulty that it has for an accountant to help a user remotely and accountants copy. I mean, QuickBooks desktop was a disaster from a collaboration perspective. So I totally buy into the Cloud and QuickBooks Online, but I feel there was a point in time in QuickBooks Desktop where like for a year or 2 or 3, it just worked. Like I didn't have to worry about a screen maybe showing a blank or a screen, a button not working. Like just. With accounting software. It just wish there was a world where your accounting software wasn't a big experiment. Like, I'm the type of guy that likes to experiment, but I like to know that I'm in an experiment. Like I like I don't want to be surprised later on that, Oh, whoops. Yeah, we tried the dropdown menu here for work and it did. It ended up not working, so we switched it back. And by the way, thank you for being frustrated in our behalf, you know, and letting us know that you didn't like it through your frustrations. Well, that's not that's not a good relationship.

Speaker3: Right.

Alicia: Well, you know, one of the things you have to think about is, is change management and expectations. For example, one of the things that is changing in the left navigation is we're used to seeing banking up there, but that's going to be changing to transactions and that's ported over from the business side. Now personally I think that's great. Because what's in there is way more than just banking. What's in there right now is the bank feeds, but it's also app transactions. It's where you import your e-commerce, it's where you import your Amazon. The rules are there, the tags are there and your receipt management are there. All of those are different ways of creating transactions. The banking feeds just the one you live in, but all of them are all different ways of of adding transactions to your system. So I think the name change is solid, but where people have trouble is if it looks different, if you don't understand, then your immediate reaction is stress. And so I always try and look for the logic and I also try and reframe that stress as enthusiasm that, you know, for the most of the time, those changes have a reason. And much of the time they're good innovations. We just have to kind of wade through the minimal, viable product that they put out while they hone it in.

Hector: Well, you're a lot more patient than I rechannel that stress as.

Speaker3: Rants and.

Hector: Rants in a podcast.

Alicia: Right? Well, that's why I call it look what I found with an exclamation point.

Hector: So I think that's it for the sort of the little features that we found in September. This this little things that we found along the way. Uh, Alicia, what's going on in your world?

Alicia: I am excited to announce that Jackie Meyer, CPA, who has her own concierge CPA podcast, is going to be coming to the Royal Wise Owls and doing a class on tax strategies for small business on October 3rd. Now, when I say tax strategies for small business, that sounds really dry and boring. But what we're actually going to be talking about is how to mine for gold in your and your balance sheet, different places that you as a business owner can look to save on your taxes. So that'll be on October 3rd and you can register by going up to Reuters.com and clicking on the calendar in the upper right. And now I've mentioned, by the way, the Royal Wise Owls a couple of times, and there's actually a reason for it beyond the my my logo, our logo is an owl wearing a crown. And we say that it's wisdom with a touch of humor. What we actually we've thanks to Jennifer Diamond. She turned it into an acronym that Owls now stands for the on demand Web based learning Solutions. And so it's our training portal. And we have like over 50 different QuickBooks Deep dives from one hour to to ten hours long that are all CPE authorized. And so if I ever announce a class and you're listening to this podcast after the fact, you don't have to go, Oh, I missed it. All of the classes are all still available. Everything has lifetime access. So if you ever hear me talk about a class and you're interested after the fact, just head on over because it's there for you. Hector, what's going on in your world?

Speaker3: Uh, before I get into that.

Hector: So Owl is synonymous with knowledge. I don't know why or how that happened, but I know that when I look at an owl, I think of, like, school and teacher and knowledge. So that's why the owl and the crown is because knowledge is king, not cash king.

Alicia: Knowledge is knowledge is king. Exactly.

Speaker3: I love.

Hector: It. So in my world, by this time, Alicia, I think you're tired of hearing me say that I developed an app called Right Tool that makes QuickBooks Online better.

Speaker3: I'm not tired of it, though.

Hector: It's a Chrome extension that you add to Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge and enhances your QuickBooks Online navigation experience. And in September, we added a feature that has been wildly successful, which is called Rolling X Months. And essentially it allows you to create a report preset where you select rolling X months, and then X is a number that you put you put 12, three, four, five or whatever. And then once you set, you put that setting in there and you run a report. Then immediately after you run the report, you click on presets, which is a little button. That right tool adds to your reports and automatically splits the report by month or by year or by quarter. You actually get to choose how you want to template that. And the date range is based on the rolling month. So like QuickBooks doesn't have anything built in that does rolling months. I can't tell you how many people just want to look at not this year, not last year, but the last 12 months, which is a year's worth of stuff, but it's basically the last 12 months. So like this rolling X months concept is something that QuickBooks should have built in into the default dating in the reports. We did that through right tool. So I'm excited about that and that's all I will mention about that. And thank you very much, everybody, and we'll see you on the next one.

Alicia: See you in the next one.