QBO Labs: Company Templates is an All Star favorite feature of mine. So, when I received the email from Intuit saying it was on the chopping block, my optimistic personality thought, “Cool, what do the engineers have planned?”
After all, QBO Labs is a test environment, so it’s possible the feature is no longer in testing status.
What is the Company Templates feature?
QBO Labs: Company Template makes short work of copying the Chart of accounts, Items and other preferences.
In QuickBooks Online, much like in QuickBooks Desktop, there's sometimes a need to duplicate how a company is structured; QBO Labs:Company Templates does exactly that.
The way it works is by saving an image of the COA, Items and other preferences. It then stores that image in QBO Labs to be used later when a similar business is created.
QBO Labs: Company Templates essentially is a warehouse of all those captured images.
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The 'Smart People' Company Templates
One of my favorite aspects of this feature is that QBO users can opt to share their templates, making them available to everyone.
This allows us to utilize some of the really smart people and industry specific templates like Hector Garcia’s Property Manger LLC Template and Laura Redmond's Nonprofit Template and others alike.
I just love when the really smart people decide to share with the rest of us, don't you?
I mean, why remake the wheel when there already is a golden wheel waiting.
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Real Life Application
Why is it so cool? Well, let me count the ways I have used this feature:
- Franchise Mandatory Chart of Accounts
- Multi-business owner who wants similarly named Chart of Accounts, Items and preferences
- Retail business Chart of Accounts, Items and preferences
- Property Management Chart of Accounts, Items and preferences
- Firm internal preferred Chart of Accounts
QuickBooks Labs: Announcement of Company Templates Discontinuation
It's possible the feature will go away, however, I can’t image this feature would go away entirely. So no, I don’t have a crystal ball. And I haven’t heard inside information but doggone, this is too cool of a feature to vanish.
The Intuit notice list is below if you haven’t had a chance to read it:
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(Note: The blue links shown in the graphic above are not active.)
Conclusion
It’s difficult to speculate what's going on in the minds of the engineers inside QBO Labs, as they're a test environment for possible new features.
But it’s clear that QuickBooks Online will continue to develop interfaces with professional features, so I can’t image this function going away entirely, just maybe (hopefully), it will become a regular feature.
I certainly hope so.
If you'd like to read more about QBO Labs: Company Templates, I posted an earlier Insightful Accountant article on the topic.
If you enjoyed using the QBO Labs: Company Templates feature, post your comments below, so that Intuit can see all of us who really want this feature to stay around.