Misc. Musings on QuickBooks | Sept 2024

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

Hector Garcia: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Cat Pollock, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia's CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's edition of [00:00:30] the unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast. And this episode is going to be another Look What We Found, which is a play on the Look What I found column that I do through Royal wise. But of course I've got Hector joining me and doing the, the, the heckling with me. So, Hector, how are you doing?

Hector Garcia: Very good. Excited to talk about miscellaneous musings that we have found in the last week or so, because we're recording this [00:01:00] probably a week before the official firm of the future article for September new features drops. So we can only really talk about the things that we've been randomly observing that we maybe stumbled upon during the month of August and September as a way to kind of bring to you potentially new things that we're starting to see in QuickBooks online.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So we have a collection of little differences and little changes that we've seen. Some of them are subtle. Some of them are major. And so we want to point them out to you. The [00:01:30] first thing that I want to start with was actually something that got my attention, because when I was clearing out my bank feed, I saw a $20 account fee in my bank feed that had some customer ID numbers and some other numbers in it, and I'm like $20. Okay, that's some sort of fee, but the only things that I can think of that were ever $20 were either subscription prices for old subscriptions, so it didn't think it could be that or a [00:02:00] merchant service monthly fee, but they just sent an email out last week that said we don't have monthly fees. Everything is a per transaction fee. So this kind of got my my synapses burning. And I called into it because I needed to identify what it was. And I have literally like 50 different sample accounts. And so it really could have been anything. And so the support person took a, you know, a couple hours to go figure [00:02:30] it out. And I was actually like talking to different clients while she was doing her work.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So at least it wasn't dead downtime. And we determined that I have one of my sample files that I've been using for ten years. It's called Wild Style Construction. If you watch my classes at Royal Comm, you're going to see that file in a lot of them. So I've had this merchant service account, which is the one that when I'm doing a bank feeds class or a QuickBooks payments class, that's the file that I use, and I'm generally running like $1 [00:03:00] transactions through it and once or twice a year. So it's really, really rarely used. That turned out to be the culprit. And so okay, why are they charging me $20 monthly fee on an account that's ten years old came to one conclusion, which is they needed some way to alert people about unused accounts and bring those unused accounts up to the surface. Maybe you have an old QuickBooks [00:03:30] file you haven't been using, or maybe they wanted to call attention to the fact that you have QuickBooks payments attached and haven't been using it. So, Hector, what are your thoughts about my discovery?

Hector Garcia: My thoughts is I want to pay attention to $20 charges coming from Intuit, uh, more often because, like you, I have so many, uh, sample files and I also get money as a qozb. And sometimes there's chargebacks and there's all sorts of money coming in and out with, you know, from Intuit and [00:04:00] sometimes it's Intuit payments. So maybe I need to go back and check to see if I had maybe accidentally enabled payments in an old sample account. And I don't know if they're going out there and just charging all the old accounts $20. I assume that maybe somebody builds a spreadsheet that compares the profitability of one account versus the $20 a month, and if the profitability is under the $20 a month, maybe they activated just on those. And it's a way to get people, hey, go close the account if you're [00:04:30] not using it because it's taking up space in our database or whatever it happens to be. So other than that, I haven't seen the charts. Maybe I have a couple charges myself in my credit card and I haven't even noticed. But yeah, that's what I think.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Have you been doing auto rules on your bank feeds for your Intuit fees? You might not be catching these, so it's definitely worth taking a look. I have some people researching it and so far what we've determined is it's being applied to quote unquote, legacy accounts, which means that it's on a former pricing [00:05:00] plan before they implemented this new pricing plan. And then there's probably some other trigger, like unused nonuse. And what was interesting, though, is that when I called to find out about it, they said, oh, well, we can't waive that fee. I'm like, well, what do you mean you can't waive that fee? You don't charge monthly fees. You used to have a plan that gave you the option of pay as you go or a monthly fee. So if you had really high, [00:05:30] high volume or high charges, you could pay the $20 and get a reduced fee. And that's when this plan was originated way back in the day. But of course, I'm charging a dollar, not $100,000. So they said that no, they couldn't change it. They couldn't waive the fee. So I closed the account, which is like super unfortunate because this is my demo account that I use when I'm on stage, so I'm probably going to reapply for the new QuickBooks payments and [00:06:00] get my new rates through my Qsp.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, Hector is a qsp. I use a complete business group, but when you apply for QuickBooks payments through a Qsp, you actually get reduced rates over signing up through Qbo. And since they're about to do that big push starting in October, they're turning on the this alert where they're actually going to pre-qualify everybody for merchant services. So [00:06:30] this is kind of like this is where Credit Karma comes in as the the underpinnings of the software, where now they're going to be able to look at your credit worthiness and pre-approve your clients for QuickBooks payments before they turn it on and have to apply. So that's going to be a big change that's coming up starting in October. So I highly highly, highly encourage you before that happens and before your clients start signing themselves up, that you [00:07:00] be proactive and work through the cusp so that you can, uh, reap the benefits. Your clients get lower rates. Some cusps give you residuals on the amounts that you pay. And I did see and Hector just put up a screen. Let me see if it's on it. I do remember something going by that there will be either residuals or calculations or something for the ProAdvisor for these clients, but I don't [00:07:30] remember if that's real.

