Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast

In this episode, Hector and Alicia dive deep into the features and benefits of QuickBooks Online Advanced, exploring whether the additional cost is worth it for businesses. They compare and contrast QuickBooks Online Advanced with the standard QuickBooks Online Plus plan, highlighting key differences in user permissions, forecasting, batch editing, and more. The discussion also touches on the transition from QuickBooks Desktop to the online advanced version, providing insights for accountants and small business owners considering the move.


  • (00:00) - Welcome to the Unofficial Quickbooks Accountants Podcast
  • (03:35) - Price Comparison: QuickBooks Online Advanced vs. Plus
  • (05:50) - User Capacity: A Major Selling Point
  • (07:17) - Forecasting: Advanced Budgeting Features
  • (08:57) - Spreadsheet Sync: A Game-Changer for Budgeting
  • (20:28) - Alicia's Correction About this Feature
  • (22:49) - Batch Create Transactions
  • (26:33) - Custom User Permissions: A Work in Progress
  • (29:17) - Diving Into Report Customization and Limitations
  • (31:11) - Workflow Automation and Task Notifications: A Closer Look
  • (44:53) - QuickBooks Online Advanced Tech Support
  • (46:39) - A Few Additional Features Not Listed on QuickBooks.com

Send your Questions/Comments (we could read/answer them on air) ask@uqapodcast.com

Links/Apps Mentioned in this episode:

Creators & Guests

Host
Alicia Katz Pollock, MAT
Alicia Katz Pollock, MAT is the CEO at Royalwise Solutions, Inc.. As a Top 50 Women in Accounting, Top 10 ProAdvisor, and member of the Intuit Trainer/Writer Network, Alicia is a popular speaker at QuickBooks Connect and Scaling New Heights. She has a Master of Arts in Teaching, with several QuickBooks books on Amazon. Her Royalwise OWLS (On-Demand Web-based Learning Solutions) at learn.royalwise.com is a NASBA CPE-approved QBO and Apple training portal for accounting firms, bookkeepers, and business owners.
Host
Hector Garcia, CPA
Hector Garcia,CPA is the Principal Accountant Quick Bookkeeping & Accounting LLC, a globally-serving Technology-Accounting firm based in Miami, FL (USA), specializing in QuickBooks Consulting, but also providing traditional accounting services such as: Bookkeeping, Payroll Processing, Tax Return Preparation, and General Business Advisory. He has over 10 years of experience working with small business finance and accounting, along with 3 Post-graduate degrees from Florida International University (FIU) in Accounting, Finance and Taxation.

What is Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast?

Stay up-to-date on the latest QuickBooks news, tips, and updates with Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors Hector Garcia, CPA and Alicia Katz Pollock, MAT. Hector and Alicia break down need-to-know QuickBooks information in a fun and engaging format. Learn about new product features, accounting technology trends, integration how-tos, and best practices for getting the most out of QuickBooks all while earning NASBA-approved CPE.

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Hector Garcia: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Katz Pollock, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia, CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks.

Hector Garcia: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, we're [00:00:30] going to talk about QuickBooks Online Advanced. Is it worth it? So Alicia and I are going to sort of break down all the features that make the difference between QuickBooks Online Advanced and QuickBooks Online Plus, because that's your next logical alternative. And we're going to break them down in the same order as you see it in the QuickBooks comm sales page, plus a couple other things that are just not included in there that are worth mentioning as well. So, Alicia, let's start with the price tag $200 [00:01:00] versus $90. What is your initial what is your initial thoughts about about just looking at a piece of software that's slightly more than double than the one under it? You you feel that the fact that it's not double, but more than double has any psychological effect on the user itself.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I think the psychology behind that is actually really intricate and interesting on Intuit's part. I mean, your first reaction is like, well, why would I want to pay that much [00:01:30] $200? Oh my God, that's a lot of money. And so it makes you kind of think, okay, well, first of all, my my company doesn't need any of those things. But if you actually take the time to start exploring the feature set and you look at what's possible for a company who is looking to grow and needs batch automations and really needs some special considerations, that's where advanced really shines. And then, you know, if [00:02:00] you had asked me a year ago, I would have been like, well, you know, I have very few people on advanced. I don't know why most of these companies even need advanced. But honestly, this year so many new, really cool features have come out that I look at that price tag now and that $200 doesn't scare me away anymore.

Hector Garcia: I'm going to give you a real sort of conflicted answer that's going to make me sound like a politician, which is obviously perfect for the year 2024, which is I feel that QuickBooks [00:02:30] Online Advance is not worth double QuickBooks Online Plus, but it is worth the extra $110. So that's the concept I'm saying. I think the $110, which is the extra that you're paying for the features, it is worth it, but it's not double as good as. Plus you understand what I mean?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, it kind of makes sense. I think it will probably make sense to people as, as we go through here, because if you haven't taken the time to explore what it does, then [00:03:00] Hector's statement doesn't make any sense. But once you find out what you get for $110, then it sure does.

