Intuit Releases R3 Update for QuickBooks 2014 Product Line

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Intuit has released the R3 update to the QuickBooks 2014 product line containing a lot of changes and fixes identified during initial testing and release.  The following areas have been addressed within the R3 update which is presently available for 'Manual' download, but which should begin being pushed out in Automatic releases within a few days to a week, if past practice continues.  This list applies to both Pro/Premier Users and Enterprise Users (as well as the 'Accountant products' of each), as applicable.

Alerts

  • QuickBooks recommended memory alert will now display when available system memory is less than 2 GB.

Bank Feeds

  • Improved performance opening the Bank Feeds Center.
  • Improved performance when launching the Transaction list with Rule processing applied to transactions.
  • Improved performance when editing, saving, and deleting rules.
  • QuickBooks will now take no Action for downloaded transactions if name/description contains “ACH”,“Checks”, “ATM”.
  • Added Edit and Ignore option for Auto-created rules.
  • Added ability to bulk delete rules.
  • Set the default sync to "Download per FI" on Overview for all direct connect connections.
  • New combo boxes for Payee field on Transaction List and Rule Edit to improve performance, also includes keyboard and mouse interactions.
  • Added option to display and hide Memo on Transaction list.
  • Improved error messaging for Direct Connect channel.
  • Single warning message for Greater than X day and older than Y day transaction, during Bulk Add.
  • Clipboard notifications of cut/copy/paste on Account, Payee and Class dropdowns.

Email

  • Attach File button will now display the number attachments linked to the transaction being viewed.
  • Added ability to double-click and open attachments from the Webmail Editor and Send Form editors.
  • Added ‘Sent By’and ‘Email Template’ columns to the Sent Email history tab in Centers.
  • Statements send via Email are now stored in Sent Email History tab.
  • Ability to group and send email(s) for all transactions (excluding Statement Charges) for a single Customer : Job in a single email.
  • Emails sent as Batch Emails are tracked for the history in Sent Email Tab with the Email Template appearing as Batch Email.
  • QuickBooks will prompt for missing email ids (customer and company) before launching any email functionality.
  • QuickBooks will no longer add any Payment receipts to send forms queue.
  • Fixed an issue that caused batch emailed invoices to include a Winmail.dat attachment and not a PDF.

Enterprise Advanced Pricing

  • Other Charge items types have been added to the types of items that can have their prices modified by Price rules.
  • Quantity Discounts now have an effective date field. This means that only transactions dated on or after the effective date will have Quantity discounts applied.
  • Link to "Help and Learn More" for Advanced Pricing now works.
  • Customer Price List Report: Items will now show on the report even if their price goes negative.
  • Customer Price List report will now show base rate instead of calculated price when item's rate is percentage.
  • Prices now recalculate for quantity discounts when a transaction date is changed.
  • Rounding will now correctly occur when rounding is set to "use the same rounding across all price rules" and 1.00 minus .11 is selected.
  • Item Prices by Price Rule report - inactive items are no longer shown on the report where they should not be.
  • Item prices by price rule report - All price rules are now shown on the report.
  • Item prices by price rule report - some subitems were not shown on the report.
  • Account column can no longer be removed when customizing purchase forms since it is required.
  • Cost is now correct when turning on "use BOM cost" if BOM contained inventory parts with 5 decimal places.
  • Fixed a price miscalculation when a "fixed price" rule and an "amount off price" were applied to a sales line item.
  • In the Inventory Center, item name will now display correctly instead of being truncated.
  • Users who can create and memorize reports will no longer be incorrectly restricted from viewing those reports.
  • The amount on transactions will now reflect the new prices set in the Quantity Discounts window.
  • Creating a lot adjustment will now change the lot count.
  • Hot key Alt + c will now open the Price Rules list instead of the Company drop-down list.
  • Price Rules will no longer override billing rates assigned to Vendors.
  • You are now able to print multiple copies of bar codes.
  • You are now able to track prices edited or modified by other users when a price rule has been applied.
  • Price rules notes will now update when editing a saved statement charge.
  • When the estimate form includes the markup column, the cost will now appear instead of the sales price.
  • Price Rules will now calculate on estimates.
  • Price Rule list limit has increased from 10,000 to 100,000.
  • When different prices rules are used at the same time (Fixed price, percent or amount), the fixed price will be used as the default.
  • When opening the Item Prices by Price Rule Report, QuickBooks will no longer freeze or show a white screen.

Enterprise Build Assemblies

  • "Automatically build required subassemblies" check box no longer disappears if a customize template is selected.
  • When you remove an item from the Bill of Materials, it will no longer leave a blank line in the list.

Enterprise Job Costing

  • Committed Cost report can now be filtered for one job.

Enterprise Price Markup

  • Markup field on the Add/Edd Multiple List Entries will now calculate based on the global preferences when new service and/or non inventory parts are added.

Income Tracker

  • General Journal Entries will now show in “Open Invoices” block of Income Tracker. Users have the ability to filter GJE’s using the Type filter.
  • Introduction of filtered list totals at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on a specific block will show the total at the bottom corner of the screen.
  • Fixed tab order and other keyboard navigation issues for better accessibility of Income Tracker.