Hector Garcia: That is true. That is true. There was an email sent that in the future and we might be in the future now, I don't know what that date meant, that ProAdvisor would be able to add a sort of a payment lead, I guess, into their clients, and if those close, they would get a residual for I believe, the first three years of that account. I believe that's what they're offering to ProAdvisor. And Alicia was talking about Qozbs. These are the QuickBooks [00:08:00] solution providers. These are sort of legacy resellers that also could sell merchant accounts. And the merchant accounts typically have one, a slightly better rate. So for example, the advertised rate today, if you go into the website, the advertised rate for um paid invoices, which are usually keyed in invoices. Right. Because the customer will key in their their information when they get the invoice is 2.99 and no base fee [00:08:30] per transaction. So if you look at traditional merchant, they'll charge you 25, 30, 40, $0.50 a flat fee for the transaction, plus anywhere between 2.5 and 3 and a half half percent. So in the QuickBooks payments website, it shows that it's just a flat 2.99. I wonder if that 2.99 will become, uh, an official number, not a dynamic number, because traditionally that number has moved up and down. I think that's probably a good number to use for a marketing purpose. But I think where they make it up, because the 289 [00:09:00] is a really good solid number, especially when it comes to American Express, because American Express has traditionally been higher and and other other things like Apple Pay, uh, PayPal, Venmo that has they have their own fee structures.

Hector Garcia: They're going to encompass all that within that same 299 2.99%. So worth mentioning that. But how they're going to make up for it, I believe is with the ACH. So back in the day and this, this this maybe a month ago or [00:09:30] two, uh, when, when uh, when people bought, uh, QuickBooks payments accounts, there was a cap on ACH payments, which was up to $10 or $15, I believe there was like sort of two groups of people, 10 or 15. Now, every single new person that buys into QuickBooks payments has zero cap on ACH payments. So if you pay somebody via ACH or somebody pays you via ACH, you will pay 1% of that no cap. [00:10:00] That's a huge, huge change. And that's what I think Alicia is alluding to when it comes to quote legacy accounts, because the legacy accounts are the ones that have this cap and the new ones don't. So if you have somebody with an inactive account that maybe wants to turn it on in the near future or start having more activities, they prefer to use the excuse that they're pretty inactive to close them. So then when they create a new one, they go into this unlimited ACH [00:10:30] fee at 1% per per transaction. So I think maybe that's the ethos behind it and why they're moving towards that. So that's all I got to say about that. Maybe we can talk about the next thing that we found, Alicia. Or do you have anything else to mention?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, the only other thing that I wanted to say about QuickBooks payments is that I just want to remind people that even with the fees going up, the fact that it's all completely baked into your qbo and it saves you time and it saves you work. If your transactions [00:11:00] are on the, you know, the traditional couple hundred dollars side, it's still way cheaper to use QuickBooks payments because than other solutions, because you can just send an invoice and they can click the button. And QuickBooks itself will make the invoice payment, put it in undeposited funds and match and batch them together and match the bank feeds all natively so that you don't have to do any extra work. And you can also do automated sales receipts [00:11:30] that will just charge the card or run the ACH and send the receipt to the client without you having to do any work. So if you find external resources that have cheaper rates but you have to put time in, then you need to measure how much cost that has in your time of both for doing the work and not doing other income sourcing work. And then generally you find that QB payments is still cheaper. Now, if you're talking $100,000 [00:12:00] payments run by ACH, and now you're paying $1,000 for your merchant service fees, that may be different, and that may be worth looking at some of the other solutions that are out there for larger firms.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I agree that for credit cards specifically, because reconciling credit cards is traditionally such a nightmare, especially when certain merchants do a lump sum minus the fee all in one shot at least QuickBooks has a lump sum of the gross, and then a separate transaction for [00:12:30] the for the for the fee. But anyway, since traditionally it's been such a nightmare to reconcile credit cards because you have individual payments with customer names, and sometimes the credit card use is not the same as the customer's name. So you have to go research and find out if you know David Gomez is the same thing as A, B, C construction. Or maybe David Gomez spouse that didn't change her last name to She's Sabrina Smith or whatever. And then how how are we going to know who Sabrina Smith has something to do with ABC construction? If the only person that we know [00:13:00] is David Gomez. So like, the whole thing is just a nightmare to reconcile sometimes. And I totally understand. You know, even if that 2.99% is higher than whoever charges 2.89 or 2.75 or whatever, they're. Yes, I agree 100%. Whatever you're paying with QuickBooks payments, it's worth it a million times on that, just the labor that it takes to reconcile. But ACH payments if you have like a big company that charges 20,000, 30,000, $40,000 invoices and you have a different system in place for people to just [00:13:30] pay you electronically, it's not that much more work, because electronic payments are usually 1 to 1 and they're easy to match. And then the bank fees behind that are also almost always separated. So it's not the same nightmare it is to to pay with, to reconcile as credit cards, so I would disagree that paying 1% on ACH will be cheaper than the time that it takes you to reconcile specifically ACH payments, so I would strongly recommend taking a look at other [00:14:00] solutions that are not as usurious as this. Into it. This is usury. Okay, 1% for ACH is ridiculous. You're completely out of the market here in my opinion anyway.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But I'm going to interrupt you on that because the 1% is actually a standard rate. The problem is that not having a cap.

