QuickBooks 2011

QuickBooks users (there are about 3.5 million of you) have probably received marketing materials from Intuit announcing the availability of QuickBooks 2011. We automatically receive the latest versions as QuickBooks Certified Pro Advisors. We like to kick the tires and find the new features and see if there is anything there worth recommending to our clients. QuickBooks is a mature product and the changes/enhancements from one year to the next are not always that significant. That seems to be true for QuickBooks 2011. And, since QuickBooks will support its products for three years, there is usually no urgency to purchase the annual upgrades. Additionally, if you are running "add-ons" to QuickBooks, you must also consider whether the "add-on" product is compatible with the new QuickBooks version.  Following are the features new to QuickBooks 2011. Most of these have limited applicability to the Government contracting environment. If these new features do not seem to have immediate applicability to your business practices, you might pass on the latest upgrade.

• Batch invoicing lets companies create a template once and invoice many customers at once
• Quickly prioritize customers with the new Customer Snapshot
• Quickly locate any account, report or invoice in QuickBooks Search
• Convenient access to customer or vendor's balance and transaction history
• Stay on top of receivables and email collection notices with Collections Center
• Send invoices and estimates right from business Yahoo!, Gmail or Hotmail account[28]
• Keep track of vendors' remittance addresses with a convenient new field
• Mark which invoices have been paid with the Paid Date stamp