What's new with QuickBooks?

A review of new software products for your business

QuickBooks has been one of the leading small business accounting systems for years. Originally, it was designed for small businesses with no accounting knowledge. But as Intuit's flagship product, it has now been updated with several new features, such as contact management, loan management, cash flow projection and a revised help function. The new version, QuickBooks 2005, shipped on September 2.

Like the previous versions, QuickBooks 2005 supports five simultaneous users and includes many highend functions such as multi-currency, custom fields, ability to break out finandals by division or department, multiple price levels and ability to buy, sell and stock inventory in different units of measurement. But there are ceilings on file sizes that might cause a problem for some; for example, you can have no more than 14,500 inventory items.

To meet the needs of larger organizations, Intuit launched its Enterprise edition in March 2003. This edition doubled the maximum number of simultaneous users to 10 and doubled the maximum file sizes. Although the edition took off in the US, especialIy among mid-market companies, it was discontinued in Canada this past July. That may be because QuickBooks has been branded as a small-business solution, and it's hard to change public perceptions without extensive marketing campaigns. According to Intuit, "The typical QuickBooks customer is a small business with 20 or fewer employees and annual revenue of less than $2 million. The ideal use of QuickBooks is to keep at least two years of detailed transactions in a data file so you can run comparative reports and have prior-year project information."

For QuickBooks 2005, the biggest enhancement is the inclusion of Customer Manager. Whenever a customer calls, Customer Manager gives a complete overview of that company's information on a single screen with easy access to key documents. The system allows you to view contact information as well as customer history, recent QuickBooks transactions, related documents, to-do lists and appointments. It integrates with QuickBooks and uses Microsoft Outlook for e-mail. Customer Manager also includes the ability to maintain multiple relationships associated with each contact.

Like ACT, Customer Manager is a contact management system. It is not meant to compete with customer relationship management systems svich as SalesLogix or Microsoft CRM, which include other functions such as sales force and marketing automation. It is also a separate single-user system (not part of QuickBooks). You will need to synchronize to keep the contact information up to date. Also on the downside, there is no way to select contacts based on multiple criteria, no mail merge for multiple contacts and no report writer.

Although Customer Manager has its shortcomings, the average small business will probably appreciate its one-stop shop for customer information.

QuickBooks keeps getting better and will undoubtedly remain on the list of leading accounting systems for small businesses. Nevertheless, Intuit faces an uphill battle in winning over the middle market. It should relaunch the QuickBooks Enterprise edition with a marketing campaign showing Canadian accountants that it's more than a small-business product.

For an expanded version of this article, which includes a more detailed analysis of features, please visit www.CAmagazine.com/multiview.

[Author Affiliation]

Michael Burns, MBA, CA, is president of 180 Systems (http://www.180systems.com), which provides independent consulting services, including business process review, business case development and system selection. Contact: 416-963-1296; mburns@180systems.com