Hector Garcia: Well okay. Yeah, I'm okay with yeah, of course I agree with you 1,000,000%. I'm okay with 1% up to, I don't know, $30 or whatever. Like take a look, go to your bank and ask how much is a wire fee? Your bank, your brick and mortar [00:14:30] bank is going to have a wire fee for what, 25 bucks? 30 bucks? That's it. That's the most you ever pay for a wire. Okay. Which is the most expensive banking transaction or product there is. So why wouldn't that match somehow the same thing as a wire fee to me is it's ridiculous. I'm not talking about the 1%. You're right. It's the 1% no cap. Which is what I mean. And I can rant about this forever because I am an ex-banker and I dealt with things like this, and I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I get the convenience factor, but it's absolutely [00:15:00] ridiculous. So if you look at other solutions like anchor, you know, for, for your receivables, maybe even Melio or Bill.com or any of those companies, usually they're not going to have usurious rates like QuickBooks payments has for ACH. So anyway, before I go down the rabbit hole of continuously, continuously call into it out for their bad practices on payments, let's talk about the new things that we found in Qbo while exploring things.

Hector Garcia: So I was creating [00:15:30] a couple of new files and new sample files, and I noticed that in the expense page. So when you go into expenses, you know there's a slight different design than the traditional expense page. Most of the stuff is fine. It's sort of on the surface, but down at the bottom where it says attachments, there's a little drop down menu next to a button that says upload from device. So you can still drag and drop from your computer if you want to attach any particular file into a, um, into a document, you literally [00:16:00] just click and drag into your expense. It uploads it. That's the traditional way that most people do it. You could also click on upload this device, and then you get a pop up menu. And in that pop up menu, you can pick whatever file you want to attach and you can attach it that way. But if you click on the drop down menu next to upload device, you might see if you have this newer version of the expense screens. You might see three options here that are pretty neat. One is called browse into a document and [00:16:30] it says Select files from your Intuit account.

Hector Garcia: Now, I haven't tested this workflow, but I'm going to guess that this is going to be a combination of everything you have ever uploaded into in the QuickBooks attachments section. I don't know if this will include transactions that have already been attached to an existing transaction, or only the ones that are sort of unattached or unlinked. And if and if the logic serves me right, it's also [00:17:00] going to link to any other, uh, document sharing system you have with your accountant within the Intuit accountant family, which would include Intuit accountant or QuickBooks Accountant Edition, where you actually share documents and that your accountant section, and also in the in the tax portion. So if you're uploading W-2s 1099 or whatever, and they go into that folder, if you actually go [00:17:30] into that from Intuit documents, you're going to see that filtering system by form. So I don't use Proconnect myself as I don't do tax returns anymore. But I assume that if you're using Proconnect and the Intuit document sharing system as a tax preparer, those documents will also be included as the attachable documents. Using this, you know, from select from Intuit Documents option. Alicia, any thoughts on that? Any any initial thoughts on that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Can you go back into that. So [00:18:00] the things in here that really got my attention is, first of all, they call it Intuit documents, which tells me that it's more than just QuickBooks. Like maybe it's like you said, Proconnect tax, maybe it's TurboTax. Not sure. But then when you choose the document type dropdown, it was all different tax forms. So it was not talking about JPEGs and PDFs. It's talking about W-2s W-3 1099 um, 1099 interest, like, you know, actual tax forms. So [00:18:30] that and those forms are not available through Qbo 1099. So this has to be some sort of integration with TurboTax or Proconnect tax I agree.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, it's really cool. And also you start seeing how it's called into a documents. The conference is called Intuit Connect. The the stadium is called Intuit Dome. Uh, I don't know if this is an indication of [00:19:00] QuickBooks moving away from leveraging the QuickBooks name and trying to leverage more of the Intuit name. I don't want to read too much into it, but there might be a much bigger idea here behind the global rebrand of the Intuit Business Solutions ecosystem, if you want to call it that. So I think that Microsoft, for example, they they call their entire AI business suite Microsoft Copilot and Copilot integrates [00:19:30] with windows, with office, with Excel, with word. So it's it's almost like thinking about what is the higher level name that encompasses all the business productivity tools that you want your customers to associate brand wise. And I think they want customers to associate into it as the brand of the solution providing brand to a business, not QuickBooks. Okay, it's still called QuickBooks payments. I wonder if they'll ever switch it to Intuit payments? [00:20:00] It's still called QuickBooks payroll. I wonder if they ever call it Intuit Payroll. Like all these things or QuickBooks Bill pay, for example. Will they call it into a bill pay? So these are things that maybe we can speculate on. But this is this might be an indication of that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right that we've been touching on this over several different episodes, like when we did the earnings report last week. And we're seeing that Intuit is leaning into all of their different software [00:20:30] and not just having QuickBooks be its flagship. They're trying to kind of level it. So it's not QuickBooks and TurboTax and Credit Karma and MailChimp. I think they're really trying to level it and bring it together as a suite. I mean, we keep hearing that their survey results say that their customers want everything all in one platform, instead of cobbling together different suites and so or different software solutions. And I think that this is an early indicator of some [00:21:00] of that integration coming to light.

