QuickBooks Online October 2024 Updates

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.

Hector Garcia: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants [00:00:30] podcast, we're going to be talking about what's new for QuickBooks online October 2024 updates. We're actually going to be following the article that was published October 10th. We're actually recording this exactly on October 10th, and we're doing this prior to watching the what's new the the the in the no webinars, which sometimes cover a little bit extra that live webinar is going to run while [00:01:00] both Alicia and I are at a conference at the Reframe conference. So we're going to have to wait until we finish that conference to watch that webinar, and then come back and report to see if anything new was added. But October 10th, they dropped the the in the newsletter and the firm of the future article, all the new things they want to announce for October. Hey, Alicia, how are you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I've been having fun prepping for this because now I have to wrack my brain and say, well, wait, wasn't that already there? And then figure [00:01:30] out exactly what the little fine nuances are for all of these changes. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: On this episode and the one that's coming after, we're kind of recording this very close to each other. There's a lot of wasn't that already there? The type of stuff that we're not 100% sure if this is news or just reminding us that this was news at some point, but let's go through it. The first area that they that they show in the in the firm of the future article is another sort of marketing brief for the new Intuit Enterprise [00:02:00] Suite product. Now, they did a deeper dive into this in a recent webinar in the Accountants Innovation Showcase or something like that, and we'll discuss that then. But still, to date, the most important news about Intuit Enterprise Suite is the fact that we have no news on the pricing. We still don't know how much the the product is. What we do know is that if anybody asks for a price, [00:02:30] you're going to talk to an Intuit salesperson, not even a Kwik Shop, not even a reseller. You're going to talk to an Intuit salesperson. And then I assume that after they qualify you as a as a good candidate for the product, then at that point they'll give you a price. And because they've said the word customizable so many times in their marketing brief, and because they're entering this enterprise Price world. I'm going to make the assumption that the pricing is going [00:03:00] to be modular. Not that you know that you have to pay extra for invoices or bills or anything like that, but it's more like you're going to look at the entire Intuit suite of products. So we have what we think of QuickBooks, but it will be the GL for Intuit Enterprise Suite, the core GL.

Hector Garcia: Then there's going to be the multi entity component. So depending on how many different companies you have that you want to add on for the multi entity component that's probably going to be additional [00:03:30] additional cost. They talked about the new uh the new dimensions which are basically more classes per se. And what we know so far is that they're going to be offering four classes four additional classes or dimensions in general. So I'm making the assumption that if you go higher than four, then maybe you pay a little bit more. So these are not entities. These are these are like dimensions inside of a specific entity. I'm also going to make the assumption that it's also going to be based on users. I [00:04:00] heard this is kind of maybe rumors, but you know, I've heard from some people that that into Enterprise Suite is going to support up to 100 users. Now, I'm not sure if that's the exact number, but that's the number that I kind of heard. So yeah. So I assume that if you're going to have a lot more than 25 users, which is the cap that you have on Qbo advanced, that that will probably be part of the modularity. And then also if you're going to add MailChimp and Payroll and bill pay and payments. So it might not feel that [00:04:30] much different than Qbo right now where you can add multiple things to it. But that's essentially what we have when it comes to pricing. We don't know what the price is.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, when you mentioned the number 100, I also heard the number 100. But I heard that in terms of how many multi entities you could have, like you could have one parent account with up to 100 smaller entities underneath it. So I don't know if it's 100 entities and 100 users. Or if that's where that 100 came in.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So I'll accept. I [00:05:00] reserve the right to be wrong about this. This this hasn't been made public anywhere. So it's like all these different things that you hear. Um, but the one thing that they did make very public and they put it in the article and they put it in the, in the innovation showcase is the fact that you will get a $1,500 referral referral with a, quote, signed contract. So it's not by somebody signing up for their monthly services of of Intuit Enterprise Suite, it says with signed contracts. [00:05:30] So whenever I hear the word contract I think of one year. So I'm making the assumption that they're not going to be getting people into into enterprise suite with a 30 day free trial. The way that Qbo works, it's it's going to be like sort of locked in contracts. What are your thoughts about that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I think that makes sense. I do think it's going to be annual as a contract, even if it's paid monthly. But what interests me about the pricing question is I have a feeling that the probably also pressure testing the pricing. They're trying to [00:06:00] figure out what will people pay, what is the value, what is it worth, because they've never had these things before. And so they have to actually kind of commoditize it and figure out what the dollar amount is. That makes it enticing. And I did hear in one of something somewhere where they actually used the word negotiate, like you can negotiate your prices. So in those sales cars, you may be able to say, well, you know, oh my God, $100,000, that's too much. Let me pay you $50,000 and [00:06:30] see what Intuit comes back and says.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, we could we could semi speculate on the pricing. So for example, most software companies pay anywhere between 10% to 20% bounties on their annual on their annual contracts. So if there's a flat fee of 1500, then we can assume that if if it's if they use the 10% mark, that this is going to be a $15,000 a year software. Or if they're using that 20% mark, maybe they're thinking that [00:07:00] after negotiation and stuff, this could be a $7,500 a year software. So we are thinking at this point that this is going to be somewhere between $600 and maybe $1,200 a month. That's kind of what we're thinking that the software is going to be. But as soon as we know the exact pricing and the pricing structure, we will report on that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I think that's a fairly good estimate, but it's going to depend on your number of users and your number of entities and the number. Are you using MailChimp and are [00:07:30] you using payroll, and how many employees do you have on payroll? And I think they're working all of that into a package price.

