Packed with more than 50 minutes of new and enhanced product features implemented by Intuit within QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online-Accountant during December, 2015 through February, 2016, with a a few sneak-peeks of releases being pushed out (almost as he spoke), Woody Adams, probably Intuit's best known Product Specialist, and a guy who is considered by many as the face and voice of QuickBooks, gave webinar participants a thorough review and maybe even raised a few 'shouts of joy' over some of the enhancements.
March 2016 QB Talks Webinar
At least 2 enhancements caught my eyes and ears quite unexpectedly, both dealing with the migration of Company files from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. One of these was the fact that now Desktop Payroll Data migrates (that is, 'properly converts') 75% of the time without further 'tweaking'.
Intuit
Migrate QBD Payroll Items to QBO
This functionality (as seen above) allows you to 'Match your company's unique payroll items' so that the migration process can properly configure those items for QBO. In the example below you can see that QBO has converted the year-to-date 'net pay' for each of the employees in the 'desktop' file.
Intuit
Year-to-date Payroll Conversion QBD to QBO
And not only did the 'net pay' migrate properly, but Woody's example also included all of the various payroll liabilities (as can be seen below) along with other payroll items.
Intuit
Company Payroll Totals including All Payroll Items
This is a 'Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat' (as Tony the Tiger would say it) enhancement that really can cut down on the time required to convert a desktop file with payroll. The development team that worked on this functionality is 'still working' so as to improve that 75% conversion figure to and even higher percentage. But even the present functionality, when coupled with the next little feature Woody shared can greatly enhance the successful conversions ProAdvisors make for their clients.
When we convert a clients desktop file through QuickBooks Online Accountant there is a big surprise awaiting us at the end of the 'automated process'. Sorry folks, I got so excited when Woody showed this off in the first hour's webinar, I forgot to get a screen capture; and he got so pressed for time trying to illustrate a few extra points in our late-afternoon's webinar that he was only able to chat about this new 'wowzer' as we were actually conducting our final polling question.
After the conversion process takes place, and the email confirming that the file has been migrated into QuickBooks Online (from Desktop) there is now an Excel spreadsheet embedded in the email. When you open the spreadsheet it is a very comprehensive report of all the various aspects of the file conversion, illustrating anything that may not have converted, or may have converted differently than it appeared in the desktop file. In some cases (as in Woody's example) an account balance might be different, and in the illustrated file conversion we could see where the difference in the amount of the Sales Tax liability came from. This is MAJOR stuff folks. One of the big issues about file conversions in the past has always been the inability to easily track down what didn't convert as expected. While Intuit provided a guide as to data differences, designed to serve as a pre-conversion guide, it is a lot better to see the actual file data elaborated upon after the migration so that you can identify, locate and fix the issues than to just have to start looking at all the possibilities based upon a multi-page guide. I am practically 'dumb-founded' by this enhancement; so much so that I have given Liz Scott, Insightful Accountant's Contributing QBO Author a 'priority assignment' to cover this topic in a upcoming article. Be on the lookout for her article soon.
Woody spent a good deal of time discussing the new 'Categories' feature that allows you to further 'define' and 'refine' your Products and Services list. As you probably know there have been a lot of 'inventory-related' changes to QBO (Plus) within the past 6-months or so. Well now, Intuit has not only spent a great deal of time giving you this categorical functionality, but also including 'categorical-related' filtering and sorting within reports.
Intuit
New QBO Categories for Products/Services
Woody, a Certified ProAdvisor in QuickBooks Point-of-Sale (as well as QuickBooks Online) actually compared this new 'category' functionality to the use of Departments in QB-POS. It provides a way to establish an additional hierarchy that has functional meaning much more so than simply using 'parent' and 'child' items. QBO has already given us the ability to use both 'locations' and 'classes' and now it adds this new 'Category' form of 'item definition'; I mean, how many more differential characteristics could you possibly want in a single data file? "This is yet another big 'way to go, QBO' in my book."
Well if you thought I was going to give you a complete synopsis of the entire Webinar you were wrong, you will just have to watch our 'archive' of today's recording if you want to find out more....and believe me, if you are a QBO user, or a ProAdvisor who actively supports QBO clients, you are going to want to find out more.
Here is the link to our Web Seminar Archives at Insightful Accountant, you will find both the webinar recording, and a downloadable PDF of the webinar's PowerPoint listed there.