Look What We Found: March 2025

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

Alicia Katz Pollock: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, we're going to do the march. Look what I found. Or in this case, it'll be look what we found because I've got with me, Miss Margie Davis. Woo hoo! Hey, glad to have you here.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Always a delight. Always a delight. I'm still pinching myself that I [00:00:30] get to be on this show. Excellent.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, we're. You know, I love the expertise that you bring because you're one of the people who's out there creating educational materials like I do. And so we see the changes as they happen. And it's basically what Margie and I do is we have a Google doc that every time we notice something is different, we go ahead and take a screenshot and drop it in the doc. So what we are going to do today is kind of go through all the little things that we have noticed changing in the [00:01:00] interface. A lot of them are very subtle little things. Some of them are signs of things to come, and some of them are things that we saw once and never saw again. So we're not sure some of the things that we're going to talk about. Maybe they were experiments and they disappeared, or maybe it's on a slow rollout. So some of the things that we're going to tell you keep an eye out. And at least that way you'll you'll know that changes are coming and not just have them sprung [00:01:30] on you.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yep.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The very first thing that we noticed is that with the new Intuit Enterprise suite and trying to raise awareness of it, that right now you can't just go sign up for it, you have to have a meeting with sales. They made it easy for us as accountant users to make these recommendations up under the Accountant Tools briefcase that you have when you're in Qbo A. There is a new quick link to Intuit Enterprise Suite referral. That [00:02:00] way you can go fill in a form and make an appointment to meet with Intuit with your client, and have the conversation about whether the suite is right for them.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: The next one is another one of those. Wait, was that there before or when did that show up? So, Margie, why don't you go ahead and and introduce this one?

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. So I'm the one that found this, and uh, and Alicia said, no, actually, that's been there for a while, but I just barely [00:02:30] noticed. So the so we've had the ability to add bookmarks ever since they, they kind of like revamped the whole left navigation bar. They gave us the ability to, um, bookmark our favorite spots. So it's right there. We don't have to go to a submenu. We can rearrange them to to match our workflow. But the thing that I did not realize that you could do is you can actually edit the name of the bookmark. [00:03:00] And Alicia and I have differing opinions on whether whether this is a good thing. I think it is not a good thing, because the whole reason they got rid of the business view accountant view thing was that the it was confusing for support, like not only for Intuit support, but for us supporting our clients. Like if we're not looking at the same thing as they are. And [00:03:30] it just was too confusing. So we all shouted Hallelujah! When they got rid of it, they went back to this. They gave us some functionality to move, you know, to move things around. But now, as I said, I just discovered you can actually edit the label of the bookmark, which seems to me creates exactly the same problem with support level. I was like, do I even want to talk about this on this show, because I don't want people to know that they that they can [00:04:00] change the name of this bookmark. Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So the mechanics of it, if you haven't already tried the bookmarks, is that in the left navigation bar over by the menu, there's a new section called bookmarks. And when you fly out anything from the left navigation, and then you move your cursor over to the right side of it, it puts a little bookmark symbol, and when you click bookmark, it means that now you can see that submenu right from the bookmarks area. In fact, it doesn't even [00:04:30] have to be from the left. Navigation. You can literally be anywhere in Qbo, and then you have the option to add the bookmark for that particular screen. Like Margie said though, once you have added the bookmark, you can then edit the bookmark. Now I kind of I mostly agree with you that it's nice to have the consistent names, but when I bookmark the reminders list because I spend a lot of time in the reminders list, it always comes in in all caps. Now I'm [00:05:00] a little OCD, and so the fact that it's coming in in all caps, I like being able to edit the bookmark and get it into regular case instead of all caps. Yeah, but I absolutely agree that it becomes a challenge for us educators because now when we're trying to explain something, who knows what the client actually called it? They edited it, right.

