The Canny Can-Can

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, I'm Alicia Pollock from Royal. Com and I have with me Margie Remmers Davis of Acadian Accounting Education. And we are going to talk about the canny boards for leaving feedback for QuickBooks online. How are you doing, Margie?

Margie Remmers-Davis: I'm doing great. I usually come on to talk about look what we found, and I think this is like the biggest [00:00:30] look what we found. That there is. It's amazing I can't wait.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. No, I'm really I'm really excited about this episode because, you know, people who have been listening to this podcast over the last few years are really familiar with me encouraging people to flood that feedback that Intuit needs to know how we feel. And when I say leave feedback, I don't just mean me, me me me me me me. This doesn't work. That doesn't work. I don't like the new thing. You know what leaving feedback means is I'm [00:01:00] having a problem. This problem on this report that needs to be fixed. That's what feedback is.

Margie Remmers-Davis: And this is what I would like to see instead. Yeah. Not just I want to complain about it, but this is how I would like to see it work.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, they always say that about HR, right? You don't just complain about things, you show up with a solution to it. And so that's really what the candy boards are all about. Yeah. Now this kind of hearkens back to the early days of QBO, where they actually [00:01:30] had a feedback forum right under the help that when you went to feedback and you typed something in, it would give you a list of other people's similar feedback that you could upvote. And they had that, you know, that was back in like the the 2020 12 to 20 15 or 16 or so. And then they took that away. And then there was QuickBooks labs for a while where you could turn on and off different features in order to beta test them and put in feedback. But [00:02:00] that went away too. And a lot of people don't take the time to put in feedback. And there's a lot of different ways of putting in feedback. You know, there's going up to the gear and putting in the general feedback up at the top, but then you also see feedback links all the way throughout the software, where those feedback links go directly to the product team and develop who's responsible for developing that particular feature or that particular app. And so it's, you know, putting in feedback is the way that they know what to prioritize. [00:02:30] And the more people who put in feedback about a particular topic, it rises to the top of importance. And they know. So, you know, if you come across something that's mission critical, getting your friends to put in the feedback to actually helps.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. And one of the things I learned, actually, on an episode of this, of this podcast, listening to you, um, when I was just a little fangirl, was, um, that you said that they actually review the the feedback every Friday or something and [00:03:00] then like shows up on a board at headquarters. Tell us more about that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So there is actually somebody who, as the feedback comes in, sees the feedback as it's coming in. And that's so that if there are any mission critical things like the site is down, they're on it immediately. So there's somebody who takes all of the feedback and kind of filters it for the different topics and sends it on to the teams. And that happens not just Fridays. That's all throughout the week. And, you know, she told me that for every [00:03:30] 20 she gets, only five of them are actionable, and 15 of them have to be thrown out because they either are not specific or they don't give the context for where the problem is, like, how are they even going to get there to to replicate it, you need to tell them exactly where you are, what you're doing in order for them to replicate it so that they can see what's going on. So, you know, only about 25% of the feedback that comes in is actionable. But then they take all that actionable feedback and [00:04:00] send it directly to the development teams, and they have Friday meetings where they go over everything in order to fix things for us.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh I see. So it's a Friday meeting. Oh, interesting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, but there's even a I believe there's a room where there is a monitor with all the feedback that's just rolling in. And so you can actually sit in this room and see the feedback. I don't know if they still have that, but.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Maybe ten years ago, a guy told me that, uh, you know, it was coming in on his phone. He could see it on his phone and they had [00:04:30] a TV. And, you know, so the feedback is not just going into a drawer or a spreadsheet. They are actively monitoring things so that when things are time sensitive.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: There on it.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right. You know what I have started doing with some I don't know that I've done it with Intuit, but I've done it with other vendors is create a loom of, you know, what I'm seeing and all of where it is, what exactly the problem is, and putting that in their support [00:05:00] form. What I love about that, of course, one of the things we love about loom, right, is that you're notified when somebody watches it. So if I send it in to a, you know, a vendor a lot in the old days, olden days, I would never know if my support, my feedback thing, just, like went into a black hole. But if I'm sending a loom, then at least I know somebody watched it. They might not get back to me, they might not care. But at least they watched [00:05:30] it. So I don't know if we could put a link. I don't know if we could put a link in the feedback form. I don't know why we couldn't. I think we could.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I think that's that's a great idea. I've only recorded one of them one time, and that was when I'm having trouble with the products and services batch upload. And so we tried it a couple of times. So I actually recorded a loom and sent it to them. And they were actually pretty grateful because they could see it not working. Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Well, I know with our own on my own support at Acadia, and that's like I [00:06:00] always really appreciate those. Send us a screenshot, send us a loom so we can see exactly what you're seeing. Just helps things so much. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And for people who haven't been familiar with loom, that is a great free app where you can record your screen. And then, like Margie said, send a link to somebody where they can watch that recording so quick and easy. Great for communicating with clients, great for communicating feedback with into it.