Hector Garcia: And it's important to also notate that you have to be enrolled in the ProAdvisor revenue sharing program, and we'll discuss more about that. But the ProAdvisor revenue sharing program gives you revenue sharing. If you add people, if you add a new client to Qbo and you have them pay directly, it pays you if you if you add a payments account. So if you add a merchant account, the credit card processing [00:08:00] account, I'm not sure if they pay extra for payroll now. I don't think so. Um, and for bill pay. So those those two haven't been added to the, to the, um, referral pricing or the referral program. So I think you only really get paid if you add someone to Qbo or at this point add someone into Intuit Enterprise Suite and payments. Of course.

Alicia Katz Pollock: For some reason my revenue share is blocked out and I've applied and it says, you know, I get an error message and I've called support to try [00:08:30] and fix it and I just can't. So for me, that's yet another reason to continue working with my Qsp, my QuickBooks solutions provider.

Hector Garcia: I wonder if that's the reason I haven't even applied for the for the revenue sharing program, because I'm a qsp myself, so I'm.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Not a qsp. I'm not a qsp, so I don't think that is it's probably that, you know, my intuit life is so complicated that it throws up a flag somewhere.

Hector Garcia: You got all the you got all your emails associated with a whole bunch of Intuit accounts and that sort of thing. Yeah. That happens. [00:09:00] That's a life of a of an old school Intuit product user. The next thing that they talked about is called stay compliant with the new W9 management module. And this is interesting because at 1099 go, every year they go through some sort of, uh, refacing and remodeling and, and it seems to be like the same thing that they redo over and over. Like there hasn't been any, any real significant innovations around this. And honestly, as I as [00:09:30] I tell you what this is, I think most of you are going to be like, didn't have that already. Like, it's one of those things that I'm not sure if this is new or not new, but apparently there's going to be a new a new dashboard per se, where you're going to have all your vendors listed, you're going to see a column that tells you whether or not they have been marked as 1099. You're going to have another column that tells you whether or not their address is filled in, another [00:10:00] column of whether or not the Social Security number or the tax ID number is filled in. But a new interesting thing is there's a little button that says create W9 invites. So essentially you're inviting the vendors to add their information. But again, I can't help but think that I've seen this before, so I'm not sure what's new about this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Let me speak. Let me speak to this. So one thing that you did just say is that, you know, it hasn't changed. But actually last year they rolled out an entirely new [00:10:30] 1099 tool that was way better than it was before, but it still had some awkward parts to it. And I actually helped them design and beta test it. And so I'm kind of invested in this one. And so when I look at this screen, to me that looks like a new, improved dashboard for the W-9s. That kind of solves this now that I'm looking at it. It kind of brings together information that was on two different screens into one. [00:11:00] Right now we can't see it in our qbo. I think that this is part of the 1099 wizard that doesn't become available until November 1st, which is why when we're prepping for this episode, we're looking around and we can't find it. So I think this is part of the new thing. Now, as far as creating the W-9 invites, yeah, that was already there. When you go to the contractor center, which actually has two places you can get there through the payroll or through expenses in the left. Navigation. [00:11:30] When you go to contractors, you have for years been able to invite them to fill in their w-9.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And up until now, what that has done is invited them to create a free Qbo self-employed account as kind of a clearinghouse for all of it. And if they didn't want to use it for real. Bookkeeping, they didn't need to use it, but it just gave them a place to keep all of their w-9 forms together. And then when they filled in their name and address [00:12:00] and email address, it would come back and populate your qbo. So I think this is just kind of another version of that. Um, all that being said, when I looked in my qbo, I did find another new tab. That's not the one in the firm of the future article, but it is in the expenses center and it says 1099 filings. And this is the very, very, very first time I've been able to see what I filed in 2023. So [00:12:30] it has current filings and it's showing me in 2023 and in 2022, the 1099 that I did file through the system. So who it was, the filing date, what form it was, whether it was emailed or mailed or both. If it was accepted by the IRS and a column to correct it if it's wrong. So I have to admit that I'm kind of excited to see both of these two options.

Hector Garcia: Another interesting [00:13:00] messaging that you see in the screen. From the screenshot in the page, it says, we found two more recipients who should receive 1099 to stay compliant. So I wonder if when they say we found if that's some of the AI stuff that's being built in, because traditionally, you know, you are the one that tells QuickBooks track 1099 yes or no. And then, you know, based on whether or not they get paid more than $600 or, you know, whether or not they're [00:13:30] an individual versus a company, or in some weird cases, like a law firm that has to receive a 1099 and all these weird things. So I wonder if if AI is being invoked in here to try to, like, triangulate the information you have, the information it has, and then try to, like, help you not forget to get a w-9 for this type, this specific vendor. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: The screen definitely looks like if you didn't check them off as a 1099 vendor, it's recommending it. So. But I'm guessing in order to make that happen, [00:14:00] you would probably have to have done the previous step of mapping your chart of accounts expense accounts that you typically have 1099 contractors pay from, you know, repairs and maintenance, advertising, contract labor, those things. So I'm curious to know if this is after you've done that mapping, then it says, hey, wait, you've paid this person over $600 using your checking account in the categories you've already specified, or if it's even going to take it a step further [00:14:30] and just find everybody who you paid $600 to buy any payment method other than credit card, no matter what category they were in. So I think we're going to have to kind of see this play out.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I'm going to sidetrack for a second and kind of talk about my my experience as an accounting professional. Um, coming January or February, I talked to my clients and go, hey, we got 1099 all these people. And the general thing they come back with is, I don't know where these [00:15:00] people are. I you know, what? If I can't find them? You know what? If you know, and then I already pay them. There's nothing else I can do. And I usually tell them something really grim, like, well, then we can't take the deduction. You got to take that payment and reclassify it as a nondeductible expense or as a distribution. And people freak out. They're like, okay, okay, I'm going to go find the contractor. But there's always this situation where coming crunch time January, early February, they can't find the contractor, right. And then they come back to me and go, what can I do? And then the reality is you either roll [00:15:30] the dice and not file a 1099. And then if you get audited, you know, just so you know, they're going to back out those payments because you were supposed to give them a 1099. But secondly, make sure it doesn't happen next year. And the only physical way to make sure that our very irresponsible, forgetful clients stop paying brand new vendors without collecting a W-9 first is to actually create a company policy [00:16:00] where you don't release a check.