Margie Remmers-Davis: But one thing is you can only edit the name of the bookmark if you're on the page that the bookmark refers to. So [00:05:30] that does make it. I mean, that's a little better. You can't just willy nilly change them all. So.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. Excellent. Okay. The next thing that I found is I was adding a fixed asset to the chart of accounts. And there has long been a feature that disappeared. That has come back again. So that's why I'm super excited about this. We're so.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Happy.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, [00:06:00] I had put in feedback saying, I want this, I want this, I want this. So what it basically is, is that when you add a fixed asset in traditional accounting, you just lumped all of your equipment and equipment and your vehicles in vehicles, and you had one big number of all of your properties and then just one accumulated depreciation account to offset. That's great when they have big ticket items or a lot of [00:06:30] them. But for my small business owners who might just have a couple fixed assets, sometimes it's helpful to see subcategories under the fixed asset where you actually put in the fixed asset, like not just vehicles but cargo van. And then you make a subaccount for the original cost and a second subaccount for the depreciation. And then that way you can see the net book value for that one fixed asset on the chart of accounts. And I personally it really [00:07:00] suits my OCD. I love seeing it that way. And in QuickBooks ten years ago when you create the fixed asset, it gave you the ability to turn on those subaccounts. And then when they changed the chart of accounts edit fields three years ago, that went away. But I saw it back. There's a I don't know if it's always there, but it was.

Margie Remmers-Davis: It's been gone for three years.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's. Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh my gosh. I did not realize that it had been gone [00:07:30] for that long.

Alicia Katz Pollock: When they went to the sidebar versus the box in the middle of the screen is when it didn't make that migration. Yeah. So now basically when you create this new fixed asset, like I've got one on my screen that says cargo van. Yep. It will now create two. There's a checkbox that says create a category to keep track of depreciation. And when you turn that on, it now creates two subaccounts the main account to a book, the opening value [00:08:00] of the vehicle. It could be the loan, it could be your down payment or both. And then a separate one for the depreciation. And then that way when you look at cargo van on the balance sheet, you see the current value, not just the original value with the depreciation off somewhere else. Yes, yes it's I.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yes. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. That is like that. It's back and makes it so much easier.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Now not everybody's going to use it. But if you only have a couple fixed assets, it's really [00:08:30] great for small business owners. The next one is the long standing issue that if you are making invoices for your clients and the money comes in the banking feed for the payment, but nobody actually made the Payment to close the invoice first to match the big mistake making. Making duplicated revenue for years has been somebody clicking on the deposit [00:09:00] in the banking feed, and then typing in who the customer is and what the account is. So, you know, here's my customer and here this is sales of product income and then creating the duplicates. So now the second you hit the account category it popped up and said this client has five open invoices. Is if this deposit is for that invoice, record the payment and receive payment first. That way your books are accurate. So QuickBooks is actually telling [00:09:30] you you are making a mistake, that you should not be making this deposit. You need to go take your payment first. Of course there is a checkbox that says don't show this message again. So once they dismiss it, they're going to go back to their bad habit.

Margie Remmers-Davis: But don't take off. Don't take it off. Now it wasn't clear to me from the from our shared document here where this screenshot was coming from. But you're saying this is in the bank deposit transaction at the bottom. [00:10:00] Add funds to this deposit. If you put in the customer name, then it then it looks at that customer name and says it has these open invoices.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly.

Margie Remmers-Davis: That rolled out everywhere.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Again saw it in the wild.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I don't know if it's everywhere. I sure hope so because this is a game changer for all of us cleaning up duplicated revenue. So yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: All right [00:10:30] I'm going to test I'm going to test that out okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Awesome okay. The next one is something that is rolled out across all files. And Margie and I were both super excited when it showed up. And that is that reports Finally has a submenu like all the rest of the centers.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Why? Why did they have they not had this from the beginning?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I don't know.

Margie Remmers-Davis: We should clarify. Well, we should clarify first because [00:11:00] if people are just listening. So we're talking about the left navigation bar. Every item that you hover over has a submenu that takes you to the tabs for that thing. Except for ever for years reports, reports never had that reports was just its own lone thing, even though inside reports there were the different. There was the [00:11:30] standard reports and customized reports and management reports. For some reason it never had the dropdown. And I when you're teaching, when you're teaching and you say and on the left navigation bar and you hover over this. So thank heavens. I mean, it is a kind of a pain because now I have like a million screenshots and instructions and, and all of this that, um, that [00:12:00] are wrong. But hallelujah that they did this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, this is one of those things that if it's wrong in my materials, I don't mind so much because it's not like it has to be explained. The moment you click on reports and you see them, it feels like it's always been there. That one's not hard to get used to. The next one is actually kind of a precursor of some future changes. Uh, some of you might have heard that they are actually [00:12:30] working on a beta test for a new banking feed, which is not ready to be released yet. But a while they were working on that, they realized that the split transactions window was too small and impractical, so they updated the experience on that. So this is one of those really, really welcome changes.