Margie Remmers-Davis: And not a sponsor of this podcast. [00:06:30]

Alicia Katz Pollock: But yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: We're always open. Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey, loom. All right. And so that kind of leads us to the present. And about six months ago, maybe a year ago now, I was asked by the bank feeds team when I was doing the beta tests on the current bank feeds to go submit my feedback on this canny board that they had, and they sent me to Intuit and signed me up for the bank feeds [00:07:00] board. And what was cool about it is it's a place where you could actually put your post in and talk to the PMS and have a conversation with the developers about the feature, and you can look at the other things that other people have suggested and upvote it. Because, again, the things that have the high number of votes are the things that they're going to pay attention to.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Npm being project manager.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Project manager. Yeah. And then I found out that there was [00:07:30] a candy board for modern view of reports. And I just recently found out that there's one for payroll. So I think there's just three of them. And originally they weren't really promoting this. And they kept saying, well, you know, when those bank feeds, it was like, well, this is just for our team. And then, uh, Jessica McCracken had put out a post saying, hey, we have this candy board, come check it out. And I keep hearing that they're not that. It's kind of like in beta test and they're not sure if they're going to keep using it. But [00:08:00] they've also said, well, not a lot of people are engaging with it. And that was because Jessica told me not to promote it yet, because they weren't sure if they wanted to use it. So like, people don't know about it, they're not going to use it. And canceling it because people aren't using it.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Is a little backwards.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. Well, I mean, I can understand why they're nervous, right? Because they don't want it to turn into a gripe fest. They want. I mean, they asked you to participate in it when you were [00:08:30] a beta tester because they knew that you would give, you know, actionable, um, very specific feedback suggestions that you were going to be a helpful person on the board. You weren't going to be just one of these people who slams into it, says into its terrible, says this feature is awful and then goes on their merry way without saying specifically what's wrong. Specifically, what you would like to see different. Engage in a reasonable, [00:09:00] logical conversation rather than just throwing emotion at it so I can understand why they would be, you know, reluctant. But again, you can't say something's not working if you don't open it up to another, more people. So the way I found out about it was, um, actually at Intuit Connect and I went to a session at Intuit Connect with Jessica, and she said that, um, she talked about the candy board. [00:09:30] She mentioned that at first they were like, keeping it really small. They were they didn't want to open it up to a lot of people, but now they're at a point where they do want more people, more feedback to come in. So I was in that session and I texted Alicia and said, look what I found. We have to talk about this on the podcast. So yeah. So it's really yeah, it's really great. And what's great about it. Well, we'll go over each [00:10:00] of the things, but it has like a list of all of the things that they fixed. And so like all of the things that people well should we just like talk about it now, should we just go over each thing? Alicia.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so basically the website you go to intuit.io and you can log in and create an account. I think you can log in just with your Intuit account, but we're actually looking at it right now without a login. And we can see a lot of [00:10:30] the interactions. But I do have an account because I want my name attached to everything. Yeah. And there's um, a speaking my name attached to everything. One of the things I didn't say about leaving feedback earlier is when I do leave feedback, I almost always sign it. I always say at the end so that they know that it's me. You know, I don't know. I'm always curious. Like, do they ever search and see all these things? Alicia said. Anyway, I digress. Okay, [00:11:00] so when you go to Intuit, it says QuickBooks Account and Feedback, and there's three sections up at the top. There's a roadmap, there's feedback and there's a changelog. And Margie, do you mind if we do this in reverse order.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So the third one is the changelog. And the changelog is basically a list of things that they have put out as they are putting it out. Now it's not every little detail, but for example, [00:11:30] the top item says that on November 21st they introduced a bank feed account search. And so there's a little explanation. And then there's a little demo video. And basically what they did. And I hadn't even seen it before. But when you are in the banking feed, You know, we were used to the cards that go across, but a lot of people don't think about the fact that the name of the card at the very top, above the those cards is actually a drop down menu and a switcher where you can switch [00:12:00] between your accounts. So if you have ten accounts, you don't have to just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, you can just pick it off of a list. But what they did oh go ahead.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Sorry. And some people like they just see the tiles that are there and they don't realize that they can click the arrow to go scroll to their other ones and they're like, where's all my accounts? I connected my accounts and I'm not seeing them. So yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So look for the blue circle above the, the cards or the tiles. And that's actually a drop down menu. But what they did is they actually added a search to that drop down menu, because once [00:12:30] you have more than five accounts, scrolling to the one at the bottom becomes kind of a drag. So they've they've enhanced it with that little small improvement right there. So in any case, the change log is a place where they are putting out the new features. And I would love to see them. You know, the fact that the most recent one on there is about a month old tells me that they're not putting everything in there, but it would be. You know, we have long been asking for a place where we can see all of the changes, so I would like [00:13:00] to see them lean in on this one.

