QuickBooks 2014 - What would you like to see?

August 8, 2013

9:07 PM

What do you want to see

If you had a magic wand, what would you whip-up into the next version of QuickBooks?

Every once in a while I will start a little blog for the purpose of getting your opinions on various topics and issues. As the release of the 2014 QuickBooks product line is approaching, what would you like to see included in QuickBooks?

Even if you don't have a 'new feature' you want, if you think an existing feature should be changed or 'fixed' in some way, please tell us all about that as well.

Post your responses using the 'comments' box below.

Who knows, maybe some of your wishes will come true....and even if they don't, I will at some point 'pass along' all your comments and suggestions to Intuit.

I can't wait to hear from YOU !

Murph

Comments (58)

Comment Feed

Customer Statements with Remittance Advice

I would like to be able to have a Statement Form that includes a remittance section the shows invoice #'s and amounts that the customer can return with their checks.

Rosemary Chambers more than 9 years ago

My 2014 Wish List

1) I would like to be able to make reports inactive - since you have trained us so well not to delete them.
2) I would like a report date function of 'This YTD through Last Month'. We are always working on last month but can't save a memorized report with this date range.

Eileen Sass more than 9 years ago

Statements

Be able to print the item description in detail statements. Only the item code prints. This has been on my wishlist for years.

Anita Robinson more than 9 years ago

General Journal Entries

When entering a General Journal entry have a "Check-Box" to dictate if the transaction is accrual based, cash based, or both. This will allow reports to be better customized.

Klade Williams more than 10 years ago

Quickbooks Non Profit 2014 for Macs

I'd like to see Quickbooks Non Profit ed for Macs.

Adventure Maven more than 10 years ago

Quickbooks Non-Profit 2014 for Macs

Yes, I too would like to see that or at least a "How To" section on how to set up a Non-Profit corporation in Quickbooks for Mac 2014 edition.

Don Smith more than 10 years ago

Great Idea - QB for Non-Profits

We probably need to offer that in the form of Windows and Mac, not just Mac alone.

Thanks for your contribution and readership.

Murph

insightfulaccountant.com more than 10 years ago

QBOE Harmony

Love the new Harmony edition of Quickbooks Online, most of our work is on hosted Quickbooks Desktop but the new Harmony version makes us rethink our hosted setups. Number one on our wish list is the ability to set up recurring ach payments from our customers.

Hank Burba, CPA more than 10 years ago

Quickbooks 2014

Emailing remittances would be a very useful addition. I cannot understand why this function is missing

Graham Verard more than 10 years ago

Post Dated Cheques

Sort record deposit According to Post Dated Date, Customised Reports,

Riyazi more than 10 years ago

Inactive Column & Inventory

With thousands of items in our database we often have to view all items keeping the ones in stock active and ones we can order inactive. It is really a HUGE problem having the inactive column non adjustable. When it is large it is very easy for people to make items active and non active. I really think the inventory / advanced inventory needs a make over. Lots of bugs and lots of work arounds we have to do to make it work. Honestly our old 1985 Doss compiler program managed the inventory better than quickbooks. Paying $3500- $4000 a year for the quickbooks program and the add all the extra features gets really old when all you hear from the employees all day is "stupid quickbooks" or "waiting on slowbooks" gets really frustrating. Quickbooks has a lot of good to offer and I am glad I have it but with a couple hundred thousand part numbers / customers / venders, employees ect ect. the functionality seams to get worse as we grow.

Raymon Caldwell - G.M.- R.F. Engine more than 10 years ago

Premier Manufacturing

I would like to be able to change a "build" on the fly, such as the Enterprise version. This would cut down on inventory adjustments if materials needed to be added or subtracted from a build. Being able to have it linked to the customer of the build would be helpful as well.

Steve more than 10 years ago

Auto save pdf documents / reports to client folder

I am a property manager and am getting ready to start using Quickbooks for managing the rents and payments. I like to see a feature whereby any invoice / letter / other document that is generated - is automatically saved to a client folder on the computer / network. I am able to do this with my software in MS Access. Intuit should look into this as this is very helpful for me. Never miss a document that is being sent our again.

Gurdip Singh more than 10 years ago

Quickbooks for Mac UK

Without any hesitation I would love to finally see a uk version for the Mac. If 2014 is not released for mac, I am starting to look for another accounting package which is.

D Khiroya more than 10 years ago

Quickbooks Item codes and descriptions

It would be great to be able to sort the drop down list when entering invoices, sales orders etc into either item code order OR description order. We use item codes but actually would rather be able to select the line items by description. If you could set it up so the list is not in item code order but in A-Z description order it would be great

Jim more than 10 years ago

Enter an inventory bill BEFORE the shipment arrives

...In the "old days" we used to get the bill either when the shipment arrived or after it arrived. Quickbooks never takes into account that today's e-commerce purchases of inventory will often have the bill arrive as a pdf via e-mail --all sent and often even paid for (i.e. PayPal, etc.) days before the shipment arrives. Have to do a manual work around right now using an account "Inventory in Transit" than negatively cancelling it out when the inventory actually gets here, using the "Item Receipts" window.

