Sign-up no more: making it easier for your customers to pay you!
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?
After clicking on the payment link in your invoice
Your customers will see a “Pay” button
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!
Posted September 15, 2011 by Darth Categories:apps, Features, News
Track multiple sales tax rates, email invoices in HTML, GoPayment integration and more coming soon with our next release being rolled out over the next few weeks. As always we hope that these changes benefit you. So keep the comments coming!
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.
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!
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.
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 (QBOA) is a new offering being developed to give accounting professionals the tools to work faster and manage their QuickBooks Online clients accounting needs in one place. QBOA has been in Beta since February and is entering into a Pilot phase, the final step before the offering is commercially launched. The Pilot program gives accounting professionals the opportunity to test most of the accounting features which will be in the first release of the product and give feedback about their experience so that we can continue to make it better.
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.
Posted August 4, 2011 by Darth Categories:Features, News
We’ve added some great new “mini-delighters” in our upcoming release.
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/
Besides that Safari 5.1 still fixes some prior issues specifically relating to navigation - saving a transaction taking you back to the homepage or some other page. If the above do not matter, you may want to switch.
This is just a FYI post for folks, just incase you have stale bookmarks or shortcuts for QBO.
QuickBooks Online Login Page – https://qbo.intuit.com Ideally everyone should be using this as their QBO login page. If you are logging in from other pages, it is encouraged that you use this one instead. Google Chrome users can use that or better yet – the QuickBooks Online App shortcut from the Chrome Web Store both are fine. Most common mobile device users (webkit browser based devices like Androids, iOS devices etc) should also go to this login URL, since it will automatically re-direct you to the mobile website. Otherwise you can go there directly via https://qbo.intuit.com/m
QuickBooks Online Support Page – https://support.qbo.intuit.com While that is our support URL, it is still best to use it from within the product rather than clicking it directly from external sources such as this blog or your bookmarks. Use this as a starting point when needing help or if you want to read knowledge base articles.
This blog – http://blog.qbo.intuit.com Well you are already here if you reading this blog post You should subscribe to this blog for news and announcements. Good place to comment on upcoming features too.
QuickBooks Online Forums – http://forums.qbo.intuit.com If you want to start a discussion or ask generic questions to the community. This is a good place to search / ask for simple help from other QBO users. Account and login related issues or issues that require a 1-to-1 correspondance are better dealt via the support page above and not these forums.
Feature requests and feedback should be sent via the yellow feedback widget in product.
You can report bugs via the same feedback widget or post about it on the forums.
QuickBooks Online Accountant – https://qboa.intuit.com The current URL for QuickBooks Online Accountant login. Currently this QBO product is in pilot stage so the URL may change in the future when the product is fully released.
Take advantage of a limited time promotionto pay your bills online and have Bill.com credit your phone bill $25 for the next 3 months. This promotion ends August 6th. Learn more about Bill.com and the promotion here.
With Bill.com and its integration with QuickBooks Online, you can now view invoices online, route bills for approval, and pay them online through Bill.com. All bills and payment activities are matched and reconciled accurately in QuickBooks Online - eliminating the need for double-entry and managing multiple systems. Bill.com also allows documents to be attached to accounts so all bills and financial documents can be managed in one place.
Manage all your bills and financial documents in one place
Customer Success Story:
Alkahest Artists & Attractions, an entertainment booking company, uses Bill.com on the iPad to pay artists and booking agents from anywhere.
From anywhere and on any device, manage your bills and your cash flow with easy-to-read reports.
”I discovered Bill.com’s integration with QuickBooks Online that works via the Internet, putting all
transactions online. Now I can payeveryone by direct deposit. Our artists are elated and I can
go on the road myself and not have to worry about their payments”
Mac Frampton, Owner and Treasurer
Alkahest Artists & Attractions
Every new contract that comes in to Alkahest is converted to a PDF file and attached to the account as a reference. The integration with QuickBooks Online helps compute commissions owed to independent agents and sends payments directly into their accounts. “In the old days,” Frampton said, “I’d sometimes have to tell the agents not to cash their checks for a few days, to make sure I had money to cover them. With Bill.com and QuickBooks Online, any time they cash their checks, the money is there.”
Check out Bill.com and other apps that work with QuickBooks Online in Intuit App Center.
About ten months ago the QuickBooks Online team launched an open beta of a platform we call “Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online” (IDS for QBO). IDS for QBO is a set of tools that allow third-party developers to create independent applications that will work seamlessly and securely with your QuickBooks Online data. This means that you can utilize enhanced functionality – such as paperless bill-pay, easy expense reporting, and integrated appointment scheduling – via 3rd party applications. This lets you eliminate redundant data-entry and keeps the tools you use to run your business in sync with one another. You own your data – why shouldn’t you be able to easily use it with other applications on the web?
In March, we announced that IDS for QBO had met stability, quality, and performance goals and that it was officially ‘out of beta’. We released with support for a wide range of money-in and some money-out workflows, and with the Intuit App Center Toolbar integrated in the core product so that you can access your apps from within QuickBooks Online.
