QuickBooks 2014 - Changes for You Lefty’s

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Here is a short little update for all my “lefty” readers.  Most of my clients are QuickBooks traditionalists, so they have chosen to continue to use the ‘Top Icon Bar’ View option, and the ‘Switch to colored icons/light background on the Top Icon Bar’ preference; however, for those who are “lefty’s”, as I now call them, and prefer the Left Hand Navigation Bar there are a few changes for you this year.

One of the big changes involves the Balances Window. For years people have asked if there was any way to change the accounts visible in this window. For 2014 you can customize the View Balances tab in the left hand bar.  Unfortunately QuickBooks did not provide the right hand display panel of the Home Page with the same option for those continuing to use the Top Icon Bar.  Come on Intuit, you gave us a choice, of Left or Top Icon Bar, we “on Top” people want our customize balance options too.

“Lefty’s” will also notice that there is no more ‘My Apps’ in their Navigation Bar. Apps have instead been added to the My Company window.  Personally I find this a very odd place to put “App” information since historically the company information for a file has been contained in the Company Information window. (So yes, the “My Company” window represents a new display of your company data.)

The ‘Do Today (Date)’ tab is also gone for you “Lefty’s”; you can either access the To Do window from the Company menu, or from the new ‘Reminders’ flag in the extreme upper right of the menu bar. (You will need to insure that your ‘To Do’ items are included in your reminders set-up.) Of course those who have chosen to remain traditional to the Top Icon Bar can still add an Icon to open the To Do window if they prefer.

I wrote this article based upon pre-release versions of the QuickBooks 2014 products, so it is possible that some aspects of this feature might be slightly different, or updated by the time QuickBooks 2014 is actually released. Over the next few weeks Intuitive Accountant will be reviewing more of the new features, functions and enhancements in the various versions of QuickBooks-2014.