Hector Garcia: You don't release a payment until a w-9 is on file. And all the large companies I work with, like when when any of these large companies hire me to make a video for them or, or write an article for them, or talk in their conference or whatever, they won't even they won't even enter the bill in the system until they've gone through the w-9 process. So I wonder, especially somebody from Intuit is listening. I wonder if, you know, revamping the 1099 screen doesn't seem like a [00:16:30] big innovation. You know what would be a killer innovation, especially with Qbo advance and and Intuit Enterprise Suite, if you can create a permission That is not allowed to create bills. Not allowed to make payments. Not allowed to use QB payments. If the vendor doesn't have a w-9 or a supervising authority. Has overridden the fact that this one doesn't need a 1099, that would be amazing. It would be nice to have that too much of a manual process, and it's still [00:17:00] leaving way too much up to the user who's kind of forgetful or just in the heat of the moment. They have to make the payment, but then the vendor is gone.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Now, I think putting up a flag is a really, really great idea. I don't know about like blocking it all together, but definitely saying, hey, you're paying this person over $600. Do you have a w-9 on file? Would be really, really helpful, especially for our small business owners who don't know any better.

Hector Garcia: But that's the difference between small business and mid-market. When you say, I don't know about blocking it all together, [00:17:30] that's small business. Mid-market is I need to block it. I need to make sure that we create that that wall between the payment, between the vendor creation and the payment process, where there has to be a a w-9 and what would be even even more killer, especially if we're going to use AI for this, is that there has to be a physical W-9 scan. You know, you can't just add any random document and it checks like where the AI will actually read it and go, okay, this is a real w-9. So that [00:18:00] would be interesting too, because again, I think, I think AI is being used for like really random, not so useful things. And then maybe, maybe I will stand corrected when we talk about the next item in the in the article. The next item. Go ahead, go ahead.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So one of the things that I do want to let everybody know is every single January I do a 1099 class where I go through Intuit's or QuickBooks is 1099 tools, and I show how to [00:18:30] use them with the current iteration, because it has been changing every single year. It's absolutely one of my most popular classes and so I will be teaching it in January. So keep an eye watch this space for my January class. In fact, I can put the link in the show notes. You can even register for that class now and then get the updated information in January when I teach it.

Hector Garcia: All right. The next item here is called [00:19:00] flag mistakes before running payroll with anomaly detection. And the minute I hear anomaly detection, that's obviously AI. And the actual verbiage they use here is running payroll is a crucial task. Clients that use QuickBooks Online Payroll now have the help of an AI powered anomaly detection, which uses AI to flag payroll mistakes before a payroll run. So the example that they used on the [00:19:30] payroll mistakes, quote unquote, is on the typical range of hours. So it's going to go back and look at, you know, that Michael usually works 30 hours a week, and then all of a sudden in one, uh, in one one week or whatever, you're paying them 45 hours or you're paying them two hours or whatever. So the system is going to go, whoa, whoa. This is not the usual amount of hours that you're paying this, this person or and I assume that if if the bonus, [00:20:00] for example, it's out of range or the amount of benefits is out of range, I assume that it's going to go through all the variables of a paycheck. But the example, the only example they use here is the number of hours. No, I mean, regardless, I think this is great. This is a net win for all payroll people because this happens many times where you're just you're just in a rush to to run payroll. And then they give you the timesheet and you just transcribe the timesheet information. I mean, assuming you're not using [00:20:30] QuickBooks time or a time clock system, you just transcribe it in there and then not notice that, you know, this employee is a part time employee, or this employee is not supposed to pay. You're not supposed to pay them overtime because for whatever reason. So I like this a lot. And I know you're a fan of QuickBooks payroll, so I'm sure you have something to say about this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, the fact that it now has a toggle is down at the bottom and it says Smart Review, and it starts on by default. You can just hit the slider and turn it off super easy. [00:21:00] But when I did my last payroll run, it actually flagged that I had an employee who had not put in their timesheet, and so I didn't even have to think about it. It was just there it is. And it made it super easy to notice without accidentally running the payroll and then having to go back and do the second person.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I haven't tried this firsthand, but this is the first time I see a checkbox where you can enable or disable, I quote unquote on the screen. And this is really important [00:21:30] because as Intuit starts adding all this new I things and you see this on like the Facebook groups and the LinkedIn groups and and the chats, especially us, the heads down. I've been doing this for 20 years, type of accountants that they know what they need to do and they're just doing it. All these little pop ups just feel like a like an annoyance, and it doesn't feel like we can turn off these things. It feels like it's being like, you know, forced upon us. So I like the fact that there's a checkbox, [00:22:00] that smart review checkbox where you can turn off and on the AI. Now, I'm sure that in a couple of years the tide will turn and then no one will turn off the AI. And then in a couple of years later, you know, like you wouldn't even think about running payroll without the AI. But this transition period, it's an important one. And I think that somehow that team understood the assignment, that not all of us want to see pop ups in every single screen, even if it's quote unquote [00:22:30] helpful, because what they think is helpful might not be helpful to us because we maybe we have six employees that we that we know, we know on top of our head how much we have to pay them. And the anomaly is a normal anomaly. I don't want to go through it through a, through a, I don't want like QuickBooks to be questioning my work, basically. So so I would totally understand how some people would value having this on, and some people would value being able to turn this off.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Now, one thing that I do want [00:23:00] to note here is that this very first iteration is just for your regular hours. It's not looking for overtime, PTO bonuses, retirement, anything. It's just right now looking at the regular hours column.