D. B. more than 10 years ago

Consolidated VAT returns

I run two small businesses, one that is VAT registered, one not. Ironically, it is the one that is not registered that has the greater VAT payables. I would like the system to be able to link group companies and prepare consolidated VAT returns and potentially P&L.

Jonathan Pyman more than 10 years ago

Notes Enhancement

Show the user that entered this note. This is a no-brainer, since they are logged in. Also when I add a note, let me change the note date. If you want a separate field called note created date, fine but not everyone is able to put the note in the date it occurs.

Kathleen Fernan more than 10 years ago

Invoicing customers from employee time entries

We are a service based business and multiple employees are billed out to the same client. Need the ability to filter the screen (or at least sort) the time entries that are going to be dumped on an invoice. Since I do one invoice per employee, I have to manually click each entry - create the invoice and start over. A simple filter would be nice.

Kathleen Fernan more than 10 years ago

Filter box in Find Transactions

Please change the look of the filter box in the find feature. It is too large. I do a lot of searches by name and in 2013 you have to scroll down to find it. A minor issue but one that is very frustrating. It is much faster to create a search in previous versions of QuickBooks.

Cheryl Short more than 10 years ago

Inventory (Stock Asset Value)

I too would like to see the FIFO method for inventory. I had decided to convert to QuickBooks from Peachtee, but since I learned QB only used Average Cost I'm not so sure.

Sean Fagan more than 10 years ago

FIFO Option is Available only in QBES-AI

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions with Advanced Inventory (add-on subscription) offers the FIFO valuation methodology for inventory.

insightfulaccountant.com more than 10 years ago

A proper database!

How about giving us a proper database rather than the hacked-to-hell Sybase junk they're using? Maybe a real SQL server, please? There's plenty of open source ones out there which work flawlessly and don't require major (and dangerous!) rebuilds constantly with every few bugfixes. Not to mention that if it ran on real SQL, us folks with *nix back-offices could actually run Quickbooks on a proper server rather than some half-assed Windows workstation sitting in the corner.

Also, hey Intuit! Some of us have 100+ client files we have to manage. Bulk management utilities (backing up, converting, etc) would be appreciated.

Sean M more than 10 years ago

The QB "Sybase' database is a true SQL, but Intuit has limited its' functionality.

Thanks for your comments, but I wanted to reply by saying that I often hear that QuickBooks doesn't use a true SQL, but in reality it uses the original SQL (Sybase).

In late 1986, Sybase released the SYBASE system, the first high-performance RDBMS; the SYBASE System provided for a client/server computer architecture. Sybase was the first to market such a client/server relational database, Sybase called the database server "Sybase SQL Server" and made a deal with Microsoft to share the source code for Microsoft to remarket as "SQL Server"; the Sybase SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Server were virtually identical. Due to disagreements between the two companies over revenue issues, Sybase and Microsoft decided to split the code-lines and went their own way. The big difference is that Sybase has a Unix heritage, while Microsoft SQL Server was adapted and optimized only for Microsoft Windows architecture.

Intuit could do a lot more with the database they are using, so perhaps they will take your suggestion to heart. We can only hope that they will choose to make such improvements in future editions of what they refer to as their 'desktop' product line.

Murph

PS - and thanks for reading Intuitive Accountant !

insightfulaccountant.com more than 10 years ago

Accounts payable

I would like to be able to receive ebills into accounts payable.

Scott Miles more than 10 years ago

Payroll

This is just a suggestion for an article for Intuitive Accountant News. A good article would be explaining the different flavors of payrolls that are availablefor QuickBook users from the desktop versions to the online versions that can be used inside QBO and online versions that are outside QBO that can be imported. Very confusing.

Billy Barton more than 10 years ago

Stock Asset Value

I would like to finally see FIFO/LIFO for stock valuation. As each month we have to export to a spreadsheet & make a manual adjustment.

peter webster more than 10 years ago

Bank Reconciliations

I see many clients that have never reconciled the Bank Accounts in Quickbooks, sometimes it seems I have a couple of pages that reconcile on the statements. I'm not sure how it would work but if i could tick these off somehow without having any discrepancy through opening and closing balances. This would then allow me to clear down some transactions leaving less to wade through earlier transactions which still require looking into/resolving. I'm not sure if this is clear what I mean but maybe someone understands this. I just been to a client with nine months worth of transactions but i guess i could have waited to near year end and just select all less those that hadn't cleared.