Hector Garcia: I'll make sure that this will make sense by the end of this. So let's start with the number of users. Quickbooks Online Plus is limited to five users, and QuickBooks advanced allows you to have up to 25 users. That's five times the number of users in traditional ERP software world. The cost per user typically [00:03:30] is a lot more, comparatively speaking, than just doubling from 90 to 200 to go from five to 2 to 25 users. There's almost no software out there where it would only cost double to get five times the amount of users. So that's where I think where the I think the $110 are worth it if you are going to use 2025 users. So that's a that's probably the biggest one. Yeah. I mean.

Alicia Katz Pollock: This alone is worth the $110 [00:04:00] in costs, because if you have 25 users, you're really talking about maintaining an IT infrastructure with servers and 25 computers. And this erases your entire IT department as far as maintaining your data server. And so right there, you have saved more than $110 just by that one feature.

Hector Garcia: Exactly. So just think about it like this $110 for 20 users. Okay, that's less than $5 a user. [00:04:30] No software out there costs less than $5. Not really. I'm sure there's some, but in our world, nothing costs less than $5 a user. Something to think about now. The first major feature that's highlighted in the QuickBooks comm website, in the list of features in that comparison, grid is forecasting. Now forecasting we had a whole episode about this is a companion to budgets. Budgets are included in plus. But forecasting allows you to create another layer of of budgets where you can kind of look into [00:05:00] the future. There are some built in tools. We discussed it in details that allow you to project those numbers out, basically allowing you to pre-fill that information a lot quicker than it would be with a traditional budget. Um, and the nice thing is, once you get the budget, I mean, sorry, once you have the forecast set up, you turn the forecast into a budget. So then you can do a budget versus actual reports. Any thoughts on forecasting as an advanced feature only?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, really what you're looking here is trend for trend analysis so that [00:05:30] you can see how you're doing, how you're going to be doing based on how you've been doing.

Hector Garcia: I personally think forecasting should be available in plus, just because I am going to, I'm going to draw the comparison between plus and Advance the same way we used to look at Premier versus enterprise. Right. Like like this is the kind of the same comparison I want to make. Like Premier always had forecasting, you didn't have to go all the way to enterprise for forecasting. So I personally believe that that should have gone to Premier. But in the QuickBooks online world, hardly [00:06:00] ever. Something starts in advance and goes backwards down. The only example I can think of that I ever remember from the entire history of QuickBooks online advanced is the ability to import budgets that started as an advanced only feature, and then that was deprecated down to, um, QuickBooks Online Plus. I think that's big. But in addition to that, in advance you can use spreadsheet sync, which we'll go into detail uh, soon. You can use spreadsheet sync to edit or upload your budget. [00:06:30] So one thing that to me is very important is if you ever work with a budget, working with a budget in a web based grid is usually a very painful process. We need Excel, Google Sheets, we need spreadsheets, style of tools, and power to quickly edit fields in a budget. So being able to import it with spreadsheets sync is huge. And note you cannot import forecasts through spreadsheet sync. Only budgets. Think that's that's worth mentioning as well. So Alicia, what about spreadsheets? Sync? [00:07:00] Do you use it at all?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I use spreadsheet sync increasingly that when it first came out, I wasn't even sure what the different use cases are and what they generally, the four categories of what spreadsheets sync can be used for is reporting, batch editing, budgets and multi-company reporting. But the ability for me, my favorite one is the editing and uploading. Um, because if you if [00:07:30] I want to make a change across many transactions, the idea of editing it, opening it, changing it, saving it, going to the next one is really time consuming. But when I can open it up in spreadsheet sync, I can see all of the records in one column, and I can literally just change it in one and use the autofill handle and drag it all down, and then instantly upload them all so I can do work in minutes. That used to take me hours. So I'm a big, big proponent of spreadsheets, Inc..

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I'll [00:08:00] be honest with you, I was very much against spreadsheets sync at the very beginning. Not because of the concept. I'm a total spreadsheet nerd. Obviously. I'm completely for anything that has to do with batch editing or modifying things in a spreadsheet to eventually go into QuickBooks online. I was just very much against the implementation of it. It was very quirky. Um, you know, it gave a lot of errors. It wasn't very clear in terms of how to use it. So I think it got started. It, it it got [00:08:30] started through a loss, a slow start per se, but now that it's a bit more mature, I can tell you that specifically, uh, batch editing data or batch importing transactions to spreadsheet sync once you actually learn how to use it, it's really, really powerful. Like really, really powerful, even I would say even more powerful than the SaaS sans and the transaction pro importers of the world. The problem is that SaaStr transaction pro importer are easy to use and spreadsheet sync. It's a hot [00:09:00] mess. I like to actually learn how to use. Um, so if you have like if you've been importing, uh, invoices or bills or whatever through this system that you've had for years via SaaStr or TPI, you're probably better off sticking with that. But if you want to do batch editing of like a journal entry of transactions, change a class or a location or something like that in a spreadsheet format, I think spreadsheets is actually more powerful than the standard, um, uh, API features. And Alicia, I think you might have [00:09:30] a different opinion on this one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, uh SaaStr. And one of my clients calls it Sushant, um, is one of my go to data management. Uh, it does a lot more than just what spreadsheet sync can do. I mean, with spreadsheet sync, you can edit a table and then upload the changes. But sometimes. But, um, SaaStr recognizes actually more fields in the table, and you can export data out and do more things with it and then up import it to modify. [00:10:00] And it it just does more. It has access to more tables, more fields and a little bit more streamlined of a of a process and procedure. But it is a separate subscription. And if all you're using it for is just doing some some quick data updates, then having spreadsheet sync is excellent. I'm definitely a fan of it. It doesn't replace Sushant for me, but it is a. Great tool to have in my in my arsenal. True, true.

