QuickBooks 2019 Desktop - 'Our Summary'

by

General Ledger

Intuit has just released QuickBooks 2019 Desktop, and over the next few days and weeks, QuickBooks ProAdvisors (for Desktop), Enterprise Users, and QuickBooks Pro/Premier 'Plus' subscribers will begin being notified about the availability of the initial release of this software. Soon thereafter, QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Mac versions will start appearing on retailers' shelves. 

Insightful Accountant has been working with various pre-release versions of these products for months, and has had multiple communications with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn as much as you can about the new products. This article is intended to provide a brief synopsis of the fifteen (15) new, changed, improved, expanded and enhanced features to be found in the QuickBooks Desktop 2019 product line-up.

We will also be providing a series of ‘feature minute’ articles in addition to our annual article, ‘My Favorite Newbies’ in which I tell you more about the specific product changes I like best. And look for a special edition of our QB Talks webinar to give you an in-depth look at these new products (more information about the scheduled date and time of that webinar will be outlined in a future article.)

So, for all of you who have been waiting for today's product release here's what's new.

For All 2019 QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Accountant and Enterprise (v19) Users

(1) 'New' Customer Invoice History Tracker – a ‘new feature’ providing improved status tracking and information about your Invoices. You get real-time visibility of invoice statuses at-a-glance for historical or collection purposes. 

Note: Invoices must be emailed within QuickBooks for full functionality to apply, you must have an active Internet connection for some information to be displayed, not all capabilities are supported under Microsoft Outlook 2010.

(2) 'New' Transfer Credits Between Customer: Jobs – a ‘new’ feature providing a simpler workflow to allow you to transfer credits between different jobs for the same customer. Credits displayed within customer transactions reflect unused credits across all jobs allowing easy transfer of credits between jobs.

QuickBooks creates and uses a special ‘Account for Credit Transfer’ Other Current Asset account-type to record the changes which happen ‘behind the scenes’ using journal entries. QuickBooks also sets this account to inactive status (upon creation) so that users do not mistakenly attempt to post transactions to it for other purposes.

While this feature streamlines and automates the same type of manual workflow taught to QuickBooks users traditionally, just be advised that there is no ‘undo’ option for this feature. As the warning shown above advises, you can only undo this transfer by manually making additional journal entries. This feature also does not work when using an ‘Accountant’s Copy’ of a client’s data.  

(3) 'Revised & Enhanced' Prompt to Create Bill Payment In-lieu-of Write Check – This really is just a change to an advisory message that already existed. But the highlighted option in that message was the Continue Writing Check (blue) button which resulted in many users continuing inappropriately. 

QuickBooks 2019 helps to insure the proper workflow is followed by highlighting the proper ‘Go to Pay Bills’ option (blue button) in the new Check for Bills pop-up. When you select this option, QuickBooks not only takes you to the Pay Bills window, but also automatically filters the window for the specific Vendor you initially attempted to write a check for. This streamlines the workflow making it easier than ever to follow the proper procedure.

(4) 'Revised & Enhanced' Inactive Inventory Items in Inventory Valuations – Previously, Inventory Reports providing valuations of your stock excluded any item(s) that had been made ‘inactive’ even if those items had quantities on hand. This meant there would be a difference in the amount inventory value on those reports when contrasted with the amount reported as the Inventory Asset account total. 

For 2019, QuickBooks Desktop Inventory Valuation reports can include inactive item quantities and values so that you can balance your inventory reports against the inventory assets on your Balance Sheet and General Ledger.  A checkbox for ‘Show Inactive Inventory Items’ is located on the report header to the right of the Dates and ‘Hide zero QOH’ options, as highlighted above in the Inventory Valuation Summary.

UPDATE: Subsequent to the original publication of this article on September 4, it was reported, and Insightful Accountant subsequently confirmed, that there is a 'bug' associated with this feature. While the new feature includes inactive 'Inventory Items' in the computation it does not include inactive 'Inventory Assembly Items' (with quantities on hand) in the computation. This means that the report may still not balance to your balance sheet or general ledger even if other irregularities are not present.

(5) 'Revised & Enhanced' Intuit Data Protect – Many QuickBooks users have failed to activate Intuit Data Protect even if they were eligible for this off-premise backup solution. Others reported that it was too difficult to set-up, monitor and restore a backup.