Margie Remmers-Davis: It would make us preparing for this podcast a lot easier.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, let's go check out the list and just.

Margie Remmers-Davis: We don't have to find them ourselves.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Okay, so then the let's go over to the roadmap next. Okay. So I'm not doing the tabs in order. I'm going to the roadmap next. And there are three different boards. There's a bank feeds [00:13:30] and accounting agents board. There's a modern review of reports board and a payroll board. So basically they're collecting feedback on the banking feed reports and payroll and on the roadmap. They you can filter by any one of the boards. Or you can see all of them, but there's three different sections. There's under review, there's planned and there's released. So under review is the list of all of the feedback that we're putting in planned are the ones that they're actually [00:14:00] working on, and they tell us what they're working on about it.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Exciting. They're listening.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Um, and then there's a released tab, and the released is the things that they have actually implemented due to the, due to the feedback. So there's a lot of transparency here. Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: And you can actually on the roadmap you can upvote something like even on there if you just click on if you see each of the items that's under review. [00:14:30] So this is a really what we're going to talk about. Um, in just a minute, how you actually create, um, a thread. But it's really important that when you create a thread that it's not that you be descriptive because that's what's going to show up here. So um, so for example, this first one I'm looking at under the roadmap for under review, it's under it's for the modern view of reports. And it says retained [00:15:00] earnings not displaying correctly and trial balance when displaying by month. Okay. So that's I would change that phrasing a little bit so that it's more clear when you're looking when you're looking at it. But anyway so that's the that's what somebody put. And if you thought that that was an important thing, there's a number right next to it. So right now it just says one. And I could click that number and it now it says two because that's like my upvote. [00:15:30] Like yes I want this thing fixed also. So you can you can upvote things directly from the roadmap.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep. So that's at the point where you do need to log in. You can't actually take action on anything until you log in. Um, but you can at least see everything when you're not logged in. Um, and so when you, um, when you're looking at the roadmap, like Margie said, you can click on any one of them and not and you can upvote it. And you can also leave your own comments. [00:16:00] So if you want to clarify something that they said or add your own experience to it, you can actually the more information they have, the better. And sometimes the developers will actually respond to you and ask additional questions.

Margie Remmers-Davis: But you have to click on it in order to be able to make the comment.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes, yes. Yeah. So when you click on anything that you see in the roadmap and again the roadmap is the under review section, the plan section and the released section. But when you click on any of those or just click on the boards to go straight [00:16:30] to the bank feeds or reporting or payroll, then it takes you to the list of feedback. And so that's kind of the middle tab. And that's where all the action really, really happens is under the feedback and you can pick which board you're in. And then once you're in that board, read through everything you know. See if there's see if there's anything already there that is related to what you're looking for. And that's actually a really important point. Don't [00:17:00] just show up and start. Start typing. There is a search showing the posts, and you can sort by trending posts, top posts, and new posts so you can see what people are paying attention to. And then even filter it for what's already under review or in discovery. Or if they're not going to do anything about it, they put it in a backlog. And I've seen a couple of mine go to backlog, which is disappointing. Oh yeah. But, um, one [00:17:30] of them actually went to backlog and I was like, no, you guys, this one's actually important. Oh no. That's.

Margie Remmers-Davis: So that's when you rally your friends. Alicia, you rally your friends on. I'll go on to the candy board and find my post and upvote it and comment on it so that it's more than just me saying it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep, exactly. So, like Margie said, once you kind of get into the feedback area, you can upvote, you can respond, and then when you're actually [00:18:00] putting in your own, your own feedback, you give it a title, you give it descriptions and literally as much detail as you can. What screen are you on? What's the terminology? What's the problem? What have you tried? What do you need it to do? What do you want it to look like when it's done? And then there's also a level of impact where the you have a you say, okay, well this is minimal or negligible or this is minor or moderate, this is significant and disruptive [00:18:30] or this is critical and severe. Now be honest about it. Don't you know critical severe means like you can't work. You are stopped. Cold, significant or disruptive means. You can't get the result that you want, and you have to do a bunch of workarounds. If or give up minor or moderate or like this would be nice and minimal, negligible or kind of like typos and minor issues.