Russ more than 10 years ago

Customers - urgently needed

I would like to be able to highlight a few of my customers in accounts receivables that have different credit terms on them - if you could classify them in a different colour that would be a great advantage!

Wendy H more than 10 years ago

Email and change template for remittance advice

I would like to be able to edit the template for the remittance advice and to email it directly from Quickbooks. I know this is widely commented on in forums and a lot of people would like to see this.

J Davison more than 10 years ago

Splits Made Easy

I'm constantly having to click to submit splits and classes, could you make that easier when parsing through downloaded transactions?

Jameson more than 10 years ago

Job change orders

There needs to be a way to input a negative change order as a stand alone entry.

Jeni Ramsey more than 10 years ago

More Options for Re-classing transactions and more transactions available in Accountant's copy

1. I would love to have the ability in "reclassify Transactions" to be able to reclass by Customer/Job in addition to account and Class
2. I think the features of an accountant's copy is much too limited. We can't batch reclassify, we can't touch payroll, we can't apply customer or vendor credits....these are most of the reasons we need to clean up customer files. Allowed activities in the accountant's copy are much too limited.
3.I'd love it if the "do not mark as billable" default actually worked. I have never seen it work in any client's file.
4. And please, bring back the user interface we are all so familiar with. I hate the look of 2013!

Penny Gireon more than 10 years ago

Printing an envelope for a vendor

This is an easy one to code. Give us the capability to print a vendor envelope, packing slip or label. We have the capability in the Customer Center, why not in the other centers? I have many clients who pay their bills by check and then go to Word to create the envelope. Big waste of time but it needs to be done or hand write the envelopes. Small request, but one that never seems to get enough attention.

Sharon Smith more than 10 years ago

Zipping Columns on Reports

I'd like to be able to selectively collapse columns on reports as we are now able to do selectively for row groupings. Not being able to do so has made us rethink our class list because using subclasses makes an Income Statement by class wider and more unwieldy than desired. We'd like to be able to show or hide the subclasses as needed.

Stacy Mueller more than 10 years ago

Non-profits

Would be nice to be able to customize terms for clients like partron, ect. that are more specific to Non-profits.

Becky Neilson more than 10 years ago

Payroll

Would like to see an easier way to flag past employees that have wage garnishments. Work with construction clients and we usually receive these notices after an employee has been laid off. We may hire again in a few months to a year depending on work load. Would be nice if we could flag them when we rehire. Then we can verify with the agency if they still have garnishments and then take apprporaite action.

Becky Neilson more than 10 years ago

Search Amounts

I have often needed to search for a trx but don't know the exact amount. I would like the find to allow for a range search, both a greater than and a less than in the same search.

Bonnie more than 10 years ago

Commonality/Consistency

More consistency between the way A/R and A/P are handled - take the best of both.
More Credit Card-type function for bank debit card entries - i.e., returns/credits.
Report that would show which invoices have been applied to which payments - both A/R and A/P (or am I just missing something?).

Honali Austin more than 10 years ago

Interface in 2013 is awful, go back to 2012

I do not like the interface they introduced in 2013. I have a large screen monitor to see MORE on the screen, but they have forced us to see LESS. At a minimum, they should make the line sizes optional in the preferences (single space vs "double" space).

Lorien Prince more than 10 years ago

Security/Permissions improvements and granularity

The current permissions settings in QuickBooks Pro and Premier are horrible. This is a huge problem for many of my clients. It is really impractical to upgrade to Enterprise just to get more granularity, and even then it is not that great. I believe they should introduce the Enterprise level security into Pro and Premier and then improve the security in Enterprise truly a higher-level security vehicle worth the price of the upgrade.

Lorien Prince more than 10 years ago

Need to catch up

Wow, I haven't even gotten QB 2013 yet. Maybe I'll just wait for QB 2014.

C Kirk more than 10 years ago

Password Management on QuickBooks Online

Dear Joe, Can you check the password management and report access relationship on QuickBooks Online ? It seems everything not quite seamlessly coordinate with the internal control. CPAs should be a good place for discussion.

Irma more than 10 years ago

GREAT COMMENTS EVERYONE - KEEP THEM UP

Our readers have NOT disappointed me.....your are providing exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping for from this blog (comment request). I look forward to hearing more from you, so keep up the comments......
Murph

William "Bill" Murphy more than 10 years ago

data integrity

I would like to see improved data integrity. Many people are requiring to rebuild way too often. It used to be a rebuild was hardly ever needed. "Things that make you go, hmmmmm."

Susan Humphreys more than 10 years ago

Things I'd like to see

I would like to see... 1.Batch reclassify to move credit card transactions from one credit card to another (for clients who regularly record transactions against the wrong card). 2. Batch reclassify to work on item-based transactions, realizing that you may assign transactions to a different account than the one assigned to that item. 3. Improved intelligence or "learning" on the "Matching" feature of online banking imports (recurring monthly payments and daily transactions of the same $amount are not matches). 4. I'd like to be able to search several QBW files for a $ amount (to see which related entity made a specific payment) without having to open each file & search.

