Now available to all QuickBooks Online Plus users is an easy way to track three key business metrics and compare your performance to businesses in your industry.  The new Scorecard feature shows you three key ratios that can provide valuable business insights:

Net Profit Margin – how much money do I have left after paying for everything?

Sales Growth – is the demand for my products or service increasing or decreasing?

Cash Flow (quick ratio) – Do I have enough money coming in to pay my bills?

We heard from customers that you need a drop dead simple and effective way to gauge how your business is doing on a regular basis.  By seeing your performance in three key areas (Profit, Sales, and Cash Flow), we hope you will find actionable insights you can use to more effectively run and improve your business – if not validate the great job you’re already doing!

You can access this feature by clicking on the “My Business Scorecard and Industry Comparisons” link via Company Snapshot under Reports.

Do you find this feature useful?  Does your score surprise you?  Are there other business metrics you would like to see in your Scorecard?  Let us know in the comments below!

Notes

Read about Intuit’s Small Business Privacy Statement here:  http://smallbusiness.intuit.com/small-business/privacy/index.jsp

QuickBooks Online Terms of Service:  https://qbo.intuit.com/c23/v33.140/Terms_Of_Service.html

Do you sell widgets? Or books? Or dolls? Or scuba gear? Or other random specialty parts that you need to keep track of, in a way that would make an accountant proud? Well, product-based businesses rejoice! QuickBooks Online Plus users who sell merchandise can now easily create, manage and send professional Purchase Orders (POs) and track your inventory right from your QuickBooks Online accounts:

• Automatically track and adjust Quantity on Hand inventory.
• Be IRS-compliant when accounting for the purchase and sale of inventory items.
• Categorize your purchase of inventory items by Product/Service, Vendor, Location, or Class, in real time.
• Link POs to payments to vendors via Bills, Checks, Cash Purchases, or Credit Card charges to accurately identify open purchase orders.
• Automatically update Balance Sheets and Profit & Loss reports when a bill is entered into QuickBooks Online.
• Customize your PO forms with your company logo and up to three custom fields.

Sample Products & Services list in QBO Plus

QBO Plus tracks Quantity on Hand Inventory.

And for you accounting pros out there, you’ll be interested to know that QuickBooks Online uses the FIFO (first in, first out) costing method. (Desktop versions of QuickBooks use “average costing”).

QuickBooks Online Plus users: to turn on inventory, choose Company > Preferences > Products and Services > Quantity on Hand.

Other QuickBooks Online users: Login to your account and click “Upgrade” in the upper-right corner to get this feature.

Not a QuickBooks Online user? Click here to learn more and try it free for 30 days.

Free Webinar – Inventory Tracking

Join us live on June 17 at 10:00 a.m. PDT to learn more about the Inventory tracking feature during a free, hour-long Small Business webinar hosted by one of our QBO ProAdvisors.  Go to http://community.intuit.com/events/inventory-tracking-with-quickbooks-online-edition to register.

Update 4/9/10 9 am: If you are experiencing lockups while using IE, please post about it below or on the community post. Let us know if you are using any 3rd party add-ons or any script blockers etc.

Update 4/8/10 4 pm: If you are using Google Chrome, please check out this community post to be aware of certain known quirks with Chrome.

Update 4/8/10 10 am: If you are experiencing the new homepage to load rather slow, please comment about it below or on this community post or via the feedback button. While giving feedback or commenting please include the following information – Browser and it’s version, Operating System, and optionally CPU speed. Also check out the recommendations section at the bottom of this post.

________________________

We looked in the mirror today and things are looking up!

Welcome to the new Homepage!

We know – it’s a big change. And change is hard.  So first and foremost we want to let you know we’re listening.  What do you like about this? And what do you recommend we look at again?

On the top left is the typical feedback button where you can leave feedback about the homepage. Talk to us.

But first,  let us give you the tour.

If you are a new user, you’ll notice a  yellow ribbon like module that shows a few tasks for first time users of QuicksBooks Online.  It has buttons to update the company information, to upload a logo and to import data. Have customers? Go import them from Outlook or Excel!

If you are not a new first time user, you will not see this yellow ribbon module and the homepage will look like this:

There is still fun to be had. Want to customize your homepage and add other widgets?

Below are the individual modules for the homepage. Over time more might get added, but for now only a few basic ones. You can move them around or add new ones.  One favorite we recommend is Company Snapshot. Go grab it and try it out!

Basically drag and drop, like people might have seen on the iGoogle homepage. To close a module, click the X button on its title bar. Once you have done customizing your homepage, click the Close button in the top right to save your settings.

The Getting Started Module shows you basic tasks or links to get you started working with QuickBooks Online and its various features.

You can change its view to the one below via it’s options menu.

Here you can add more links to this section, again via it’s options menu. This will be useful to people as a place holder for their shortcuts. You can switch back and forth from this view and the prior via the options menu.

The Messages Module will show you your TO DOs as well as our messages. Just below the messages you will see a section talking about some new feature that has been added to the product. (This is to make you aware of it and you can dismiss the message if you want.)