Margie Remmers-Davis: So nice.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: What I'm talking.

Alicia Katz Pollock: About is that when you're in the banking feed and you click on split, it used to be a tiny little window. Now [00:13:00] it fills up your screen. And now not only can you split it between different chart of accounts categories, but you can now also map it out to different product and service lines and have multiple lines. So it can be a combination of both. But the screen is big and roomy and pretty and matches the rest of the interface now.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah, it looks very similar. It's it's nearly identical to an expense transaction interface, which is great because [00:13:30] that's typically what you're entering.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I'm still singing the praises of being able to assign products and services from. Oh yeah, fee. That was that was definitely a game changer.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. Now, didn't you say, uh, Alicia, that you are a beta tester for the new bank feed thing? So have you actually seen this and played with it, or. This was like, even this is an out. Is this an alpha or is this a beta? Have you been playing?

Alicia Katz Pollock: The new split screen is out for general release whether or not you have the new [00:14:00] beta. Um, that was just kind of the, the, the generation of it. So.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Okay, nice.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So everybody should get ready to have beta testing on the new banking feeds coming up. In fact, in the banking feed class that I taught on March 4th. They actually gave me permission to demo it. So if anybody takes my banking feeds course, you'll see the current experience. You'll see what's to come for the new banking feed. And then [00:14:30] when the new banking feed gets released towards the end of this year, anybody who already has registered for the class is going to get the new content for free.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh, nice. Yeah, I had not. This is the first time I've heard that the new banking feed experience is going to be out at the end of this year. Is that. Are you, like, dropping a little?

Alicia Katz Pollock: There are no timelines. We have zero idea when it's actually going to happen. But I've been beta testing it and I like it. So [00:15:00] you know I think it's going to be a positive improvement. Of course, you know there's still work to do before we're ready for that.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Interesting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Well, I'm excited to see.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. The next look what I found. I actually talked about this with Dan DeLong in the episode about invoices a couple weeks ago, but they now that they're attaching as many people as possible to QuickBooks payments by default, one of the changes that they actually made in the new invoice [00:15:30] experience specifically is that if you go into the manage and then the payments button on the right, you can if you turn off your merchant services then. Your customer still can pay using merchant services, but they pay the fees. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So for those of you who have been putting in feedback because you want the client to pay the fees, that's what you can actually do is turn [00:16:00] off your merchant services and then they'll be able to pay the fees.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh my gosh. I just like right immediately before we recorded this, I just taught a class talking about QB payments and how everybody should sign up for QB payments and how great it is. And and now you're saying we should not use QB payments because then we don't have to pay fees.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, but but but it is still QB payments.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah yeah yeah. [00:16:30]

Alicia Katz Pollock: So you still have to have QB payments. I agree with you. I love QB payments. I talk about it. I have a whole class just on QB payments, just like you do. We should actually put both of those in the in the show notes. And you still have to have QuickBooks payments, and you still map it to the checking account where you want it to be deposited. But now you have an additional payment option.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Interesting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's cool. It's like opposite day. The additional payment option is not turning on the payments. Yeah. [00:17:00] Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Wow.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Uh, a couple payroll changes. They have already started impounding your tax payments separately now. And not waiting until your quarterly payment or your annual payment. So we know that, but they're refining it even further. That's starting. And the date was kind of nebulous. I saw one thing that said March 1st, and I saw something else that said April 1st, but they're going to start withdrawing [00:17:30] your taxes when you run your payroll. So you have to have your payroll and your taxes. Gross. Gross funding available in the checking account when you run payroll. So they're not even delaying it anymore. It's going to be all at the same time. Another thing that I found in payroll was something that I am completely excited about, and that now in the payroll tools, in the expense mapping. So when you go [00:18:00] to the gear and then payroll settings and then scroll all the way down to the bottom to accounting, that's where all the juice is about your account mappings. And there's a new section for employer tax expenses. And this was never there before. Before all of your taxes either hit the liability or it just went into a payroll taxes expense. And now you have the ability to create micro expense accounts for [00:18:30] literally any one of your employer taxes. Now that's going to change. You're going to see some. According to the state that you're in. But every little local tax is going to be listed. And you can choose which ones you want to see in your chart of accounts.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Cool.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Now, generally I recommend keeping it simple, but I have my larger companies have these giant journal entries with all of the different fields broken out, and [00:19:00] I generally recommend that instead of having it inside your QuickBooks online, you keep that information in your payroll software, which is was good advice when we were just talking about Paychex and ADP and gusto. But now for the people who are using Qbo now you have the ability to add it in yourself.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Cool.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Why don't you go ahead and do the next one?

