Quickbbooks Connect is priced as a monthly service with fees starting at $9.95/month for a single user. You can test it out for free, to see it in action. For more information about Quickbooks Connect or to try it out, visit http://workplace.intuit.com/appcenter/moreInfo.aspx?AppID=3274.

Simplified Set-up – QuickStart Center makes it even easier to get started setting up a new company in Quickbooks, allowing you to add contacts from Outlook or items and services from Excel

Import Contact Lists – You can now import customers & vendors from your contact lists in Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and others.

Search Function – Much more powerful than Quickbooks Find tool, this new function now offers a comprehensive search throughout Quickbooks contacts lists and transaction details.

Right hand Panel for Invoices & Bills – When you create a bill or invoice, Quickbooks now pulls up a panel on the right side with all pertinent info for that particular vendor or customer.

Balance Sheet by Class – Previously limited to the Profit & Loss Statement, Quickbooks 2011 now allows you to classify assets & liabilities on your Balance Sheet.

Batch Invoicing – Useful when you have to create multiple invoices, you can now create a single invoice & then duplicate it for a group of customers.

Email Quickbooks invoices using your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other 3rd party email accounts.

New Customer Collection Center makes it much easier to perform collection tasks and improve your cash flow.

These new features have all been added since Quickbooks 2010. If you are using an earlier version of Quickbooks, there are many other features, added to previous versions (Quickbooks 2009 & 2010) that might be of interest, as well. For a comparison list of features added over the last 3 annual versions of Quickbooks, click on this Intuit page:

http://quickbooks.intuit.com/pro/whats-new/

.    I came across the Transaction Pro Importer program while looking for a solution for a client who used the Concur Solutions website to track Rep expenses across the country. The Reps would submit receipts online. After the client approved them, direct deposit checks were issued from within Concur. The client was downloading an Excel report from Concur and then manually entering each check and related expenses into Quickbooks.  They were looking for a way to automate the data entry process from the Excel report into Quickbooks.

.   Transaction Pro Importer (TPI) proved to be the answer to their prayers. The program can take a variety of transaction data from an Excel spreadsheet and import it into Quickbooks. It can import all kinds of transactions, everything from bills, checks (except payroll) and credit card charges to Sales Orders, Invoices and Deposits. It also handles most lists in Quickbooks. You have to do some mapping work, telling TPI what fields in the Excel spreadsheet belong to what fields within Quickbooks, to get your first data spreadsheet imported. Once you have the mapping done, you can save that mapping configuration and all future imports are just a matter of a few clicks.

.     The TPI program can be found on the Baystate Consulting website (http://quickbooksimporter.com/Default.htm). It is reasonably priced and I found the email tech support very responsive. Please feel free to write me with suggestions for future topics regarding 3^rd party software that works with Quickbooks.

.     I’ll just comment on a few of Karl’s utility programs. Let’s say you have an invoice that you’d like to duplicate for many customers (for example, monthly membership dues). Rather than having to create the invoice individually for each customer, you could use the Invoice Duplicator program. Now let’s say, you’ve created the invoices & printed them, but you want to print them again 2 weeks later. Instead of having to open each invoice & mark it “to be printed” again, you can acquire the “Mark Invoices to be Printed” Utility, which will mark a whole batch of invoices to be printed with a few clicks.

.     There are utilities that will combine A/R & A/P data from several Quickbooks company files. Another will transfer data from one Quickbooks company to another. I’ve used the Data Transfer utility and Beginning Balance Transfer Utility to shrink Quickbooks data files for clients when the file size has become too unwieldy. There are other specialized utilities worth checking out, as well. Karl currently has 22 listed on his website ( www.q2q.us) . The utilities are all reasonably priced and tech support is great. You’ll usually get a response to any email query within 24 hours from Karl himself.

.     As 3rd Party programs continue to add a lot of value to your accounting experience, allowing you to expand the usefulness and productivity of Quickbooks, I will continue to write about them in future columns. Feel free to contact me if you have questions regarding Quickbooks and 3rd party software.

Quickbooks Pro 2010 is available for around $150. It does offer a lot of new bells & whistles over QB 2007, so you might consider upgrading now, even if you don’t have to.

You can call the National “Do Not Call List” number at (888)-382-1222. You must call from the phone you want blocked. Your number will be blocked for 5 years.

You can also register more than one phone number by going the their website at: www.donotcall.gov.

      If you’re currently not using the online banking feature within Quickbooks, you should really take a look at this option. Downloading bank account and credit card transactions not results in improved productivity, but it has the added benefits of  better transaction detail and added security.

        On several occasions, I’ve found forged checks within a day or of their being cashed at a client’s bank. Downloaded transactions match up against transactions within Quickbooks. On these occasions, a check downloaded from the bank that wasn’t issued by the client. The client was able to take action quickly. Without online banking, the forged checks probably wouldn’t have been spotted until the following month, when they received their bank statement in the mail.

Another addition I’m looking forward to is the new Document Management system in Quickbooks 2010. This feature allows you to attach a document to a transaction, vendor, customer or employee  inside  Quickbooks.  For example, when you receive a bill from a vendor, you can scan it and attach it to the transaction when you enter the bill in Quickbooks. When you’re sitting down to pay your bills, you can call up images of the attached bill with a click. Imagine how much easier it will be when trying to find a bill from a year ago – just clicking to pull up the digital image, rather than plowing through the box with last years bills in it. Likewise, you can attach a receipt to a check transaction or an employee form to the employee’s name in Quickbooks.

These are only a couple of the new features available in Quickbooks 2010. Intuit estimates a 15% – 20% increase in productivity with Quickbooks 2010. I’ll be writing about additional features in future blogs. Stay tuned…

Some of these temporary breaks may eventually be extended by Congress, but others may not be. So, where practical, you may want to take advantage of the breaks while they are available.  

• To help get you started, here are a few breaks that are currently set to expire in 2009. 
• If you claim the standard deduction for 2009, you may also claim an additional deduction for real estate property taxes.
   
• Whether you claim the standard deduction or itemize your deductions for 2009, you can deduct the sales tax you pay on a car or truck purchased by December 31, 2009 (but the deduction is phased out if your income is too high). 
   
• If you itemize your deductions for 2009, you can choose to deduct state and local sales taxes instead of claiming a deduction for state income taxes.
• If you buy a principal residence by December 1, 2009 and haven’t owned a home during the prior three years, you are entitled to a tax credit of up to $8,000 (but again, there is a phase-out if your income is too high).
• If you are age 70 ½ or over and own an IRA, you don’t have to withdraw any funds from your IRA in 2009 unless you wish to.

 There are other breaks scheduled to expire in 2009 and still others will expire in 2010. Click here for a complete list of all 22 Tax Breaks that expire in 2009.