What's new in QuickBooks 2011.

• Author: Kepczyk, Roman H.
• Position: TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

QuickBooks continues to be the predominant small business accounting product for firms and their clients. The 2010 version added enough features to warrant an upgrade, but for those who are still working on 2009 or older versions, it is worth jumping directly to QuickBooks 2011 to take advantage of the 2010 features and new 2011 upgrades, which became available last September. These upgrades are targeted at quicker access to client information and processing, which means that CPAs will be able to do more within QuickBooks in less time.

Here are some of the key 2011 QuickBooks Professional features to consider:

1. QuickBooks Search helps you locate customer, accounts, reports or invoice details much faster using keywords. It has advanced features to narrow down the results.

2. QuickBooks has added a Collections Center to help users follow up on receivables by identifying customers who are past due and those that are close to being past due. Users can then send a collection notice with the "Select and Send Email" prompt directly from their webmail account, which can be defaulted to an Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! account.

3. When creating new transactions or editing existing transactions, users can pull up customer, vendor contact and transaction history in the same window to see prior information instead of jumping between transaction screens and a report screen.

4. When repetitive billing to a client is necessary, QuickBooks 2011 adds Batch Invoicing that allows users to generate a number of invoices at one time that can be saved and sent in the future. The Batch Invoicing system allows those invoices to be edited if there are changes in pricing or other details in the future without having to generate each invoice individually; think scheduled progress payments or fixed fee accounts.

5. Intuit added a Customer Snapshot and Customer Vendor History screen that shows information about purchase history, outstanding balances, average days to pay, etc., on one comprehensive screen.

6. The PAID stamp on the invoice has now been updated so it includes the date the item was paid. That means users don't have to go to the Customer Center or transactions to look it up.

One more feature: In the QuickBooks Accountant version, users will have a File Manager that makes it possible to...