Margie Remmers-Davis: That's an excellent description we should have. We should give that description to intuit so that everyone that uses [00:19:00] the candy board has that little guide next to them.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, just because it's pissing you off doesn't mean it's critical. Right.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. Yeah. Um, so I really invite everybody to go check it out. It's at Intuit. Now, don't go spam it. Go use it. And let's show Intuit that this is a method of gathering feedback that really would make a difference to us. You know, we want [00:19:30] a product that works and we want our voices heard, and being able to do it in a constructive environment with actionable results is really fabulous.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah, I love it. I hope they keep using it. I hope more people are tuned into it and really giving good feedback, not just complaining doesn't move the needle right. You've got to be logical and specific. And we've said this the whole time we've been talking. [00:20:00] We've been talking about how important it is. We're trying to like really, really, really get you to use it in a constructive way that actually makes a difference for everybody, because we can they'll listen to us if we talk in the right way.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. When I look at the under review options, you know, the you know, this one's got 14 votes undeposited funds, reconciliation needed and um, 17 upvotes for please do not default new [00:20:30] features to on before we have a chance to talk with our clients.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh, nice.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, things like that. And so, you know, I know that with that particular one until it defaults to on, because that's the way that you would know that they're there if they add new features in or defaulted to off. You literally would have no idea that it's there, especially since, you know, we hate the pop up ads and we dismiss the pop up ads. Well, if you didn't read the pop up ad, then you might not know that there's something there for you to know about. Um, so, [00:21:00] you know, I have I understand that we don't necessarily want it to start sending reviews, review invitations out after people pay an invoice. But if you haven't checked out the client hub, you don't know that you have this really cool option.

Margie Remmers-Davis: So yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Anything else you want to say about it? Margie?

Margie Remmers-Davis: No, I think that was I think that was great. I think this is an exciting it's an exciting tool and opportunity for us. And I hope we I hope we use it [00:21:30] well and that it continues and that I would love to see them roll out boards for many more things.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So yeah, that's a great idea. And I actually bookmarked it. So it's right in my browser. And when I do have feedback that I need to submit, I just go click on the bookmark and boom, I'm in. All right. Well, Margie, what's going on in your world?

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh, we have an exciting 2026 planned. Um, [00:22:00] it's going to be really so many, so many things that we're rolling out, but none of them can I talk about yet. Oh. Oh, my. Spoiler alert I know my students give me such a hard time. Uh, because I'm always saying it's, you know, something exciting is happening, and, and, uh, but then I leave them on the edge of their seat, so I can't talk about it yet. Maybe the next time we get together, I will have some news to [00:22:30] share. Um, but for right now, the best place to get Ahold of us. To stay in the loop. To know what's happening is in our Bookkeeping Skills lab, which is our free Facebook group. I teach a free class every Friday, and, um, we that's all where everything happens and how you can interact with us and find out and what's going on, and it's all totally free. So we'll put that in the show notes. Of course, you can have a link to it. And, uh, what about [00:23:00] you? What's going on in your world? Alicia?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I'm continuing on with my WTF QBO the great QBO refresh series that I started back in, uh, back in September, and we spent the end of 2025 doing all of the basics about Qbo. And then January is the first couple of weeks have been dedicated to 1099 and year end reviewing, and now we are now moving into our level two curriculum, our our now slightly more advanced [00:23:30] deep dives into features. So the first one that in that section of the series is going to be on January 20th, and that's projects progress, invoicing and job costing. So it's the class about using the project center and all of the job costing tools in QuickBooks online.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And then the second intermediate level class is sales tax in QuickBooks Online on January 27th. And that one is crucial if you are in a state that does sales tax because you have [00:24:00] to set up your customers for sales tax, your your company for the different states and the products and services, and you have to do it correctly. Otherwise your sales tax is going to be wrong. So, you know, I hear people complain about the sales tax module, but it's actually fantastic. It's just really complicated to get right. And so my class on the 27th shows how to get all the, you know, get all the perfect storm together to get great sales tax. And if you are listening to this after the fact, [00:24:30] all of my classes are on demand and you can still get CPE for taking them on demand as well.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And then last and not last, because it's indefinite. But next in February is our payroll month. And so on. February 3rd is my payroll in Qbo class where I go and we actually add employees to payroll, set up a company for payroll and run a payroll. And that's followed up [00:25:00] that same week on February 4th with Shannon is coming in. She's the the queen of payroll queen from Payroll Restoration Comm. And she's doing a compliance class. So she's going to come in to talk about all the rules and regulations around payroll. And then on the 10th is my QuickBooks time class, where we go deep into QuickBooks time and the time cards and time sheets and work the workforce app. So it's a really, really good time to engage with our content. If [00:25:30] you haven't checked out the classes at Royal Comm, Head over there and click on the calendar to see everything that we're up to.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yay!

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: All right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Super exciting. This is my favorite time of year when we get to, like, start fresh and have big plans and start executing. And. Yeah, I love it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Me too. All right, well, thanks for joining me, Margie. It was awesome having you. And I'm glad that we get to share candy with the world. And let's kind of explode it a little bit and make it [00:26:00] practical. Okay, again, the last thing we want is for you to hear about Candy on here and go spam it.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Give them your specific, actionable feedback, and let's continue to make it make QuickBooks, the world class software that it has always been and will continue to be.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Well, thank you everybody for listening and we will see you in the next one.