Hector Garcia: For batch editing. Saastr [00:10:30] is multiple steps. First you you run SaaStr and you tell it which fields you want to bring in and what filters you export into CSV. You, um you you change it, then you have to import it back, make sure the mapping is correct, and you can actually make it do batch editing. But with spreadsheet sync you click two buttons. It's already on a spreadsheet for you. It wasn't multiple steps. And so. So I feel that in the long terme a spreadsheet sync will win this battle. Um, especially because, uh, because it's a QuickBooks [00:11:00] feature, they're going to have access to more fields that than, uh, an API tool can. The budget is a good example. Budgets are not available in the API. Saastr cannot edit budgets. Spreadsheets sync can. Now I, I completely go out and say, hey, QuickBooks do not monopolize certain fields just because you have all the power like API should be truly open APIs. You should never, um, basically beat out a third party tool because you're holding back on certain fields. You know, things [00:11:30] like, um, custom fields, things like tags have never been an APIs. I would be very disappointed and they'll be excited to see it in spreadsheet sync. But I'll be disappointed if they hold it from third party app developer. So that's in either case. I think this is where QuickBooks might win that battle, because they have control over that data, and they can essentially control what API gets and doesn't get. Um, so that's that's the kind of a bummer around it. But spreadsheet sync is still kind of [00:12:00] an interesting, interestingly powerful, uh, feature.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I think it's a huge value added.

Hector Garcia: All right. The next one is, uh, the fixed asset manager, uh, which is actually a very, very much simplified version of what QuickBooks desktop had for a very long time and recently deprecated, by the way. So it allows you to create assets, uh, fixed assets. You can import them, you can enter them on a, on a grid. And then you can also automate the depreciation. So QuickBooks will automatically [00:12:30] create the journal entries for you and create a depreciation. Alicia, what are your thoughts about using fixed asset manager for the last couple of months?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I'm really glad that it's there. Um, it being able to calculate the depreciation and not have to rely on your CPA or external websites is definitely something that's really nice that they brought into the software and the fact that there's multiple depreciation schedules as well.

Hector Garcia: Okay. The next one is called the expense [00:13:00] manager or the expense claim manager. This is in my opinion, a half developed idea. Like they got a couple people to go to, to, to decide that they were going to compete with like the konkurs and expensive eyes of the world, and they were going to build a built in system where employees through their phones can take pictures of receipts or whatever, and then do an expense claim. So then we can do reimbursements. The whole idea is great. I mean, Expensify is a huge company for a reason. The [00:13:30] problem is it feels like they got like three people to build it, and then the three people were fired or were moved to other locations, other tasks. And then it hasn't been, uh, improved upon for the last two years. So it's really sort of like a living beater. And I don't have any one client that uses that feature.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I have actually implemented it on 3 or 4 people just in the last couple months. And so it you know, in some ways, I agree with you. I think it's a little bit clunky in how it works. But if you're running Qbo [00:14:00] payroll or you have employees in your system, what it's basically allowing you to do is have them be able to use the receipt capture center without being a user. And so that's where this is. The use case where it really makes a difference is with receipt capture, you have to be a registered user in order to forward your email or to take the pictures. But expense claims uses your employee list as its source. And so [00:14:30] you have to go in and you have to turn it, turn it on and sync the employee. But once you do their workforce app, which is the app that they're using for their payroll anyway, then gets a the receipt scan button so that they can take a picture of their receipt. And once they do that, they can say, yes, I'm supposed to get reimbursed for this or no, I'm not going to get reimbursed for this, which means that you can then either turn it into an expense when you see it in the receipt center, or turn it [00:15:00] into a bill to the employee in order to reimburse the employee.

Hector Garcia: Now, I'll make a confession. I had no idea that you could do this from the workforce app, and if that's the case, then I do see I do truly see the value of it. But one of my big gripes about it was that the user didn't have an actual app to do this in. You had to do it from the website, so I had no idea. You could do this from the workforce app. So that's, uh, so with that value [00:15:30] proposition, then I see the value of it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The other thing that it does allow you to do is similar to using Expensify or the other or other ones. You can specify which categories your employees are allowed to use, and you can name them in shorthand. So you can say you can only use fuel and employee meals, but you can call them gas and food. And then that's all they see and that's all they can classify to. So they're not like, you know, seeing your entire chart of accounts. [00:16:00] So, you know, it's like I said, onboarding the employee is a little bit clunky. But if your needs are pretty straightforward, there's no need to turn to third party apps. It is. The expense claim center is in Cuba. Advanced. Hey there. This is Alicia. When we were recording this current episode, I realized in listening back that I actually made a mistake. And I wanted to correct it so that I don't send any of you on a wild goose chase when your employees [00:16:30] are submitting their expense claims and they want to take pictures of their receipts, I had said that they can go into the workforce app or into the QuickBooks app mobile app to do it, but that actually is not true. What your employees need to do is go to the their browser on their phone and log into qbo dot intuit com, and then they will be able to submit their receipts. They're still restricted from all the rest of the functionality, but they're going into the web browser [00:17:00] on their phone to submit their receipt claims by taking pictures. So thanks for listening and thanks for all your support.

