It’s time once again for me to share what an amazing human being Charlie Russell is. One of my favorite bloggers anywhere and on any topic, he’s just released a new article called “QuickBooks 2017 Has Arrived! Here Is What to Expect“. I encourage you to read all of it, as he does the most wonderful job of presenting illustrations, describing his testing, and offering real-life interpretations of everything, including the value he sees in various features.
To summarize, however, I’ll quote a few of Charlie’s responses from the comments section (run together with ellipses):
“Intuit is continuing with their recent policy of making fewer changes in the annual release of QuickBooks than in the past… Back in Fall 2014 Intuit stated that there would only be incremental improvements to the desktop product, few if any big significant changes. They want to keep the desktop people happy long enough for them to get comfortable with the idea of an online product, and then get them to move over there… I’m still waiting for the online products to match their hype.”
That said, there are some really nice changes to this year’s version of the QuickBooks Desktop software. My personal favorites are (1) Search Improvements and (2) Report Customization Improvements, though some folks are pretty excited about (3) Scheduled Reports, and (4) Security Updates.
In addition, there are some miscellaneous improvements that are a total relief… as in FINALLY!
- The Record Deposits icon shows the number of deposits that are available.
- A Cleared flag shows on cleared credit card charges.
- If a User is deleted, the deleted user’s name will still show on the audit trail.
- Your Company name will print on the deposit summary.
- You can copy/paste detail lines on weekly timesheets.
Now, as Charlie points out:
“Accounting professionals will have to get the new version, of course, because you will have clients who have the new version. You need this version to work with their files… but from the end-user’s standpoint, there isn’t a lot that compels you to upgrade unless your version of QuickBooks is retiring.”
Still and all, I’m pretty happy about these changes. I don’t need a lot of bells and whistles — I just want a stable product to continue to be stable, with improvements that shave a few minutes off my workday here and there.
There are also some updates in the most recent QuickBooks Online version — but as you’re probably aware, these come up constantly (usually monthly), so they are usually less significant than the annual updates we see in the Desktop version. (Personally, it makes me insane how cloud software just changes overnight without warning. I like to have time to play with new features and improvements before interrupting my workflow with them.)
And if you’re not already subscribed to Charlie’s blog posts in Accountex (formerly the Sleeter Group), do yourself a favor and take care of that right now.