QuickBooks Premier 2006: A Fresh New Look for Quickbooks New Edition Faster and More Intuitive Wayne Kawamoto
After years of improvements, modifications, and tweaks, there doesn't seem to be much about QuickBooks that needs improvement. But every year, like clockwork, Intuit releases a "latest and greatest" version, and this year is no different.
While QuickBooks 2006 lacks ground-breaking new capabilities, the designers have successfully reworked the interface so that it's faster and easier to use and allows you to work more efficiently with clients, vendors, and employees. And there's a powerful new inventory management feature in the Manufacturing and Wholesale version. In short, for the first time in years, there's an update with lots to like.
More Than Skin Deep
QuickBooks customers will immediately notice the modified home page that has been redesigned to efficiently present the program's functions and provide access to almost any task within two clicks of the mouse. In this regard, the revamped interface succeeds and indeed offers an intuitive and effective layout.
The home page retains the flowcharts of prior versions, but instead of treating the accounting tasks — customers, vendors, employees, inventory, and banking — as separate functions, it integrates them into a single screen. And the flowcharts extend across the accounting functions to provide a concise overview. The new home page may look sparse when compared to its more colorful predecessors, but it works well.
The answers that you provide during the program's setup form the basis of the home page structure, which you can reconfigure to reflect business changes down the road. For example, if your business begins to carry inventory, you can alter the main page to provide access to inventory features.
Customers, Vendors, and Employees
A key improvement comes in what Intuit calls centers, various areas that let you efficiently work with customers, vendors, and employees. Centers, which are actually well-designed, multi-paned pages, let you quickly sort customers, companies, or employees and click on them to instantly view information and relevant history. You could obtain this information in previous versions if you knew where to look, but the slick new interface quickly finds what you need.
Within the Customer Center, you can click on a client and immediately view estimates, invoices and payments, transaction histories, and billing terms in a single window. The screen makes excellent use of filters, too. For example, it lets you list customers with open balances and select them from drop-down lists. And you can also filter transactions the same way.
With the Vendor Center, you can view and sort contact information as well as past activities, bills, and checks. And in much the same way, the Employee Center lets you view employees, as well as contact and paycheck information.
The Sales Order Fulfillment feature displays pending orders and lets you make "ship-to" decisions based on projected revenues and customer priorities. For example, you can set the order priority based on criteria such as the largest revenue potential or earliest promised delivery. A new, always-on audit trail tracks changes and errors and pinpoints fraudulent transactions.
The most powerful new feature is the "Available-to-Promise" tool in the Enterprise and Premier Manufacturing and Wholesale and Accountant versions. This feature reports the amount of inventory that's on hand, where it's committed, when it's needed, and what's in each order. The tool makes it possible to commit to product delivery dates or reassign inventory that's tagged for later deliveries or for less crucial customers. This welcome new feature is a definite time saver.
Another key addition, the Accounting version now provides a toggle that instantly switches the interface between any current version of QuickBooks. This way, an accountant can view the exact version of QuickBooks that his or her clients use and offer advice and instructions.