Hector Garcia: All right. Thanks for adding that. But in my opinion, obviously it needs to look at everything for it to be useful. But it's a good first example. I think it's probably the biggest issue. Okay. The next thing that is within the the payroll theme. So the next one is called assign an HR manager your roll [00:23:30] for your payroll only axis. And it does mention that this HR manager role is only available with Qbo payroll Premium or Elite, which is interesting because generally when we talk about user roles and permissions, we're really only talking about Qbo advanced. So if you don't have Qbo advanced but do have QuickBooks Online Premium or Elite Payroll, you do have [00:24:00] this, uh, this, um, new role called HR manager, which I find really interesting. The one thing is, yeah, one more thing with essentials. I wouldn't know how that would work, but. But what are your thoughts on that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, elite is the one that has the HR portal. And so it makes sense as far as that one goes. But the companies that are using premium are generally companies that either have larger payroll or more specific payroll Role, and having [00:24:30] there already was a feature that you could allow access to. Seeing payroll or not for any user level. And if you had payroll access turned off, then even if they were a company admin, they still couldn't see whose paychecks belonged to who. So this is a great step up that allows the HR person to only be able to see that data. And it it gives them access to the HR portal, [00:25:00] the payroll portal, and the time tracking as well. So it gives access to QuickBooks time. So this is great that you can now increase your delegation for these.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So here's the note at the end. Hr manager role. It's available in Qbo Advance Plus or essentials. So definitely not in Simple Start who also subscribe to Qbo Payroll Premium or Elite. And it's also available for standalone subscribers of Qbo payroll. [00:25:30] Now that's a weird one, because if you only have payroll, what do you care about people? What is the stuff that you don't want people to see? Um, I don't get that one because the whole HR role portion is so you can look at payroll, look at time tracking, and not have to look at the PNL on the balance sheet. So I don't understand how this role even matters if you have standalone payroll. Um, I don't know about standalone payroll.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You have to have that.

Hector Garcia: That just makes no sense. [00:26:00]Unless somehow standalone payroll has only timesheets and only payroll or something like that. Unless I don't, I don't know. I don't use standalone payroll, but I don't know how that would work. Okay. So we can move to the next thing. And and this was interesting. And it is a mini simple one. But this is what Intuit calls the lighter. And I agree a customized column order and change payment type in Qbo payroll. So in the screen [00:26:30] where you're going to run payroll, which is going to have a list of all your employees, the salary or number of hours. And then basically like a summary of what's gross pay, what's net pay, what classes you're adding to each line, to each line in payroll, all that stuff. Now you can just change the order, which I found to be awesome, but then it says change payment method. So I assume this is for people that normally get paid with um, with [00:27:00] direct deposit. And then maybe you want to just for that particular payroll run, write a check, I don't know, do you have any thoughts on that. Like what is what would you want to change the payment method in the in on the fly?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that's.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly the use case. Maybe you're doing a bonus check or maybe they're in between banks for bank deposit, but whenever you had to switch it before it was under a pencil and or three dots and really hard to find. So now they've got the payment [00:27:30] method in its own column, so that it's really super easy to change it if you need to on the fly, which is nice, and I really like that you can reorder the columns, because if you are doing your timesheets outside of QuickBooks online and you're not using cube time, you know, maybe you have another spreadsheet or maybe you're using one of the other apps. The order that your fields are in may be different than the fields in QuickBooks online. So now you can customize your QuickBooks online to map to your [00:28:00] other time trackers. So this is a great value added.

Hector Garcia: Absolutely. Okay. We're still in payroll somehow. I mean they added a lot of stuff to payroll. The next one says allow employees to edit direct deposit info in QuickBooks workforce. And this is the one that in the in the show prep Alicia and I were like, wasn't that there already? Like what's what's the purpose of of workforce if you couldn't edit your direct deposit information. So I guess that QuickBooks workforce was only to to view your w-2s [00:28:30] and your your pay stubs. But in the past it says now you don't have to go through your employer to change your direct deposit information. So apparently it's a new thing in workforce. Individuals can change their own direct deposit information inside QuickBooks workforce needs to be the web. The web version, not not the mobile app.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: One's got me completely perplexed, because I am pretty darn sure that my employees already had that ability. Or at least I know they put it in in the first [00:29:00] place. Maybe after they put it in, I needed to change it and they couldn't do that in workforce. So I'm not sure exactly what the before and after is on this one, because I know that I have never collected my employees paycheck information.

