Message from Intuit: Live technical support and business services—including Intuit QuickBooks Payroll—will be discontinued for QuickBooks 2008 onMay 31, 2011. If you are using QuickBooks 2008 and would like to continue to use your Basic, Standard, or Enhanced Payroll Service and any other connected services through QuickBooks, you’ll need to upgrade to a newer version of QuickBooks. If you no longer need payroll or other connected services, you can continue to use your QuickBooks 2008.

We understand that upgrading your QuickBooks software takes some effort. The new tools and features in QuickBooks 2011 give you faster access to the information you need and make your everyday tasks more efficient. You’ll also get all the time-saving new features added since you purchased QuickBooks 2008.

Intuit is committed to developing easy, straightforward financial tools that help you today and grow with you tomorrow. But it’s a balancing act—making QuickBooks better and easier to use while still supporting older versions. This is why we offer support for the current version of QuickBooks and the two previous versions.

If you use QuickBooks 2008 and Basic, Standard, or Enhanced Payroll services and you don’t upgrade by May 31, 2011:

• QuickBooks will no longer automatically calculate correct payroll taxes or provide payroll tax forms.
• Your paychecks will not be accurate.
• Your payroll subscription will be inactivated, and we will issue a prorated refund to you for the unused portion of your subscription.

Find out more about services affected and your options.

An Advanced Training Conference for Intuit Advisors

May 23-25, 2011 – Las Vegas NV

Join Hundreds of Other ProAdvisors to Experience…

• In-Depth Product Training on QuickBooks and QuickBooks Point of Sale
• In-Depth Product Training on Selected QuickBooks-Integrated Solutions
• Business Development Training (designed for the Intuit Advisor)
• Keynote Presentations by Intuit Executives
• Optional and Extensive Hands on Workshops on:
  • Advanced QuickBooks Topics
  • Designing Crystal Reports with QuickBooks Data
  • Business Plan Development (for the Intuit Advisor)
  • Method Level 1 and Level 2 Certification Training
  • …And More
• Exhibitions Presented by Intuit and Dozens of Leading Developers of QuickBooks Integrated Solutions
• Intuit Solution Provider Certification Exam Preparation
• Extreme Professional Networking Opportunities
  • Hundreds of QuickBooks ProAdvisors
  • Dozens of Key Intuit Employees and Executives
  • Leading Developers of QuickBooks-Integrated Apps
• …and More!

Learn more about the training at Scaling New Heights.

In QuickBooks, when trying to view customer quickreports in QuickBooks, straight deposits don’t show up.  By default, this report only lists A/R items.  I have prepared a Jing to show you how to get your straight/direct deposits to show up on your customer reports.

To view the larger, 1010 x 800 video, click on read more for the download link.

If this video was helpful to you, please post a comment.

Download link

There is a chart of account created automatically in QuickBooks called, Undeposited Funds.  What is it there for exactly?  In short, it is a holding account on monies that you have collected but not yet deposited.  To see a visual, here is a jing….

To view the larger, 1010 x 800 video, click on read more for the download link.

If this video was helpful to you, please post a comment.

Download link

It’s that time again to file sales tax.  You have already made your payment online via a credit card and it’s time to enter the transaction into QuickBooks.  You go to Vendors > Sales Tax > Pay Sales Tax, you select all the information to pay and realize that you don’t have the option to pay with a credit card.  How can this be?  You guessed it folks, you can’t!  Even with the newly released 2010, it’s one thing they haven’t fixed.  So how do you get around it?  I made a video tutorial (Jing) to show you how…..

To view the larger, 1010 x 800 video, click on read more for the download link.

If this video was helpful to you, please post a comment.

Download link

Restoring Backup for Earlier QuickBooks Version

Change: The compression software that QuickBooks uses to back up and restore files has been upgraded in QuickBooks 2010 and is not compatible with earlier versions of QuickBooks.

Occasional Result: Accountants who find it necessary to open the backup copy (made as part of conversion of a company file to QuickBooks 2010) will discover problems restoring the backup from earlier versions. The error would appear as follows:

Solution: QuickBooks 2010 has a new menu item for just this occasion, to deal with the change in compression software between QuickBooks 2010 and earlier versions. Using this new menu item provides a backup copy that can be opened up by earlier versions of the software.

To read more on this article, visit the support pages.

Major New Release Addresses Online Banking and Much More

Last week Intuit enabled Intuit® QuickBooks® 2009 Release 8 (QB09-R8) as an automatic update. Clients who have enabled automatic updates will be prompted to complete the update.

Note: This is a significant update covering many issues, but most importantly to some QuickBooks accounting professionals will be upgrades to online banking in two ways:

• QB09-R8 provides users the ability to switch to the exact same online banking functionality (and register view) that was in QuickBooks 2008 or use the default approach to Online Banking in previous releases of QuickBooks 2009.
• The default approach to Online Banking provides many new enhancements and restoration of previously missing functions.

Users can toggle between the two views without affecting data at this interface:

Edit > Preferences > Checking > Company Preferences

Users can toggle between the two views without affecting data at this interface:

For a sense of all of the many changes in QB09-R8, read the release notes here.

One Wrinkle: The QuickBooks 2008 uses an aliasing approach for names of financial institutions, while the QuickBooks 2009 uses renaming rules.