Anyone had experience of new features in QBO?

Looking to document the new functions and assess their impact

Didn't find your answer?

I need a bit of community help to fill in areas where my knowledge is weak. I've been aware for a few weeks of product updates for QuickBooks Online, but do not spend enough time with it to know which ones have been added in the latest round, and which which have been kicking around for a while.

From previous talks with Intuit, we've been expecting to see things like:

  • Month-end client optimisation and bookkeeping review screens
  • Cashflow Planner
  • Open Banking - with ability to automatically categorise transactions imported using the standard OB interface. We have been hearing a few niggles about this.
  • Payroll employee portal with timesheets and holiday requests 
  • CIS filing, with automatic reconciliation to bank feeds and payroll
  • Payments: PayPal and iZettle payments built in
  • Email receipt forwarding.

If you are a regular QBO user and have used any of these new functions, can you give an idea of their benefits and weakspots?

And are there any things you like in the new version that aren't on this list?

And if there are things you'd like to see that haven't made it into the product yet, do share too.

If I compare what I pick up from the company to how you're all finding it, it should make for a more informative news article. Many thanks, as always, for your help.

 

Replies (8)

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blue sheep
By NH
03rd Aug 2020 20:07

tbh a lot of the latest things they have added I have glanced at and thought, no use to me. Two fundamental things that need improving (and perhaps this is more across the board than just QBO)

1. Data capture of receipts - this was released a few months ago on QBO but the one client I tried it with had continual issues with the App that it put me off. Much like Hubdoc/Xero what promised to be a great addition disappointed and ended up costing us lots of time, and in the had to be ditched for AutoEntry (Receipt Bank too expensive and very cagey about prices).
2. Open Banking - Bank feeds was the number one thing a few years ago on my list of reasons to adopt cloud software. Especially since Open Banking, having to constantly remind clients to update the feed is a nightmare. Many clients also have accounts now with "obscure" banks that do not support feeds so we still have to rely on csv imports which pretty much takes us back to the days pre cloud

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Replying to NH:
RedFive
By RedFive
03rd Aug 2020 20:45

100% agree with NH - open banking has ruined our slick process.

We have 130 clients on QB that we do 90% of the bookkeeping for.

As an aside almost all use Receipt Bank. Works perfectly. £299 per month unlimited uploads / clients on the middle tier. Price knocked AE out if the park once we went above 50 ish clients uploading as they charge per entry.

Will not swap out to QB scan as it’s hopeless and I like the RB central interface - all clients and receipts in one place.

Cash flow feature is useless. Disregard it as a feature.

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By JD
04th Aug 2020 14:18

Another vote for, have not used the new features due to minimal benefit and fed up with short sighted cloud accounting people saying what a benefit open banking is - its not, it's a complete time eater for us an the clients

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Giraffe
By Luke
05th Aug 2020 10:40

Yes agree that cashflow seems fairly useless.

Open banking feeds need to be improved, many not working regularly. This results in frustrated clients getting annoyed with us, unsuprisingly I can rarely fix it as it's a QBO issue. American Express feed was originally promised in April but it still says it is coming but no timescale.

Data capture of receipts has some uses but is limited. Some clients now have the option to classify as bills or receipts, some only seem to have the receipts option, so it is inconsistent.

Month end optimisation not available yet as far as I can see.

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By Cantona1
05th Aug 2020 11:03

It may not be relevant to the topic at hand but, I thought it would be worth mentioning it.
QBS-On-line has been down since Saturday. I am unable to scroll down to see a single page. I can only view 20 lines per page, then it is the end of a page. I complained to support, but as usual, since no one knows how to resolve the bottleneck, they hide behind ‘we will get back to you.’

QBS e-mailed yesterday to all users to warn us they system was unavailable for services for a half-hour. I was hoping that the issue to be fixed but to no avails.
I am now stuck, so be warned.

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John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
05th Aug 2020 16:03

Thank you all for your feedback - I was interested to hear how consistent it was. Since I posted the question, I had an interview with the QuickBooks director for Product Development, Europe - Shaun Shirazian.

I made him aware that several of you were less than impressed with the Cash Flow Planner and the Open Banking bank feed implementation.

His response was that the Planner was a big priority for Intuit. This is the first step (or what they sometimes call the "minimum viable product" in software development circles) towards an end-to-end cashflow forecasting engine. The Planner would get stronger as the company put more work into it and the machine learning algorithms chewed through more and more data sets to calibrate their predictions.

Shirazian has seen feedback on the Open Banking feeds, particularly around reauthorisation. It appears that users who had already implemented feeds were the worst affected, but the larger numbers who have connected for the first time are very positive about the experience - apart from having to renew the feeds every 90 days.

“Whenever we move to a new technology or new source like this, there are teething issues. It is something customers have to go through, but we are working closely with banking organisations to improve that,” he said.

Sorry I couldn't get more definitive answers to your moans, but at least I made him aware of them. Here's the full news report: https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/accounting-software/quickbooks-intr...

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Replying to John Stokdyk:
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By JD
07th Aug 2020 10:16

Thank you for taking the trouble to talk to QBO, John

The difficulty you have is that open banking reauthorisation every 90 days adds a time costs and disruption to each and every VAT return (and MTD submission in the future) defeating the point of automation. It really should be a case of connect once and let the bank feed work its magic from there without any further intervention.

As for cashflows, despite the best efforts of those such as Leave no Business Behind, practically the majority of ''small'' businesses that would make up many of the QBO users, do not see value in detailed cashflow statements. It's a solution looking for a problem along with just because you can do something, does not mean that you should.

Not wanting to state the obvious, but it's only when you start moving up the ladder in the size and nature of the business (with significant staff, an overdraft/significant debtors to manage and the like) that its value starts to become more obvious.

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Replying to JD:
blue sheep
By NH
07th Aug 2020 10:25

Precisely correct on all points
And on the bank feeds, as Rebecca said the other day imagine you have a client with 4 different banks or more than one business, I have a client that regularly every 90 days connects the wrong bank to the wrong software.
Either allow an agent to setup bank feeds (read only access, why not?), or forget the 90 day thing, its not working

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