We’ve developed the platform with performance and security in the forefront of our minds. Rest assured that we’re protecting your data and making sure that when you want to access your data, you don’t have to wait a long time for it. IDS for QBO will only give data access to apps that you sign up for – if you haven’t given an application permission to connect to your QuickBooks Online account, it won’t be able to access your data.
The Apps
QuickBooks Online provides an app center and a platform for connecting to your data, but the ecosystem is nothing without developers building solutions for your businesses. We have been privileged to work with a group of excellent early-adoption partners who have already built out ten applications that you can use to extend the functionality of QuickBooks Online. We owe these developers a big thank you for getting on board early, and we think you’ll find their apps compelling and useful! The following ten applications are currently available on the Intuit App Center:
AuditMyBooks Analyzer analyzes your QuickBooks Online data to catch common bookkeeping errors, indicators of accounting fraud, and other issues with your QuickBooks Online data. AuditMyBooks Analyzer has fast scans that detect most common problems in minutes, and reporting to help you understand the problems with your data.
Bill.com for QuickBooks Online is a paperless bill pay service that works with QuickBooks Online to eliminate error-prone data entry. It imports your chart of accounts and vendors from QuickBooks Online and enables users to view and pay bills electronically. Bill.com is a great way to reduce paper and increase your efficiency with one of the most common tasks in running a business – paying your bills.
Expensify aims to make expense reporting painless. Syncing with your QuickBooks Online company data, Expensify helps you automate the expense reporting process and provides capabilities like receiving expense reports via email and reimbursing them through direct deposit to a checking account. Once an expense report is complete, you can sync it with QuickBooks Online to eliminate painful data re-entry.
Full Slate is designed for businesses scheduling clients for one-on-one appointments, Full Slate offers an online scheduler that lets prospective and existing clients schedule appointments directly from your website 24×7. By importing customer information from QuickBooks Online and synchronizing their contact information as it’s updated, Full Slate helps you manage busy appointment schedules and maintain accurate customer information.
Intuit Small Business Scheduler is an Intuit app that gives your business the ability to manage everyone’s scheduling in one calendar that is available anywhere, anytime, from any computer. From tracking expenses and appointments to remembering internal meeting details, this app is an excellent resource. Synchronizing your customer, employee, and item data with QuickBooks Online keeps Intuit Small Business Scheduler up to date, and lets you charge customers for billable appointments through QuickBooks Online.
OneWay Commerce is an e-commerce application that lets your business use your Facebook Fan page as an e-store. Integrating a shopping cart with your fan page gives you an instant storefront tied into a social media strategy, and integration with QuickBooks Online means no data re-entry is required to keep your financials up-to-date.
Profit for Staffing is an employee management and time tracking application that works with your QuickBooks Online accounts, as well as many payroll services. Providing invoicing, payroll, reporting, and document sharing, Profit for Staffing can help improve communication and workflow across a variety of business needs.
QuickBooks Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides you with new insights into your sales, payment status, and other transactions you’ve had with customers. You get a deep view of your customers and vendors, as well as total data synchronization with QuickBooks Online. Make a data change in either Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online or in QuickBooks Online, and you can quickly and easily update the other application with your changes.
Quotes is a new application for QuickBooks Online that helps you streamline the Request for Quotation (RFQ) process. Integrating with item and vendor data from QuickBooks Online, you can quickly gather multiple quotes for goods or services from different vendors.
Transaction Pro Importer makes it easy for you to import many list and transaction types into QuickBooks Online from text and Excel files. With a UI that gives you control over the data import and field mappings, this could be a great way to import transactions into QuickBooks Online.
What’s Next
We just highlighted the great apps that are currently available to help you run your business better, but there are even more coming. The QuickBooks Online product team is hard at work improving platform functionality to allow developers to build new and better applications that let you leverage your QuickBooks Online data in new ways. We believe that you own your data – we are just here to help you protect and use it.
We’re also partnering with developers and organizations to give you access to even more best-in-class web applications that will work seamlessly with your QuickBooks Online data. These third-party web applications will work with QuickBooks Online, providing your business with new functionality not available in our core product. From data analysis to niche solutions for particular industries, expanded reporting to specialized workflows, we expect to see many more applications launching on the Intuit App Center in the coming year. Our focus is on saving you time and money while running your business, and we think the existing and upcoming apps in the Intuit App Center will help you do just that.
If you are a developer, or a technically minded small business owner, check out our recent post on the IPP blog for the technical low-down and information on how to get started developing your own apps with Intuit Data Services for QuickBooks Online.
Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, online invoicing and cash management solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has just added seamless synchronization with QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online customers can now view invoices online, route bills for approval, and pay them online through Bill.com. All bill and payment activity is matched accurately in QuickBooks Online eliminating the need to manage multiple systems.
Take advantage of a limited time, special promotionto use Bill.com and have Bill.com pay your phone bills for the next 3 months (up to $75). Thousands of businesses are already using Bill.com to save over 50% of the time and cost it takes to pay bills. And now the savings is even greater…let Bill.com pay your bills for you by taking advantage of the special promotion. Learn more about Bill.com and the promotion here.