Bryan Bostrom more than 10 years ago

2014 Product Suggestions

Actions/Scripting. I'd like to see QuickBooks revolutionize their product by allowing users to create scripts or actions which are triggered upon the user's choices. i.e. When I enter a bill for this vendor, please have QB send someone else in my department a notice that they have been billed. Intuit doesn't grasp the concept of actions/scripting nor do they understand why users would want this ability.

David Gutierrez more than 10 years ago

Preferences for sending forms

This is minor and would be very easy to fix, but it's a pet peeve of mine. Under Company Preferences for sending forms, you have two options for addressing the recipient: "To" or "Dear". Neither one of these suits me, and I have to manually change it every time. How about "Hi" or just blank?

Along the same line, if you are using IPN, there is no way to customize the text, so I'm always manually deleting the text that sounds like a marketing ploy. (***Save yourself time by paying this invoice online with . . .)

Sandy Bibace more than 10 years ago

2014 QB Wish List

It would be nice to have a place to record miscellaneous company info that is not part of the Company Information icon. Such items that I find i need are online banking login info, Perhaps something like a "Note" icon.

Billy Barton more than 10 years ago

QB2014 requests

We would like a report that would show what invoices are paid in a deposit. There is one that will show the client and the check numbers of the deposit but a report that would shoe the Invoice number associated with a deposit would be great.

Laurie Cisneors more than 10 years ago

Attach documents

In 2013 it is hard to decipher if a document is attached to a record. Earlier, the paperclip turned from black to green which made it easy to tell if there was a document attached. In 2013 the icon changes but it is too subtle.

Margaret Gow more than 10 years ago

QB2014 requests

I have several clients who use factoring and it would be nice if QB could handle this.

Laurie Cisneros more than 10 years ago

Factoring in QB

I developed a system for handling factoring in QB about 5 years ago. I used an Excel workbook in conjunction with QB. If you're interested, I think I could look it up and do it again. It worked well.

Linda Qbq Russell more than 10 years ago

Department vs class

I am curious as to why QB chose "class" vs "department". Case in point.
I was meeting with a np yesterday that tried to set up their QB on their own. They have an educational department that gives art, dance, music and craft classes. They need Financial Statements that reflect the five departments - Education, Administration, Fund raising, etc.... However they went into QB and set up ALL their education classes under "class". Then they wondered - how do we set up the other departments, there are not any other departments listed only one for our classes.
I have run into this with other companies who have various departments to track. They tell me - we don't offer classes. It is very confusing to the end user, even after we explain that "classes" are really similar to "departments" .

Jeanne Bergelin-Murphy more than 10 years ago

Class Vs Dept Vs Profit Center

I think QB says that classes are profit centers. I explain that means you can create a Profit and Loss Report for any and all classes. You could easily fix your clients' class set-up mistake. Add Education as a class. Then change the art, dance, music & craft to sub-classes. Add the other Depts as classes. Then memorize a Profit and Loss by Class report. Let your client see how it works.

Linda Qbq Russell more than 10 years ago

Class Feature ability to rename it

I agree "class" is a confusing term. Why not let us in prefereces rename the field class to whatever we want and have that flow through the system to the screens and menu options. Some will want departments or division etc.

Kathleen Fernan more than 10 years ago

Sales Rep Field on Vendor Transactions

For years I've been hoping they would add a field on vendor bills, checks, paychecks, etc. for sales rep. We have clients that would love to do a profit and loss by sales rep and the only way to do it now is to use classes for the sales reps, but then you can't use class for anything else.

Mark Stricker more than 10 years ago

Credits and Discounts

I would like to see credits and discounts (when applicable) COMPLETELY separate from any existing activity. Separate line items both on screen and in print/reports. I would like the ability to apply a payment EXACTLY as the Customer did. Example: Check amount for $8,000.00, payment on account for $1,000.00 for 10 different jobs. I need the ability to also enter the deducted amount of $2,000.00 which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual payments as it is for prior activity. I also need the ability to receive a payment for MORE than the amount of invoices, on a separate line item, or just "on account". Ditto everything for the Vendor/Bill side. I DO NOT like how currently a discount, or a credit has to be applied against existing activity and then gets "lost". Most often, the credit/discount has absolutely nothing to do with the particular invoice, or bill, that you are forced to apply it against. I don't know an accountant out there who has ever had to do account reconciliations that likes "net" transactions. I won't be holding my breath on this ever becoming a part of QuickBooks. I've been asking for this change for 8 years.

Michele Riffe more than 10 years ago