Income List

Last year we introduced the Invoice List which was loved by many of our users. The page soon became a high traffic page within QuickBooks Online. Today we are introducing the Income List that incorporates much of the feedback users gave us on the Invoice List. The biggest difference between the two is that the Invoice List shows just invoices, while this new Income List shows invoices, estimates and sales receipts.

To get to this new Income List, go to the Invoice List under the Customers (or Members/Clients etc) menu tab. You will see a link to switch to the new Income List next to the page title as shown in the image below. Likewise, to switch back to the Invoice List, use a similar link found on the Income List page. Eventually when this new Income List page is finished, we will remove the old Invoice List and make this permanent for all users.

The image below shows the new income list page and various sections of it.

By default it will show all the transactions, but you can narrow down what you wish to see via the Narrow By button as shown. Once you choose certain filters, they should remain selected even when you navigate away from this page and come back later.

After choosing your specific filters, click apply to update the transaction grid. Above the grid you will also see the breadcrumbs for the currently chosen filters as shown in the image below. You can click the (X) to remove that part of the filter.

For our first release you can filter by transaction type, its status, a date range and a customer. We will be further improving the filtering of this list in our future releases, so this is definitely not the final version of how filtering is going to work.  We look forward to hearing your feedback on this new Income List.

Copy Estimates

You can now quickly copy information from one estimate to another. Just open an existing estimate and click the copy button at the bottom. This should copy the data to a fresh new estimate that you can save or modify before saving. Note: Estimates functionality is not available to QBO Simple Start subscribers.

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Important notice for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.x users

We are down to about 1-2% usage for these browsers and will soon block QuickBooks Online usage on them. Expect this to happen sometime in March. If you are still using IE7 or Firefox 3.x, please upgrade as soon as possible otherwise you will not be able to access QuickBooks Online once it gets blocked. We need to end full support for these old browsers to prevent any interoperability issues that can happen when we put out new features, as they are not being tested on these browsers at all. Below are a few upgrade paths that users can take to continue using QuickBooks Online without issues. Do realize that by switching to a modern browser you not only improving QuickBooks Online performance but also for any other websites you visit, thereby increasing your own productivity!

Window Vista, Windows 7
IE7       –> IE9 or Firefox 10 or Chrome (latter 2 preferred)
FF 3.x –> IE9 or Firefox 10 or Chrome (latter 2 preferred)

Windows XP or prior
IE7       –> IE8 or Firefox 10 or Chrome (latter 2 preferred)
FF 3.x –> Firefox 10 or Chrome

OSX Leopard, Snow Leopard or Lion
FF 3.x –> Safari 5 or Firefox 10 or Chrome (latter 2 preferred)

OSX Tiger
FF 3.x –> Safari 4.1.3

Linux
FF 3.x –> Firefox 10 or Chrome

Other users should always upgrade to the latest version of their browser. IE8 users should definitely look into switching to IE9, Safari 5 users should get on Safari 5.0.6 or higher. Firefox users should get upgraded to Firefox 10 soon if not already on it, while Chrome is soon going to be on version 17. Pay One Vendor issue with Firefox 9+ will also be fixed with this above release. Creating a new company from the My Account page should also not complain about Firefox. Safari 5 on windows still has the issue of character duplication in popups. Safari 5 on the mac still has the issue of Caps Lock logging you out + some printing issues (printing issues seem to be fixed with Safari 5.1.4, so you have to wait till whenever Apple decides to release it). These latter ones need to be fixed by Apple, till then you can use Chrome or Firefox. More browser info here.

YOU SPOKE AND WE LISTENED

“We NEED the ability for a customer to pay online with a credit card. . . seems like it should be a very basic part of Quickbooks online. . . People are scared of giving out routing numbers and bank info. Let them pay by credit cards!”

“Add a credit card option and you will have a winner”

“Intuit – when can we expect something like this to come out?? There are requests all over the forums and we have yet to hear any response (at least as far as I can see)…What’s the deal??”

“Excuse me for shouting, but… WE REALLY NEED OUR CUSTOMERS TO BE ABLE TO PAY ONLINE, USING A CREDIT CARD, BY CLICKING A LINK IN OUR EMAILED INVOICES.”

The above is just a small sample of the many comments we’ve received about credit card functionality.

Thank you for all the feedback. We are happy to announce the ability to accept credit card payment on invoices! Find out more about this new feature below.

What’s the new feature?