Hector Garcia: Right. I'll add asterisks to that. When customers say they want everything in one platform, they mean everything in what platform and that it works. Okay, that's a really important one, right? Because it's not hard to just throw a bunch of things together like this is like traditionally into it. That's that's what you've seen in the last seven years or so. They just throw things together, but they don't really work cohesively. Um, so yes, I get it, but I would, I would concentrate on making [00:21:30] things work well first before just throwing more things in there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's the multifunction printer syndrome. You know, your multifunction printer does a whole lot of stuff, which is convenient, but if I need a really high quality printout, I have to go use my color LaserJet.

Speaker3: Absolutely.

Hector Garcia: That's I think it's just a perfect analogy. When I was working in Best Buy, we've always talked about that, right? Like, you want a multifunction printer that can do a lot of things. Mediocrely or do you want a photo printer that will, you know, print actual photos? You want a scanner that will do [00:22:00] 1200 dpi or whatever, 100%.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And there's purposes and use cases for both.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So the second option that you have, we're still in that little drop down screen for expenses by the way. So we've gone like really deep into this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So let me let me just preface this. So wrapping back to where we were, we are in an expense form in the attachments field, looking at the green button that says upload from this device. And so far all we've done is browse internet and browse Intuit documents. [00:22:30] So now the second one says get from cloud apps.

Hector Garcia: So when you click on Get on Cloud Apps, you get two options and I assume this will get expanded, but you get the two flagship document sharing systems that are out there Google Drive and Dropbox. So when you click on any of these, let's say you click on Google Drive and click on next. And you you authenticate through the Google system. It will pop up your basically your Google Drive account. You can you can filter by folder, [00:23:00] by document, by spreadsheet or PDF, whatever. However, is it that you have your documents, you grab whatever document you want to select. You click on select and it will fetch the document through the Google Drive and upload it and show it to you right there in the in the attachment screen. So that's super nifty.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I have a question about that though. I have used Google Drive integrations with some other apps, like even the receipts, but [00:23:30] it would only access my drive. And I have a company shared drive and in some of these Google Drive integrations, I have not been able to get over to my shared drive, which has all my business accounts. It would only give me my my drive for that, for that email address.

Hector Garcia: That's a good question. Like, I know this one called Miscellaneous Musings document that we that we that we basically is a document.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That we use document for this the operating.

Hector Garcia: Document I think that one is a shared document. [00:24:00] So I'm going to make the assumption that it does work with the shared documents. Or actually I selected that one and it said I can't fetch your docs right now. So maybe that's what's happening is that you're right. You know, it'll show all the documents. But if the document is not owned by you in Google Drive, it might have an error. So good. Good thing that you pointed that out. The second option is Dropbox. I don't know if I have an active Dropbox account, but just kind of imagine the concept of logging into your Dropbox account and and then being able to select, oh, there you [00:24:30] go. So so you're able to select any document in your Dropbox. You just grab it in there, click on choose and it'll grab it from your fetch it from your Dropbox, drop it into the attachments of that transaction. So that's working really, really well. I think the only thing that we have to sort of take a look at is how is this going to work with shared documents in Google Drive, which seem to we don't seem to have a clear answer on that. And the third option here is pretty cool. It's called add from mobile device. Now this is different than you grabbing [00:25:00] your QuickBooks app on your phone and taking a picture and adding it to the attachments section of your QuickBooks online.

Hector Garcia: If you have that, then you would choose the first option called browse into a document and that should include everything that's in your attachments. This is different. This third option that when you click on add from mobile device, it actually pops a QR code on the screen. Then what you do is you grab your phone and you essentially [00:25:30] take a picture of that QR code. Okay, so I am going to show you that process here. So I'm just literally going to go into my camera on my phone and then I'm going to show the the QR code. I'll click on that and it'll take me immediately into the basically like a little website I'll show you right there. It's a mini website. It's not your app, it's actually a mini website. It opened it literally opened your browser on your phone. And then from here you can [00:26:00] either upload a file that's already in your photo, you know, in your photo library, you could take a picture on, on, on the fly, snap a photo and grab grab your receipt right here. Okay. Take a picture of the receipt. Click on Use photo just the way it works with the app okay.

