What's new with QuickBooks?
By Michael Burns published in the CAmagazine
November 2004
QuickBooks has been one of the leading small business accounting
systems for years. Originally, it was designed for small businesses
with no accounting knowledge. But as Intuit's flagship product,
it has now been updated with several new features, such as contact
management, loan management, cash flow projection and a revised
help function. The new version, QuickBooks 2005, shipped on September 2, 2004.
Before deciding what to include in the 2005 version, Intuit
conducted extensive market research that included a product survey,
visits with users to observe and interview, a conference with its
ProAdvisors, and an analysis of tech support call logs, suggestion
databases, and outbound calls to the user base. The changes should
appeal to QuickBooks small business customers. But is QuickBooks
also suitable for mid-market companies?
Target market
QuickBooks is targeted to small businesses with 1-20 employees.
Customized versions of QuickBooks are also available for accountants,
contractors, retail and repair businesses. The Accountants edition
allows accountants to better manage their client files using Internet-based
remote access. The other industry- specific systems are designed
and set up specifically for those industries to manage their businesses
more effectively.
QuickBooks 2005 supports five simultaneous users and includes
many high-end features including multi-currency, custom fields,
ability to break out financials by division or department, multiple
price levels, and ability to buy, sell and stock inventory in different
units of measurement. But there are maximum file sizes that might
cause a problem for some companies. For example, you can have no
more than 14,500 individual inventory items.
To meet the needs of larger organizations, Intuit launched
its Enterprise edition
in March 2003. This edition doubled the maximum number of simultaneous
users to 10 and also doubled the maximum file sizes. Although the
edition took off in the US,
especially in the middle market, it was discontinued in Canada
in July 2004. That may be because some people at Intuit considered
Canada
as a land of small businesses. More likely, the problem is with
branding in the Canadian marketplace. QuickBooks has been held up
as a small business solution, and it's difficult to change public
perceptions without extensive marketing campaigns. Also, Canadians
are probably more conservative and a tougher audience. According
to Intuit, "The typical QuickBooks customer is a small business
with 20 or fewer employees and annual revenue of less than $2 million.
The ideal use of QuickBooks is to keep at least two years of detailed
transactions in a data file so that you can run comparative reports
and have prior-year project information."
Cost
Choose between QuickBooks Basic at $199.95, QuickBooks Pro at
$349.95, QuickBooks Premier, or a QuickBooks Premier Custom Edition
at $499.95. Here we will focus on the Premier edition, which is
the only one that includes Customer Manager, Loan Manager and Cash
Flow Projector.
New features
For QuickBooks 2005, the biggest enhancement is the inclusion
of Customer Manager. Whenever a customer calls, Customer Manager
gives a complete overview of that company's information on a single
screen with key documents easily accessible. The system allows you
to view contact information, customer history, recent QuickBooks
transactions, related documents, to-do lists and appointments. It
integrates with QuickBooks and uses Microsoft Outlook for email.
Customer Manager also includes the ability to maintain multiple
relationships associated with each contact - a feature normally
found in higher-end CRM systems. However, it would be better if
QuickBooks allowed you to tag each relationship with the type of
relationship. It could then be possible to run reports that could,
for example, show how much business was attributed to a specific
referral.
Like ACT, Customer Manager is a contact management system.
It is not meant to compete with customer relationship management
systems such as SalesLogix or Microsoft CRM, which also include
other functions such as sales force and marketing automation. It
is also a separate single-user system (not part of QuickBooks).
You will need to synchronize to keep the contact information up
to date. Also on the downside, there is no way to select contacts
based on multiple criteria, no mail merge for multiple contacts
and no report writer.
Although Customer Manager has its shortcomings, the average
small business will probably appreciate the one-stop shop for customer
information. And the product will become stronger with future upgrades.
Another enhancement is the Loan Manager, which helps track
the loans that have been set up in QuickBooks. You can keep track
of all your loans in one location and be reminded of upcoming payments.
In the Loan Manager, you can add and remove loans you want to track,
view payment schedules, set up loan payments, and analyse payment
information for various loans, whether they be existing or prospective.
QuickBooks 2005 also includes a Cash Flow Projector, which
uses the information entered in QuickBooks to provide a six-week
view of all incoming and outgoing cash and will show any weekly
cash excesses and/or shortages. You can compare the effects of increasing
or decreasing cash receipts on your cash flow, see how increasing
or decreasing business expenses will affect your cash flow, and
view the impact of unpaid bills and their due dates.
Intuit has pulled out all the stops in trying to make it
easy to get help. With what is called "Follow-me help",
QuickBooks automatically displays topics relevant to where you are
in the program. You can enter a question and QuickBooks will first
search the on-screen help system to find answers followed by searching
the online knowledge base. QuickBooks will also show how to contact
an Intuit representative or a professional advisor.
Bottom line
QuickBooks keeps getting better and will undoubtedly remain
on the list of leading accounting systems for small businesses.
Nevertheless, Intuit faces an uphill battle in winning over the
middle market. It should relaunch the QuickBooks Enterprise edition
with a marketing campaign showing Canadian accountants that it's
more than a small business product.
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