QuickBooks online customers can now get invoices paid by credit card, in addition to bank payments.

This is an optional feature and can be managed (turned on/off) at any time by the small business by signing into IPN and clicking on ‘Profile’ in the left navigation bar.

What does it cost?

This feature, like bank payments will not have monthly, set up or termination fees. You will also not be charged any fixed authorization fees per transaction. The only fee you pay is 3.25% per transaction when a customer pays by credit card.

How do I turn it on?

Sign into IPN and click ‘Profile’ in the left navigation bar. Navigate to ‘Receiving Preferences’ and click the ‘Turn On’ button. That’s it – easy! All invoices you create and send after turning this option ON can be paid by either credit card or bank account. You can turn OFF this option at any time.

What will my customers see?

Your customers will see an additional option to pay by credit card when they pay online.

What’s not available in this update?

• Currently, only Visa and MasterCard are supported.
• The option to turn on/turn off credit card payment method is a global setting in IPN, and cannot be changed for every invoice.

A big thanks to our IPN customers for the feedback, which helps us build great products for you!Try it out and let us know what you think.

• IE9 support

NOTE: Some users have reported issues with Safari version prior to 5.0.6. Please upgrade to a newer version of Safari before trying this page out.
NOTE: Safari 5.1.2 has a printing issue where it prints the entire page instead of its content. Apple is aware of this problem as this is a browser bug. 

In our latest release we have introduced a new Sales Receipt page that is built on modern web technology. Users have the option of trying out this new page and giving us feedback.

Is the old Sales Receipt page being removed?

No, the old page will remain. We have no plans right now for removing the old page for any of our users. You will be able to switch back and forth from the new and old page whenever you want.

Who can access the new Sales Receipt page?

At the moment, the new page is only available to users who access QuickBooks Online via Google Chrome or Firefox (version 4+), Safari (version 5.0.6+) or Internet Explorer 9. This page is currently best viewed in Google Chrome. Due to the technical limitations of older versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari, we will not be adding support for them. You will need to upgrade to one of the browsers mentioned above to try out this page. Currently credit card payment processing (Merchant Account Services) is not implemented either, so users who have signed up for MAS will also not be able to access this new page. This page is only accessible to US companies.

Is this page finished?

Nope, this page is still in beta and is still being actively worked upon. We wanted to get a working version out to users to get feedback. We are aware of certain features missing – like MAS payment processing, recurring transactions etc. Over time these will be implemented and added to this new page.

How do I access the new page?

You will see a Try new Sales Receipt button on the old sales receipt page. As mentioned above, you will only see this button if you are using Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari and don’t have Merchant Account Services enabled. Click the button to switch to the new page. On the new page, there is a button on the top-right bottom-right to switch back to the old page.

Why are we doing this?

Our old pages were written a long time ago and needed a technology uplift. In order to add more features and make the page more user friendly we had to have a fresh start rather than trying to modify the old page. Having a clean start allows us to incorporate more feedback now and in the future.

What’s new in this page?

Better perceivable performance

Unlike the old page, this page doesn’t reload or refresh when you save a transaction or load a prior transaction. Try saving a transaction and opening it again from the recent drop down. You should see it do so pretty fast. In the future when we replace more transaction pages, you can imagine not having to load different pages. Going from one transaction page to another will be seamless and not like today where you have to wait for the other page to fully load. This new Sales Receipt page lays the foundations of that design.

Better drop down selection boxes

The drop down selection boxes for names, product / services, accounts, classes etc on this page will search as you type. They will do a full text search for whatever you type in the box, so you will be able to search for a customer even if you know the name partially. Parent / Child searching is also possible. For example if you have a customer named Darth and sub-customer named Luke and Leia, then you can search for any of those 3 names. Searching for Darth will also show Luke and Leia. Besides the usability, we have also improved search performance of these drop downs just in case you have thousands of items in the list.

The drop down boxes for dates have also been improved. Unlike the old pages, the calendar popup is more interactive. You can also use keyboard shortcuts to access common dates like on the old pages. Depending upon if you are focused into the date text box (like when tabbing into it) or when you are focused on the calendar (like when you click on the drop down) you can use the keyboard keys below to get to a date quickly. While focused into the text box (like when tabbing into it), pressing the down arrow key will now open up the calendar.

