Murph wants to know if you speak French then he is going to invoice you for your merchandise in French. That's his 'Editor's way' of leading in to my story about QuickBooks Online Canada announcing the release of Bilingual Invoices in English-French during QuickBooks Connect Toronto a couple of weeks ago. The new feature will first be launched for all QuickBooks Online Canada users starting in January (2019). I personally would kind of hope it would be launching in Canada; I don't know about you, but I am not anywhere ready to be producing my invoices in English & French.
Jeff Cates, President of QuickBooks Canada announce Bilingual (English/French) Invoicing for QuickBooks Canada
QBO_Bilingual_Invoicing
No, really, Canada is the inaugural testing ground for Intuit's QuickBooks Online 'bilingual' invoicing engine, it just happens that Intuit has selected QBO-Canada as the proving ground with which to test bilingual functionality (using English and French) since so many Canadians speak and routinely do business in both English and French.
The next most likely adaptation of this bilingual functionality will be English-Spanish, with other bilingual language combinations coming on board as it progresses. This is all part of the global vision of Intuit, whose goal is to allow anyone, but especially accountants, using QuickBooks to communicate with all their customers anywhere in their preferred language(s).
How Bilingual Invoicing Works
QuickBooks Online users will be able to assign a preferred language for each customer. From inside each customer's information you can edit their communication 'send communications' language preference (as can be seen in the illustration below).
Configure customer invoice language preference in QBO (graphic captured during a live demonstration while attending QuickBooks Connect Toronto)
Bilingual_Invoicing_Setup_01
Once the customer's language preference is set, all language elements within the Invoice will be set to the selected language, English or French on the Invoice the customer actually receives.
Individual Invoice can be converted on the fly before sending (Graphic image captured during a live demonstration at QuickBooks Connect Toronto)
Bilingual_Invoice_Setup_02
Configuration of the language preference can also be performed in batch while sending several Invoices at once.
Additionally, the preferred method of setup is to create an item in each language to insure proper translation. For example, the QBO file will have both an English and a French version of the same item to be used for Invoicing.
While talking to the Intuit developer team for Canada they confirmed this definitely a phased project with all languages ultimately being available in all QuickBooks Online versions! This is a HUGE undertaking, but a HUGE bolster for the Global QuickBooks Online platform, my friends, all my friends... world-wide!