Hector Garcia: And then you go to crop upload this photo once it finishes uploading. Again this is not on the app. This is a little mini landing page that is used for you to be [00:26:30] able to upload the document. Then when you go back into QuickBooks, you're going to see a document uploaded successful. Click on done and then you can just double click on that document and take a look at the receipt that you just took a picture. So imagine you don't have a scanner, but just imagine you're a normal person that doesn't have a scanner. And there's many of those people, and you have a bunch of receipts in your in your hand, and you don't want to go open the QuickBooks online app or even log into it and take it and take physical pictures of the [00:27:00] documents you want to attach. This allows you to on the fly, click on take a picture, boom and upload it in there. This is fantastic. I am completely blown away with how well this works. And you know, I usually don't react this way to a new QuickBooks thing because usually new QuickBooks things are broken in one way, shape or form. I did not feel any brokenness on this. I'm impressed. Quickbooks. Hats off. Nailed it I love it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, let me throw in a couple little things [00:27:30] about there. Just in the language of how you described it. So I want to make sure that it's clear to everybody. So when you use the green button that says upload from this device and you choose the option for add from a mobile device, it puts up a QR code. And when Hector says click on it, I want to make sure you realize that you're not taking a photo of it, that you know, if you're not used to QR codes, all you do is you hold your phone up using your camera app, but you don't take a picture. You just tap on the QR code and then it takes you to the website. And what [00:28:00] I want to emphasize here with this new workflow, I also am pretty jazzed about this. What's different about it is that this is now giving you access to content that's on your phone that you didn't have before. You don't have to go into the QuickBooks app and then tap Scan Receipt. So if you have people out in the field who are not QuickBooks users, this is yet another way where if you have photos, if you have documents saved, if you have a scanning [00:28:30] app on your phone like I'm a huge fan of Scanner Pro from Readdle is the document that I use. I'm sorry, is the app that I use to scan all of my documents now and save them to Google Drive? So now I have these PDFs on my phone, and now that gives me a way of I don't now have to like, save it and send it and attach it and go through all of that. I can literally just grab this QR code and add it. How do you how do you spell that?

Hector Garcia: What how do you what [00:29:00] is it called? Scanner Pro by who?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Readdle r e a d d l e.

Hector Garcia: Okay, let's give Readdle some free advertising here. So it's real or it's readable, like, read like readable. Yeah. So the word read r e a d and then dl e so readdle com slash scanner pro. Uh there's a free download. And you like this app because it takes a picture of, of of anything and.

Hector Garcia: I assume.

Hector Garcia: It [00:29:30] squares it up and and does OCR as.

Hector Garcia: Well.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I absolutely adore this app. You can it does square up your documents. You can do photos, you can do black and whites, you can do multi-page. And then once you've saved it, it lives on your phone. But then you can it'll scan for OCR. You can save it to literally almost anything. You can send it. And so for me, my biggest use of it is my tax notices or things that I need to send to my accountant [00:30:00] or to my lawyers. That's most of what I scan. So I have all of my legal documents saved in the app, as well as sending them out to other places. So it is absolutely my number one scanner. It's like seven bucks a year and it's absolutely worth every single penny. I've been using it for years and years, and Readdle has a lot of different products. Any product that they have has been absolutely first class.

Hector Garcia: So it's per year, not a one time fee. Right. That's still that's still super, incredibly worth it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I [00:30:30] haven't had a scanner. I put my scanner in a drawer and I have not taken it out since. I still own a scanner, but I literally haven't used my scanner in ten years. Right.

Hector Garcia: I mean, if you got one through five pages, that's you could use a phone. If you got 27 pages, that's where a scanner becomes a little bit more useful, especially the ones that you that you, um. What's it called? The one. The ones that, uh, you grab a bunch of pages at a time. Yeah, one of those books. Now, I went to I went to get the app on my phone and it's $30 a year, so it went [00:31:00] up.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I will still pay it. I love that app.

Hector Garcia: Right. Good, good. And by the way, into it, if you're listening, go acquire this.

Hector Garcia: Company.