Integrated Help

  • We fixed some ongoing issues with duplicate content and improved the speed of our search results.
  • The "How To" and the "Trouble Shooting" search results, from the In-product help, are combined and will get displayed under one category called “How To” and this means there will be no separate category for troubleshooting results.
  • Number of results displayed for each of the “How To” and “Community” data has been limited to four so that they appear in a single view without the user having to scroll. Clicking “show more results” under each category loads more results in a batch of ten.
  • If the number of “How To” results returned for any search is less than 4, additional results will be loaded from the Community results and vice versa, so that at any given point a maximum of 8 results is displayed.
  • For community results, the number of characters in every list element will be truncated to 75 such that, it spreads across only 2 lines at the max.

Intuit Payment Network

  • QuickBooks will now attach the IPN link to the email and pdf correctly.

My Company Window

  • QuickBooks will now up to 10 subscriptions.
  • QuickBooks will allow customer to go through the existing manage experience for listed subscriptions from QuickBooks. This includes updating existing credit cards, account information, etc.

Payments

  • QuickBooks Users can now sign up for the QuickBooks Payments service in the product. Upon successful signup, user will get a Credit card, eCheck, GoPayment, and IPN account.
  • Payment services come with easy Pricing options now, that includes a plan with no monthly fees.
  • Receive Payments window and Sales Receipt form now includes new Payment Method buttons to improve the recording and processing of Payments in QuickBooks.

Payroll

  • Sorting has been added to the tables in the Payroll Center.
  • Added ability to resize the tables in the Payroll center.
  • Icon bar on the Payroll Center has been updated with new buttons. The new icon bar now has buttons for the following: My Payroll Service, Time Tracking, Payroll Updates, Payroll Items, Hiring Forms, Payroll Setup, Preferences, Support, and Help.
  • Added notification icons for overdue item or items that need completion.
  • Fixed an issue that causes QuickBooks to close unexpectedly while creating large number of paychecks.
  • In the Contractor Edition of QuickBooks, the Direct Deposit for Vendors button no longer overlaps the WORK COMP EXPIRES field under the Additional Info tab of the Edit Vendor window.
  • Paychecks created by Assisted Payroll subscribers that are not marked for Direct Deposit will now have the status To Send in the Recent Payrolls table of the Payroll Center.
  • Paychecks marked To Be Printed and that are sent for Direct Deposit will default to having the option Lock Net Pay selected.
  • Status column has been added to the Create Paychecks table in the Payroll Center.
  • Added ability to QuickZoom on entries in the Recent Payroll table by clicking on the Net Pay amount. The result is a Paycheck Detail report that shows each paycheck for the selected Payroll.
  • Direct Deposit paychecks will no longer be shown with a zero dollar amount under the Email History tab.
  • QuickBooks will now populate the WH1 Form correctly.
  • QuickBooks will no longer display a Microsoft Visual C++ error when creating/printing paychecks.

Client Collaborator

  • Only one instance of the view conversation list will be opened to prevent errors.
  • Restricted access of Client Collaborator feature from Sample company file.
  • Added new dropdown menu next to the Chat Icon.
  • Added ability to QuickZoom to transactions from the Conversation List.
  • Extended the support for 22 more transaction types. (Bill payment Check, Bill payment Credit Card, General Journal Entry, Sales tax payment, Item Receipt, Purchase Order, Estimate, Sales Order, Invoice, Sales receipt, Statement charge, Receive Payment, Credit memo, Credit Card Refund, Paycheck, Payroll Liability check, Liability Adjustment, YTD adjustment, Transfer, Deposit, Build assembly, Inventory Adjustment)

QuickBooks File Doctor (QBFD) Integration

  • When a damaged company file (QuickBooks company files with the extension QBW or QBA) is opened within QuickBooks, the QBFD tool is launched to diagnose and repair the problem in the company file. The tool will attempt to repair any problems found and will provide direct uploads to data services if applicable.
  • QBFD is also invoked when there is a possible network setup issue preventing access to the company file.
  • QBFD tool can be downloaded from within QuickBooks by going to File -> Utilities -> Download QuickBooks File Doctor.

QuickBooks Shipping Manager

  • Shipping manager will no longer display the error "PackageSpecialServicesRequested - Invalid codCollectionAmount in Requested Package 1" [ship:6617]", when attempting to ship packages using FedEx.

Time Tracking

  • When viewing a previously saved weekly timesheet, the time entries will remain in the order in which they were originally entered.

User Interface Enhancements

  • The width of vertical and horizontal scroll bar controls have been increased for a better scrolling experience.
  • Editable fields are made little darker for better contrast and visibility.

Should You Update

My take is always the same, if you are not already using the product, don't rush in.  If you are already using one of the 2014 products, then I would go ahead and 'update' from the R1 release to the R3 release, you should find some needed fixes and slight changes to certain performance issues. 

Those wishing to migrate from an earlier product to 2014 should continue to monitor the forums to determine if any new 'substantial' issues develop with the new release.

For Enterprise customers, I would still 'shy away' from the Advanced Pricing functionality which is a new 'add on subscription'.  I have seen too many problems with this, and haven't had time to explore how R3 may affect these problems.  In addition I am simply not sure that the added capabilities warrant the additional price of the subscription; although that will have to be a cost-benefit analysis each user will need to make for themselves.