Hector Garcia: Exactly.

Hector Garcia: The next item is called Get Enhanced Payroll Cost Allocations for robust Personal insights. Now, I could have sworn we talked about this before, because this was released prior and essentially before [00:29:30] you run a paycheck, there's a button that says edit classes and projects. And inside each individual employee you can now select a specific class. If your classes are configured to be line, item level and at transaction level, and a specific project on each of the hours or the basically the individual timesheet entries for that employee. What is different though, from the last time we reported it, is that the first version [00:30:00] of this was essentially kind of sort of broken, so you had to always manually enter the classes and projects if you already had the data coming in from QuickBooks time, or if you had a timesheet. And Alicia and I were kind of testing this on the fly a couple of weeks ago when we did that. If you already had a timesheet or the stuff was coming from QuickBooks time, the information wouldn't pass through to this new edit classes and projects, but now they're saying that it does that. If you do have QuickBooks time or, [00:30:30] uh, QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium or Elite, uh, the information passes through, which is actually great.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to using this myself, because right now, one of the things that I'm particularly interested in is my job costing on my own labor for payroll that, you know, I can see when my bookkeepers, who they've been working on and see that in my what I do is I run a PNL by customer. So [00:31:00] I have a PNL where every column is one of my bookkeeping clients, and then I can see my profitability by client. And so for my bookkeeper, it's already been in there, but for my salary hours, it has not been in there. And so starting in October, I'm going to be able to put in my own labor costs.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. One really interesting caveat about this. And I have to kind of recall personal pain and experiences. Quickbooks time [00:31:30] comes free or included with the two higher tiers of payroll Premium and Elite. But only the elite was advertised as job costing compatible time tracking. So it was really odd. And this is prior. It seems like it's prior to now based on what we're reading in the article. What was really odd is that even though QuickBooks time was included with Qbo Payroll Premium and [00:32:00] inside QuickBooks time, you could select a class and a project that information didn't pass through in the past. If you didn't have Qbo Payroll Elite. Now, based on what we're reading, it actually says in the bottom time tracking, it's available in Qbo payroll Premium and Elite. So maybe possibly QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium users can pass through this job, this class, [00:32:30] or job costing information into payroll. I don't know, because Intuit is never really clear about this. And based on the history, it is possible that they themselves are confused about the fact that it might still not work with Qbo online premium. So you have no idea how much pain we've gone through and how much how many people we have to talk into it to confirm this sort of hidden piece of information that you have to be in in Qbo Payroll Elite for QuickBooks, time to transfer [00:33:00] job costing or project information into payroll. So I'm making the assumption that this situation fixes it, this new upgrade. But I guess time will tell. I don't know if Alicia, if you have any experience with this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of clients who are on elite specifically because of the job costing. So I'm wondering if they have now brought that level down to premium, in which case I can downgrade a lot of my people. Or maybe this is just not transparent text. Maybe the classes are still [00:33:30] just in premium, but the job costing by customer is just in elite. I would hope that that if that was the case, they would have actually made that apparent. So I'm hoping this means that they've actually just dropped the required level down.

Hector Garcia: Yeah.For the record, I always thought that was completely ridiculous. The fact that you had QuickBooks time, that had a dropdown for selecting projects, but it didn't pass through into Qbo and the integration, it was just completely it's ridiculous. I mean, I understand that you want to guard [00:34:00] certain features and you want people to upgrade to have that feature, but for that to be logical, you would have to have removed that project dropdown from QuickBooks time, because logic dictates is if I have a place to input it, there has to be a place to output it like it just drives. It will drive a user insane. If there's a drop down when you add something, but you can't get it out somewhere else, it just makes no sense.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, it made a little bit of sense because it still worked in the project center, so it just didn't populate payroll.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, but.

Hector Garcia: The [00:34:30] know if the time comes in the project center. But when you process payroll and you want to see a PNL by, by by project, it didn't show up in the PNL. So what was the point?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that's what I'm saying is in the but in the project center, it did show up in the hourly cost reports. It just didn't show up in the payroll reports.

Hector Garcia: Mhm. Yeah. I still find it to be. Well I guess this is one of those tomato tomato things where I think that in [00:35:00] my particular opinion it the project center, it's, it's, it's fun. But to me a pnl by by class or a PNL by job is like the truth, you know, so I prefer the truth over fun and the project center has always been very fun. But like, you know, I'm, I'm I'm an old school accountant. I need the net income to tie in across all my jobs. Otherwise I don't trust the information. So. So yeah, I get it. Yeah, it worked in the project center, but not in the PNL. So, long story [00:35:30] short, we're just hoping that now it works in the PNL with Qbo premium.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I'm teaching my project center and job costing course on October 22nd, and I haven't taught it in two years, so I'm going to be able to pull in all the new stuff, and you better believe I'm going to have to put this one through its paces so that I can speak to it with authority.