Hector Garcia: And just build it into the QuickBooks process. So we can just scan documents, have it OCR, and have it PDF instead of having a messy picture. It's 2024 and we're still taking pictures of receipts. I mean, just get that through your head like we have OpenAI, which you ask it any question and within seconds it gives you any answer you want. And in QuickBooks, [00:31:30] we're still taking pictures of receipts. Okay. So yeah we gotta we gotta we gotta get through this like we have to go to the next thing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Let me actually say something about taking pictures of receipts. This new integration that we're talking about is allowing you to use a picture that you have on your phone as a receipt. But one of the things that I like about the Qbo app on your phone is that when you scan a receipt, it gives you the option of saving it on your phone or not. And I'm a huge fan of not saving [00:32:00] these receipt scans on my phone because a I don't want that in my photos app. I don't want that visual clutter, but also for security reasons. And so it's still a good idea that if you have employees out in the field and they have their gas receipts and their food receipts, you know, being able to use the Qbo app and they have a receipts only account so that they can use the receipt scanner is still better security because now you don't have receipts saved somewhere floating [00:32:30] out and personal documents.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. Now, thank you for. By the way, thank you for that recommendation that I have a new toy to play with now. Um, I want to. I'm gonna. I'm just so you know, you guys know because most of you are listening to this in a in a podcast format, but Alicia and I are usually looking at the screen just to make sure that we're not forgetting something, or because sometimes we'll take a screenshot of something and then we'll, we'll, we'll try again and then the whatever feature is gone. Like for example, that option that said Intuit [00:33:00] documents wasn't available in one of the sample files and it's available in a different sample file. So it's one of those crazy things that sometimes we have to, like, sort of be on the screen. The other thing I wanted to talk about Alicia, and then maybe we can speculate some of this, but most people, when they log into Qbo, they're going to see a new login page. And a new login page doesn't have the QuickBooks logo, it has the Intuit logo. So it's more like you're logging into the Intuit ecosystem. Okay, so another kind of nod to that. And there's a [00:33:30] little sign at the top that says new Look has arrived. Everything works the same way, but a more modern design. So so it's a fun change on the login screen. Maybe. Um, but I don't see any new information like any new additional information or functionality on the login page, but the login page changed and it sort of setting, I think it's setting the stage to, hey, we're modernizing QuickBooks and your QuickBooks experience, but [00:34:00] beyond, you know, beyond the the the new font, slightly changed font change and the little sign that this is changing, I don't see a whole lot of sort of new things other than the fact that there's a new invoice template and there's a new reporting template. Do you read anything into this? You think this is a precursor to something bigger?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. This is all speculation, but people have been complaining that Intuit hasn't been [00:34:30] communicating with them about things. And so the fact that they have put this on here, I don't know if they're just if they were just talking about the login screen, I don't know if they're referring to the new modern invoices and modern reports, or I am wondering if this is an alert for a new appearance change to come. You know, back when we went from the the blue to harmony to the black border, I'm wondering if there is another color change or layout change coming. [00:35:00] I haven't the changes have been subtle, so I don't know if it's referring to the subtle changes we've been seeing, or if they're just kind of letting us know that somewhere down the pike, there's going to be some big appearances. I wish they would let me know, because I'm about to start editing my QuickBooks complete textbook for 2025. And if there are rolling out some new appearances. Please let me know when.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I sincerely.

Hector Garcia: Doubt there's a single person over at Intuit that can answer this question, [00:35:30] because I believe that the sign of of QuickBooks is so compartmentalized in different product managers with different initiatives. So it'll be very difficult for somebody to tell you, yeah, on this day we're going to change this or this or change that. I think this stuff is like very fluid. And people just they just test and back and forth. And this is part of our frustration as, as, as designers of third party software to work with QuickBooks like right tool, every time they tweak and change something, we have to rebuild that tool again. So it's a [00:36:00] it's a major point of frustration for us. Like, I get it that you have to modernize, but modern modernization is something you do every 25 years, right? Modernization is a is it's a switch from generation A to generation B, right. In QuickBooks, modernization means a change every week. Literally. I change every week and changes across multiple versions. Or like multiple clients could have different things. So I hope that this hey, it's a new look. We're modernizing. Quickbooks comes together with a cohesive plan to [00:36:30] let us know in parallel which companies are going to be changed, in what schedule, and by when. Everybody is going to be general access to whatever the new screen is because it's very, very, very frustrating to see those things. Like, for example, if you go and convert a QuickBooks desktop file into QuickBooks online, converted files are least likely to be in the newest version of all the screens because they still haven't ported over some of the concepts [00:37:00] you know, from QuickBooks desktop up to QuickBooks online.

Hector Garcia: So for example, like I have in the screen a file that I converted from desktop to online, and it has, let's call it the old products and services screen. Whereas if you switch over to a, um, to a company file that you created from scratch, then the the products and services screen looks significantly different. And it it doesn't just look significantly different, which would be maybe that would be like, okay, fine, it's just a different look. No, it [00:37:30] actually literally has different functionality like the products and services screen in a, in a newer format that hasn't been converted to desktop is going to have, uh, I think we talked about it in a different episode. It's going to have the new variants module where the items can have variants and the new import, the new import screen is going to the categories are going to be different. Um, it's just the screen just looks different and it looks and feels different. Uh, also if um, if [00:38:00] you are doing inventory, you have the brand new inventory cycle count feature, the new inventory adjustment screens. So it's another challenge that we have that even though yes, there's signaling there's a new QuickBooks, there's a new Intuit we're redesigning. But the bulk of the clients that we're bringing over that we're excited about bringing over are not going to see that modernization in some of the screens for a while. So I don't know. I'm excited about the concept of the idea, but not [00:38:30] excited about the painful process that we have to go through in order to, um, just kind of endure all these things. Sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, my question is always whether the modernization of the interface is cosmetic or functional. Like when we went from the original QuickBooks to the Harmony based one that was transformational, transformative, and amazing and really allowed QuickBooks to go through the roof. But if they're just like changing the color of the sidebar and making the font smaller, [00:39:00] people don't like that kind of change. Their eyes get used to what they're used to. So, you know, all we can do really right now is speculate.

Hector Garcia: By the way, if you're a QuickBooks consultant, a QuickBooks accountant, and you use the word harmony, you're old. I just want to say that I use it too, right? Like, if, if, if. The Harmony redesign of QuickBooks online is something that's still in your in your brain. You're old, we're old.

Alicia Katz Pollock: We're OG yeah.