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. So this [00:19:30] is one of those things that I just, I think. How long has this been? Has this always been there? And I just never noticed it? Or is it actually a new, like look? I think.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's new.

Margie Remmers-Davis: It is new. Okay. All right, all right. So, um. So, yeah. So if you are using QB bill pay. So previously we've been talking about QB payments, which is the ability for you to receive money electronically. And [00:20:00] this is referring to QB Bill pay which is you being able to send money through Qbo. Okay. So those are two different things that can get confusing. So this is related to QB Bill pay, which replaced Melio. We used to have Melio in, uh, you know, incorporated. So this QB bill pay replaced that. And and now if you select a vendor, uh, if you're creating an expense and you select a vendor that [00:20:30] has already Connected with bill pay and put in their payment information. It actually will show you that right on the expense. It'll show. It'll show you the, you know, their information. So which is kind of cool, like it's just additional information. You can't do anything with it, but it's just kind of cool.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So when you create a bill, you can now see that, yes, you have their information on file so that you can easily pay it. [00:21:00] And if you don't have it on file, it has a little link for you to enter it. Now of course, that means that you have to have it. Yes. And for a while it had the ability to send out to your vendors to gather that information. For some reason, they they pulled that back. I know I'm looking forward to them figuring out. I'm assuming that they pulled it back because something wasn't working quite right. And I would like to think we're going to get it back again. I know that they're also, um, because of the business network, you [00:21:30] actually have a place in your business network settings inside your qbo to put in your account information, your payment information, with the idea that everybody who's connected will be able to pass that information around. So it's just in the basic, basic rollout. But look for that, find your business network settings and put in if somebody's going to pay you what's your ACH information. And then that [00:22:00] will just make it easier on everybody and you'll get paid faster.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. Which is what we all want.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes, exactly. Now we have a couple that are things that we saw that apparently Intuit went, oops, we don't want to, but we liked them. So we wanted to share with you. So those of you at Intuit who are listening, here are some things we saw you try and we want you to do them.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right, right, right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Well, why don't you go [00:22:30] with the first one?

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. So the first one is in the bank transactions. One of the columns is rule. So if a rule applies, then it's right there that disappeared. And but you can still see like it'll still say in small letters that a rule applied. So I guess they were just moving it to its own column from there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right.

Margie Remmers-Davis: But still [00:23:00] I think it's super helpful to see it in its own column. Then it like sticks out and you could go edit it and all that, but yep. Okay. Yeah. And then when it disappeared again, I thought, oh, maybe it's there as a column. And if I just hit the little baby gear, but it's not.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's not there. Okay.

Margie Remmers-Davis: They took it away. So yeah. Made me sad.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And then go on, go on to the next one too.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. And then the next one is [00:23:30] in the transaction list for a vendor. There was there was for a brief second a column that said approval status. So I guess this is if you're using the workflows for, um, you know, for your paying bills and, and all of that stuff. But that disappeared to what was also weird is, is I think doesn't that isn't that only in [00:24:00] qbo advanced?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, that's only in advanced.

Margie Remmers-Davis: That's only in Qbo advanced. And yet I was looking at a Qbo plus account when I saw this. Oh, interesting. So it was, you know, Alicia, and I hear me tell you something, Alicia and I are both Mac fanatics. Like, we love our Macs. And one of the things that a mac, that one of the things that a mac can do is that it can so easily take a screenshot. So [00:24:30] we can take a screenshot of a little thing and have it forever and prove that we actually saw what we thought we saw.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, exactly. We are not crazy. Yeah. So as far as this feature goes for whoever out there is listening, who develops Qbo advanced, basically, the idea here is that we have different workflows that for. For example, if you create a bill or you create an invoice, it gets sent for approval to different people in [00:25:00] your organization. And especially if you have multi-stage approvals, it would be nice to be able to see what stage of approval it's at. And this is very clearly what that is intended to do. So I'm glad to know that somebody is working on it. Thank you for the little sign of it. I will look forward to that actually getting fully rolled out.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yep.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, another one that Hector found and he and I both got extremely excited. But then it disappeared and we were told [00:25:30] that when we asked. No, it's really not coming out. But for a brief second you could make a P and L with columns for custom fields. And we got really excited because the for a custom field, that's for example, a drop down that makes perfect sense to be able to be able to see, like if I have a custom field for our different employees and we have a drop down using advanced for all the different employees to be able to run a P and L by those employees or by that field. I understand [00:26:00] why they can't turn that on though, because some custom fields are text based and different for every single transaction. And if you gave it the instruction to run a P and L by custom field for a text field, you literally could break your computer because it could be infinite, right? So I understand why they think.

