My Favorite Newbies - QuickBooks 2020 Desktop

by

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my favorite things”1

Each year, I begin my favorite newbies article with the excerpt from "My Favorite Things," which was composed for "The Sound of Music." The song emphasizes the simple things in life.

Some years my favorite things were ‘complex’ features found in QuickBooks Enterprise, perhaps only in Advanced Inventory, and yet other years they were some of the most simple things found also in Pro and Premier. Still other years they were features geared solely toward accountants, bookkeepers and ProAdvisors and found exclusively in the Accountant versions of the software.

This year, I am going to give you just 'what I like best', the things that give me the 'warm fuzzies inside' and make me think that "there is indeed a future for Desktop."

Warm and fuzzy # 1 - Automated Payment Reminders

Automated Payment Reminders are designed to save you time by automatically creating reminder emails for outstanding invoices to your clients with the content you choose, even allowing you to send different reminders to different customers, plus you always have the option to review the reminders prior to sending them out.

Think about it, you don't have to keep track of past due invoices, QuickBooks is doing it for you and letting you know when you should be sending notices so you never forget to remind your clients it’s time to pay.

With the Invoice tracking feature and special 'Reminder' status posting in the Customer's Sent Email tab you will easily know all the details about your client's past due status and if it's time to 'dun' them again for their invoice.  Read my detailed article on this feature for more information.

Warm and Fuzzy # 2 - Automatically Add Customer PO# to Invoice Emails

So why have we not had this all along? I mean, a lot of customers use Purchase Order Numbers when they give you an order for products and services, but what good does it do for you to write that number down if it doesn’t display where your customer can easily find it when you send them their Invoice?  But with this new feature in QuickBooks Desktop 2020 you can edit any Invoice Email Template so that the Customer's PO# automatically appears in the subject line of the Email.

This is just one of this years features that makes me think that Intuit is really listening to their customers. They maybe a little slow to react, but they are responding to what customers are asking for and are delivering improvements to desktop that are needed.

To get all the information on this feature read my detailed article here.

Warm and Fuzzy # 3 - Combine Multiple Emails

With this new QuickBooks Desktop 2020 feature you can combine multiple Emails to the same Customer from within QuickBooks into a single Email so that all their PDF Invoices, or other forms are transmitted together. And believe it or not, this magic is made possible with the check of one simple checkbox, ‘Combine all forms to a customer in a single email’ at the bottom of the window where you select the Emails you want to send.

While this is perfect YET; for example, you can use this with QuickBooks Payments... it has the potential for solving a lot of time consuming work when people tried to work around QuickBooks and send all the PDF invoices via and email from outside of QuickBooks.  If Intuit get the payments problem fixed, this should be a real winner.

Find out more about why this feature makes me warm and fuzzy in my detailed article.

Warm & Fuzzy # 4 - Horizontally Collapse Report Columns

Probably solving a need for 50% or more of all QuickBooks users, definitely another case of Intuit having heard the 'outcry' users posted in feedback because we have all been wanting this feature forever.

If you needed to run a report that displayed data by columns, like jobs or classes, you had to scroll to find the displayed total columns, or export the report to Excel so that you could hide the columns and just display the appropriate total columns. QuickBooks 2020 gives you the ability to view the totals of data displayed by columns without having to scroll through large reports, or export the data to Excel.

For all the details on horizontally collapsing report columns just read my article.

Warm & Fuzzy # 5 - QuickBooks Enterprise Alternate Vendors

This feature makes me think that QuickBooks Enterprise is really back on track and going somewhere toward becoming a full-fledged ERP, at least if you are a Platinum Subscriber since this is an Advanced Inventory feature. 

With this new feature you can add up to four (4) Alternate Vendors, each with their own associated prices, delivery times, and part numbers for your inventory items. You can then compare that information with the same for your Preferred Vendor at the time you begin to configure a Purchase Order so that you can make the best buying decision based upon cost or deliver options. Intuit even figured out a convenient couple of methods for users to populate the alternate vendor pricing data into QBES.

With this new feature you will have increased visibility into vendor pricing options, save time importing vendor price lists, and easily create purchase orders with vendor information and pricing that saves you money by using the most cost effective options, and in my book, that makes QuickBooks Enterprise Advanced Inventory Alternate Vendors a winner for 2020.

Warm and Fuzzy # 6 - QuickBooks Enterprise Landed Costs

With this new Landed Costs feature QuickBooks Enterprise v20 Advanced Inventory users have the option of factoring freight, duties, insurance and other miscellaneous costs into their actual item costs to provide them with greater visibility into their true product costs.

This new feature makes it easy to identify true product costs, post them to your vendor bills, update your product costs, update your item selling prices, and do it all with minimal effort, and without the errors and hassle of manual workarounds while at the same time giving you the more accurate inventory valuations and the ability to make better sales decisions.  Get all the information on this feature in my detailed article.

"And those are my favorite newbies for 2020." Oh sure, there were other features I liked, but none of them gave me the 'warm & fuzzies' like these did, so they simply didn't make this list, "so sad."

Editor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to Laura Madeira who helped me by cross-checking my work with her own to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding the release. For Laura's official Intuit version of “QuickBooks Desktop 2020 – What’s New and Improved” check out this Firm of the Future blog website. 

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication not only in providing information, briefings and responding to questions, but in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Chetana Arakanakere, Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Varshitha Gokari, Sumit Poddar, Raman Verma. Of course there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel, behind these people that make the magic happen and too often we forget to say, thank you, to them as well; so to all involved,"THANK YOU"!

1-"My Favorite Things"; Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music (1959), Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.

Figit Friends Newbies (as shown in this articles' headline graphic) are the registered trademark of Mattel, Corporation.