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Intuit unveils QuickBooks Accountant Edition

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12th Sep 2012
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US developer Intuit has targeted the UK accountancy profession with a new version of QuickBooks tailored for their needs.

The QuickBooks Accountant Edition 2013 includes several tools to speed up data collection, corrections and collaboration for accountants and bookkeepers working on clients’ accounts.

“While QuickBooks has always been popular with accountants and bookkeepers in the UK supporting small business clients, this is the first time we have offered the Accountant Edition. It is a step change in functionality and accountants and bookkeepers will notice it makes everyday tasks more efficient,” said Alison Ball, head of accountant programmes at Intuit.

The most eye-catching feature in the Accountant Edition is a Send General Journal Entries routine that emails journal entries directly from the application. To import the adjustments into their ledgers, all clients have to do is click the attachment.

“This facility means an end to sending disks of backup data back and forth between client and accountant,” Ball said.

“The QuickBooks Accountant Edition lets accountants to work on the client’s live data and update it in real time without any synchronisation issues. Or the accountant can work on their own copy of the data file, while the client continues to work on their own working file.

“Send General Journal Entries provides a foolproof way to send any adjustments so the accountant doesn’t have to spend so much time checking to make sure they’ve been imported.”

QuickBooks Accountant Edition - Send General Journal Entry

Other enhancements added specifically for accountants in the new edition include:

  • Accountant Centre: Consolidates frequently-used commands on within a customisable home page screen. The user can select functions such as the (upgraded) File Manager,  Client Data Tools, Working Trial Balance with one click; select a specific report type from a pull down menu; or check the bank reconciliation status for that company.
  • Batch Enter Transactions: Speeds up shoe-box jobs and retrospective accounts work by letting users thype data into a spreadsheet-type grid - or cut and paste information from Excel. The column headings can be selected from a menu of QuickBooks fields and when the Save Transaction button is pressed, they are written straight into the accounting ledgers.
  • Statement Writer: Template-driven tool for creating, editing and formatting customised financial statements.

The new version received positive feedback from early test users in Intuit’s QuickBooks ProAdvisor Programme. Richard Aitman, an accountant with PJA Bookkeeping Services, commented: “I found the improved home screen to be very clear and easy to navigate around. Obviously time is money, and with this new improved version I can handle key tasks quicker and provide an ever better service for my clients.”

The price for a single user version is £519.  Members of the QuickBooks ProAdvisors programme get a free copy of QuickBooks Accountant as part of their £395 annual subscription.

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By alisonatintuit
12th Sep 2012 15:51

Intuit Insight Tour

Hello everyone,

If you would like to hear from industry experts on topics such as mega trends that affect the future of your practice, plus learn practical tips to get and keep high value clients and maximise efficiency in your practice, please consider registering for our free 3-hour Master Class. It is being held in 20 cities across the UK, from 20th Sept through 10th Oct,  and each attendee will go home with a free copy of QuickBooks Accountant Edition 2013 to thank them for their time.

You can register at www.intuitevents.co.uk

I hope to see you there!

Alison Ball

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
12th Sep 2012 17:29

John,

you say

"this is the first time we have offered the Accountant Edition"

Thats not right, it was available for the pre 2008 edition as i used to buy it when QB was the best thing in the market. I still have a couple of clients using the 2005 and 2006 versions as they are a very nice bit of kit. It allowed import of the client data file and an export of the changes for the client, much like this does albeit with a few more clicks.

We have gone away from it after the 2008 'upgrade" and the fact the cloud providers dont charge you to sell their software!

Regards,

 

 

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By carnmores
12th Sep 2012 17:40

well despite the hype

it is a step in the right direction if youre a desktopper . i am attending the london event and will let them know exactly what many people think - i might be more keen to tell them where they have gone wrong rather than them tell me how to run my life invaluable tho that will be ;-)

 

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By Ken Howard
13th Sep 2012 11:35

What about other changes?

It's all well and good allowing journal entries to be sent back, but does it allow the accountant to make changes to the sales and purchase ledgers or bank accounts?  Journal entries are only half the story and if the accountant can't change the bank or ledgers, then there's not much point in this at all.  Businesses have a tendency to mess up their ledgers and entering journals isn't always the way to correct.

 

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By JPMLondon
13th Sep 2012 12:32

"First time - Errrr?"

Am I the only one who's been working on the "Accountants edition 2012" for quite a while??

@ 0Ken Howard - there's other functionality in the accountants edition as well. There's an area where you can review postings and make amendments/corrections etc. It might not be what you're looking - I couldn't say - but it might be functionality that's useful to you...

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Adrian Pearson
By Adrian Pearson
13th Sep 2012 13:04

Accountants Edition is not new

I agree with the comments above, in that Accountants Edition was available many years ago and I have a copy of QB2012 Accountants Edition on my desktop now.

I'll have a look at the 2013 version and report back on whether Journals affecting AR and AP accounts can be exported for import by the client.

Regarding tools for client record checking and correction, there are better solutions :)

Adrian

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By alisonatintuit
13th Sep 2012 16:19

some answers to the above?

Hello everyone,

Firstly, thanks for commenting on this string - I am looking forward to meeting some of you at the Intuit Insight event, and I welcome your feedback at any time (good, bad or ugly!)

