The New and Improved QuickBooks Online: Towards a Brighter Future

There are plenty of reasons why QuickBooks Online is loved by many sole proprietors and small businesses: not only is it a full-fledged accounting solution with every possible feature a decent business needs, but it also has a stellar app, payroll and tax reporting services, plus very affordable prices. So it is not surprising that QuickBooks Online (QBO) has been chosen by approximately 1.5 million users just in the U.S. – and seeing the latest trends this number will definitely grow. Take into consideration the latest additions and complete makeover, and QBO is indeed facing a bright future.

Better appearance

The company has taken feedback from its users very seriously, and therefore the changes reflect the most important suggestions. These changes can be very small, like renaming the ‘Home’ button to the more appropriate ‘Dashboard’, but they can also be noticeable such as moving the ‘Banking’ tab right under the freshly renamed Dashboard. Another huge improvement is the addition of invoice tracking that updates whenever an invoice is viewed, paid or overdue. Thanks to the simplification of QuickBooks Online’s interface you can say goodbye to jumping back and forth between pages: everything related to sales are now categorized under ‘Sales’, while viewing your expenses is, unsurprisingly, slotted under its respective tab. And last but not least the new ‘Accounting’ tab immediately displays your chart of accounts as well as adding a new feature – ‘Reconcile’ – to the mix.

One small step for QuickBooks, one giant leap for users

Working on a bigger project can be really frustrating when you are not able to manage it properly. However, QBO is more than capable of this with the upgraded ‘Projects’ feature, available for U.S., UK, Canadian, and Australian QuickBooks Online Plus subscribers. This way every single element of a project can be organized in one location, such as associated transactions, the time spent on the job and – as a true novice – project-specific reports like profitability, unbilled time and expenses, and non-billable time and transactions.

Another important improvement is allowing users to link bills, checks and expenses to only a portion of a purchase order with which keeping track of transactions, up-to-date expenses and inventory becomes much easier. Not only that, but you can also close individual lines, see in detail how much is owed and check what kind of transactions are linked to a purchase order.

The new apps

There’s also Workshop Software that can be integrated for a more streamlined workflow management, Findjoo that syncs customers, sales, products and inventory, or Expiration Reminder that – as its name suggests – alerts you of expiration and renewal dates via push notification, email or Slack.