New transaction detail line grid

Unlike the old page, this one features a new grid that will have resizable columns. Not only are the columns are resizable, some of them can be toggled on or off. For example, if you want to turn off Quantity and Rate, just right click on the grid’s blue header and unselect that option. Doing so will also save your preference. In the old page if you had to do the same, you would have to stop working on your transaction, go to the company preferences page, enable / disable that feature and then come back. With this new page we are trying to get all the preferences related to it right in-place so that users can change them on the fly. Currently the Customize button on the top still opens the old startup interview. We plan to remove that and bring preferences in there.

Unlike the old grid, this new one will also not force a page reload when you try to add more than 20 detail lines. The new grid will also automatically insert a new line once it notices you are already working on the last line. Once focused into one of the grid cells, you can use keyboard tab navigation too.

Less window-based popups

We have removed almost all the window-based popups from this new page. You will see the new Customer add dialog as well as the new Item add dialog. You will see the new tooltip bubble styled quick add dialogs. We plan to remove the few remaining ones in the near future. While not ready yet, you will also see a new, simpler and cleaner account add dialog in the future.

New help and information pane

This page also features a new information pane that we are trying out. When you 1st open the page, you will see this pane overlaying and giving you an overview of the page. This pane can be closed or opened whenever you want by clicking on side bar. We plan to use this pane to help users identify new features that get added on the page and / or provide any other instructional content to help newer users started.

What feedback can you provide?

Since we are redoing the whole page, please let us know what worked and what didn’t work. You can also provide feedback for improvements to the layout and design if needed. Since this page will be a starting template for all other transaction pages like Invoices, Estimates etc, all feedback are welcome. Please report any bugs or issues, including performance related ones. If latter, please do mention what browser you are using and what operating system. You can provide feedback on this blog as comments or send it via the Beta button that you see on the page.

What more can be expected from this page?

As we iron out issues on this new page, we plan to keep adding features to it. Besides implementing the missing features that users see on the old page – Recurring templates, MAS processing, we also plan to put in some experimental features sometime in the future. For example implementing a way to quickly duplicate an existing transaction. Or having an offline draft storage – allowing you to navigate away from the page without having to loose data that you already entered. Another experiment could be to allow users to change the color of the page just in case you aren’t happy with its current blue-grey coloring scheme.

Updates

UPDATES for Dec 15th.

• Void button should now work.
• Basic math is now possible in fields that take a mathematical value such as Quantity, Rate, Amount, Discount, Shipping etc.
  • Example, typing in 1.25 + 2.25 and tabbing out should result in 3.50 in fields dealing with a money type value and to 3.5 in fields that are not money specific.
  • Right now only basic math will work with numbers such as ABC.XYZ with no commas and the decimal point being a dot.
  • A more solid solution that will allow commas and international numbers will be available sometime in the future.
• Choosing an item in the detail line transaction grid should now populate the fields of that line such as Description, Quantity, Rate, Amount much faster.
  • This should improve performance for people who tab fast and didn’t see the rate / amount fields populate fast enough.
• For prior updates please check the bottom of this blog post.

UPDATES for Dec 1st.

• Tabbing into and out of the detail line grid has changed a bit as mentioned below
  • If you are tabbing from an empty line (a line is considered empty when both description and amount fields are empty) and the other lines below are empty, then you will tab into the customer message field and skip the remaining detail lines. This will help people not to waste time in tabbing through an empty grid to just get out of it.
  • If you are on the last line, and its not empty, then tabbing will add a new line.
  • If you are on the last line, and select an item from the drop down, it will add a new line below.
• Some date box change as below.
  • Entering MM in the date boxes and tabbing out will auto-complete it to MM/01/Current Year now
  • Entering MMDD in the date boxes and tabbing out will auto-complete it to MM/DD/Current Year
• For sales tax, before and after discount radio buttons should work properly now and not revert after a save.
• Pressing Enter or Space Bar will work on buttons when they are focused.

UPDATES for Nov 22nd.

