New in QuickBooks Online: See how your Encome and Expenses stack up against businesses like yours

Posted February 9, 2010 by btubbs22
Categories: features

Have you ever wondered how other businesses like yours are doing in this down economy?  Or whether you’re spending as much to acquire customers as your competition?

QuickBooks Online can now help you answer these questions and more with the new Trends feature, available in QuickBooks Online Plus.

Trends compares your business to others based on peer group classifications. You can:

  • View your Income and Expense trends over time
  • Compare yourself to your peer group
  • Customize the comparison by Industry, Location, and Annual Income

Cool huh? This is accessible via a link in the upper right hand corner of the Company Snapshot page (under Reports).



It gets better! Want to see a comparison of individual account breakdowns?  No problem.  Simply select the “Details” option under both Income and Expenses to reveal a horizontal bar chart with individual account categories.  This allows you to compare something like your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) with people like you…maybe Health Care Services businesses in Arizona making $100k-$250k or Service businesses in California making less than $50k.  See the Trends!

If you have any comments, thoughts, or suggestions on what else you would like to see from Trends, please leave a post with your feedback, or better yet, visit the Trends page and click on the “Beta” logo to leave your input!!

(To access Trends: Go to the Reports Tab => select Company Snapshot => click on the “Compare me to similar businesses” link)

Info to know: Cyber crime, Phishing and you…

Posted February 9, 2010 by chiefcrewdog
Categories: Uncategorized

Hi,  I’m Dave Rich and I am a Team Lead in the QuickBooks Online Sales and Service team.  I’m also part of a group who look into possible security breaches.

Below is important information on a scary topic called “Phishing and Cyber Crime”.   But don’t worry, there is a lot you can do to protect yourself from this growing threat!

What is Phishing and Cyber Crime?

Have you ever received an email appearing to be from someone you do business with and trust (like Intuit or maybe your bank) asking you to perform some extremely important (possibly security related) task by a certain deadline?

Many of you probably have.  Many communications like this are the work of Phishers or Cyber Criminals.  These bad guys send out huge quantities of such emails all the time, hoping they will get a few unsuspecting folks to act.  When some trusting individual takes the bait and performs the task, the results can be rather frightening .  Financial, and information security losses are often incurred and it can take a lot of time and emotional energy to right the havoc these criminals can cause.

Your security censor should go off if the email asks you to:

  • Download and install safety tools (i.e. Click here to download and install the super secret safety tool)
  • Download an important update  (i.e. Click here to download and install the very important update)
  • login using a provided custom URL (i.e. “Click here to login”
  • with embedded login fields  (Please enter your:  User name ________________  Password ________________   )

Most reputable businesses (like Intuit for example) :-) will never send you “call to action” emails asking you to do any of the above!

These emails are just ways to get a hold of your login credentials or install a key-logger type virus that will record and send all your access IDs and passwords to the criminals.  They then use this information and power to access your finances looking for ways to “get paid”.  This is scary stuff.

But there are steps you can take to help protect against such threats. 

  1. Carefully  read any email asking you to perform some task.
  2. Look for poorly worded phrases, poor word choice, capitalization, punctuation and spelling mistakes. Often these emails are poorly written and contain these errors. Like “Please will you provides your Password hear to loggin and resolve this problems” If you find such miscues, that’s a big warning sign.
  3.  Look for the call to action…  “Do this before X date or else”  The reason the date to act is so close, is the crooks know the site they’ve posted will be taken down soon.  They have a limited window of opportunity to get the unsuspecting to act.  Often only a day or two.  The quick call to action is a huge red flag!

More about QuickBooks emails:

While Intuit might send you a special offer email or three, most concern special price offerings or new services and have a fair of lead time for you to take advantage of them.

If there ever were specific actions we need you to take regarding your program or a service you have subscribed to, we will almost always direct you to take action from within your program (i.e. perform an update or upgrade) or tell you to login to your subscribed service for further instructions.  We won’t provide direct links in the email to perform these tasks.

Intuit takes your security very seriously and as a result we are on the lookout for new attacks all the time.  However, when it comes to protecting yourself from the Phisher or Cyber Criminal, you are the first line of defense.  Staying educated on what is happening and frankly being a little suspicious can go a long way.  Last but not least, have virus protection software installed and keep it up to date.

 Where can I learn more?

Visit security.intuit.com and see real communications AND phony ones too.  You can even report suspicious emails you have received. 

I hope this helped shed a light on this growing area of concern.  Here’s to safe and hopefully cyber crime free 2010!

Best Regards

Dave Rich

In addition to focusing on delivering the best sales and service experience possible and keeping an eye peeled for shady behavior, Dave Rich is a Dad, Grampa, Classic Rock Guitarist and sometime SCCA Racing Mechanic.

Calling all Android users!

Posted February 5, 2010 by travis_qbo
Categories: features, news

You asked us for it, and now it’s here. We’re excited to announce that QuickBooks Online can be accessed from any Google Android phone!


Go ahead and try it out! Just enter your usual user name and password on our mobile login page:

https://qbo.intuit.com/m

Firefox for Mac is here!

Posted February 2, 2010 by travis_qbo
Categories: news

Are you a Mac user who prefers Firefox to Safari? If so, we’ve got some great news for you: QuickBooks Online can now be used with Firefox for Mac! Just make sure you’re running Firefox 3.0 or higher and log in as you normally do, or use the Log In link at the top of the QuickBooks Online home page.