Hector Garcia: Absolutely. Looking forward to that. All right. The next item here is explore and advanced search for transactions in QuickBooks online. So there [00:36:00] has been this new revamped reorganized advanced search in QuickBooks online already. So that's not new. But and this is something I can tell you firsthand from my experience, especially with the development of of right tool is that the the old search, the old search screen gave you a dropdown where you can choose whether you're searching the amounts inside of a line, a [00:36:30] line item in a transaction, or whether you're searching an amount or of the whole transaction. And when they upgraded, quote unquote, to the new search screen, the dollar amount search only searched the total dollar amount of the transaction, and you couldn't search inside details of the transaction. So now it's really cool. Now in the amount section, when you click on the drop down menu, you can now search whether any dollar amounts you're searching, if it's going to [00:37:00] be the total transaction or if it's going to be the line in the transaction, or if it's going to be either or. And then on top of that, you now can do in between search, you can do greater than you can do exact amounts. So you have total flexibility in terms of what you want to search for in terms of dollar amounts. You know, like line line, item level, total amount, uh, in between search. So that's that's amazing, super, super powerful. Something [00:37:30] that should have been there all along. But I'm not going to complain. I think it's it's great.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The I used to have to teach people about line item searches because the default always was just total. And you had to go into a drop down and find line. And what we mean by line is that, for instance, if you have an expense or an invoice that has multiple lines on it, the line option will search any dollar amount in the entire transaction, not just the whole grand total [00:38:00] that shows up in the in the reports. The other thing that's new about that is the between. The between was not there before. The between is brand new. And so that's been something that we've been asking for, and I'm really happy to see that. The other thing that I really love about this new search is that it's a multi multi filter. So you can say I just want to see transaction type equals deposit with the date of last month, with the dollar [00:38:30] amount between this one and this one. And you can get into some really complicated searches this way with all of these filters. There's also a more filters button. And under the more filters don't miss that because there you can even search by product and service and class and location. So there's even more ways of searching. And this search just blows desktop search out of the water. Whenever I'm trying to find even a single transaction [00:39:00] in desktop, I have to like refresh the database and then put in this one thing and look through a whole list. And even if it was the transaction that I was just working on. I would then have to go do this big, complicated search. So the fact that I can get to the most recent transaction just by clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper right, or go into really complicated entire database searches from the advanced transaction search. I am a very happy puppy. [00:39:30]

Hector Garcia: Well, I'm going to disagree on the fact that this one is better than the desktop search because the desktop search had one really powerful component, or it still has it, which is after you search, you click on a button and click on make into a report and anything you search was be able something you can create into a report. A report that can be edited customized. So many times when I when I was teaching people how to build custom reports, I asked them, go find the transactions [00:40:00] that you want to show in a report. And it was easier for them to use this the interface of a search rather than the interface of customizing a report. So until they give me a lot more columns to see on the screen, because the columns are very limited, like you can only see date, transaction type, reference number, payee, due date, balance, memo, and last modified date. There's a lot more columns I would like to see in this screen for this to be valuable. [00:40:30] You know, like class location, like things that are really valuable. Um, you still can't see them. Um, so that to me still shows a little bit of weakness versus desktop and the fact that, yes, I can convert this into an Excel CSV, but it's not the same thing as a customizable report. So I think that when the reports team, especially with Qbo advanced and the custom report builder figures out how to how to talk to the components of a search result to turn that into a [00:41:00] custom detail report. Then at that point, I would admit that maybe it's getting closer to being as powerful as QuickBooks desktop.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I think we kind of beg to differ, at least based on our needs. Now, what I like about what you just said is the ability to turn it into a report. I think that's totally cool, but I as far as cumbersome and how much time it took me to find a single transaction in desktop, I would spend five minutes trying to find one thing that I can just pop up in seconds [00:41:30] and online.

Hector Garcia: Fair enough, fair enough. But for example, if you have any custom fields, um, I'm not 100% sure if you can search with through custom fields. I haven't tested that yet. Something you can do with QuickBooks desktop. So potato potatoes again tomato tomatoes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But that's also.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Why we have the the Custom Reports Builder, which has, you know, all kinds of abilities that we never had before. And I know again, I'm going to everybody's heard me say this. I'm going to keep saying it. If you have not [00:42:00] checked out the Custom Report Builder recently, I know that it had a really awkward rollout, but I actually found myself for the first time frustrated by a file that was not qbo advanced because I couldn't go use the builder to go grab the information that I needed. So it was the first time where I was thwarted by not having advanced and really missed all the things that the custom reports can do.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I agree 100%, but Qbo Pro can do tons. I mean, QuickBooks [00:42:30] Desktop Pro can do tons of powerful searches and I don't have to pay for the highest tier anyway. Um, yeah. And if you are going to be an Intuit Connect, if you're going to be at the in Las Vegas, um, I'm teaching the, uh, the Advanced Reports class, and we're going to go do a deep dive into the Qbo Advanced Custom Report Builder. And like I said, Alicia, if I could tie my search to my custom report builder, that would be incredible, because that would be logical, I think, for that to work.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Hector Garcia: The [00:43:00] last item that we see here and and honestly it's going to be challenging for us to to give you good information about this. Some of it is semi extrapolation. There is the title of this is help clients get automatically paid with recurring payments. Wasn't that there already? I could have sworn that Qbo had automatic payments forever, and that was the big deal between Qbo and QuickBooks desktop that you can create a sales receipt, [00:43:30] that you can make it a recurring sales receipt, and you can enter your credit card information, set it and forget it, and you'll get paid every month or whatever it is. So this is not new per se, but if you actually look at the article and you look at the screenshot, the screenshot shows what looks like an invoice, what looks like a sales receipt. But the title of the form is Recurring Payment. Now, recurring payment has never been a transaction type [00:44:00] as far as I know. Okay, there's recurring invoices. There's recurring sales receipts, but recurring payment has never been a thing. So what I think this is this is a sales receipt with a different title. And from what we see here, what's different and innovative. And I think what seems to be the the reason why this is a change is that in this particular case, you will create [00:44:30] the recurring payment and then you're going to punt it off to the customer so the customer can enter their credit card information themselves. So it's not like they have to give you the credit card information or the ACH information via text, or via a secure portal or via paper with a signature or whatever.