• Tabbing into and out of the detail line grid should now work.
• Some date box fixes. There are shortcuts mentioned in the blog post below.
  • Entering X/Y in the date boxes and tabbing out will auto-complete it to X/Y/Current Year
  • Entering X in the date boxes and tabbing out will auto-complete it to Current Month/X/Current Year
• The page should now fit in QBO’s minimum browser width requirement of 1024 px
• Alt-S (windows) and Option-S (mac) should now save the transaction
• Customer select box will be focused after a save
• Customer is taxable checkbox will be checked off automatically if you select a taxable customer
• Sale# and Ref# fields will be a bit wider now
• Ship To / Sold To box should now correctly show the full address including name, when viewing an existing sales receipt
• The delivery email address field should now allow multiple emails

We heard you loud and clear: having to sign up for an account is a huge barrier for your customers to pay you online from your invoice. Today, we’re excited to announce that for all QuickBooks Online users who send out invoices, your customers will no longer have to sign-up for an account in order to pay you via Intuit PaymentNetwork. Of course, if they plan on using the product repeatedly, then we recommend that they still sign up for an account. That way, they can save their payment preferences and make any future payments easily!

What will your customers see?

1. After clicking on the payment link in your invoice

   

2. Your customers will see a “Pay” button

   

3. Where they can input their bank information and pay you quickly and easily!

   

What now?

E-mail, tweet, or Facebook your customers with a link to this blog post and inform them about this improvement. The sooner you let them know of this new update, the sooner you will start receiving payments!

GoPayment integration – accept credit cards on your mobile device

In case you haven’t heard about or used Intuit GoPayment, check it out here http://gopayment.com/. We have now integrated QBO with GoPayment so that you can accept credit card payments on your mobile devices.  This is an exciting new way to accept payments and many of our customers have been asking for this.

New Sales Tax

We will be soon introducing our new sales tax feature that will allow you to record multiple sales tax rates. This will be a major departure from the current sales tax implementation that only allowed one default tax rate.

What you see today

The image below shows the Sales Tax preference on the Company > Preferences page.

Once we roll out this new sales tax, the above old preference will be removed from the Preferences page. For those users that have sales tax checked, you will notice that as soon as you uncheck this checkbox and save the preferences, this whole section will now point you to the new Sales Tax center where you will manage any sales tax related features.

Sales Tax Center

The new Sales Tax Center helps you manage and track sales taxes. With it, you can

• Set up sales tax (both single and combined rates) so you can charge sales tax on invoices and other sales forms
• See current and upcoming sales tax due by agency
• Record your tax payments in one spot, instead of using a paid bill or check
• See recent sales tax payments

The 1st time you come to this page, you will see

You will then be required to setup sales tax rates as shown below. If you had previously set up a default sales tax rate we will automatically create a new one for you with that percentage.

After adding a sales tax rate, the Sales Tax center will show you sales tax owed and recent payments.  If you don’t have any sales transactions with sales tax for an agency, it will show as zero.

What will you see on transaction pages with this new sales tax

Below is a screenshot of an invoice page showing you the new sales tax select drop down, where you can choose a particular rate.

What happens to existing transactions using old sales tax?

Nothing will happen to your existing transactions.  You probably have prior transactions that were saved using the old sales tax. When you open them, they will show as before, with the old styled sales tax box.  If you edit them, they will still use the old sales tax.  Going forward, if you had a default tax rate of 10%, we will create a new rate in the drop down using that percentage.

When can I start using the new Sales Tax?

In order to make the transition a smooth one you will only be able to start using the new sales tax rates starting on Nov 1st.  This way all sales transactions prior to Nov 1st will have the old sales tax rate and all sales transactions starting Nov 1st can use the new sales tax rates.  This makes it easier when you go to pay and record your sales tax for the months of October and November.  You’ll pay your sales tax for October in the same way you’ve always done.  You’ll pay (record) sales tax for November from the Sales Tax Center.

UPDATE: The roll out of the new Sales Tax has been delayed.

Guest Payments using Intuit PaymentNetwork

If you were using IPN thus far, you would have noticed that we required all of your payees to sign up for this service.  This was a barrier to use and so lots of people just didn’t pay using IPN.   You’ll be happy to know that we are removing this requirement and letting anyone send payments without the need to sign up for IPN. Look at Company > Preferences > Accept Online Payments for more information. In case you didn’t know how IPN worked, see the image below for the typical workflow.

Track your business on-the-go with QB Mobile

We have free native apps connecting to QuickBooks Online on the iOS and Android. Follow the links below to download QB Mobile.  We know many customers have been asking for the ability to do tasks on their mobile devices.   Right now you’ll be able to create invoices and estimates and manage your customers.  We are updating these apps frequently so stay tuned!

