While the QuickBooks Online Expanded view for the Vendor Center has been available in QuickBooks Labs, it is now a newly released standard roll-out feature. QuickBooks Labs is a fun place to try and check out new ideas for QBO, and because the Expanded Vendor Center was so widely liked, it has now became a standard-part of QuickBooks Online. Some of the biggest benefits of the Expanded Vendor Center are the ability to use the side drawer which allows more usable landscape while viewing vendor transactions, plus the ability to sort vendors by name or open balances.
At first glance, there is not a noticeable difference in the Vendor Center, it’s when you select a vendor that the expanded vendor view becomes available. What the expanded vendor view allows you to do is move easily between vendors. This feature is handy when you need to switch between vendors while looking for a particular transaction or type of transaction with multiple vendors possibilities.
Expanded Vendor Center (fig. 1)
Another Expanded Vendor Center feature is the ability to sort by either name or open balance. This allows you to find what vendors have open balances and Expanded Vendor Center lists the vendors in order of dollar amount due. Being able to view which vendors are owed money helps you to prioritize payments.
QBO Expanded Vendor Center (fig 2)
The Expanded Vendor Center acts like a sliding side drawer which means you can take control of how much usable landscape you need to see vendor transactions. One way to take control of this sliding drawer is to open the vendor and minimize the sliding drawer so you have more workable space while viewing the transaction. This is just a little thing that makes me so happy.
QBO Expanded Vendor Center (fig 3)
Lastly the vendor search box at the top of the sliding side drawer allows you to type in a vendor name or piece of a name and Expanded Vendor Center will search for all possibilities. Even if you are unsure of the whole name, as long as you have part of the vendor name which can even be the last word in the company name, the search feature will list all possibilities; this is really handy for those vendors you don't often use.
QBO Expanded Vendor Center (fig 4)
If you had turned on Expanded Vendor Centers via QuickBooks Labs this might not be a new topic, but is should serve as confirmation that a great feature is here to stay. The Expanded Vendor Center with the ability to switch companies easily, sort by name or open balance, expand or minimize sliding drawer and search box functionality allowing you to look for any word which is part of the vendor name, are all part of making a better user experience for you the bookkeeper/accountant and for your client users. Including your clients in “what’s new” feature discussions not help your clients to understand the new functionalities, but opens up conversation which can lead to more opportunities for both you and your clients.