What’s new in Enterprise 2015: Part I

Our last two newsletters focused on what was new in QuickBooks Pro and Premier for 2015; first for Accountants and then for Clients. If you missed them, they are posted on our blog.

In the next two issues, we will cover what’s new in Intuit’s more robust software – Enterprise – in the recently released 2015 version.

In my opinion, the most significant changes to Enterprise are in the Preferences that control what users can and cannot do within their company files.

Disallow Negative Inventory

In the past, QuickBooks© has allowed you to sell products that you do not have in stock – at least not according to QuickBooks. There was a preference that if set, would warn you that you were selling something that was not in stock, but it would not prevent you from doing so.

This caused all sorts of problems – having negative quantities on hand threw off the Cost of Goods calculations, caused errors in reporting and in some cases lead to recurring data damage.

In the 2015 release, we now have an option in the Items and Inventory Preference that says “Don’t Allow Negative Quantity”. Selecting this option will prevent you from processing a transaction that causes negative inventory.

It only works to block transactions from going negative if they have a balance of zero or greater. If the quantity is already negative, it does not prevent it from becoming further negative.

This only works with Quantity on Hand. If you select the Preference to Disallow Negative Inventory, you will no longer be warned that a Sales Order or Inventory Assembly creates a negative Quantity Available.

If you decide to use this Preference, take the time to review the new report called Negative Item Listing under Reports – Inventory and correct ALL negative inventory quantities before enabling this Preference.

Disallow Sales to Overdue Customers

Under the Sales and Customer Preference, we can now select the option
“Do Not Sell to Overdue Customers”. This works for Invoices, Sales Receipts and Sales Orders, but not for Credit Memos.

You will want to make sure that your Customer Terms as they relate to Due Dates and exactly what constitutes Overdue, are set up properly before selecting this option. There is no Admin user override and this is not a User or Role specific preference so it could become quite restrictive if not set up properly.

Hide Opening Balance Fields

The leading cause of postings to the Opening Balance Equity account is entering the Opening Value when setting up Customers, Vendors, Assets or Inventory accounts and items.

In 2015, we have the option to hide opening balance fields in Names and Items. It’s under the Accounting Preference tab. The field will be visible, but grayed out.

I only wish that Intuit had made the default preference to Hide this field; it would save us countless hours of reversing duplicate transactions.

These are only a few of the changes to Enterprise for 2015. Stay tuned for our next article and we will cover more of what you can expect to see for improvements.