Here’s a quick look at the updates that Intuit is releasing for their QuickBooks Online update for October 2014. Keep in mind that they roll these out to users in waves, so you might not see these right away. These are all incremental changes, tweaks to the program that help make the program more useable. No earthshaking new features, but some nice changes.
However, one of the features that they announced isn’t showing up in my test system (at least not at the time I’m writing this) and one of the features seems to be missing an important option.
QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds
This feature underwent a big change last month when they added bank feed rules. Now we start to see some tweaks that are probably based on user feedback.
Recognized Bank Transactions
There will be a new “recognized” view that will list bank transactions that have already been matched, have a rule applied, or use categories from related transactions that you have previously accepted. This should make it easier to quickly accept bank transactions.
Here’s what we saw before:
And here is what you will see now:
Items highlighted in green are the ones that are “recognized” by QuickBooks Online. Clicking the “recognized” tab at the top will filter the list to show you just those items. Check the box at the top left (next to “date”) to select them all, then click Batch Actions and Accept Selected.
This is a very good addition and it should speed up transaction processing.
Bank Rule Logic
When you create/edit a bank rule you now have the ability to add an “or” logic to the rule, which in this case is listed as “any”.
In the old version if you had multiple conditions in the rule you could only say “and” – which means that all of the conditions have to be met.
In the new version you have the option to match “any” condition, which is a logical “or”.
This is a very useful change. Now the rule will apply if any of the conditions match. Unfortunately you don’t have the ability to create more complicated conditions where you can group them, with several “and” and “or” conditions. That is more complicated, of course.
Turn Off Automatic Categorization
Normally when you set a bank transaction’s category the new category will be used for future transactions for that same vendor name. You now have the option of leaving a transaction uncategorized. You may, for example, have a situation where the first transaction gets posted to one category but future transactions from the same vendor should go somewhere else. This helps with that situation.
Here is what you saw in the older version:
And here is what you should see in the new version – this is a screen shot from the Intuit advance information, not from my test file, so it is a bit fuzzy.
I should note that at this time I can’t get this to show up even though all the other features announced by Intuit in this release do show. It is possible that this is because I don’t have any “new” vendor transactions? It also could be that this feature isn’t quite ready for everyone? I’m still looking for it…
Import Bank CSV Files
If your bank can provide you with a .CSV file you can import transactions using that type of file. This is found in Transactions/Banking, then click Update and File Upload.
Before we had this:
And now we have the additional option:
After you select the file you are asked to select the account to import into:
Here is my CSV file. Note that I have “headers” for each column.
Next you will map the fields in the import file to the necessary fields in QuickBooks Online:
In my sample file there were headings for each column (note the check box). QuickBooks Online automatically matched the “Date” and “Amount” columns in the CSV file for me, which is nice. The only things I had to update here in my test was to select the date format and to match the import file’s “ID” column as the description field.
After this, you are given the opportunity to examine all of the transactions for accuracy, and you have the option of skipping any by unchecking the box at the left.
Looking at the bank transaction list, here is the imported transaction:
Interesting, there are some odd things here that I’m not sure work out the way I expected:
- Why “A C” for the “description”? Where did that come from?
- Note that there is no “payee” – even though there was a column with that information in the import file, the mapping process didn’t allow me to select that. I think that this is something that should be included.
- This is a new transaction to a new vendor – I still don’t see the option to turn off the “automatic categorization” that was discussed earlier.
Batch Receive Payments
There is now a checkbox that will let you apply a payment to multiple invoices.
Here’s the old version:
In the new version there is a check box at the top of the column that lets you select all of the transactions listed.
Order Checks
You can now order checks from within the product. This new link will be found at the bottom of the window in the Check or Print Check transaction window.