Margie Remmers-Davis: It's a bad idea because they're getting rid of tags. And so I'm sure that they were like trying to okay, how can we accommodate [00:26:30] no longer having tags. And we said we were going to do custom fields instead. And now we've got to be able to be able to do this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And so I think you're exactly right. I think it was part of that experiment for the upcoming migration.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. Which is around the corner.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It is around the corner. The next one is I noticed that the line of credit woke up in mine under the left navigation bar in my qbo A. There was [00:27:00] an option for lending and banking, and that's where my QuickBooks checking account comes in. Because I do have QuickBooks checking. I'm a big user of it, and the line of credit from Fundbox showed up and I didn't go click through to, you know, I don't want anything on my credit score. Actually, they say that it doesn't affect your credit score, but I was happy to see that the line of credit showed up. And so they're using Fundbox as the source. And if you need some extra funds for your cash flow, check [00:27:30] and see if the line of credit is turned on for you.

Margie Remmers-Davis: And just to clarify, this is you, the business owner, requiring a line of credit. That's what this line of credit is, is you, the business owner, requiring a line of credit. It's not extending a line of credit to your customers.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. And you may or may not see it. One of the things that we know they're doing with their acquisition of Credit Karma is taking a look at your QuickBooks itself to see [00:28:00] if you have good credit and if you're good with money, and then if you are, they will offer you a different resources. I also suspect that if you're not good with money and they see there's a problem, they might offer you some funding resources to help your cash flow. But I would imagine that your interest rate is going to be a scary.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. Way high.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep. The next one that I noticed is in QuickBooks Online Advanced in the fixed asset manager [00:28:30] that when you add a new fixed asset, maybe you don't have all the information because for example, if it's a vehicle that are asking for your Vin number and all sorts of information about it, you now have the ability to start something for your fixed asset and then save it as a draft if you're not quite ready. Like maybe you don't know which depreciation schedule you're going to use yet. So now you don't have to do it all in one shot. You can get it started and then save it as a draft and then activate it when you're ready. Yep. [00:29:00] The next one is something that I'm actually super excited about. Gopayment is an app that you can download from the App Store that accesses your QuickBooks online, but only for merchant services. It's the app that if you have workers out in the field or you go to a farmer's market. It's what allows you to use your QuickBooks online as a point of sale without giving your, you know, your staff the [00:29:30] keys to the kingdom.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. So you can download go payment. You can create in your regular QuickBooks. You can create a user that is a go payment only user. And then they log in with that on their phone. And up until now here's the part that's the cool part is up until now you had to order a Bluetooth reader and they cost 50 bucks and you have to wait for it to come. And then you would have to make sure you had it charged, but it gave you a tap [00:30:00] to pay or a card insert that was PCI compliant and a way of taking payments out in the field for credit card. But what they have just announced and there is a link on firm of the future for it is they now have tap to pay for iPhone. So that means that you can hold your phone in your hand, you can log into go payment, you can dial up an order, and then they can just tap their credit card or tap their phone to your phone.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Oh my God. [00:30:30]

Alicia Katz Pollock: No.

Margie Remmers-Davis: What?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: What?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: How how does that technology even work?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I've used something similar with my PayPal. Like exchanging business cards by tapping a phone. But now you can literally take a payment using your QuickBooks payments merchant services by just having the client tap their phone to your phone, or tap the credit card to your phone so.

Margie Remmers-Davis: That [00:31:00] the the phone to phone makes more sense to me than the little the little chip thing. The little, I don't know. Is it a transponder? Like, what is that little chip thing that signals out that you can tap when you go to the grocery store. Yeah, that's what you're talking about, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So now how does that.

