Today, various online services are joining in protest to make internet users aware of SOPA & PIPA and their possible negative effects on innovation, the economy and the freedom of the internet. Developers of QuickBooks Online hope that you share the same feelings as us about these bills. Please take a moment to look at the infogaphic and links below and act upon it if you wish to do so. As netizens we feel it’s our responsibility to raise awareness about such bills. Please take action to help keep the internet open and free from censorships.

You can read more and take action via the links below

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

Intuit’s press release on SOPA

An early Happy New Year to all of our readers. I wanted to highlight a few changes to our 1099-Misc preparation workflow in preparation of filing season.

1099k

The IRS has issued new reporting requirements for tax year 2011 1099-MISC form. These requirements will exclude some forms of payments from the 1099-MISC form that will instead be reported on the new third party form 1099-K.

If you’ve made payments to vendors in tax year 2011, you’ll only need to report certain types of transactions and exclude others.

What does this mean to you?

• Payments to 1099 vendors made via credit card, debit card, or third party system such as PayPal will be excluded from the 1099-MISC calculations.
• On the Prepare 1099-MISC screen…
  
• Navigate to the the Prepare 1099 Forms preview.  Note the column titled Total 1099 Payments Excluded. You can click on the total in this column to see an Excluded Payments by Vendor report which shows transaction details.  This report can help you verify if payments should indeed be excluded.
  

For additional information on the new IRS requirements please visit the links below:

• Explanation of final regulations published by the IRS on the new payment card reporting requirements:  http://www.irs.gov/govt/fslg/article/0,,id=226894,00.html
• IRS Third Party Reporting Information Center Link: http://www.irs.gov/taxpros/article/0,,id=225080,00.html

eFile

Prefer to electronically file your 1099 forms?

Well, you’re in luck! Intuit’s 1099 E-File Service allows 1099 forms to be filed electronically. For more information about the 1099 E-File Service, see this web page: http://payroll.intuit.com/support/kb/2000864.html.

Want to give it a try?

You can sign up for the E-file service here: https://onlinepayroll.intuit.com/welcome/1099.jsp

Thank you,
Quickbooks Online Team

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.

Below are steps if you want to access multiple companies simultaneously within the same browser. This post is relevant only to Chrome users. While both Firefox and IE allow multiple profiles in some sense, they currently don’t have an intuitive and simple interface to get you started as easy as Chrome does. For Firefox profile management look here.

Step 1:

Install or upgrade to Google Chrome version 16 or higher (version 16 was released on the 13th so you may not have it right away). You can either wait till Google does it for you silently or use the Wrench > About Google Chrome window to do so. You can also just re-install Chrome from their page.

Step 2:

Go to the Personal Stuff section under Chrome’s preferences / options window via the wrench menu or just copy paste this in a new tab – chrome://settings/personal. Click Add New User as shown in the picture below.

Step 3:

Once you click on the Add New User button, a new window will popup as shown in the picture below. This window will be your new profile, demarcated by an icon in the top left. You can customize it’s icon and name by clicking Edit as shown in the picture below after going to it’s preferences / options screen like you did in the prior step.

Final Steps:

You are pretty much done now. You have created two profiles in Chrome, each having their own browser window. You can open QuickBooks Online in both and choose different companies and access them simultaneously. You can always create a third profile and manage your two companies on those two, leaving your default profile for personal non QuickBooks Online usage.

Some points to remember

• Opening a profile window is done by the icon in the top left, just click it and choose one.
• You can add more users or remove users from the same screen as shown above.
• Hence you can manage more than two companies simultaneously.
• Since the two profiles are completely separate, they will not share bookmarks and other preferences.
• When signing into QuickBooks Online, you will need to allow our popups to go through for each window.
• You can bypass the prior step by installing the QuickBooks Online app on each profile (will require you to sign in using your Google accounts).
• Since bookmarks are not shared between profiles, you can add different ones for each profile window.
• Remember to check the company before doing any accounting stuff, you don’t want to be entering data in the wrong window hence wrong company.

Hopefully this improves productivity for users wanting to work on multiple companies.

While the biggest maintenances are behind us, we have a few more ahead. The new data centers provide the infrastructure we need to deliver a faster, more reliable QuickBooks Online experience for you. We’ll continue to keep you apprised of future maintenances. We thank you for your patience and your continued business.

Sincerely,

Vinay Pai
Director, Product Development

• 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+) or Safari (version 5.0.6+). This page is currently best viewed in Google Chrome. In the future we will add support for Internet Explorer 9. 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 have received reports from some of our customers that they are receiving phishing emails.  These emails request that users download an “Intuit Security Tool” in order to continue using QuickBooks.

Intuit did NOT send this email and will never contact you by email to request personal information or to update the security of our service. Please be on the lookout for any emails like this and report them immediately to spoof@intuit.com

Click here for more information.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,

Intuit Corporate Information Security
http://security.intuit.com/

UPDATE: Above also applies to the similar emails being sent out on 10/31/2011

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.