QB Mobile for iOS
QB Mobile for Android 

Emailing invoices in HTML

Right now you can e-mail invoices  as plain text with a PDF attachment. We are now expanding this further to allow HTML emails instead of plain text.  They look much nicer!   To email in HTML, enable the preference under Company > Preferences > Form Delivery. There is an HTML version for both the summary and full version. Please note this a Beta feature and we will be looking for feedback through the feedback widget to make changes and adjustments in the coming months. See the image below for an example.

*There is a known issue with the logos for Outlook 2007. Logos are properly sized for all other email clients, but Outlook 2007 does not respect the size contraints of the logo. We will have a fix with the next update.*

New Customer Add Dialog

We are introducing a newly designed dialog for adding customers. For the moment you will only see this when adding a new customer from the Customer Center. Other pages will still show the old dialog. We will be using this new dialog hence forth for any newly designed pages requiring the functionality of adding customers.

You should find this one cleaner and less cluttered. We have logically grouped similar sections together and made it more aesthetically pleasing than it was before. You will also notice that this dialog is no longer a window based popup so it will definitely not lock out your browser tab. This allows you to switch to other tabs if you are copy / pasting customer information from another tab like from an email.

Tip: When adding a new customer, our system only requires that you enter a name or a company name. Even though the dialog has a lot of other fields to fill out, you can choose to ignore them till later if you don’t have the information on hand right away.

Tip: Many of our users have low resolution screens. If you are one of those users and don’t plan on upgrading to a newer monitor anytime soon, try using a browser like Google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9. And remove any / every toolbar you have (if any, not including your bookmarks or favorites bar). 3rd party toolbars in modern browsers are absolutely redundant and unnecessary these days as most functionality is already built into the browsers. 

New drops downs and simpler add dialog

With this dialog you will also notice our new drop down select boxes. We talked about them in this blog post. You should be able to search as you type. Since we are now allowing a full text search, you should be able to find a customer by searching for it’s parent or find a customer by searching some part of the customer name. You will also notice the new quick adding dialogs for payment methods and terms. Previously both of these were window based popups and now they are not.

Customer Center Improvements

There were some formatting changes made to the transactions area of the customer center as well as an enhancement. You will notice the new transaction button is now on the left and much more prevalent. From this button you can add a new statement, charge, invoice, payment, sales receipt, or recurring template. You will also notice the filters have been moved to the right of the grid, with a new print button on the left. This print button mirrors the print from the invoice list, allowing you to now print everything in the grid. Select a customer, then select any transaction or date filters from the drop downs to filter what you wish to see in the grid below, and then just click print.

Refreshed look of the Accountant Center

We recently introduced the Accountant Center for QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA). The accountant center has been refreshed a bit to better suit the needs of accounting professionals. Some modules has been re-arranged and certain tasks highlighted. For more check out the link above or http://qboa.intuit.com

Text messaging and alerts

This feature should now be available to all. You can look up company information on your mobile phone with simple text messages. Subscribe to receive customized push alerts and keep updated on upcoming invoices and bills. Look at the Text Messaging menu option under the Company tab.

QuickBooks Online Accountant is being designed specifically with the accounting professional’s workflow in mind, here are some of the key features:

Cross-Workflow Tools

• With the Client List, accounting professionals can manage all their online clients from one place
• The Accountant Center provides features and reports accounting professionals need at their fingertips

Step-by-Step Workflow Tools

QuickBooks Online for Accounting Professionals Demonstration

Sign up for the pilot

The Pilot program is free. To learn more about QuickBooks Online Accountant and sign up for the free Pilot program, please visit http://accountant.intuit.com/qboa

EDIT: Some reconcile features will only be seen if you switch to the new reconcile. On the reconcile page, if you see a link in the top right corner saying “New Reconcile” then please click to switch to the new one.

Print 3 checks per page

Besides printing one check per page with voucher checks, you can now print three checks per page using standard checks.  We know that many of you have been asking for this feature.  (Note: This will not work for payroll checks.)

Chrome users: Unfortunately there is a PDF printing bug in Chrome when using its inbuilt PDF viewer (please star it to remain updated). This makes the PDF page shrink a bit when printing, causing check alignment issues. A simple workaround from your end would be to just save the check PDF to your desktop and open / print it from Adobe Acrobat or Preview or any other PDF reader you have installed on your system. Unfortunately for now the other option would be to use another browser like Firefox when printing checks. http://support.qbo.intuit.com/support/answers.cfm?faq_id=4706

List Printing

You can now print your chart of accounts and other lists. Just go to a list page and click the Print List button at the bottom.