Hector Garcia: Okay. The next sort of big feature worth mentioning is the Batch Create Transactions screen. Now, this is kind of a callback to QuickBooks Desktop Accountant Edition and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Edition, where you had a feature called Batch Enter, where you had this spreadsheet style screen where you can maybe copy and paste from a [00:17:30] spreadsheet, and you can batch enter, um, different types of transactions, which is probably, I would say most accountants would say experienced accountants in desktop would say that has been the most productive feature in, uh, QuickBooks desktop accounting and enterprise added in the last decade or so. So they are attempting to do the same in QuickBooks Online Advanced. And the new batch Create Transactions features allows you to batch create invoices, checks, expenses, bills, [00:18:00] deposits, and sales receipts. Now specific to QuickBooks Online Advanced. And this is one of those kind of quirky things is even the batch enter feature is going through a classic mode and uh, and new screen, uh, workflow at the moment. So like even if you go into the new uh, batch transaction screen, there is an old layout and a new layout, and I'm really not sure the purpose of them, but you you might see a bit of inconsistency in the [00:18:30] last couple of, in the next couple of weeks or months on how it works, but it is a really powerful feature.

Hector Garcia: It gives you a copy and paste style style of functionality. So any of those transaction types that I mentioned, you can copy and paste into it, it adds a whole new slew of keyboard shortcuts for you to insert lines, delete rows, duplicate rows. I mean, this is a very different experience from the rest of, um, of QuickBooks online. Like in these screens, if you right click, [00:19:00] you get a custom right click menu. You don't get the regular browser or right click menu. So that's that's kind of interesting as well. And also in this batch import screens you can import from CSV. But then when you bring it from CSV, it previews it in the grid for you. And then from the grid you can make edits and then import. So it's actually a whole new approach to doing data entry in QuickBooks online only available in QuickBooks online. Advanced again, its own [00:19:30] set of keyboard shortcuts, its own type of interface. Even the drop down menus feel kind of different. You know, the tabbing across of them, the interface feels different, but it is a good step forward. In my opinion. It's not where it needs to be, but it is a feature you get with advanced that you don't get otherwise. So Alicia, any thoughts on that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, this is a great tool. If you're if your data is being generated in third party software, you know, POS systems or ERP systems, [00:20:00] and you want to bring in the data, it's great to be able to just do it as like, you know, taking a CSV and copy and pasting your CSV file. So there's not a lot of people that need it, but those who need it. It's crucial.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I would say spreadsheets sync and batch enter are those two features that if that's the only reason you're moving to advanced for, let's say you don't need anything else. I still feel SaaStr and or TPI are going to be, in today's world, a more [00:20:30] powerful add on and less than the extra $110 a month. But if you're using the other stuff, then it's nice eventually when when they add all the transaction types not to have to pay a third party to do additional imports or or batch edits. So that's kind of, you know, again, that's why I started with, hey, it's, it's, it's it is worth $110, but it's not worth double type of thing. And that's kind of like what I'm what I meant by that. The next one is going to be custom user permissions. And unfortunately. So fortunately and unfortunately, fortunately there is sort [00:21:00] of an implementation of this now where you can create custom roles and you can create certain restrictions to what users can do and can't do. The problem is, is the vision for this, like what QuickBooks online has always marketed to? Eventually, how powerful this feature can be has never been truly executed. Like you still go into custom roles and you can only, you know, custom edit whether the customer can go to invoices or [00:21:30] estimates, but you really don't have the whole gamut of can they receive payments? Can they create sales receipts? Can they create credit memos? The current role screen has a bunch of X's kind of indicating that they're working on it. But that's the part that's why it's kind of disappointing. So I would say that yes, absolutely. Yes. Quickbooks Online Advanced has more powerful control features that QuickBooks Online Plus but not worth double not double the power per se. [00:22:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I mean, this one feature alone isn't going to have that much intrinsic value. But it, you know, plus only allows you to say yes, you can do customer. Or no, you can't do customers. You can do AP or are there getting better. The the roles are definitely developing and they're dialing it in. This for me is more like a wish list of I wish I could just pick a list of features I want them to be able to use and just call it good. But for those who are coming over from enterprise who need the [00:22:30] granular permissions at at least this is here and represented, and it's getting closer and closer to what you can and can't do. And oh, Hector, it looks like they are finally doing that. Just what I just said. Hey, this is a you are hearing me live learning something about the software. It looks like some of the roles do now have granular detail where you can view or not view, and have the ability to customize things like expenses and vendors.

