During today's (8/22/19) monthly 'In the Know' Webinar hosted by Intuit, a couple of things hit me straight in the face that I didn't think I should wait to at least mention them to you because I wasn't even aware that they were underway, or we would have brought them to your attention during the 'other last minute news' segment of our QB Talks Webinar yesterday (8/21/19).
Here are the two items that I felt you needed to know about almost immediately.
1) QBO 'Business View' for QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials or Plus. This will impact 50% of New Users of QBO (within the U.S.) going forward at least for the time being since it is a 'test'.
Business View is designed with a 'Money-In / Money-Out' approach designed to simplify and streamline QuickBooks Online for business users who have told Intuit they felt "they needed to have an accountant's brain to take advantage of QBO."
As part of the set-up of a New Subscription (with the Business View option), users are prompted to select their 'role' (Business Owner, Employee, Bookkeeper or Accountant). Based on this selection either the 'Business View' or traditional 'Accountant View' is displayed.
New Selector to Help Pick View in QBO
The Business View 'Switch' will change the view from the traditional (Accountant) view of QBO, but still allow customers and accountants to toggle back and forth between the two views to navigate to the view that is best suited to their own needs.
QBO Account & Settings Options allow Users to toggle between Business View and Accountant View if they have they new 'trial' (test) feature.
QBO Business View Settting Options
Intuit reports that the toggles does NOT unlock any new features currently, but the development team is excited about delivering experiences over the upcoming months leveraging the capabilities the new switchable views afford.
Liz Scott signed-up for a new QBO subscription and got this option on her first attempt so it is obviously live. You may well start having some of your clients, or new clients calling you wondering why QuickBooks looks unusual or different than they expect (especially if they were previously using a desktop version of QuickBooks).
Insightful Accountant's QBO Editor, Liz Scott, will have more details about this important development in an upcoming edition of our QBO Monday Minute.
By the way, my question (during today's In The Know Webinar) "What View will Accountants see (especially if the Client has chosen 'Business View') if they access their Clients Books via QBO-Accountant" went unanswered, so I really can't answer that question for you. Perhaps Liz will know by the time she writes her follow-up article.
2) Discontinuation of Slack Integration - Intuit will turn-off Slack Integration as of September 20, 2019. They are discontinuing this feature (service) due to low adoption and use.
This change won't affect any of your firm's Slack channels. You'll still have access to existing messages and files, but you won't get Slack notifications for new QuickBooks projects or tasks. To stay up to date on your Work tab items, you can turn on email notifications under Company Settings.