Timesheet defaulting to the current week

Both the weekly timesheet and the single activity timesheet should now default to the current week. This will hopefully prevent unnecessary additional clicks for many, thus saving time.

Invoice Duplication

Clicking the Copy button on the bottom of an existing invoice will now save a duplicate of it.
You should use the Make Recurring unscheduled option if you don’t want to duplicate and save automatically but rather just have a template for future invoices.

Add your website to your invoices

We added a field under Preferences for your company website.  You can include it as part of the header on your invoices or other sales transactions.

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Known Issues in Safari 5.1

For people upgrading to Safari 5.1 there are a couple of known issues, both being Safari related and not QBO:

• Caps Lock key causing a logout after you see a dialog in QBO. This is not a QBO issue and can be reproduced outside. Bug has been filed with Apple against Safari. Unsure when it will be fixed, so till then just watch out if you see your fingers nearing the caps lock!
• You will notice that your PDF is now downloading rather than opening within the browser like before. This is again a known issue and again unsure when it will be fixed by Apple. In the meantime you can continue using it as-is since it doesn’t really effect functionality (except perhaps check alignment). You still can print or save the PDF. However if you prefer for the PDF to show within the browser, you can use this 3rd party plugin - http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/

Upcoming browser changes
If you are using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3.x, you would want to read this post.

Upcoming feature improvements

Invoice list improvements
You will now be able to print the invoice list. You will also notice a running total for the amount and open balance columns at the bottom of the list and be able to see the sub-customer of the parent-customer in the name column. We’ve also provided easier access to the invoice list by adding both a new menu item in our main navigation and a shortcut on the home page Quick Links portlet.

Tip: The columns on the invoice list are resizable. Once you resize them to your satisfaction, the layout should be remembered whenever you come to the invoice list next time.

Customer Center improvements
A search on a customer will now show both the customer and all its sub-customers, if any.
A new filter has been added for showing deleted customers.
The un-delete workflow has been improved by allowing the restore to happen directly from the customer center instead of the customer edit dialog.

Receive payments workflow
From any Receive Payments link (like those displayed in the tooltip bubble on the invoice list, customer center, or homepage), the corresponding invoice will be automatically pre-selected on the Receive Payments screen. This should hopefully save some time and energy in trying to figure out the invoice you are receiving payments against. 

Pre-fill customer information
When creating sub-customers, all information will automatically pre-fill when you select it’s parent-customer. (information you have already put in manually will remain unchanged)

Overwrite an existing memorized report
Prior to this, if you needed to overwrite a memorized report, you had to 1st go and delete the old one. Now you can overwrite a report with the same name; simply click memorize and enter the report name you would like to use. If the name is already in use you will be prompted with the option to replace the old report with the new report. You will also notice that this dialog is no longer a window-based popup. So there goes another window pop-up in the system. Please look at the bottom section of this post about some additional changes that you will see on this dialog.

Get weekly push alerts about your business
Now you can subscribe to receive push alerts on your mobile device and keep updated on your upcoming invoices and bills. Set it up in the Text Messaging Setup page under the Company tab. This is a beta feature and may not be available to all.

On the old Customer List page, where did the Summary button go?
If you haven’t already done so, check out the Customer Center for a better way of viewing transactions, creating statements, running quick reports, and more!
The links below may help you in tasks that you may have been using the Summary button for in the past.

Using Customer Center http://support.qbo.intuit.com/support/answers.cfm?faq_id=3355
Creating statements http://support.qbo.intuit.com/support/answers.cfm?faq_id=4666

Introducing a new interaction change

DISCLAIMER / README 1st
This is a work in progress; what you see in product right now may NOT be what you will eventually see in the final version (visually or interactively). This depends on user feedback too. We are introducing this change only in 1 place at the moment which is the memorize report dialog that you see in the images above and below. However this is an important control that is used throughout QBO (for selecting customers, vendors, items, accounts, terms, classes, location etc) and we will eventually start using it in more places. But for now its limited to the memorized report group drop down.

Summary

We are trying to get rid of certain popups. We are also trying to combine the features that our current drop downs have when the “Quickfill Autosuggest” preference is turned off and on. And at the same time making the drop downs a bit more performant for large lists. Read below for more details.