Hector Garcia: But that's [00:23:00] just on the report section. So like, um, on on the specific transaction types on the specific transaction types is still pretty limited. Like for example, when you go into sales, you can pick and choose if the customer has the user has access to estimates or invoices, but not the other transaction types. Under expenses, you can pick and choose if the user has access to bills, checks, and expense claims, as we mentioned earlier, but not the other transaction types. So there's a there's a grid that shows you [00:23:30] a wide array of transactions that will potentially be part of the permission structure, but they're not fully there. However, on the reports section, okay. What what they've done is they created two groups. One is called expenses and vendors, and the other one is called sales and customers. And you can pick and choose the specific reports under the sales and customers group or under the expense and vendors group. And you can pick and choose whether the customer, whether the user sorry, can view the report or even after viewing can take a one step further [00:24:00] and customize it. So on the report side, they are getting closer, but they've only done this for like 20% of the report. So again it's it's the promise is there. And it's a beautiful promise. They just have not been able to to just complete it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But this is one that we know that they are actively working on. They know that this is for people moving over from desktop to online, that this is one of the things that they have to dial in. So this is one that's like literally changing every time [00:24:30] I go in to look at it. It's getting more and more granular.

Hector Garcia: Absolutely. And I'll just make a quick confession. If this podcast existed three years ago and we were talking about this three years ago, Alicia would have said the exact same thing. This is something that actively working on and actively improving. The problem is it's too slow, too slow from the perspective of, hey Intuit, you want me to move my enterprise customers to advance? I can't, this feature is not ready yet. So that's a that's a huge uh, to me, it's a huge problem. Um, especially when you go to like 25 [00:25:00] users, the probability of having a customer with 25 users, that's okay with them seeing everything. It's going to be very low. Right. So like the more users you have, the more access control you want to have for those additional users. The value of having more people touching QuickBooks is you give them access to a specific area so they can help with the entire workflow, but not necessarily have access to sensitive information. So at the end of the day, it's just not executed the way enterprise was executed. [00:25:30] Okay, let's move on to workflow automation and tasks. Alicia, what are your thoughts about this feature in advance?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Workflow automation. I haven't seen a whole lot of people use it, but I have been slowly but surely adding it in with my Qbo advanced clients, for example, invoice, um, invoice approvals and bill approvals where you have to send something up the chain to get it approved, much improved. There's a lot of things that [00:26:00] are beginning to be automated. It notifications, late fees, um, unpaid invoices, whether you're trying to actually just get a notification and a reminder about the activity that's happening inside the company, or whether you actually need to bring in your other staff to take action before you can move forward. The workflows are really interesting approach to being able to create your own automations. So I'm definitely a fan. My [00:26:30] one thing that I have trouble with it is that if there's an invoice approval, the getting the notification of the of that people are waiting on me. I don't think Qbo has a notification center that's prominent enough to actually get somebody's attention.

Hector Garcia: And the other challenge I think, in notifications in general is QuickBooks online across the whole spectrum. It it doesn't have a lot of, uh, customization [00:27:00] in terms of who gets notified and when. And so many power users get complain about getting emails for clients that don't even work with anymore or getting paid. Reminders of things that they don't they don't manage for their clients. So what ends up happening is more and more people get desensitized where they see these emails coming in from QuickBooks, and they just they just ignore them. And in between all that junk, you may have good, important reminders that you actually want. So if Intuit [00:27:30] wants reminders to be effective, there has to be a real, real in-depth reminder customization control so people don't start ignoring or out of junking these emails. And essentially the reminders become useless.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, it can be as simple as using the bell up in the upper right hand corner and putting that pink dot on it. When somebody has sent you something that has a notification, that alone would be a complete salve on the whole notification issue for the workflows and tasks. [00:28:00]

Hector Garcia: Right? That that bell again, we're kind of like veering off from QuickBooks on advance issues for a second. But that bell, that little bell icon is severely underutilized. It feels like it's something's going in there. Some things don't go in there. I think that that could be improved. But going back to workflow and automation and tasks, one of the kind of cool things they've added recently is and we've mentioned this earlier, that QuickBooks is revamping their HR portion of payroll, like they're adding more HR tools [00:28:30] and stuff like that. So now they've added reminders that interact with the employee section, things like reminding you when an employee has a birthday, things like reminding you when an employee hasn't completely filled out the W-4 or or a work anniversary. So I think that's interesting, like a sort of outside the box thinking that has nothing to do with accounting workflows. But it has a lot to do with important things like like retaining employees and and acknowledging your talented employees for what you know, for, [00:29:00] for the great things that they do. Uh, the other couple interesting things they added to custom workflows is when they add new entity items. So, for example, a new account is added to the chart of accounts you can now create just to get notified.