With the integration, it’s easy to get started instantly. Now you can download all open invoices from QuickBooks Online directly into Bill.com - along with vendor lists and chart of accounts. You can begin paying bills instantly and avoid the time and costs of starting a new system.
Bill.com gives you complete control over your finances and gives you peace of mind to enjoy why you’re in business in the first place. Mac Frampton, performer, part owner and treasurer of Alkahest Artists & Attractions sums it up: ”It was hard to pay our artists and booking agents while I was on the road, now with Bill.com I can pay everyone by direct deposit, our artists are elated and I can go on the road myself and not have to worry about their payments.”
Check out Bill.com and other apps that work with QuickBooks Online in Intuit App Center.
We will be rolling out the following changes over the next week. If you don’t see them right away, you will soon.
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.
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
When you are trying to use an existing entry, you typically do one of the following:
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.
Issues with the current drop downs
When trying to use an existing entry, as you notice that both approaches above have their set of issues.
Users ideally want the drop down button to work as intended – to show the drop down list whenever clicked.
As well as typing in should show the filtered list of entries based on what you type.
Right now we seem to have an either this OR that approach and you can’t get both.
In both the add cases you have deal with a window based popup.
As you know that we are trying to get rid of window-based popups to make the user experience better – most people hate popups and browsers love blocking them.
Throwing of popups is also generally considered laggy.
The window-based popup may get minimized / hidden accidentally which may confuse the user as to why there screen is frozen.
Another drawback of the current drop down quickfills is that they hinder some UI performance.
While this may not apply to the memorize report group drop down, we have noticed page load times being slower on pages where such drop downs have a lot of entries, eg: having 1000 customer names in a drop down or 1000 items / services in a drop down.
While this doesn’t affect the majority of our users, there are some with enormous amount of entries for those drop downs.
Besides the above drawbacks, such old drop downs are one of the major reasons that prevent us from allowing the full QBO website on a touch based tablet device like the iPad.
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.
QuickBooks Online is supported on the following browsers (what we officially support)
Windows
Google Chrome
Firefox 10 or higher
Internet Explorer 8 or higher(recommended version 9 or higher)
Safari 5 or higher(recommended version 5.1 or higher)
Mac
Google Chrome
Firefox 10 or higher
Safari 4 or higher(recommended version 5.0.6 or higher)
QuickBooks Online may be usable but not supported on the following browsers
Such browsers are not officially supported but are also not blocked. If any browser/platform specific issues are found, please report them on the forums as QBO support agents cannot help you with such issues. Read below what we mean when we say browsers are not officially supported.
Windows
Internet Explorer 7(recommended version 9 or higher)
Firefox 3.x (recommended version 10 or higher)
Opera 11
Mac
Firefox 3.x (recommended version 10 or higher)
Linux
Google Chrome
Firefox 3.x or higher(recommended version 10 or higher)
Browsers that we block
We prevent QBO access on browsers with versions older than the above listed. Such browsers are blocked mostly due to lack of testing, low market share and also simply because they are a good riddance from the web. Please expect IE7 and Firefox 3.6 to fall in this category sometime in March / April 2012 time frame.
PDF Plugins for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari Users
Here is roughly what we mean when we say a browser is not supported
Users will still be able to use QBO on the browser unless it is completely blocked out (eg: IE6 or below is blocked out, Firefox 3.5 or below is blocked out)
We will not block the browser completely till its % usage is relatively low (eg: IE7 or Firefox 3.6 will be blocked off soon once their usage % is low enough)
If the browser is not blocked then:
We are not actively testing QBO on that browser or developing for that browser
People will be ignoring or not filing new bugs against that browser unless they are deemed necessary for QBO to function
Any existing bugs specific to that browser will be de-prioritized and probably never fixed unless they are deemed necessary for QBO to function
Users can still call support if their issues happen irrespective of the kind of browser they use (eg: generic QBO/ accounting issues)
Newer features may not be available in an unsupported browser
This does not apply to people using modern browsers (Chrome / Firefox) on unsupported platforms like Linux or Chrome OS. Assuming you guys are keeping the browsers updated via the linux update manager or another way, you should get exact same QBO features as Chrome / Firefox on windows or mac.
For all browsers
Try to keep your browser updated and not fall below the 2nd oldest version. See below for specifics.
If you are using Firefox 3.x OR Internet Explorer 7 (please read)
These browsers are no longer supported. You can continue using them, but you are doing so at your own risk. We highly recommend that you upgrade to either a newer version or switch to a different browser that is supported. Access to QuickBooks Online on these browsers will be blocked sometime in the March-April 2012 timeframe.
If you are using Internet Explorer 8
We fully support IE8 and will continue to do so. However you will get better performance if you choose to upgrade to one of our recommended browsers above. If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7 and are loyal to the IE camp, then consider upgrading to IE9. Others can remain on IE8 or upgrade to Google Chrome or Firefox 10+.
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