QuickBooks 2011 What's New

Get the full experience with screen shots and the original video web cast here:
http://nerdenterprises.com/blog/2010/09/quickbooks-2011-has-been-officially-r...

Purchase the full 1 hour video review here for only $10:
http://nerdenterprises.com/knowledge/2010/12/quickbooks-2011-exposed/

It's official! QuickBooks 2011 is out and I have to say it is well worth the upgrade as there are some important new features!
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http://nerdenterprises.com/business/2011/05/10/quickbooks-small-business-acco...

There are many things that people have been asking for in QuickBooks for a long time now and Intuit has delivered quite a few much needed features as well as some that are just nice to have. I don't know how many people have actually spent time on the Company Snapshot in QuickBooks. If you haven't I highly recommend you get acquainted with it because it offers some really good information at a glance. In QuickBooks 2011 they've added a new tab called "Customers"

Since most people, unlike me, are NOT numbers people this works much better for most business owners to get an understanding of what the "picture" looks like.

Another feature that stands out right away is the new global search. It is a Google-like search that will bring up transactions, customers, inventory items, and anything else within the QuickBooks universe that contains a match to your search criteria. In my video review of QuickBooks 2011 you can see how to filter the search criteria to get specific about where you are looking for your search results. The original "Find" feature is still very much there an intact.

In the Customer Center there is a new "Collections Center' which gives you information at a glance about who is past due and who is almost past due. This includes a module that lets you e-mail those customers. Speaking of E-mail QuickBooks 2011 now lets you use most popular web mail features like Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail to send your invoices and statements. Previous versions of QuickBooks only work with outlook.

Rumor has it there will be no more issues with the PDF converter, because there is no more PDF converter. QuickBooks used to create a virtual printer driver in order to create the PDFs. In QuickBooks 2011 the PDF is now created internally so you are actually saving the PDF instead of printing it to a print driver that creates the PDF. This is a really important upgrade because there have been a lot of problems with this, especially for people running Windows Vista and 7 on 64-bit machines.

Invoices and bills have a new summary on the side that shows you a history relative to that customer or vendor. This comes in handy, especially since lots of the information is hyperlinked allowing you to click through to the source.

Bills have a similar feature relative of course to the Vendor information.

Possibly one of the greatest new features if you're an accountant is the ability to run a Balance Sheet By Class report. Previous to QuickBooks 2011 this was not possible. You could run a Profit and Loss By class, but never a Balance Sheet. You had to create separate Balance sheet accounts and even open a separate bank account for each class if you truly wanted to separate them on the balance sheet. It will be interesting to learn (and you know I will do it) how QuickBooks handles the equity accounts. This feature is probably more exciting for nerdy accountants like me then it is for the masses.

Intuit has finally tied in customer payment date information to the invoices. So now you can run reports and show the date paid on an invoice. Also the "Paid" stamp that appears on invoices that are paid in full now shows the date right there. What is especially exciting about this is that it gives rise to a new standard report called the "Average Days To Pay" report. Great information when evaluating clients and how they pay. I have actually been known in the past to run a customer balance detail report in QuickBooks, then export it to excel, then back in QuickBooks double click each invoice, click 'History' and list the payment date in my excel version so I could run the same analysis that is now available in one click. Maybe 2 J.

Sales by Item and Sales by Customer detail reports now total your quantity columns. Another thing I used to have to export to excel to do. You can also run a Sales by Ship To Address. This kind of information will come in real handy if you have customers with multiple ship to locations.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• QuickBooks 2011
• New QuickBooks Features
• QuickBooks Tuitorial
• QuickBooks Help

[chrion7]

Good demo; question though, we used quickbooks back in 1998 and I see they have finally put in some better features. The one thing that I am afraid still remains is that Quickbooks Items have sub-cateogries but it will still not display them as an item tree when placing invoices. This is very annoying if you have 5000 products in 20 categories. It's impossible for a sales clerk to find anything.

Quickbooks should supported nesting items and display as a folder tree. Should be SIMPLE.

[nerdenterprises]

@chrion7 You can see the indented sections in the drop down when you are choosing an item. Of course now QB 2012 has been released. I can't post links here, but if you visit my main website and then click the "Knowledge Srore" link at the top, you will see my 1 hour video that you can download there for $10 going over all of the new features!

[HSOY82]

Thanks for the overview of the new features in QB 2011!

[nerdenterprises]

@HSOY82 Thanks! Glad you liked it :)

[TimRideout]

Another specific example: when I Maximize a window (a report, for example) - when I restore it, it doesn't go back to its original size and position - somy nice little window layout (that I have to do btw because the QB layout is horrible) is toast everytime I maxmizeand restore... infinitely lame! Also, try using it on multiple monitors then go back to single monitor - you can't access some of your windows! lollll get the bug spray baby

[TimRideout]

@nerdenterprises I understand your positioning as a pillar of the Intuit tech support community! That's great - and shows a lack of support on Intuit's part (your service is miles ahead of theirs in this casual conversation). For me it's not a question of specifics, but a general feeling that the software is way behind in terms of usability for anybody other than an accountant. For the Average Joe Businessman a LOT of things could be done better

[nerdenterprises]

@nerdenterprises PS I am not aware of any accounting software that lets you work in 2 invoices at once. It's a database thing - you have a customer name associated with accounts receivable and depending on what you are invoicing for possibly inventory, COGS and income all being affected at one. So it is a pretty dynamic thing.

[nerdenterprises]

@TimRideout I understand. A lot of people lean on me for tech support :) As far as opening more than one invoice at a time that hasn't really been an issue for me. So in a case like that I would ask what you were trying to accomplish (ie why do you need 2 open at once) there might be another way to accomplish whatever it is you "really" needed to.

[TimRideout]

@nerdenterprises I just mean in terms of the design of the interface - it was obviously designed for - and by! - accountants. Non-intuitive to the exxxxxtreme. For example - you can't have two invoices open at the same time; up until the last version, you had to install Google Desktop Search to search anything; you can't interface with Outlook Contacts. Etc. Also, the learning curve is very high for most, I would venture to guess. And good luck with tech support - in India. And PAID. Ouch.

[nerdenterprises]

@TimRideout Well I don't work for Intuit but I do use the program daily and have a lot of luck searching for transactions and finding them. I have had many clients like you who were completely turned around after a few sessions with me :)