Margie Remmers-Davis: How does that technology even work on an iPhone? That's amazing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. No, it's an [00:31:30] NFR. It has the NFR reader now built into the software instead of the separate device.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Wow.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So we'll put the link to the show notes. And then everybody can can take a look. If you don't have an iPhone you still have to use the Bluetooth reader.

Margie Remmers-Davis: If you don't have an iPhone, get an iPhone.

Alicia Katz Pollock: For some people, this is that would absolutely be worth it. Now, the last thing that we're going to talk about was an email that I got that it has the [00:32:00] I got it on February 26th and it says the subject line was upcoming changes to QuickBooks checking deposit account agreement. So if you're not using QuickBooks, checking this is not going to be relevant for you. But I do use QuickBooks checking. I actively use it. I stow my savings in it. It is my major savings account, so I was particularly interested in this. I also link it to my QuickBooks Payments merchant services. So everything coming [00:32:30] in from all of my QuickBooks payments is going into my QuickBooks checking. And then personally, I use my QuickBooks checking to pay my payroll. So I've got this really slick automated workflow happening. There are changes to the QuickBooks QuickBooks checking deposit account agreement, and so they're changing how you put your money in. Um, so they are introducing some new limits. You have a maximum number of ATM cash withdrawals per is [00:33:00] ten per day. So they do give you a little ATM card. You can take it to the ATM. So now you can only do ten withdrawals a day. Uh, the total purchase and cash withdrawal transactions amount can only be $10,000 a day. The third one says funding transaction limit of 5000 per day. But I don't exactly know what funding transaction means. Does that mean deposit transactions? And if that's the case, then [00:33:30] this is going to be a problem for me, because I might take more than $5,000 in QuickBooks payments in a day from different students. Or, you know, a big job that I might do.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I'm kind of curious how that one is going to play out. If you are using your account number and routing number, you can transfer via ACH up to $500,000 per transaction and up to $100,000 per transaction out of the primary [00:34:00] account. So I think those actually raised up, um, wire transfers can only be up to $1 million per transaction. So this one is also an increase. Now, the one that's actually got me kind of mindful here is up to five instant transfer transactions per day and per week, and up to ten instant transfer transactions per month. This is the one that I'm really not sure how this is going to affect me. What an instant [00:34:30] transfer means is that if you use QuickBooks payments to take your payment, you can have it instantly transfer into your QuickBooks checking account within literally three hours. And the benefit was that it was completely free if you did it through QuickBooks payments. Now you could do instant transfers in other ways and at any time. But they did charge you. I think it was like a 1.75% [00:35:00] or something like that, but now they're limiting it and you're not going to be able to do as many. I'm definitely checking in with them myself because I don't know what this means for me, since I do all of my QuickBooks payments as a free instant transfer into my QuickBooks checking. So I don't know, like, are they going to just are they going to start charging me or are they going to just slow down everything after the first five for the week? Inquiring minds want to know.

Margie Remmers-Davis: So [00:35:30] why does it say up to five per day and per week? Couldn't they just say per week and then like, how is it? How is.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It? I'm not real clear on exactly what this one means either. Okay. The next limitation is a 3% foreign transaction fee will be assessed if it's in a foreign currency or through a foreign website, or if you conduct a transaction in a currency other than US dollars. And that fee is in addition [00:36:00] to charges, um, other any other international charges.

Margie Remmers-Davis: That seems like a lot, a lot.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Do you feel like that's a normal percent, like percent for foreign transactions?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I don't know if I can weigh in on that. I mean, people are used to 3% as a standard benchmark fee, and anything under 3% is decent and anything over 3% is a lot.

Margie Remmers-Davis: So yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a vendor or two that is foreign [00:36:30] and I feel like it's I just have a flat fee, a flat foreign transaction fee. So if I think a percentage that that could add up.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It really can add up. And you know, if you have high ticket transactions, then QuickBooks payments may not be the the best route for you that there's other ones out there using anchors of flat $5 per transaction forwardly has is free. And I'll actually put links to anchor [00:37:00] and forwardly in the show notes as well. So if you if you find these fees and these limitations too large then you have some some options and resources.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Yeah. We recently switched to forwardly and we like it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah I like it too. All right. So that is our list of look what we found or look what I found. Things that we have found out in the wild in the month of March. Uh, Margie, what's going on in your [00:37:30] world?