Hector Garcia: We're yeah old school. So [00:39:30] talking about, uh, pointless modernizations and changes of screen. If you go into the gear, if you go into the gear menu and click on Import data. Some of you, I assume most of you will now see a new quote import data screen. Now the new import data screen has a drop down menu that says Select Record Type and you're going to see bank data chart of accounts, customer invoices, [00:40:00] journal entries, products and services, and vendors. The follow up screen that comes after that is the same screen that you've always seen to import any Excel or CSV files into it. So that's essentially the only thing they've changed is the front face of the import screen. Now the old import screen. Give me a second. The old import screen used to have all the different things you can import with like big square icons. [00:40:30] And then you can just click on which one you want to, you want to do. So now they have this screen that looks more modern, but it takes an additional click to get to where you want to be. So this is why this is a pointless modernization that doesn't actually improve the life of any power user. You know, maybe the Non-power users look at this, look at a drop down, and it kind of makes them think a little bit more and not be overwhelmed by a bunch of icons. But I don't I don't get this change at all.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm.

Hector Garcia: Going to say. Alicia. [00:41:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, that's just what I was going to point out, is that before it was tiles for each one. Now it's a drop down for each one. And I guess psychologically it simplifies it for the user, because now they don't have to think about all the different choices. They can just go pick the thing off the list that they're looking for. So yeah, it's two clicks usability. It's actually easier.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. And if you're if you're a right tool user we still have a direct link to the old screen. So if you actually just search for import data in the right [00:41:30] tool search box and you click on import data, we haven't even added the new screen into the right tool yet. And a link a link to this to the new screen. So if you click on import data on your uh, right tool links, you can still see the old one. And honestly, I kind of still prefer the old one. Now, if the new one had more options like importing bills or importing sales receipts or importing, you know, other transactions expenses, then I'm all for it. But a cosmetic change to hide how limited [00:42:00] the importing system is at the moment is basically a cheat. I think this is a design cheat. Okay, in my opinion.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I think this is where where Hector becomes a verb instead of a noun. I don't have the same problem with this that you do. And in fact, what I do actually kind of admire here from a business standpoint is that the old screen had the QuickBooks imports as the highlight, with two little links [00:42:30] at the bottom for import from desktop and import from Sage 50 and Peachtree. Now the QuickBooks import is more of a drop down for like, yeah, this is our import screen for importing things. Hey, and by the way, you can import from desktop and import from Sage that this is now almost more like a psychological shift to get people thinking, hey, wait, if I've got somebody on Sage, I can use this screen to import their data.

Hector Garcia: I'm going to tell you why. It's not hectoring. I'm [00:43:00] not hectoring. I am a shareholder of Intuit. I've been using QuickBooks for 15 years. I've been trying to avoid my clients to go to competitors like Xero, and.

Hector Garcia: I.Probably say, for as long as I remember you being able to import bills, budgets, uh, invoices, journal entries, which was added recently, um, into Xero, you can almost import almost every [00:43:30] single transaction type into all versions of zero. And we're talking about zero zero, the competitor of Intuit at the lowest versions. Like you don't have to be an advanced and pay $230 a month to import bills. That is freaking ridiculous. Okay, absolutely, absolutely freaking ridiculous that one of the most powerful tech companies in the world requires you to pay top, top, top dollar 230 to be able to import things like bills [00:44:00] and expenses. But wait, I have good news. The new import screen has three tiles at the bottom, one that says import from desktop, and there's a button you can click and it takes you to the regular desktop importing feature. There's an import from Sage 50 Peachtree, and when you click on it, it takes you to a company called Data Switcher, which I'm making. The assumption is some sort of contract that Intuit has with a company called Data Switcher, and then they help bring their stuff over. I don't [00:44:30] know if the customer pays for this. I don't know if Intuit pays them in the back end. I assume that's how it is, but there is sort of an easy one click approach to bringing your Sage 50 or your Peachtree data. So all 27 customers that are still on Sage Peachtree, they can still come over to Qbo. Anyway, that's a joke, by the way. I don't know how many customers they have, but I assume it's not that many. And there's also a really, really cool, uh, tile in the in at the bottom. That made [00:45:00] me really excited. That said, you need to bring sales receipts, you need to bring expenses, need to bring bills.

Hector Garcia: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I've been talking about. Let's do it. And when you click on it, you click on try this app and it sends you to the SaaS hunt Ascent app page, so I love that they're promoting such a beautiful, wonderful, wonderfully developed app like SaaStr. I'm a SaaStr user. I have promoted SaaStr forever. I know Alicia has one two, but into it. Why are you not acquiring SaaStr? Why [00:45:30] the heck are you acquiring Credit Karma? Like like if you can't figure out how to import bills on your own, go and acquire SaaStr I am, I am, I am sure it's a few billion dollars less at the very least. So either build a technology or acquire the technology. Because to me, it's ridiculous that you need to pay $230 a month to be in advance to be able to import bills. And by the way, the bill importer and all the other advanced importing tools are just complete [00:46:00] garbage in terms of like UI. Um, and there's also the spreadsheet sync, which is not garbage. It's actually pretty cool, but it's very, very difficult to use. And why are we ceding ground to apps like SaaStr, and why are we ceding ground to zero is beyond me. But again, the new import screen, it's cool looking, but it doesn't add any value to me, and it is more likely for the hundreds of thousands of people that don't listen to this podcast that they're going [00:46:30] to spend at least 20 minutes on the screen looking for the new thing because it looks new, to then realize that they just wasted 20 minutes looking at lipstick on a pig.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I have so much respect for sass, for sass that we call it SaaStr, right?

