QuickBooks 2011: A Wish List

GREAT NEWS! QuickBooks 2011 has been released. Details and 20% savings (+ instant download) on QuickBooks 2011 software are just a click away...

While the release of QuickBooks 2011 won't happen until this fall, it is never too early to put together a wish list of features and functionality I hope to see in the new release.

While QuickBooks 2010 brought us the document management center and the ability to copy and paste information directly from Excel, here is my wish list for QuickBooks 2011:

• A remit to address for vendors - c'mon already - this should have been added years ago
• Better tools to manage accounts receivable - after all, they are the lifeblood of many small businesses today
• A redesigned set of tools to customize reports - the current options within the "modify report" button are really tired and need a refresh
• The end of forced phone-in registration to get a license code. You can follow the dialogue on this issue at this very popular blog post.
• A fix on the problem that occurs with average cost on inventory items in some cases when the on-hand count goes below zero.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

• A refresh of the customer center - seriously, room for just 2 contact names, phone numbers and e-mails? What business doesn't have the need for more functionality here without having to purchase a CRM add-on.
• The ability to purchase two additional licenses for QuickBooks Enterprise instead of being forced into buying five at a time. Businesses don't grow their staff in nice even 5 user chunks.
• An upgrade to the budgeting tools - I don't think those have been touched in more than five years
• Reduced in-product advertising - it seems to me like this has really increased over the last several versions of QuickBooks.
• The ability to customize statements - very little can be done with this form currently.
• To Do items that are unique to the user and that aren't shared on the master to do list
• The "pressing Enter moves between fields" preference to be on by default. This one keystroke derails many new users to QuickBooks right away

AND FINALLY

• Stop asking each user if they want to enter memorized transactions. Designate people who even see this box in the first place.
• Control the process of installing software updates - Centralize that activity in the Admin account, especially after the oodles of problems that R9 in QuickBooks 2009 caused.

I'm sure I will think of more to add to this list. This is plenty to get started :-)

More importantly, what is on your QuickBooks 2011 wish list? Feel free to post a comment below!

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Scott Gregory is a specialist with QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise accounting software. He has been helping businesses "think beyond the ledger" for over 25 years.

Comments

[Martha]

Sweet review..I like your writing style. :D you are a ittle bit ironic.. :D It was nice to read this and also very useful.

[Big 4 Interviewer]

Hey Scott,

Question: when does 2012 come out? Do they release a new one each fall on a timetable? I'm debating whether to purchase.

Thanks!!!

[HorneAbby]

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[Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Expert]

Wendy and Sebastian:

Thank you for your post and suggestions.

Indeed, the ability to have multiple classes assigned to a specific paycheck would be a welcome new feature in QuickBooks for many businesses.

Let's see what the 2011 version of QuickBooks has in store for us!

Scott Gregory

[Norbert]

i will like to see in the new quickbooks

1: when you do a sales receipt with cash have it show the change back

2: have it with a calender if you want to setup a time to do a job or call customer back

3: have it do work orders if some one wants some thing fixed

4: have all ver. of quickbooks sync with yahoo, gmail, mobile me, & others

5: also have quickbooks work with iphone or other pda from your own network

6: have all work with bar code with out 2nd party software

7: haw it work with any credit card company and or bank

8: have it work with e-mail and or any website on may have for sales

i have more but i can't think of it right now

[Wendy]

have three stores with employees shared between stores, so a very useful add-on for my multi-location payroll would be to have the class assignment for an employee be done on a per-line item level during each payroll as opposed to a per-employee level at the time that the employee is added.

For instance, if Jim worked 28 hours at location A and 52 hours at location B, then I would like the option to add two line items to Jim's pay cheque, the first would be Regular Hours of 28 hours, assigned to class "A", and the second would be Regular Hours of 52, assigned to class "B". This way, when I run filtered reports I can get accurate payroll costs on a per location basis.

Sebastion, you can already do this. In preferences under Payroll, Job Costing and Class tracking, pick assign class per payroll item instead of entire paycheck.