Margie Remmers-Davis: Well, we just launched our bookkeeping accelerator course, which is designed to, you know, we started we've been in business for years just teaching QuickBooks online. And what we heard from accountants was that they really wanted their bookkeepers to know not just the software, but the underlying accounting principles and how everything connects together. So we just launched that. People are [00:38:00] loving it. Um, having so many aha moments, things that like they're like, oh my gosh, it never made sense until today. So that's always gratifying. Um. Coming up. Traditionally, the recertification season starts April 1st. So, um, if you don't know if you are a qbo ProAdvisor, um, your recertification is, um, is [00:38:30] seasonal. So the season typically for Intuit is November 1st through October 31st, and then you would have to recertify, um, the following spring after your season. So if you got certified this year as a ProAdvisor, you do not have to recertify until next year. But if you got certified in last season, so normally [00:39:00] it was, it would be October before October 31st. But this year they actually released. They started their season early, started it on October 18th. So if you got certified last early October or September, like before, the new ProAdvisor Academy came out, then you will have to recertify in the spring. Now, we don't know what the recertification is going to look like, uh, because the whole process has changed the academy. But that's something [00:39:30] to look out for. And we I mean, this is what we do. We watch. We watch it very closely. And so so if you're connected with us, you'll know as soon as we know, like, what the scoop is. And, and and if you need help, um, you know, the difference between Intuit provides free training, but ours is all interactive with games and that kind of stuff that people love if they prefer to learn that way. So we'll see. We're going to watch and see what happens.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Recertification [00:40:00] always focuses on features that were just released in the previous year, or features that are underutilized that they want to make sure people know are there. So I really love the annual recertification process. All the date ranges that that Margie was talking about were relevant. If you're a first time certification, when you're when your next recertification is going to need to be. But for the rest of us, recertification is every year from end of April [00:40:30] to end of June. And so keep an eye out because that is coming up. And I love that you help people who are not good at taking tests succeed at this test.

Margie Remmers-Davis: And actually, maybe we could put in the show notes I have we have a document that talks about, like all of the dates and who has to recertify and whether you have if you're a level one or level two, if you got level two this year and you got level one last year, like, what's your recertification and all of that stuff? So maybe I'll give [00:41:00] that to you for the show notes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, that'd be great.

Margie Remmers-Davis: So what's going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, for me, I've got some some pretty exciting stuff. I've already mentioned some of the classes that I have going on. My reconciliation class was just a couple days ago, and in my reconciliations class, I teach all my best practices and tricks for doing fast, accurate reconciliations, but also how to troubleshoot what's all the rest of that stuff in there, how to figure [00:41:30] out how it got there and how to get rid of it. And on April 1st, I'm doing my credit cards in business class, where it's both from using credit cards as a spending tool and a receiving tool. We talk about QuickBooks Online's merchant services to take credit cards, and also how to manage your own credit cards in QuickBooks online, including corporate credit cards, which are not easy and obvious.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Not easy?

Alicia Katz Pollock: No, but but wait, that stuff was not my what's exciting part that my what's exciting [00:42:00] part is I, I and my team at Royal Wise just won two different awards in February, and we just actually got the formal announcements that I'm an instructor at my cpcomm. That it's one of the places where you can actually find my library, in addition to learn.com, and I won one of their instructor of the year awards.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Woohoo!

Alicia Katz Pollock: So that was super exciting! I really like my. [00:42:30] I think they're a great website, a great way for accountants to get CPE for a small amount of money in addition to earmark, of course. Um, and then I won a second award also like both within a week of each other. Cipher learning is the company that hosts our learning management platform, what we call the Royal Wise Owls. So it's all of our course delivery that we're not like Thinkific or Kajabi or any of those like, hey, you're a [00:43:00] consultant, make money from your classes. We have an actual compliance platform, which is why we can offer CPE this way. And we were one of their 2024 Custom customer of the year award winners in the subcategory of revenue growth. So they noticed that we are growing by leaps and bounds. And we got an award for it.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Woo hoo! Yeah. Awesome. Congratulations.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Thank you very much. It's really nice receiving these [00:43:30] acknowledgments because I work literally 14 hours a day, six days a week. And it's nice finding that I'm really that the contributions that I'm making to the industry are really making a difference for people. Yeah, yeah.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Right on.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Well, with that being said, this is Alicia Pollock and.

Margie Remmers-Davis: Margie Ramos Davis.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And we will see you in the next one.