Hector Garcia: Hey, by the way John created a new account. Right. So that's that could be interesting. Um, because there's no way to lock the chart of accounts per se, but you can start monitoring what people start creating. Same thing with vendors, you know, even though vendors specifically should [00:29:30] actually have a, an actual, um, like an underwriting workflow where, you know, where you approve the vendor and that sort of larger companies do that. Right? Before I add a vendor, we need to vet the vendor. Are they real? You know, is this not going to be, uh, you know, an employee, um, you know, stealing money inadvertently from the company. So it would be nicer to have just a deeper, more mid-market type of workflow for approving vendors before they create it. For now, you just get a notification. Hey, by the way, somebody created a new vendor. But again, [00:30:00] this is like like user permissions. This is an area where every month you see one new thing added all the time. So the next one is Online Backup and Restore, formerly known as Chrono Box. Chrono box was a third party app that Intuit purchased, and they've been integrating it to the QuickBooks Online Accountant workflow. Uh, tell us a 32nd Reader's Digest version of this feature, Alicia.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sure. I actually just did a deep dive of it in my Baby's Got Backups class. [00:30:30] I have a whole class on ways of backing up and exporting from Qbo, and what online backup and restore allows you to do is, uh, once once you turn it on, it is constantly backing up your qbo it does a full backup periodically, and then it does incremental backups after that. And something I noticed just recently is it's now accessing the backups that are being made on Intuit servers. There's backups that are showing up that didn't use to show [00:31:00] up. So now I'm pretty sure that's what I'm seeing is insight into the the the server farm infrastructure. But anyway, what this allows you to do is make a backup on demand. So let's say you're going to reorganize the chart of accounts or you're going to do a big data import. You can make a backup right before you do it. And then if your, uh, task doesn't work as performed, you can just roll it right [00:31:30] back to where it was right before that. So having that ability to always have an on demand backup is fantastic. Um, and then being able to restore to any point in time as well. It also does have a copy feature which none of the other apps have anymore, like rewind used to do it, but it doesn't anymore. What that means is that you can copy the contents of one Qbo advanced file into another Qbo advanced file, so [00:32:00] if you need to move it for any reason, or maybe you want the infrastructure but not the data, you you have to make the new file. It has to be advanced. But after you've done this task of moving information over from one subscription to a new one, you can then of course, um, downgrade it now. So right now, this is the only way to move data from one file to another file. And unfortunately it doesn't work with Qbo A [00:32:30] with your accountant's version. Actually, none of online backup and store works with Qbo. It's only for actual standalone files.

Hector Garcia: And I don't want to add one little caveat to that. Um, just the wording that you use a way to move data from one file to another. This will override the other company file. So it's not like you can like just send the invoices over or merge data from two files together. This is just to create essentially a duplicate of your current data into a different [00:33:00] subscription. Now how would that how and where that would be useful? Like the only potential use case I see with this is hey, let me create another QuickBooks Online advanced account where I duplicate the data and then I can play with it, uh, you know, like a sandbox and then but I don't I don't truly see the reason why I would have two duplicate copies of the same QuickBooks file.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Here's one of the use cases where I have used it. A company sells and [00:33:30] there's a new owner. You have to create a new qbo file, but maybe you still want all of the the goodwill from your the vendors list and the customers list and some of that history. This allows you to have that genuine new file and create your own new starting points, but not have to rebuild all of the lists from scratch. So there are some some creative cases for using this.

Hector Garcia: Now, one of the things that I wasn't aware of is that you can actually pick the type of data [00:34:00] that copies over, like I thought it was, like the entire file that copied over. So in that example that you said, um, I wouldn't even know, like how would I just restrict this, restrict it to only lists or something.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Like, I mean, this is a bigger conversation, but what I you can't really restrict the data that comes over, but what you can do is move the whole file over and then delete all of the file that was proprietary to the former ownership.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So you could yeah. So that's a good use case. But you still [00:34:30] need a third party app to delete anything, you know, prior to 2022 or whatever. So like you still.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Could use you could use spreadsheet sync.

Hector Garcia: Right. You could use spreadsheet.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh actually no no no I'm wrong I am wrong. Spreadsheets sync, by the way, does not allow you to delete data because you can very easily break a related table.

Hector Garcia: Okay, so spreadsheets think like it doesn't let you delete anything or doesn't let you delete, um, some things.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, most things maybe we should.

Hector Garcia: We should dedicate an episode to spreadsheet sync, [00:35:00] because that's a tricky.

Alicia Katz Pollock: One. We really should. But no, you can't just delete data out because, like, you know what? If you deleted an invoice and then all of a sudden. You have payments that don't go anywhere.