Hector Garcia: And then you have to transcribe that in there. Now it's the customer who's entering that the same way the customer enters a payment when they pay you through the pay now button. But now they're going to sort [00:45:00] of they're going to sort of kind of accept that the fact that there's a recurring payment and they're going to enter that in there. The other thing that they added, and it's not very clear on the screenshot, but it's on the text, which is you can do things like one time fees, initial set of fees that can be added to the to the to the first charge. So I'm not sure if they're talking about staggered payments into a single invoice like if you can, if you have a negotiation with a client that says you're going to pay me in three parts or whatever, [00:45:30] so I'm not 100% sure what that's all about. One time fees, like initial setup fees, can be added to the first charge. So I guess I guess maybe you can set up a recurring payment for 500 bucks a month or whatever the bookkeeping is, but if you have a one time cleanup, you can bundle that one time cleanup on the first charge and then make the other piece recurring. What's what are your thoughts about like what that means?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, when.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I do one time setup fees, a lot of the time it is just an extra, literally a setup fee like we're [00:46:00] going to charge you. For instance, when you set up one of my portals, we have a one time fee for setting up the portal, so that will show up on the first occurrence and then not be there on the remaining occurrences. So to me, that makes sense. Now, this whole thing took me a minute to wrap my head around. I was like, okay, what's the difference between this and a sales receipt? And what's the difference between this and an invoice and the difference when I finally [00:46:30] kind of grokked, it was that when I do a recurring sales receipt, I have always had to put in the payment myself. This puts the the ability to enter the payment information in on the customer, but then show up in all the rest of the recurring things. And that is an ability that we've never had before. And the benefit of that is PCI compliance. I bet everybody listening to this got those [00:47:00] scary messages and got five calls or 100 calls from all your clients saying, oh my God, do I need to pay this other company $150 to to certify myself as PCI compliant? And the thing with the PCI compliance is that you're that qbo QuickBooks payments is PCI compliant, but how you've been gathering your customers payment information may not be. That's where the risk is. And no, you don't need [00:47:30] to use that company in order to certify it's actually just a self certification form where you go through and you look at the policies and you make sure that you're not violating them.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And if you are, you change what you're doing. But, you know, I've been doing this for so long that when QB payments first came out, if you made a recurring payment, it would pop up a PDF form that you would then download and send to your client to give you their payment information, and they would send it back to you. And now all of [00:48:00] a sudden you had an insecure PDF or a piece of paper in your hand, or saved on your computer that had their credit card information completely exposed. And so I love this new feature because now we don't have to touch the payment information at all, and I don't have to send out a form and an invoice and maybe never get paid. I get the best of all worlds with a sales receipt [00:48:30] that collects the invoice like an invoice does. And so I think it's really cool. I have a fantasy. My fantasy is that I can do progress invoicing this way, where I can have an invoice for $1,000 and take three payments against that one invoice. So if that could happen, my life would be super duper happy. But even if right now I can have three separate [00:49:00] transactions, all for the same dollar amount that run three times and then I never have to see it again. That's pretty cool. Then it doesn't even live in my recurring transactions list as something that I have to, you know, run it three times and then remember that I can go delete it later on. It'll just do it and be gone. That is cool.

Hector Garcia: You're right. It would be amazing if we have an invoice for a thousand bucks and then we tell it, okay, they're going to pay 100 bucks now. In two weeks, they're going to pay 208 [00:49:30] weeks, they're going to pay another $300. And then in, you know, 12 weeks, they're going to pay the balance. If you can automate all that and get the client to confirm that and accept it and enter the information and then not have to worry about it, that would be truly innovative and time saving. There was one last piece here that's not related to QuickBooks, but we'll go through it really quick. And I don't use Proconnect tax, so I can't speak to it firsthand. But it looks like you can now make adjustments to your clients books outside [00:50:00] of the client's books for tax purposes for proconnect tax. So let's say, for example, you have QuickBooks online, you have a client on QuickBooks online and your QuickBooks online accountant user. And then you have a that same client. You're going to prepare the tax return and proconnect tax. So it looks like there's going to be a module where you have the PNL and balance sheet in there. You can make adjustments, you know, kind of like a journal entry. And once you hit adjust or create, it [00:50:30] changes that PNL and balance sheet only for the purposes of the tax return. And it doesn't sort of send the changes back to Qbo, which is huge, because many times people were sort of stuck having to make sure their qbo and their tax match. So now you can have a difference between your tax PNL balance sheet and your accounting or your qbo, PNL and balance sheet. So I like the fact that now it can live in two separate worlds, and you can [00:51:00] see what your clean QuickBooks looks like, and then what your tax return adjustments look like, and not have to force it into a journal entry into the books. So that's great. I haven't tried it, but that seems to be great. And Alicia, I'll leave you with the final words.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I have I'm really excited about all of these changes that are happening. I think a lot of these things are really innovative and welcome. And one of the things that I have been working on, you know, a regular [00:51:30] listeners have heard me talk about the textbook that I'm doing or that I've written, and this fall, in November and December, I am teaching my textbook. And so I'm actually going to help new QuickBooks users learn how to do QuickBooks by building a company by hand from scratch, starting from making a new file all the way through entering your products and your customers are AP bank feeds. Reconciling [00:52:00] running the reports using the new the new advanced custom reports, inventory projects, payroll, running payroll, all of it. And so if you would like to learn how to use QuickBooks, including all of the best practices that I talk about all the time, this is going to be a great opportunity, and we'll make sure that the link is in the show notes. Or you can go to learn rois.com and search for Qbo complete hands on training. Um, [00:52:30] but before that happens, we've got something really big happening for both of us. It's time for Intuit Connect. Yay!

