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Until recently, if you were running your sales force using Salesforce.com and keeping your books in QuickBooks – then there was no EASY and SIMPLE way to link the two systems.  Of course there are some 3rd Party SaaSware that passed some information between the two worlds, but many do not view these as a particularly smooth process.

Earlier this year Intuit released Salesforce for QuickBooks in the Intuit App Center which lets the #1 online Sales/CRM app communicate directly with the #1 small business accounting software.  This is available for users of QuickBooks Pro, Premiere, and Enterprise Solutions 2011 or later as well as QuickBooks Online.  Sorry Simple Start and QuickBooks for Mac users – Salesforce for QuickBooks is not yet compatible with those products.

Once properly set up, Salesforce for QuickBooks will automatically sync data between your Salesforce account and your QuickBooks Company file.  You and your sales reps will only need to enter data once and it will be updated in both systems – a big time saver – eliminating the need to manually record the same information in both systems.  Even more exciting for Salesforce users it that they will see current QuickBooks item availability and prices (in the professional edition), with sales histories, open balances and credit limits as well as Salesforce sales and customer account details.

According to Intuit, Salesforce for QuickBooks provides the following features:

• Easily track and cultivate leads from all types of marketing initiatives
• Manage and track every communication, activity and opportunity by contact
• See a complete sales and service history for each prospect or customer
• Enter data once and it’s automatically updated in both Salesforce and QuickBooks
• Stay on top of everything with real-time dashboards and reports
• When an Opportunity is changed to Closed Won in Salesforce, it triggers a transaction to be created in QuickBooks. (Professional Edition only)

 QuickBooks for Salesforce comes in two versions: GROUP and PROFESSIONAL editions.

• Group – Ideal for smaller companies for basic sales and marketing.
• Professional – Scales with your business grows and has more advanced features.

For more information visit the Intuit App Center.

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Update concerning R8:

Some users are experiencing problems with QuickBooks 2011 after updating to R8.  Many are advising to hold off on installing R8 until Intuit fixes the problems.

If you have already updated to 2011 QB R8, then you can review the following article from Intuit:
http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/Support/Articles/SLN53363 for more information.

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Intuit has released Update #6 for QuickBooks 2011.  It is available at Intuit’s download site at http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/Support/ProductUpdates.aspx and will be released as an automatic update on Tuesday March 22, 2011.  (Be sure to make a backup of your data file before installing any update.)

There are some interesting enhancements included in this update in addition to any bug fixes.  Some of the improvements include:

1)  The Transaction Pane that was added to the 2011 transactions will now be able to display who created and edited a transaction, when it was mailed, and what other transactions are related to it.  This eliminates the need to run separate reports to determine this information.   There is also the new ability to add notes on supported transactions.  (Premiere ProAdvisor and Plus Subscription)

2)  When opening QuickBooks, the Memorized Transaction prompt has been improved to report which memorized transactions are due to be entered.  In addition, the language used to set up the memorized transactions has been improved to avoid some confusion.  (Premiere ProAdvisor and Plus Subscription)

3)  Batch Invoices have been improved to include the ability to invoice multiple customers for time and expenses.  You will now be able to view billable time, expenses, mileage and purchased items and generate batch invoices for multiple customers.  (Premiere ProAdvisor and Plus Subscription)

4)  The Intuit Data Protect System Tray icon will no longer be initiated for users that have not subscribed to the service.

5)  QuickBooks Shipping Manager will support both the US Postal Service and stamps.com

There are a number of other improvements listed for Collecctions Center, Form Templates, Help, Intuit Payment Network, Inventory, Payroll, PDF, QuickBooks Connected Services, QuickBooks File Manager, Reminders, Reports, SDK and the User Interface.

NOTE – Not all improvements are available on all versions of QuickBooks 2011 as Intuit refines the distinctions it makes between the Pro, Premiere and Enterprise versions of the software.  In addition, Premiere Accountant Edition has different features than regular Premiere Edition and this differes from Premiere Accountant Edition for ProAdvisors.  And “Plus” subscribers also have a different set of features.  Bottom line - some of the above enhancements may or may not be included in your version of QuickBooks.

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For QuickBooks Mac users, Intuit has released upgrade R8 to QuickBooks Mac 2011.

There is a issue if you have an outstanding accountant’s copy you need to wait to upgrade to R8 until AFTER you have restored your file with your accountant’s changes.  Be sure to backup your data file before performing any upgrade.

Inuit announced the following fixes in this release:

In 2010 Intuit introduced a new service called QuickBooks Document Management which was a service that provided the option to attach a document to any transaction in QuickBooks by clicking on a paperclip icon.  This become a handy way to easily drill back to the source of  the transaction or provide supporting documentation.

Some took issue with the requirement that the attached documents could only be stored in “The Cloud” on Intuit’s servers.  Not everyone, it seems, has embraced the concept of storing sensitive information on someone else’s servers.

So in 2011 Intuit morphed the service into a similar sounding QuickBooks Attached Documents and added the option to save the attached documents on a local drive instead of on Intuit’s servers.  You can still save the documents on the Intuit server, but now you have the option to save locally in you prefer.

