If you are a current user and have 5 minutes to give us feedback, please fill out a short survey.

Survey: http://survey.intuit.com/survey/survey_start.cfm?x=12321&y=1710

Thank you,
Quickbooks Online Team

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

Its really simple to use.  By simply entering a job title and where the job is based, the tool returns a chart with median hourly and annual wages that other nearby businesses are paying for that job.  I have attached a simple query I did for head cook/chef in  San Francisco, CA.

Since payroll is usually a significant expense for any business its always great to have some benchmarks to make sure you are rewarding your best employees as well as insuring that you are not over-paying in some situations.  This tool leverages the most recent wage data (2009) available from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

We hope you find this useful and a big thank you to our Payroll team for this great tool.

Regards,

The Quickbooks Online Team

We deeply regret the frustration these outages have caused you. We are working to fully understand their cause and fix this problem.

In addition, we know this has disrupted many businesses and want to make things right for you. Those affected can call:

• QuickBooks Online: 800-286-6800
• QuickBooks Online Payroll: 888-537-7794
• Intuit Payments Solutions: 800-558-9558

We thank you for your patience as we work to restore your trust.

Update 03/23/11: Over the past two days we had two service outages due to two separate errors made during scheduled maintenance.

In both cases we made network configuration changes that inadvertently affected connectivity to a portion of our servers. This blocked traffic to those servers for just a few minutes while we rolled back the change. In both cases it took us longer than we would have liked to restore service. This was due to the fact that when network connectivity was restored, there was a surge in traffic that caused the servers to overload. We decided to restore service at a purposefully measured pace to closely monitor the system and ensure it didn’t overload again.

Again, we apologize for the disruption to our service. We continue to work to improve the resiliency of our systems and our processes for implementing changes.

Original Post: We’ve restored service for QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Merchant Services, QuickBooks Online Payroll and other online offerings. As our systems come online, you may experience a slight delay when logging in. If you cannot log in, please wait a few minutes and try again. We appreciate your patience and apologize for this disruption.

We’ve pulled out some hot tips from some very helpful articles.  If you are selling, you’ll likely need more than these articles to consult. However, it’s a good start to get you familiar with the landscape.   Anything to add?

How to Sell Your Business
New York Times

“First, get your books in order. Not being able to provide accurate financial statements in a timely manner can cause a deal to unravel in short order. Be sure to have the following on hand before you go to market:

• Last three years’ profit-and-loss statements
• Last three years’ balance sheets.
• Year-to-date profit-and-loss statement.
• Current balance sheet”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/business/smallbusiness/07guide.html

How to sell your company
Jacques Mattheij

“Just like a buyer has the duty to do due diligence, the seller has the obligation to inform. All of the professionals doing due diligence will operate on the assumption that you are telling the truth, you are in immediate hot water if you are caught doing anything but that. Also, typically lawyers, CPA’s and others will state explicitly in their reporting that they are operating on information that you supplied.”

http://jacquesmattheij.com/How+To+Sell+Your+Company

Business Valuation 101: five myths to valuing a private business.
SCORE

“Quantifying the size of your discretionary expenses is often a critical determinant of the firm’s value. As such, owners should keep a tab on what these discretionary expenses may be so that, when they are ready to sell the business, they can document these facts to the buyer.

By doing so, the seller increases the buyer’s confidence that the business does legitimately generate the cash the seller claims and, accordingly, increases the buyer’s willingness to pay the asking price for the business.”

http://www.score.org/article_business_valuation_101.html

(Note: This integration requires QuickBooks Online Essentials and Plus and is for new Bill.com users.  If you are a current Bill.com user, please contact us at sales@hq.bill.com for more information.

We at Bill.com are so excited to offer the only complete and paperless bill pay service built just for QuickBooks Online users.

Since 2006, thousands of small to mid-sized businesses have been using Bill.com to completely automate bill management.   That’s why we’re so pleased that Bill.com for QuickBooks Online is now live on workplace.intuit.com.   This has a deep integration to your QuickBooks Online data and bill pay workflow, from receiving bills, approving and paying them online to matching payments accurately in QuickBooks Online.

Do you currently use your Bank’s bill pay service?

Unfortunately, even with a bank’s bill pay, many of you still find yourselves drowning in paper bills, spending hours or days getting bills approved, and then more time manually matching payments to invoices.  Because your bank’s bill pay service is not integrated with your accounting system, you’ll always have to re-enter data.  Clearly, a bank’s bill pay service only saves a fraction of the time spent on managing bills.

Bill management is a process of multiple steps and paying bills online is just one step.  To truly save significant time, the bill pay process needs to be simple and automated.