[Chhay Vannara]

Only one comment:
1) In paybill make it Sort by one or multiple selected vendor's name, I find it wasting a lot of time looking for a vendor's name in the list I need to pay which is all mixed in there.

[Paula]

Quickbooks really needs to improve the accessability of its Ship To addresses. Not sure if this has been improved since 2009, but I've had retail clients who ship all over the country lose the ability to market to those addresses because they can't be extracted easily (cost to pay someone to extract and edit the data would outweigh the potential income). If anyone has a solution, I'd be happy to hear about it! I've spent hours trying to figure this one out. I did find a tool through a third party developer, but its messy if the ship-tos weren't entered juuuuuust right. Customer Manager was useless for this task, but maybe that's been improved and I don't know about it?

[Jennifer Moore]

Two things (to start)...

First, the capability of attaching/linking bills and statements that I receive via email to the vendor in Quickbooks.

Secondly, I'd like a calendar view that would allow me to view my payables or receivables or both. This calendar should also grey out the paid items.

[Sebastian]

I have three stores with employees shared between stores, so a very useful add-on for my multi-location payroll would be to have the class assignment for an employee be done on a per-line item level during each payroll as opposed to a per-employee level at the time that the employee is added.

For instance, if Jim worked 28 hours at location A and 52 hours at location B, then I would like the option to add two line items to Jim's pay cheque, the first would be Regular Hours of 28 hours, assigned to class "A", and the second would be Regular Hours of 52, assigned to class "B". This way, when I run filtered reports I can get accurate payroll costs on a per location basis.

[Ehab]

1-vendor balance detail / summary by job report. what is currently available covers only the cost side. When there is a retainage, the statement is totally un-balanced.
It is the most thing I need from QB 2011
2-FAM to work in multi user.
3-Consolidation not combination.
4-sharing data between different company files (e.g, customers, project names)
5-Chart of accounts to be common for all multiple companies.

[Christeen Ramey]

My companyy works on an Accrual/Fiscal Year basis. It would be nice to be able to assign the proper fiscal year to a customer job so that I don't have to do the multiple general ledger entries at the end of every year to make sure the expenses and income are in the proper fiscal year.
I would also very much like to know why it is that QB does not just do updates as opposed to having to buy totally new programs and then having to upload all the information into the new version. UGH!! We use Pro and it doesn't keep the memorized reports or transactions. I have to redo them.

[Alex]

Main comments from my clients:

*Should be able to purge old data to reduce data size as of a certain date. Most people only want to see maxium of 3 years of history -- don't need 10 years ago and shouldn't have to start with a new, empty COA to get the books to a manageable size. Even going to bigger and better versions, the data files just get too large. Many clients don't need the other features of the Premier or Enterprise, just need less data.

*Pay bills -- should be able to apply all credits from suppliers when finished selecting the bills to pay instead of "take $5 from the credit to apply to this $5 invoice, then take $8.75 from the same credit to apply to this $8.75 invoice, then take the remaining $2 on the credit and apply to the $10 invoice, so I only pay $8." tedious, tedious, tedious

*Annual donation receipts in non-profit version -- Intuit, do you even READ what your clients NEED? They've been asking for this for years on the forums. The information needed is in two different tables, so there isn't even an easy export to make your own forms. Involves data manipulation or manual entry for hundreds of forms at year end for many charities.

[Karen Young]

Increase amount of Custom Fields in Items so can show all sizes on Sales Orders, etc. At present there are only 5... need additional to show Sizes at top of forms.
(XS through XXXL)

[Gail Rayner]

My suggestions for QB 2011:
1. The ability to run a report of sales by ship-to address. That's essentially what a Sales Tax report is, but you cannot do this for your non-taxable customers.
2. Multiple sales tax rates for customers.
3. Multiple selling terms for customers.
4. An address field for both customers and vendors which allows the flexibility to enter international addresses. Many companies DO sell outside the US and the address format should not be constrained to the typical US/Canada street address format.
5. A way to set a flag (other than setting credit limit to $0) that will pop up and say "hey, there is a problem with this customer!"