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So Intuit Connect is going to be the end of October, October 28th to the 30th, I believe, right before Halloween in Las Vegas in the Aria, It looks like they're not sold out, which is really interesting because last year it felt like they sold out early. I don't know if you remember, there was all the drama and social [00:53:00] media saying, I didn't even get notice and it got sold out. And then this year they handled it a little bit different. They had a waitlist and they had private invitations and they're still advertising into it. Connect. So I wonder if the strategy to this for this year to to kind of withhold tickets and do waiting lists and, and invite only. Is that kind of backfired on them. And they they're not going to sell out this year. So that could be one thing. The other thing could be that maybe previous [00:53:30] years they never sold out. They just made us think that they did and and were speculating for no reason. Um, it could also be the name change, you know, calling it interconnect and not QuickBooks connect. That could be a reason, I don't know. I guess we, you know, until we go there and we feel that there's less people we can't truly report. As you know, the number of attendees is not a public information, but I think I just find it interesting that 18 days before the event, they're still marketing it. And last year it wasn't like that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, they also.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Opened up the tickets to [00:54:00] the public so late that they made it hard for people to get plane tickets or travel plans, because they had done all of the lead up through all of these private channels and, and invitation and wait lists and all of that, that even once they had announced it, you know, if you wanted to go, you weren't allowed to go. And then a whole lot of people probably went, well, if they don't want me, then why would I want them? And decided to go to women who count and reframe and dcpa [00:54:30] instead.

Hector Garcia: Right?

Hector Garcia: Yeah, there's more conferences. Also, the price is much higher than last the last year. I think it's like $1,200. The base, the base price. You know, I'm still going. I didn't pay for a ticket because I'm speaking, I think. Alicia, you're not speaking yet. You don't know. I'm not.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Speaking. I had to pay for my ticket for Alicia.

Hector Garcia: She paid for her ticket the full the full ticket like everyone else. So she she made the calculated decision to to to still invest 1200 bucks. Plus, you know, however much the hotel costs and the time away from work and all that stuff [00:55:00] to make it there, because there are things that the conference even even if you have a kind of love hate relationship with Intuit and you cringe about giving them more money and all that stuff, there's something about that conference that just kind of like it. It ropes you back in it. It it gives you, uh, it it helps you remember that there's a reason why you fell in love with QuickBooks in the first place. Um, a lot of the folks that work at Intuit, they're just really wonderful people. They're the way they [00:55:30] treat us. Um, and and we're the first to know of the innovation. So, like, if you kind of want to be a QuickBooks nerd and in the know QuickBooks nerd and also know about all the third party developers and what's new, and maybe take some time off to party and hang out with other professionals. This conference is kind of the the one to be in. But like like Alicia said, we you know there's reframe, there's digital CPA, there's scaling new heights. You know there's other conferences [00:56:00] that that can also give give you that type of satisfaction as well. So it's not like this is the only place to do that, but this is the only QuickBooks branded place that can do that. But it's not the only place that can give you that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And this is kind of the the Porsche of conferences. It's absolutely lush and luxe and a cut above, you know, of all the conferences that I go to, this is the one where I feel like I'm treated like the like the Queen, that I am.

Hector Garcia: The [00:56:30] rock star that you are, and also that I feel the vendors to kind of go all out. So like all all these companies, they, they throw parties, they treat you to drinks and like if you, if you keep your ear, uh, open enough, you you might get invited to have dinner every single night with a different vendor. So like, you just kind of have to be out there and talking to people and, you know, so, so, so there is still some magic to it. I'm still going to interconnect. I'm still recommending people to go to interconnect. [00:57:00] I'm speaking at Intuit Connect. And that's not the only reason why I'm going. I'm, I'm uh, I'm exhibiting at QuickBooks connect. So I'm also paying them to have a booth there. So I still feel it's, it's it is the elite conference for QuickBooks people. And and it might still be like that for, for years to come.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm very much looking forward to being there.

Hector Garcia: So Alicia, looking forward to seeing you in a couple of days at reframe here in South Florida and then seeing you in a [00:57:30] couple of weeks at Intuit Connect. Yeah, everybody, thank.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You for hanging out.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In real life.

Hector Garcia: Absolutely. And everybody, thank you very much. And we'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.