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FROM: MAR-APR 2008 ISSUE | BY SUSAN KING
If you operate a small business in Canada, you probably use either QuickBooks or Simply Accounting software to maintain your general ledger and perform routine administrative tasks such as writing cheques or preparing invoices. Intuit Canada is hoping that new businesses will choose QuickBooks, and so they upgrade their software each year. Intuit says that QuickBooks 2008 is their biggest release in years, and this article will review the new features and changes, specifically QuickBooks Premier.
Navigating QuickBooks 2008
The first thing existing users will notice is major changes in the user interface, navigation, and search tools. The various navigators (e.g. Company, Customers, Banking) have been combined into one Home page, a workflow diagram that shows how the various modules integrate. From the Home page, you simply click the activity you wish to begin, and a new window opens for each one you select. The EasyStep Interview, QuickBooks questionnaire for setting up new companies, has been simplified to 28 screens from 126, and the Home page is customized based on the answers to the questions.
To get information about customers, vendors, and employees, three new “centres” provide access to balances and previously entered transactions. A new search function using Google Desktop technology will search both QuickBooks and other data on your computer for key words. This function is customizable and optional, and the Find function from previous versions of QuickBooks is still available.
New and Improved Features
The biggest feature changes in QuickBooks 2008 are in the sales tax and payroll functions. In the revised sales tax module, new companies automatically have appropriate tax jurisdictions and tax returns set up with line numbers corresponding to the tax returns. These line numbers are mapped to “sales tax items,” a new way of tracking all sales tax transactions. Additional provinces can be set up quickly, and tracking custom taxes such as import duties is also possible. GST can now be split into two accounts, thereby separating tax collected from tax paid. Filing the sales tax return clears out the balances in the sales tax items and posts a journal entry to create a bill if you owe tax and an invoice if you are expecting a refund.
In the payroll function, you can assign employees to payroll schedules to facilitate payment of different types of employees on different frequencies. A reminder of a scheduled payroll appears in the Payroll Centre, although not yet in the Reminders list. Some processes have been redesigned to make entering and reviewing payroll and creating pay cheques easier.
Some of the features designed for accountants have been improved. The Audit Trail is always on, and there is no longer an option to disable this feature. This means that all changes to transactions are maintained and reported on the audit trail report. Forms such as invoices and purchase orders are now easier to customize. If you choose the Accountant Edition you can switch easily between any other QuickBooks edition (EasyStart, Pro, all Premier editions) when working with your clients. A new Working Trial Balance window allows you to enter adjusting journal entries and a working paper reference. Enhancements to the Accountant’s Copy feature help you work with your client’s files more efficiently at year end by creating a dividing date between the period you are working on and the current period your client is working on, and by providing notes for your client’s review before he imports your changes.
Some features are now available only in the Premier Edition of QuickBooks. If you need sales orders and back order tracking, or if you assemble inventory or buy and sell inventory in different units of measure, you will need the Premier Edition. Multicurrency is now a special Premier Edition. All Premier Editions retail for $499.99
Technical Notes
QuickBooks 2008 runs on a more robust, SQL compatible database, Sybase iAnywhere, so larger companies with higher transaction volumes should notice an improvement. It also runs on Microsoft Vista. Synchronization with Microsoft Outlook is available with a free downloadable synchronization tool. Of course new technology requires more hardware horsepower, including 1 GB of disk space (plus space for data files), and when using Vista, 1 GB RAM. A new QuickBooks 2008 installation will not overwrite previous versions, so allow space for those too.
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