Hector Garcia: Right. So so then you would need to use SaaStr or Transaction Pro Deleter or something like that. Yeah. So again another example I think you paint a good picture on like a use case, but it still doesn't fully 100% work. I think the earlier example you gave, which is like Intuit making automatic backups every [00:35:30] day, and then you being able to go back to one of those backups, that would be really powerful. Um, just because people forget to do like, you know, explicitly go in there and create restore points. And that's where most people like, if you go into Facebook group and people complaining about my client deleted this, how do I get it back? And then people say, oh, you could use Chromebooks. But then the response is, I never created a restore point. I didn't even know that was there. Um, so I think that's the the gap right now. Is that like QuickBooks Live advance to really, truly [00:36:00] have a useful online backup and restore? They should be doing daily, uh, backups for you and not requiring the user to do a restore point. Well, in my.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Opinion, yeah. What I want to just piggyback on this is if you are using QuickBooks Online Advanced, you have to go and turn on the restore function. It doesn't happen automatically. So all of you listening to me log into each of your Qbo advanced instances and go up to the gear, and then go to Backup [00:36:30] data and turn on the backup. Otherwise you're never going to get it. Take advantage of this feature.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, and as a best practice, all I would recommend is if you take on a brand new QuickBooks Online advanced client, create the restore point right. Day one right there and then because they probably didn't do it. And then if you build it into your services, go in there and do a weekly if uh, if, if Intuit is in fact not doing what, uh, Alicia says she thought she saw, which is Intuit is automatically, [00:37:00] automatically doing the backup restore points for you. So.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, just to clarify that once you turn it on, it is going to create incremental backups. What I was saying is that now there's a little bit of insight into into its history, but you don't have to continually go into the backup center and tell it to to make a backup for you. Once you turn it on, it's on. But if I'm about to make major changes to a file, then yes, I will go in and make a backup at that moment [00:37:30] before I do the task.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. I thought you meant that into was doing the backups. No matter what, you actually have to turn on incremental backups and then that's going to do it for you automatically. That makes sense. The last, uh, not the last, uh, the second to last item that's in the QuickBooks comm website as a feature to QuickBooks Online Advanced is 24 over seven tech support, aka Priority Circle. Honestly, I can't speak to this. I never called tech support. Um, I really don't know how different this is than regular tech support, but [00:38:00] it's supposed to be better tech support.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I think they're leaning on the higher tier support, like ProAdvisor support, to give the answers to people who are in QuickBooks Online Advanced. Um, the other thing is that you also do get an enrollment into a course at Real World Training for free. And then, you know, I think it's like a short number of classes every year. So that's the training that they make available to you. So there is some value to [00:38:30] that.

Hector Garcia: And the last line on the QuickBooks comm website has a feature for to advance is called uh, deferred revenue or revenue recognition. So Alicia quick uh, Reader's Digest version of that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. No, I'm a big fan on deferred revenue. And I've been I just talked about it in Cube-e talks last month as well, that if you are doing annual subscriptions, for example, you have the ability to recognize that revenue spread out through the year instead of one big lump sum. And [00:39:00] they're actively working on dialing this in. It's come a long way, and I'm definitely a big fan because I have annual subscriptions to my Royal Wise Owls content library. And you know, I'm cash basis. I really am really recognizing it in the month that somebody pays me. But because I want to put all the tools through the through its paces, I have deferred revenue turned on and it's nice to see my monthly activity happening as opposed to my lump sum payments.

Hector Garcia: Absolutely. And the last couple [00:39:30] of features we're going to mention here, they're actually not in the QuickBooks comm website listed when we recorded this, this video, for some reason it might be an oversight, which are all the extra reporting tools. So for example, we have the custom report builder. We have the ability to do pivot tables inside the custom report builder, which is sort of like it's almost like two different types of reporting mechanisms. There's the Performance Center, which also ties a little bit into the the charts that you can [00:40:00] build in the custom report builder that you can do on top of the pivot tables, and also exporting reports to Google Sheets, which you can. With QuickBooks Online Advance and not with um, with a regular versions of QuickBooks. So, uh, quick thoughts about the custom report builder, Alicia.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, I love the custom report builder. I just taught a class called Running Reports in Qbo where I go in and we actually build custom reports and it uses the modern view. So this is one of those opportunities that [00:40:30] if you're not so sure about the modern view going in and diving in and starting to build your own reports really, uh, gets you to really get to know it and makes you really powerful with it. And the combination of being able to cobble together a report that shows what you sold to a customer, but what vendor you bought it from can be game changing, you know, because you can combine the the sales form and a vendor sale all on one report.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. [00:41:00] And inside that custom report builder, uh, once you again, once you get into that nitty gritty, specific, um, type of report that you want to build, where you pick all the specific fields, you have the option to take the same report that looks like a basically like a bunch of list of transactions, like a detail report, and make it into either a pivot table or make it into a chart, all within the same interface, using the same filters, using the same grouping. So what's nice about [00:41:30] this is now you got you have essentially an an all in one reporting interface mechanism where you only have to learn one screen. You have to learn, okay, how do I pick the fields? How do I filter the fields? How do I you know, what type of data within the fields I want to see. And let's see. And then once you master that, you can with one click, turn it into a chart, turn it into a pivot table. That's huge. And to me, probably that is worth the extra $110 for sure. [00:42:00] Uh, the custom reports. The only problem I would say that it has is that it's difficult to use for the average user. It doesn't have that much adoption rate. And I think the problem with that is that it's only available in advance. That's the huge problem with that, because if you've actually made it available, and I'm not saying to make it available across all SKUs, but make it available just to accountants working across all skews, that's going to give you a much deeper adoption rate because [00:42:30] it allows us, the data experts, to play with it and actively recommend it to our clients, because we're not going to sit there and build a custom report for every client, which we could, by the way, totally could.