Lets start with what you see in QBO today:

When you are trying to add a new entry, you typically do one of the following:

• Click the drop down > Click the Add New > Wait for the add popup to open > Type in a name > Click OK
• Type in a name > Tab / click out > Wait for the add popup to open > Click OK

• If you have the  ”Quickfill Autosuggest” preference disabled in the Company > Preferences
• Start typing in, and then choose what gets auto-completed. You don’t see the drop down list in this case.
• Just click the drop down arrow, and choose an entry. In this case you don’t type in anything.
• If you have the  ”Quickfill Autosuggest” preference enabled in the Company > Preferences
• You see a filtered list when you start typing, based on what you type.
• However when you click the drop down arrow, you see an empty list. The list only shows when you type in at least 1 character.

Now lets see what we are moving towards (again this is a work in progress and at the moment only applies to the memorize report group drop down)

Things to note that you will see in this new styled drop down

• Quickfill Autosuggest preference is dead to this new styled drop down and doesn’t effect it in any way. Whether its enabled or disabled, doesn’t matter.
• Clicking the drop down arrow shows you the drop down list (however we encourage users to type in unless their list is small).
• We may try to limit the entries shown in a drop down for performance reasons, but this is still up for discussion.
• We don’t really want to be showing 10000 entries in there (yeah some folks do have that many customers or items in their lists!) as that may cause the page to be a bit laggy. So maybe the entries might be paginated and shown X number at a time.
• If you type something in the drop down text box, it will filter the list based on what you type. See the image above where I type in “gg” and it only shows me entries starting with “gg”
• The filtered list highlights what you type in. So “gg” is highlighted in the drop down list.
• Instead of just matching the beginning of an entry, we can also do a full sub-string match. So not only will it show entries starting with “gg” but also those entries that contain “gg” somewhere in between. Whether to do this or not, is still up for discussion. User feedback will help here. For now you will only see the list showing entries starting with what you typed in.
• The text that you type, gets auto-completed to the 1st entry in the list.
• We may disable this auto-completion as many other web-apps are following the approach of filtering down the list, however not auto-completing.
• If we decide to do a full sub-string search as mentioned in the prior bullet point, then the auto-complete needs to be turned off otherwise it results in a highly awkward user interaction that most people will find annoying.
• To add a new entry, just type in the text in the drop down text box as you would normally do.
• Once the drop down detects that you are entering something that doesn’t exist yet, it’s border will turn green and a (+) sign will appear telling the user that this is a new entry.
• The border color and (+) sign showing is still up for discussion. Very likely  we may just get rid of the (+) sign.
• If you tab / click out now (or click the +), you will see a small overlay come up asking if you want to save this new entry. See the above image on the right of what it looks like at the moment.
• This overlay basically replaces the window-based popup that you generally see for adding new entries. So no more of the annoying popup.
• The visual look and feel of this overlay box is subject to change.
• There is no <<Add New>> entry in the drop down list anymore. You add by simply typing in as mentioned above.
• One has to type in a name for the new entry anyways, so we thought doing it before or after the overlay appears doesn’t make much of a difference.

To give feedback, ideas or opinions on this please use the yellow feedback widget in the product or post about it on this blog.

Intuit PaymentNetwork (code name IPN) now seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks Online. A small business can now send an invoice through QuickBooks Online and get paid fast using IPN. QuickBooks online invoices enabled for online payments will now have a link for the end customer to directly pay the small business. The plot thickens with the added benefits of low cost (only 50 cent/payment), faster funding (next day funding for most payments less than $5000) and automatic reconciliation.

Release Date: Released Midnight May 19th
Genres: Payments ¦ Invoicing ¦ QuickBooks Online
Rating: G for customer delight, seamless integration and fast payments
Starring: IPN, 50c Payment, Next Day Funding (aka NDF) and Reconciliation
Produced By: Intuit Inc.
What people are saying about it: “I run a small housecleaning company and have been looking for a reasonably priced debit/credit processing option. Many companies want to charge trasaction fees and a percent of your total. I love this option. A $0.50 transaction fee is very reasonable, and makes it so that I can offer the option to all my customers.”

World Premier of the Trailer:

Stills/screen shots from the release:

1. IPN on ‘Create Invoice’ form in QuickBooks Online

2. Payment link in invoice that your customers will see

3. Two easy steps for customers to pay (Sign in and pay the invoice)

4. Payment reconciled in QuickBooks Online

Note from the IPN team: We hope that all of you enjoy this new release. Please provide feedback by posting on this blog or emailing us at paymentnetwork@intuit.com