QuickBooks 2015 Desktop has just been released and there are several new features and improvements to old ones that you will want to take a look at to see if it has something worth upgrading for.
Insights Dashboard – Insights is similar to the old Company Snapshot, which is still available. It’s a dashboard view of your financial position with a more up-to-date user interface. You can find it as a tab on the Home Page and configure the view using the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. It’s customizable – you can add your logo, decide what you want to see and print the details of the entire screen. You can also click on the graphs to see a report with the supporting details.
Time and Expense on the Income Tracker – You can now view Unbilled Hours for Work in Progress by Dollars and sort the on-screen information in the Income Tracker. If you’re not familiar with the Income Tracker, that was a new feature in QuickBooks 2014.
Field Search Boxes – Finally! When customizing reports we can now search for the columns we want to add to our reports from the filter list that is now in alphabetical order and searchable, instead of scrolling up and down looking for a needle in a haystack.
Comments on Reports – In QuickBooks 2015, you will be able to add comments to reports, snapshot save them as Commented Reports and email them with the comments attached. The comments are numbered sequentially and will print as a separate page. Please keep in mind that emailing sensitive information is not secure.
Multiple Reports in Single Email – instead of sending one email per report or creating PDF’s of multiple reports, storing them in a folder and then emailing them, you can now process and email multiple memorized or commented reports from the multiple reports menu. Again, emailing is not the preferred method of sending sensitive financial information as it is not secure. We recommend using a secure portal for transmitting data.
Manufacturer’s Part Numbers – in QuickBooks 2015, we can add the Manufacturer’s Part Number to our forms without using up a valuable custom field. This is available on Invoices, Sales Receipts and Sales Orders, but not Credit Memos. Be careful, this is an editable field and can be copied back to your Item List.
Pin Notes – the Notes section of Customers and Vendors has been re-designed and we can now pin important notes to the top of the view screen so that it always shows and is the default note on reports.
Reminders Dashboard – The Reminders now show up as a dashboard with To Do Notes. It’s easier to understand and work with than previous versions.
Terminate QB on Workstation – This new feature is dangerous at best. In a multi-user QuickBooks file, the Administrator can now switch to single-user mode without the permission of the other users who may be logged in. It closes even if the other users have unsaved data. I am recommending that all Admins forget that I told you about this feature.
Invoice for Selected Items on Sales Orders – We can now select which items we want to Invoice from a Sales Order.
Unless you see something in these changes that has been an issue for you, there is no real reason to upgrade. If Intuit stays true to form, the 2012 version of QuickBooks will be sunsetted in May of 2015 at which time those users will be required to update if they wish to continue using online banking, payroll and email features from within the program.
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