Hector Garcia: But the reality is that the average end user is not. Even if they have advanced, they're not going to use the custom report builder. They're just not going to take the time to look at the data fields and the source versus detail. Like all this stuff is more of the accounting nerds world. So I think what what Intuit should do is fine. Allow [00:43:00] only advanced users to access this, but if they have an accountant attached to it, allow the accountant, especially if the accountant is like advanced certified, allow us to use those tools so we can expose it to our clients, because our clients are not going to embrace the tool until they finally see the actual report that we're looking for in practice. So once they see it in practice, they go, okay, I would pay the extra ten bucks, uh, $110 to access this. So that's kind of the disconnection that it has right now, where it's an extremely powerful tool [00:43:30] that nobody uses because accountants only have access to it if their clients had access. Actually happened to have quite advanced. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I mean, what you're saying is exactly where it has been shining for my clients that my clients who love data are loving Qbo advanced and think it's worth every penny. And more so because I have clients who are using their performance center, and they're making their own charts to keep an eye on certain certain clients. [00:44:00] And that, combined with the project center, has been an absolute 100% game changer for several of my mid-market clients, clients who I used to consider too big for Qbo who needed desktop enterprise. And I'm moving them over and they are delighted. And all of a sudden that $200 price tag is a bargain. They're like, oh yeah, sure, that's totally fine. So things are changing. Things are shifting. My opinion is shifting, my clients experiences are shifting. [00:44:30] And I really think that because Intuit is top loading, all of their new innovations into Qbo advanced, that price tag no longer seems exorbitant. Two years ago, I thought $200 was like a stupid price to put on it. Like, who would ever pay that? And now I'm like, that's a bargain. That's great. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: And so so the answer to the question Qbo advanced is worth the money from your perspective, it's a resounding yes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes it is. Okay.

Hector Garcia: All [00:45:00] right. I'm going to give you my last answer to wrap this up. So I actually have QuickBooks enterprise. Users that have 3030 user licenses that pay close to $10,000 a year. Okay, so when you actually compare $10,000 a year versus 2400, you know, no longer advance seems expensive for that group of people. On top of that, most people with more than ten users in QuickBooks enterprise, they also pay [00:45:30] for servers IT people um hosting. So the cost of running desktop software, especially in the enterprise world, it's between 15,000 to $20,000 a year when it really comes down to it. So that's about ten times the cost of cube. You advance on a 25 user license. So when you look at it from that perspective, yeah, the 200 bucks a month is actually nothing. So the point I want to want to make is that cube advance is actually not a skew meant to be [00:46:00] double the value of plus it's a skew meant to be so far away from plus. So it's perceived as a different product altogether. That way the desktop users and the potential people going into NetSuite and in Sage Intacct and all these competing mid-market softwares actually see Cube Advance as a viable option. Think about think about you being a buyer of ERP software for the past 20 years and you've been spending, you know, 10,000, [00:46:30] $20,000 a year and you see this $90 a month software. You really you can't in your head fit that this is going to work for you. So I think cube advance again is not trying to be double the value of plus. It's just trying to feel closer to what the mid market is used to paying. So that's the conclusion to the question is why I think it's worth the extra $10 a month, but not worth double plus.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's a great way of reframing it.

Hector Garcia: So anyway, uh, Alicia, anything [00:47:00] going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Um, I just taught a class on all of these report tools and how to use them. Everything, including the features that are just that in QuickBooks Online Advanced. And so if you've been interested in what we've been talking about with the reporting, with Spreadsheets Sync and the Performance Center, please do check out my class. It's at Learning allies.com. And if you just search for running reports you'll be able to find it. How about you Hector?

Hector Garcia: So now that tax season is over, I'm going to be focusing 100% [00:47:30] on promoting my conference, the Reframe conference in it's in Hollywood, Florida, which is between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, October of 2024. We're going to have up to 200 people hanging out. And we're going to talk about one theme, which is. Influential communications for accountants. So how do accountants upped their game on the way they communicate their value, communicate their prices, communicate their boundaries? [00:48:00] Communicate their advice? I believe that our profession is very, very technically savvy, but has not this soft skill of of being able to communicate well, um, it's something that we still need to improve upon and it's going to be upon us, the accounting profession, to rebrand our profession as great communicators. I mean, there's, you know, the joke that says that, um, that if you meet somebody in a party and they say they're an accountant, they'll be they'll [00:48:30] be looking at your shoes or something like that. I forget what the actual joke is, but usually an accountant is a is an avatar for a shy person, an awkward person, a person that's very introvert and is and is into themselves only and into numbers and calculations where Alicia and I are absolutely not that. And many, many, many of our colleagues are not that. But the but but that perception, um, needs to be changed. And I believe that we need to learn [00:49:00] the tools to improve our communication skills so we can be leaders amongst all the industries. So that's the theme of the conference is called reframe. Reframe 2020 4.com Influential Conversations for accountants October 2024 Hollywood, Florida. Hope to see you there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I will definitely be there myself.

Hector Garcia: So with that being said, thank you Alicia. Thank you everybody. We'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.