We’ve worked hard to make QuickBooks Online compatible with more browsers than ever before, and we’re very happy to have reached this milestone. But that doesn’t mean we’re finished! Please keep sending us your feedback to let us know how we can improve.

Year end guide from QuickBooks (for the hard stuff)

Posted January 24, 2010 by Bermster
Categories: reporting, tips

The end of the year means a lot of things.  Taking down Holiday decorations, renewing a gym membership…and taxes. We just told you about the Turbo Tax (we do it for you) option. But…you can (and probably should) be aware of what has to be done and by when.

Check out the End of the Year guide to help you through these sticky questions.  And if you have gone through this, or have questions, please leave them in the comments.

You have to be logged into QuickBooks Online to see this!

Reminder: If you have contractors or employees, there are tax forms due.

Posted January 22, 2010 by Bermster
Categories: Uncategorized

Rushing to finish 1099-MISCs and W-2s for contractors and employees?

Information you should know: The deadline to send independent contractors and employees their 1099-MISCs and W-2s is Feb 1st.

For you do-it-yourselfers, we know it can be a headache to gather all the payments, worker info, and do the calculations between year end and the deadline  (QuickBooks definitely helps with some of this remember). But, the 1099-MISC is especially troublesome if you’re filing manually because the IRS requires using a special paper form with red-boxes, which can only be ordered in packets of 25 or more – not very practical for those of you with just a few contractors!

We’re happy to share an easier way to finish these forms quickly and easily. A new service from our friends in TurboTax called Quick Employer Forms provides step-by-step guidance to prepare 1099-MISC, W-2 forms and e-file for only $2.95 each.

Bonus: If you finish your forms before 6:00AM PST on Jan 28, they will even mail them to your contractors and employees by the deadline. We hope you like it!

Check it out.

Have a website? Improve your website conversion rates

Posted January 11, 2010 by Bermster
Categories: tips

We know from our customer research that a lot of you have websites to promote your business. And…a good bunch of you are actually web designers using QuickBooks Online to manage your business.

The QuickBooks Online team just found a cool tool from google that offers a quick and dirty analysis of your website through the eyes of your customers.

Check it out. If your call to action button isn’t placed where most customers can see, that may be an opportunity to improve your conversion rates.

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

If you find your website is in need of some assistance, check out Intuit Websites.

What other tools do you use (or need)?  Please share!

Customer Center: The New Hub for Managing and Tracking Your Customers

Posted January 7, 2010 by May Cheng
Categories: features

We recently added Customer Center to QuickBooks Online.  It takes relevant customer data that used to be scattered in multiple places in the product, and displays it all in one easy-to-use page.

In the Customer Center, you can:

  • View your full customer list along with their balances
  • Find a customer simply by typing in a search box
  • At a glance see your customer information and enter notes directly in its place
  • Quickly see all the recent transactions for a customer with their status clearly visible
  • Create new transaction for a given customer on the fly

With all the important customer data now in one central place, making informed business decisions just gets easier.  So, if you haven’t already, please check out the Customer Center and see how it can work for you. 

Don’t forget to send us your feedback! We’re hungry to hear how you’ve been using it and how it can improve.

May Cheng
(QuickBooks Online interaction designer…making the world a better place, one pixel at a time.)

Thank You for a great year! We’re looking forward to the next.

Posted December 27, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: features, feedback

As we reflect back on the year, we are thankful for your continued feedback and excited about the progress we’ve made towards it.  With your help, this past year we introduced many big product features, including:

  1. Customer Center: Your relevant customer data is now displayed on one, easy-to use page.
  2. Company Snapshot: Now get a quick overview of your businesses finances to help you save time and make better business decisions. * Plus feature!
  3. Inventory Tracking Quantities: In QuickBooks, you can now answer the question, “Do I have enough inventory to fulfill the order?” * Plus Feature!

We hope you noticed other changes as well:  our design refresh, browser compatibility…this new blog!

We’re excited about the New Year and what’s coming. There’s a lot to look forward to!

Thanks for your loyalty and consistent feedback.   Please continue to tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you want.

- Happy New Year from the QuickBooks Online team!

We’re sharing ours…what’s your resolution?

Posted December 27, 2009 by Bermster
Categories: feedback, tips

It’s that time of year.  It comes around just after you’ve eaten all the holiday food and spent some serious holiday dough.  It’s the universal time to make resolutions about the upcoming year.

We started asking around the office and found out that the QuickBooks Online team is pretty good at making resolutions.  We’re excited to share our personal ones with you…and encourage you to share yours.

Intuit’s also put together ten tips for small businesses for the new year. Read them here.

A peak into the lives of your QuickBooks Online team:

Lance, Product Manager: This year I will expand my mastery of the Thai language beyond simply knowing what to order at a restaurant.

Emily, User Researcher: To save more money and to keep swimming 3 times a week.

Judd, Product Manager: I actually think New Year’s resolutions are funny…if I want to make a change, I don’t feel a need to wait until a certain date to make it happen.  That said, I have successfully avoided becoming a FaceBook user and hope I can stay untainted in 2010.

Marc, Senior Software Engineer:  Eat healthier and exercise more!

John, Quality Leader: To produce, direct, and film a documentary film about how we create high quality software at Intuit.

Shareen, Marketing Manager: My New Year’s resolutions tend to stay consistent year after year. . .lose weight, exercise more, and keep on practicing positivity!

Please share yours!