The Recent Transactions Module will show you a bunch of your recent transactions from the last 30 days. Use the menu filters to change what type of transactions as well as how many of those you want to see. So for example you can have one module show just sales transactions, while another showing just purchase transactions and a third showing just banking transactions.

This is pretty cool (if we do say so ourselves).  If the transaction is an open Invoice or an unpaid Bill, mouse hovering over that row will link you to Receive Payment or Pay Bill respectively.

The Online Banking Module will give you a summary of your online banking data and just like the recent transactions module, mouse hovering over a row will show you some info to click on. Clicking on a row will take you to that bank register. To manually update the data, click Update on its title bar.  Snazzy eh?

Recommendations
To get the best possible experience using the new homepage (and QuickBooks online generally in the time to come), it is recommended that people upgrade to a newer browser. While QuickBooks Online is supported on multiple versions of a browser, using the latest version will give you the best possible experience mostly due to performance improvements that they get over time. My personal preference list is in the order below. However you should choose a browser that is supported and you are comfortable with. You can always have more than one browser and try out each.

Google Chrome 4+ (Windows, Mac)
Firefox 3.6+ (Windows, Mac)
Safari 4+ (Mac)
Internet Explorer 8 (Windows)

Check out this link for browser information.

We have heard lots of customer feedback about making the product easier to use…with clearer ways to find things and display them. We’re on a journey to addressing all of your feedback and are excited to have you come along!

Over the course of many months, the Purchase Order development team worked with focused intensity and determination to bring this oft-requested feature to life, talking to customers every step of the way to make sure that we were creating a feature that fulfilled your needs.  So perhaps you’re wondering.

What’s a Purchase Order?

A purchase order, or “PO,” is a document you can send to a vendor/supplier, either electronically or as a hard copy.  The PO states your intent to purchase products or services and defines the details of the purchase, such as quantities and prices. If your PO is accepted, it means you have an agreement to receive those products or services under the specified terms. See screen shot for details.

What’s cool about Purchase Orders in QuickBooks Online?

For QuickBooks Online Plus users and QuickBooks Online Edition users with the optional Sales package, here’s just a sample of the useful stuff you can do with Purchase Orders:

-          Copy and link PO information to bills, checks, cash and credit card transactions

-          Save a PO as a printable PDF file and email it to your vendor instantly

-          Set automatic, recurring POs to send out periodically

-          Customize the PO form with your company logo

-          Add custom fields to define the terms of your order

-          Include a personalized message with instructions for the vendor

-          Make notes on your PO that only you can see (and the recipient cannot)

-          View reports of all open POs and purchases by vendor

Ready to begin using Purchase Orders?

Check out our comprehensive knowledgebase article for tons of useful info on how to get started.

And since we really want to hear what you think about this new feature, please send us your feedback by clicking the “Beta!” button located at the top of the Purchase Order form.  Happy purchasing!

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)

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

https://qbo.intuit.com/m

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.)

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!

Here is a sneak peek at the new page!   We understand that change can be disruptive, but we’ve worked hard to make sure this one is an improvement.  These changes will allow us to make the service faster, more secure, and provide more features in the future.



So, how does this affect me?

1. Your login page will have a new address along with the fresh new look. Please bookmark it so you can get back to it easily.

2. By the way, you are going to have to allow for pop-ups for our site again. This should be easy and the Help will walk you through it.

What if I need help?

We’re committed to making this change as easy as possible for you and anticipate that you will be able to go through this process seamlessly. Nonetheless, if for some reason you have a question, we are only a click away!  You can access support directly from the login page or from our Support site at www.quickbooksonline.com.

Look for the unveiling of the new login page soon!

About me:  I’m Kathy from QBO Support, and when I’m not helping our customers I just might be driving that Mustang that passed you this morning.

These wise words come courtesy of seasoned entrepreneur, author, and Inc. Magazine contributor Norm Brodsky, in his bestselling book on entrepreneurial success The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up.

While many of us cringe at the thought of crunching numbers, it’s not breaking news that they provide valuable insight into the health and sustainability of a growing business.

QuickBooks Online has a feature that can help you discover trends and patterns in your financial data that can predict profitable growth.  It’s called Company Snapshot, and it’s located under the Reports Tab.

This page allows you to:

• Check the pulse of your business with graphs and charts
• Summarize income, expenses, receivables, and debt
• Compare your income and expenses to previous periods
• Find patterns and discrepancies to investigate further

Getting your Sherlock Holmes hat on

Every business (even if they don’t know it!) has a key number . What’s a key number?

Let’s do an example. Your revenue spikes every May, but you always have trouble paying your bills the next month.  You investigate further.  Your expenses increase drastically every May due to a particularly needy client you serve each spring.  This shrinks your gross margin, making you less profitable.

You play around with the numbers and discover the key number you should track is labor expenses per client. Now you can predict profitability and focus on clients that provide the best gross margin possible.

But maybe you already have your key number.  Feel free to share it with us!   What metrics do you use to gauge how well your business is doing?

What else would you like the Company Snapshot feature to tell you?  We’re here to help you peer through the fog of your financials; sharing your most important metric(s) will increase our ability to do so!

Bryan