Enter Bill.com – the only paperless bill-pay service that works with QuickBooks Online

That’s why we’re thrilled about the launch of Bill.com for QuickBooks Online. It’s a real time-saver for your business and we know it’ll help you gain more control of your finances day-to-day.

Why Bill.com?

Bill.com is the only paperless bill pay service that simplifies the entire process of paying bills. Here are just a few reasons why Bill.com is the best bill pay service for QuickBooks Online users:

• Go paperless.  Only Bill.com lets you easily get your bills online. Simply email, scan or fax your bills and we’ll get them online.
• Access and pay bills anytime, anywhere.  Save your bills and other financial records in one place.  It’s secure and unlimited!
• Never re-enter data. Your Vendor List and Chart of Accounts are automatically entered into Bill.com.
• Save hours by syncing to your QuickBooks Online in one step! Send all bills, matched to payment transactions, into QuickBooks Online with one keystroke.
• Get bills approved quickly by collaborating online with vendors, colleagues, and your accountant.
• Get a complete audit trail for every transaction from invoices to cleared check images.

If your team, accountant and even vendors are spending too much time paying, tracking and managing your bills, it’s really worth checking out Bill.com for QuickBooks Online.

Check it out and try it free at:
http://workplace.intuit.com/appcenter/moreInfo.aspx?AppID=3443

Questions or comments? Post them. We’d love to hear from you!

In order to change this, the Senate and House will have to repeal it. Last night, the Senate did.

What happened? The Senate voted on several amendments to S.223, FAA Re-Authorization bill. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) offered Senate Amendment 9 calling for repeal of the new 1099 reporting requirement and would be paid for with unspent discretionary funds offset, except for Department of Defense, Veteran Affairs, and Social Security Administration. It passed with an 81-17 vote.

The house still has a chance to vote before any changes go into place.  However if this doesn’t get repealed, QuickBooks Online will be changing how we handle reporting to help make this new requirement easier to track and manage for you.

Stay tuned…

Over the years, QuickBooks Online has evolved with the needs of small businesses to save them time and instill self-confidence managing their finances, so they can focus on what they love — running their businesses. Recently, we added a feature to the product called Trends that enables small business owners to compare their income and expenses with other businesses in similar locations and industries. Extracting insights from Trends, small business owners can identify ways to cut expenses and boost sales, or more broadly see how their industries are performing. We also recently added inventory management capabilities and refreshed the user interface to further simplify accounting tasks.

You can read more about recent updates to QuickBooks Online in today’s news announcement. Or, share the infographic below to celebrate ten years of small business success with QuickBooks Online. Click the image for an enlarged view.

1. Make sure you send the 1099-MISC form to your Recipients by Jan. 31, 2011.

Deadline is getting close! Track1099 e-delivers your 1099′s to the Recipient by sending an email with a secure link, requiring them to enter the last 4 of their Tax ID number. This ensures security, complies with the IRS rule to receive “consent”, and allows the Recipient access any time to their 1099.

2. File the 1099-MISC with the IRS before Feb. 15, if you’re sending paper or by Mar. 31, 2011, if you e-file.

E-filing with Track1099  reduces the hassle of printing and snail mailing.  If you only have one 1099, you only pay for one, though we do offer discounts for larger volumes.

3. Double check correct Tax ID numbers with your vendors; having the wrong SSN or EIN can expose you to the possibility of IRS fines.

By using Track1099 to e-deliver, you get a double check on the correctness of your Recipients’ Tax ID numbers, reducing the chances of an error being sent to the IRS.

4. Make sure both the IRS and the Recipient have received their 1099-MISC’s.

If your Recipient loses their paper 1099-MISC, guess what — you’ll need to resend. With e-Delivery, their 1099 is never lost. They just go back online and retrieve it. In our IRS Status table, at a glance you may check on the status of both the IRS e-file and the Recipient e-delivery.

5. Reduce IRS paper waste.

In 2009, the IRS received 85 Million 1099-MISC forms, the vast majority of which were sent to the Recipients via paper. This is a stack of forms more than 10 miles high. Please do your part for our environment and e-deliver as well as e-file.

Sincerely,

Sharon Lindsey West and the Team at Track1099 . (Check us out…and e-deliver and e-file your way to big time savings.)

In our survey of small businesses, 65 percent of respondents said starting their own businesses was their personal passion. Despite the hardships brought on by the recession, 85 percent of those respondents said the passion is still there, driving them forward. Also, an impressive 66 percent of respondents said they expect their businesses to grow in 2011 despite the rocky economy.

Here’s what else we learned from the front lines in our small business survey. Click the infographic for an enlarged view.