The 2019 Intuit Data Protect has been updated to streamline the set-up process and simplify automated QuickBooks backups to Intuit’s ‘cloud servers.’ The solution will also now provide actionable messages in the event of any backup failures to help improve reliability.  

(6) 'Revised & Enhanced' IIF Import Functionality – Even though IIF import has been used extensively with QuickBooks Desktop, it has a history of file corruption resulting from improperly structured IIF files, formatting errors and a lack of error checking by QuickBooks during the import process. New to QuickBooks Desktop 2019 is an improved IIF Import Functionality that provides SDK verification and validation routines during data import.

There is a new interface for IIF Import that helps to ensure that the data meets requirements before it is imported into a user’s QuickBooks Company file. The new functionality still allows you to import both list data and supported transactions, providing you with a summary of your import, the reasons why data failed during import, and giving you the opportunity to fix errors prior to re-import.

(7) 'New' Data File Optimization (Condense Audit Trial) – this new option within the Condense feature of QuickBooks 2019 allows you to reduce your Company file size without losing any of your transactional data. It does so by removing all the audit trail data from the file which can be a significant amount of data especially when files have a substantial history of transaction edits. It also performs some other internal optimization of the database.

As a result, you should see better performance since files could be reduced by as much as 45% in size (although the typical reduction in our testing was around 33%).

(8) 'Expanded' Streamlined Move of QuickBooks to Another Computer – while this was another slip-stream feature released during QuickBooks 2018 it is included within Intuit’s list of QuickBooks 2019 features because 2019 will be the first release version in which the feature has been available from the launch of the version. 

Much like the ‘Easy Upgrade’ feature described later in this article for QuickBooks 2019 users with a ‘Plus’ Subscription, this tool provides a more simplistic way of moving your QuickBooks program and Company files (up to 3 of them) to an entirely different computer. 

In order to make use of this tool users need to have Admin level access to the computer where QuickBooks and the Company files are current resident, a USB (flash memory) drive with sufficient ‘free space’ to hold your Company files (QuickBooks will even tell you how much free space is required as part of starting this process). You also need Administrator level access for the new computer which must also have an active Internet connection.

As a part of this process, QuickBooks copies key information about your current installation, along with the Company files from your original computer to the USB drive. You will also create a complex password that unlocks everything that is transferred onto the new computer. When you begin the process on the new computer, the tool will download the correct version of QuickBooks and install it based upon the information from the USB drive. It will then proceed with setting up your Company files.

For QuickBooks 2019 Pro, Premier, Accountant and Enterprise (v19) Users with a 'Plus' Subscription

(9) 'Expanded' Streamlined Upgrade of QuickBooks to New Version – this feature was first introduced during 2018 for ‘Plus’ Subscribers, who were still using 2017 versions of QuickBooks, to assist in upgrading them to 2018 versions. 2019 will be the first wide-spread use of this feature and will be available to all Plus Subscribers running 2018 products who are eligible to convert to 2019 versions.

This functionality significantly reduces the issues users may encounter when attempting to upgrade on their own. It just takes a couple of clicks to transition from QuickBooks 2018 to QuickBooks 2019 with this functionality.

This process downloads the new version, installs it on your computer (giving you the option to keep your old version), activates (registers) the product, and replicates and converts your Company files. Streamlines the process, in some cases to under 3- or 4-minutes.

For QuickBooks 2019 Pro, Premier, Accountant and Enterprise(v19) Users with 'Payroll' Subscriptions

(10) 'Expanded' Employee Pay Adjustment History - If you are using QuickBooks 2019 with a ‘Payroll Subscription’ you will have access to the Employee Pay Adjustment History; which was a slip-stream release during QuickBooks 2018. Insightful Accountant actually wrote about this in December of 2017 in an article titled ‘What Goes Around, Comes Around’. 

This feature allows you to track changes to employee pay rates regarding hourly payroll items, salary and bonus items, and commission items. As I said folks, this isn’t new, but QuickBooks 2019 is the first product edition to have this report available for the entire product lifetime, so Intuit has included it in their comprehensive list of 2019 additions, changes and enhancements (so we are including it here). 

(11) 'Revised & Enhanced' Sick and Vacation Pay Tracking Changes – improvements have been made in QuickBooks 2019 coupled with an active Payroll Subscription. These changes are designed to provide improved tracking and reporting of sick and vacation time. 