There is a subscription fee required for each company file in order to save and access the files regardless of whether they are saved on the Intuit Server or on your local computer.

Current pricing was quoted to me by their customer service rep as follows:

• $ 9.95/month – allows only one document attached to each transaction.
• $14.95/month – allows up to 5 documents to be attached to each transaction.
• $19.95/month – allows unlimited documents to be attached.
• $24.95/month – bundles Attached Documents along with 3 other Intuit Connect Services: QuickBooks Connect, Intuit Data Protect, and Free 24/7 Support.
• Prices are always subject to change and there are other pricing plans available depending upon the service(s) selected and the number of licensed users - so you will need to contact Intuit to get an exact subscription quote.

The customer service rep told me to think of the subscription fees as paying for the paperclip, not the file cabinet.  I’m not sure the imagery applies, but that’s the justification I was given.  You will have to draw your own conclusions as to whether the subscription price is worth the ability to attach documents to your transactions and whether it is better to save them on your local drive or on their server.

If you are interested in trying out the Attached Documents service – and it is a handy feature - simply click on the “Attach Icon” on the toolbar on any transactions and you will receive subscription instructions.  Once subscribed, clicking on the Attach Icon will immediately connect you to the Intuit document server.

Let me know what you think of this new service from Intuit.

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As a final word about some of the new features in QuickBooks 2011 lets call you attention to the new Invoice Paid Date that has been added to the “PAID” stamp that appears on the invoices window after recording the payment received.

With the Paid Date right on the stamp it makes it easier to run through a series of Invoices without having to look up the payment date separately.

Another time saver introduced by Intuit in QuickBooks 2011.

In past versions of QuickBooks, there was only one option for recording the vendor’s address.  This created a problem if you wanted to keep track of where the vendor was shipping from, or trying to keep the corporate office separate from the remittance address.  There was no easy way to do this.

In QuickBooks 2011 we now have two addresses within the vendor record: the “Billed From Address” and the “Shipped From Address”.  This is not quite as flexible as the multiple Ship-To addresses allowed in the Customer record.  And it probably would have been better if there were at least 3 vendor addresses (e.g.: “Main Address”, “Shipped From Address”, and “Remittance Address), because the billed from address is not always the same as the remittance address nor the corporate address.

But at least having 2 vendor address is an improvement…

QuickBooks 2011 updates the options available for sending forms via Email.  In the past, the only options available for emailing Estimates, Invoices, and other forms etc. were to use “Outlook” or “QuickBooks Email.”

With QuickBooks 2011 new options are available to send Emails via an account with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or most other servers that can be configured for outgoing mail.

You can still use Outlook or QuickBooks Email, but to designate your own web-mail, simply go to PREFERENCES and click on “Send Forms”.  Provide your Email ID and the Provider Name from the drop down menu or select “Other”.  If QuickBooks does not automatically fill in the correct Server Name and/or Port, then using the instructions from your email provider enter the Server Name (usually something like smtp@serverdomain.com) and the outgoing mail port.  If your Email server allows POP3 mail, this information will usually be found in the POP3 setup instructions.

Although you still cannot add additional attachments, this new email feature works great and should solve the problems many people were having sending emails, especially  if you handle a number of companies on your computer.  Using the above procedures, each company’s forms can now be emailed from their unique email address instead of using your mail server and will avoid the complications in setting up multiple POP3 accounts in Qutlook.  In addition, copies of the emailed forms should be automatically saved in your email providers “Sent Folder” – assuming you have set it up to save all sent emails.

A great new feature added this year to QuickBooks are the Customer and Vendor summaries.  When you open forms to Create Estimates, Create Sales Orders, Create Invoices, Create Purchase Orders or Enter Bills, a new column appears on the right.  As you select a customer or vendor this column is populated with their selected information.

For Vendors:

• Phone Number
• Email Address
• Open Balance
• PO’s to be Reviewed
• Recent Transactions
• Notes

For Customers:

• Open Balance
• Active Estimates
• Open Sales Orders to be Invoiced
• Unbilled Time & Expenses
• Recent Transactions
• Notes

You can hide this column if you want to, but the information displayed (some of it can be drilled down to the supporting transaction details) makes it easier to get a more complete picture of you customer or vendor without having to manually switch among a number of different screens.

In 2011 QuickBooks has added a faster more effective search feature.  If you have been using QuickBooks for a number of years, your QuickBooks file probably contains thousands of transaction.  So, finding exactly the information you want in QuickBooks is not always easy.  Moreover, sometimes you are not just looking for transaction information, but would also like to find a specific bit of information about a customer or vendor that does not appear in any transaction.

The new 2011 search feature can search 39 different categories of information including reports, invoices, bills, contacts, estimates,  journal entries, as well as any transaction or information record based on any key word you choose.  In addition, you can refine the search to any or all of the 39 types of information and you can further refine the search with date filters and amount filters.

This is a great way to quickly fine the specific information you are looking for among the thousands of records in your data file.