Hector Garcia: You add a French accent to something and it elevates his cachet, I guess.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right? Exactly.

Hector Garcia: All right, so that's it for the miscellaneous musings for September of 2024. Alicia, what's going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I [00:47:00] am gearing up for my QuickBooks ledger class on September 10th, so probably by the time you hear this, the recording should be available. So if you would like a tour of QuickBooks ledger to see what it does do, what it doesn't do, what it's great at, and what its limitations are. Head over to learn Hoyes.com and search it for QB ledger. And then I'm actually redoing my QuickBooks advanced class for the first time in a couple of years, and I'm super excited about that because there's been so [00:47:30] many changes that it's going from a one hour. What's new and different to it's going to be 2 or 3 hours by the time I'm done, because now we've got deferred revenue and fixed asset manager and the bulk importing and a lot of different changes about it. So beyond those two classes, I am also getting ready for my next conference season. I'm going to AP hour camp, and then I'm going to reframe and I'm going to Dcpa and I'm going to Intuit [00:48:00] connect. So my family and my staff are not going to see me much for for a while.

Hector Garcia: That's a different order, right?

Hector Garcia: Dcpa is after.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It. It is? Yeah. It is. So front.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Of mind for me because I just signed up for.It.

Hector Garcia: So AP camp in Arizona, then Reframe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, then into a connect in Las Vegas and then digital CPA in Denver.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes.

Hector Garcia: Okay. And so I'm going to be at I'm not going to be at AP camp. Um, this [00:48:30] is not it's not that I don't want to. It's just I can't I'm a I'm a little league baseball coach and this is like in the middle of the season, so I can't. Um, it will be a reframe because I'm hosting that conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, October 16th to the 19th. I will be at Intuit Connect and I'm teaching. So two things are happening. That's very interesting. One, I'm teaching, um, QuickBooks Online Advanced Reports, which is a class that I've taught, I would say every year for the last four years, with the exception [00:49:00] of the one year that I couldn't talk, that Alicia taught for me, which is which was awesome. Um, we're also going to have, believe it or.

Hector Garcia: Not.On the schedule on the calendar official a right tool users meetup. Okay, so so that's pretty neat. Um, you know, we actually have a booth, a little tiny booth in Intuit Connect. So we're going to have a right tool booth. So any right tool users can come in and come say hi. If you love Right tool hang out and tell the people that don't use right tool how much you love it. Like that kind of helps a little [00:49:30] bit. But we will have an official meetup so we'll be able to hang out, talk about kind of like what what we're working on.

Hector Garcia: And.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sorry I'm interrupting you. I love that you are now officially sanctioned by Intuit.

Hector Garcia: Uh, is sanctioned a good a good thing or a bad thing?

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's good.

Hector Garcia: Okay, okay, good good good. All right, I just sanctions is usually.

Alicia Katz Pollock: One of those words.That has dual meanings. But yeah correctly recognized by Intuit.

Hector Garcia: Right. Right.

Hector Garcia: Because I know they do sanctions on like Vladimir Putin and they do sanctions on on communist government. Okay. [00:50:00] Okay. Good.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, recognizing you, acknowledging you and highlighting you.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. Yeah. Actually Interestingly enough, I've got an email sent DMs from people that said, hey, we added this feature highly inspired by Right tool. For example, the custom bookmarks on the left navigation bar in Qbo where you can add a custom bookmark for almost any screen. And by the way, Intuit did really good. I'm going to rate them a seven. They're not a right tool [00:50:30] nine because the right tool is also not perfect because you can't bookmark specific reports, you can only bookmark the reports page. So that's kind of pointless. So that's pretty good. And there's a couple of buttons inside the screens. Like like go back to banking button when you are in the register or in the reconcile screen to go back from banking to register to reconcile, which is what I call the accountant's trifecta. Right. Register banking. Reconcile register banking. We usually just going in circles on those three screens. So like right tool was pretty innovative and adding [00:51:00] little links so you can quickly go to those screens and QuickBooks added that stuff. Um inspired by right tool. So so we love that. So that's very exciting. Um, for us and that basically that's that's what we're focused on right now is like, we're thinking about what swag we're going to give to right tool users. Um, Alicia, maybe I'll pick your brain later on of, you know, of what would you what would you do? But we're thinking about, like, mousepads are so old, you know, like like who uses mouse pads anymore? But we're thinking about something where we can have all the [00:51:30] QuickBooks online shortcuts. So we're thinking of a, you know, a mouse pad, a ruler, a poster. I don't know, I'm I think the shortcuts might be might be the most valuable thing that we could, that we could give to people, but we're thinking through it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, if I come up with any ideas, I'll let you know. Maybe a postcard. You know, something small that I can post up next to my computer that has those?

Hector Garcia: Yeah, sure.

Hector Garcia: Um, so. Oh. Thank you. So thank you for that, Alicia. Thank you, everybody, and we'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in.The next one.