[Cathy]

1) On the invoice screen, the customer's phone number to appear.
2) FIX BATCH emailing, so customers do not receive WIN.dat files
3) be able to print invoices alphabetically.
4) Multiple Warehouses, in one company file
5) serialized inventory (They have this in Point of Sale, why can't they just add it to Enterprise)
6) Multiple contacts and emails for those contacts
7) Sort by Items on a purchase order
8) this list can go on and on.....

[Deborah Corbett]

I have two checking accounts and one printer. I have to change the tray everytime I print a check. It would be nice if the tray was linked to the form.

[Sam]

Chris commented above about "duplicating" entries in items. Why not do the same in other forms as well? Let's say I have 10 customers buying the same 3 items. How easy would it be to create just one invoice and duplicate it 10 times!

I would also need a better way to print "batch" invoices or any other form. Currently, if I need to print 20 invoices for a customer, I have to open each one individually, click on "To Be Printed", and save it. Do that 20 times!! And then choose "print forms" from the File menu. Isn't that very dumb? Shouldn't I be able to select the invoices I need without opening them, and choose print?

[Lake]

be able to use QB for eternity without the once every three year shakedown forcing you to upgrade

[chris]

Inventory management in QUickbooks is a joke, as is multi-currency transaction management.

Better handling of multiple locations, or warehouses, better handling of multiple units of measure (each, box, case, carton, pallet). Thes might differ for defaults on the buy and sell side duh..

Better handing of varying buy side terms (pre-paid, part pre-paid, on delivery, and credit or mix therof)

Easy ways to change large numbers of items. Excel type view.

Charging thousands of dollars for this leaves no incentive to stay on quickbooks, just migrate to a higher end package.

Reports that are easy to export straight out into excel in a batch.

CRM link to popular lower end CRMs ACT! GOldMine and other obvious choices.

[Mattia]

1) CRM functionality. We're in 2010, not 1990, a "notes" field (also limited in lenght) just doesn't cut it! We need to be able to track Opportunities and Customer-Based To DOs (i.e. for repeat sales types of businesses like printer supplies sales we need to be able to schedule a proactive sales call after x days of current sale)

2) CRM - Centralize communications with a customer. It would be nice to be able to see all communication with a specific customer within QB (email/fax/attachments/notes) like it happens in ACT or Goldmine.

3) BILL DUEs REMINDER AND SCHEDULER (i.e. for monthly rent I don't want to enter 12 bills and 12 google calendar entries, QB should do that in 3-4 clicks and remind the specific user in advance if I haven't paid a bill with an email and/or a popup. Same should happen for customers dues.

4) IPHONE APPLICATION - QB should sync a subset of data online and allow me to access it through a portable device and a laptop (at least as Read Only).

5) ITEM LIST - Get this organized better! A simple list it's just too messy when you have 1000 products. I should be able to group products and inline-search and filter for an item while filling in an order/estimate or invoice, just typing part of the word that makes up the product code, description or any other custom field. Also possibility of "duplicating" an entry in the Item list would be very welcome! Not to mention "DB syncing" with external databases through XML, FTP, etc.

[Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Expert]

Deborah:

If you are in the Layout Designer, you can "add image" to an invoice or other template.

Not sure if you knew about this or not...

Scott Gregory

[Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Expert]

Marty:

Click Edit > Preferences > General. You'll see an option that says "Pressing Enter moves between fields". Is that what you are looking for?

Scott Gregory

[Marty Halper]

Having the enter key moving between fields as a default? No way the enter key means enter!

One should be able to make mutiple vendors or customers or accounts inactive with one stroke of the key.

Many time splits are the same % but different amounts. This should be automatic

[Duane Timmer EA]

I would like to see in the Federal Payroll Reports being able to send the 941 and 940 with a Reporting Agent PIN.