You are correct that under the hood the 2012 Premier version of QuickBooks was called Accountant Edition.  However the 2013 launch marks the first time we have branded it as such, and we have added a lot of new features that I think will help you save time overall.

Additionally, it has a new look and feel that I think you will like alot - it is more modern, and embraces alot of the newer design principles.

Regarding the new Send Journal Entries functionality - The use case this feature is solving for is if you only need to adjust the accounts at the Trial Balance Level.  This is most common if the client does their books all year, and you simply get them once a year and adjust them to do the tax return  (and you don't send the data file back to the client.)  If you need/want to adjust sales ledgers, purchase ledgers, etc (and are sending the data file back to the client for them to continue using), I recommend you consider using the Accountants Copy.  It is designed to solve for not only sending Journal Entries back to the client file, but also making adjustments to other ledgers as well - and the beauty is that it synchonises your changes into the client's working copy.  We have invested significantly in the functionality for the Accountants Copy, so if you haven't looked at that in a while I really encourage you to do so.  Additionally, another advantage of using Accountants Copy is that it sets a Dividing Date.  The client can work on any transaction after the Dividing Date, while you work on virtually any transaction before the Dividing Date.  Once you have made all your adjustments, you can keep an audit trail report of the adjustments, and then send the file back to the client for them to merge into their day to day books.

I do encourage those of you who are curious, to come to Intuit Insights.  We won't tell you how to run your life but we may provide some new ideas for how to manage common pain points that accountants tell us they have?  And, you leave with a free copy of QuickBooks Accountant Edition 2013.

Hope this is helpful?  Please feel free to engage directly with me at [email protected]

Alison

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By alisonatintuit
13th Sep 2012 16:24

PS - for Adrian

HI Adrian,

Please take a look at the Client Data Review feature. It "finds and fixes" client data entry errors.

And no - Send Journal Entries will not adjust the sales and purchase ledgers, however you may invoke a customer or supplier in any journal entry you are creating.

You may also choose which entries to send, and which NOT to send.  This is to solve for book-to-tax adjustments that you do not actually want to make to the client's day to day accounts.

Hope this helps. 

Also - I look forward to learning more about the solution that your company sells?

Alison

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By Cloudcounter
13th Sep 2012 23:05

Some thoughts

1  Can we get a file from a client where the bank rec has not been done (hardly a rare situation), fix it on our machine and send the adjustments back to the client, including marking the transactions as reconciled? 

2  Yes we can bring in a customer or supplier in a journal, but we can bring in only one customer or one supplier in a batch.  That's a pain in the proverbial.  Has it changed? 

3 And when we post a journal entry such as a credit to a customer account, does it match it with the corresponding invoice? 

(I suspect that I already know the answers to the above)

4 Why would anybody put an entry into Quickbooks that you don't want to send back to the client?  We use proper statutory accounts production software for producing final accounts, not Quickbooks. Another innovation that has little or no practical application.

5 "This facility means the end to sending disks of data" Wow, so nobody has ever transferred the accountants changes file by email then.

As to the free copy of the accountants edition as a thank you for my time in attending one of your sales pitches, sorry masterclasses, I wonder if anybody regards something that they can get for £395 as compensation for a two hour drive each way plus three hours plus a the masterclass.  I think that I'll pass on that one.

And if the i"mproved home screen" with "easy navigation" is the most notable endorsement that you can print from an accountant, it does make you wonder about the rest of it

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By alisonatintuit
14th Sep 2012 15:43

Cloudcounter... some answers for you?

Hello Cloudcounter,

I would love to set some time up to discuss these issues with you in more detail but here is a high level answer to most of your questions:

1) Yes you can reconcile bank accounts and send the changes back to your clients... If you use QuickBooks Accountant Edition 2013, and get an Accountants Copy from your client, you can reconcile any period that ends before the dividing date, and your changes will be sent back to your client when you send back your .QBA file. Also, if you change the reconcile status of a transaction in the register, the change will go back to your client.

You can also reconcile periods ending after the dividing date if it helps you with your work, but those changes won't be sent back to your client.

You can also unreconcile any period.

2) customer or supplier in a Journal entry - I will need to test this, but I think the same limits apply (one per journal entry.)  I continue to raise this with the Product engineering team and I know they are looking at it.  But with Client data review, you can now write off invoices in a batch, which may help with one of the reasons you needed to do Journal Entries which invoked a customer?

3) Client data review would be the best way to handle that - ie: make your adjustments, then use CDR to automatically match them to the client invoice so the ledgers are clean.

4) I would need to understand a bit more about what you are saying here.. I do know there are lots of ways of using QuickBooks - and even though you can create really elegant final accounts (in virtually any format you need/want) you are correct that you do still need to use something like VT to send through to the tax folks.   Many people like to get the reports right in QuickBooks then export to VT.

5) - I think this last comment is the press taking a little liberty with what I actually said :-)  What was meant there was that the ways to exchange data with, and collaborate with, your clients who use QuickBooks just got a lot bigger.  And we have a lot of ways to avoid the data synchronisation issues that used to occur.

Maybe we can chat in person sometime?    And I hope this information is helpful.

Alison

 

 

 

 

 

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