The first such enhancement provides QuickBooks users with a warning when saving a paycheck that exceeds the employee’s available sick and/or vacation time. The second change involves a reformatting of the pay-stub to include information about the Accrued, Used and Available sick and vacation hours.

For All QuickBooks Enterprise (v19) Users

(12) 'Enhanced' Sensitive Payroll Permissions Identification - Certain user roles/permissions within QuickBooks Enterprise provide unrestricted access to view all transactions, including Payroll, even when users with those roles or permissions have no explicit access to related areas. New for QuickBooks Enterprise 19 is the ability for the Admin user to identify when any permission level assigned to a user includes access to sensitive payroll information, now marked by an * (asterisk).

While this enhancement does not permit additional granular restriction of such information from roles containing access, it potentially will allow the Admin user to restrict access by altering any users’ role assignments.

For QuickBooks Enterprise (v19) 'Platinum' Subscribers using Advanced Inventory features1

(13) 'Expanded & Enhanced' Sales Order Pick, Pack and Ship – QuickBooks 2018 saw the introduction of a new Sales Order Fulfillment Worksheet and optional Mobile Inventory Barcode Scanners to speed up picking of orders by workers on the floor of the warehouse. QuickBooks 2019 has expanded the functionality to permit packers to prepare the orders for shipment using the same mobile scanners to capture packed contents, shipping weights and packing dimensions. 

This new functionality is further extended by integrating the workflow directly with the Shipping Manager features for either FedEx or UPS already built into QuickBooks.  Information captured during the packing process is coupled with Sales Order information to not only update packing documents, but also print the shipping labels so that all information is recorded on the centralized dashboard.

(14) 'Expanded & Enhanced' Purchase Order Receiving – this is another slip-stream feature introduced during QuickBooks 2018 but is included in the QuickBooks 2019 release notes because this is the first full year that the feature will be available. 

Many QuickBooks Enterprise Advanced Inventory users who adopted last year’s Sales Order Worksheet and Mobile Scanner features for order fulfillment told Intuit that they wanted additional functionality to help offset the cost of scanner purchases. It seemed only natural that ‘receiving of inventory’ should go right along with sales fulfillment, so this feature incorporates not only a new Purchase Order Management Worksheet and workflow but allows for use of the mobile scanners to record Purchase Order receiving.

With this new feature you essentially identify a Purchase Order for receiving, assign the information to receiving personnel (with a scanner, or optional printed receiving receipt), and scan the merchandise directly into inventory with the mobile device (or enter the receiving information into the PO Worksheet if not using a scanner).

This has the potential to greatly reduce data entry errors and increase efficiency within the inventory receiving process.

QuickBooks for Mac 2019

(15) 'Return of an Enhanced' QuickBooks for Mac – for all you Apple Mac lovers, the Mac specific version of QuickBooks has returned for 2019 and it’s been updated with a variety of features. This is MacOS software running locally on your Apple computer, it is NOT the Mac App for QuickBooks Online. Features for 2019 include:

  • Bank/Credit-card Reconcile Discrepancy Report
  • Email Tracking for Customers and Vendors
  • iCloud Sync for sharing your QuickBooks for Mac file
  • Passwords (required) to safeguard sensitive data
  • Report Window enhancements
  • Square sales data import

We will elaborate more on these features in our QuickBooks for Mac 2019 Feature Minute article in the upcoming days following release.

You may also want to read my good friend Laura Madeira's article titled 'QuickBooks Desktop 2019: What's New and Improved' at Intuit's Firm of the Future blog for her perspective, along with additional information about the new releases.

Notes & Disclosures:

1 - Scanners or mobile devices discussed here in association with QuickBooks Enterprise functionality are sold separately, they are not included with QuickBooks Enterprise (v19) subscriptions. Functionalities discussed in this footnoted section are only available with a Platinum subscription to QuickBooks Enterprise (v19).

Graphics or other illustrations used in this article have either been prepared using a pre-release version of QuickBooks 2019 software or were furnished and/or adapted from Intuit source content. Be aware that certain aspects of features described or illustrated herein may have changed between the pre-release software version we used, and the release of QuickBooks 2019 desktop products scheduled for September 4, 2018.

This article is intended to serve as a summary of QuickBooks 2019 product features, it is not an in-depth review, nor has it been written to provide instruction in the proper use of the software.  Publication of this article does not constitute any formal endorsement of these products by either the Publisher, Editor or Author.