Mayer Consulting Services Ltd.

QuickBooks’ user base, which, according to Intuit, includes 4 million QuickBooks Pro and Premier users at 280,000 small businesses as well as the 57,000 companies using QuickBooks Enterprise.

Intuit Turns to Online Features to Keep QuickBooks on the Desktop
DATE: 2008-09-30  By Frank Ohlhorst – Article Rating: / 3

   One of the biggest services expenses many businesses have are accounting fees. QuickBooks helps to make many tasks easier for accountants by incorporating tools that speed up the review of a client’s data. That can translate into reduced costs.
   A collection of clean-up and review tools are also offered which can help save hours of finding and correcting client errors. An enhanced accountant’s copy feature offers improved client data importing and added account mapping capabilities.  
   Data backup is another area that hosted services have held an advantage, after all – the hosted service is responsible for the protection and backup of data, leaving the customer to worry about other tasks. Here, Intuit has added features that make backup much easier and faster, perhaps with the biggest benefit coming from enhanced multi-user features. Employees no longer have to wait for others to finish with QuickBooks before they can start their own work.
   New enhancements enable QuickBooks users to run reports while others work simultaneously in the same company data set. Users can now locally backup data while in multi-user mode, eliminating one of the bottlenecks that previous version of Quickbooks had. A new QuickBooks Messenger application brings IM like capabilities to bookkeeping staffs, allowing the instant communication of issues, problems or requests to other team members.  Further enhancing administrative control is the ability for administrative users to log other users off and perform maintenance chores. In the past, an administrator would have to manually make sure all users had logged off before applying updates or patches. Now, an administrator can kick logged-on users out of the system to perform administrative tasks.  
   For customers working with global accounts a new multicurrency capability will make billing and other chores much easier. QuickBooks now offers an automatic exchange rate calculator that is updated daily and brings continuity to the ever change world of currency conversion.  
   The company has also focused on tech support and accounting support issues and has implemented a short cut for business owners to get help, the Quickbooks Online Community. That community is basically a forum hosted by the company and offers registered users the ability to communicate with each other, ask questions and get answers. Users can access the forum directly from the QuickBooks’ interface.  With new features comes a new pricing matrix for both new users and upgrades.  

• QuickBooks Accounting Pro Edition 2009  $199.95
•  QuickBooks Accounting Pro 3-User Edition 2009  $549.95
• Premier Add-a-Seat Discount  17 All things considered, the Latest version of QuickBooks offers enough enhancements and improvement s to help users resist the temptation of online services. What’s more, solution providers and accountants will appreciate how the product can help solidify customer relationships, while saving customers money and generating revenue for service providers.  

   QuickBooks forged the path for many solution providers to get involved in the accounting applications arena, but hosted applications have started to put the squeeze on continuing successes. Can a refresh of QuickBooks help the channel to battle new comers? Read along and see what QuickBooks 2009 has to offer users and purveyors alike. Accounting is the bedrock of any business and it takes good accounting to build a good business. For years, SMBs have turned to Intuit’s QuickBooks to keep finances under control. And, despite Intuit’s direct-sales history, solution providers are often the ones sourcing, installing and supporting QuickBooks in SMB environment.  The accounting and finance application market is shifting with the emergence of hosted solutions. Many solution providers are finding that the unprecedented flexibility and low startup fees of hosted solutions offer their customers, as well as the high ROI for those choosing hosted applications.  
   Intuit has reworked their top of the line product into QuickBooks 2009 Pro QuickBooks 2009 Premier. Both products offer a slew of minor enhancements and a few major ones that will that will fortify the reasons for an upgrade or entice new users. Premier and Pro differ in a few key areas. Pro focuses on the typical needs of a business, while Premier adds reports and business planning tools to help with forecasting and growth. What’s more, Premier adds more product pricing options and an enhanced inventory module. Premier also adds some accounts payables features, such as purchase order creation and order tracking.   Both QuickBooks 2009 Pro QuickBooks 2009 Premier have improved online banking capabilities. That is one area where hosted services seemed to always have an advantage. QuickBooks offers a multifold increase in ability to integrate onsite accounting data with supported financial institutions. Part of that benefit comes from automation; users can now schedule updates and data synchronization with their selected accounts and financial institutions. That capability makes several mundane chores much easier, such as checkbook reconciliation and balance tracking. An added benefit is that decision-makers now know what checks have cleared and have a better day-to-day understanding of cash flow, balances and credit limits. All important issues in today’s challenging economic times.  
   QuickBook’s offers a deeper view into a company’s financial health through the new Company Snapshot feature. Company Snapshot basically converts all of the esoteric financial data, which was once only available from reports, into an accounting “Dashboard.” That dashboard offers information such as which customers still owe them money, what bills they need to pay, and what they need to do by the end of the day.