QuickBooks Online new features and improvements—September 2021

September is back-to-school season, and the learning isn’t limited to the kiddos. With our latest QuickBooks® features and product upgrades, we’ve got new productivity hacks that can help you and your clients find the smartest way to do business (no final exam required).

New! Share QuickBooks updates with your clients – send them this link for QuickBooks Innovations.

What’s new in September

QuickBooks Online left navigation menu test

Improved chart of accounts experience for new QuickBooks Online customers

Search enhancements for QuickBooks Desktop migrators

Add attachments in Tasks in QuickBooks Online Advanced

Auto Payroll now supports Multiple Pay Schedules

QuickBooks Online Payroll: Flexibility for employee tax settings

Paycheck corrections in QuickBooks Online Payroll

New QuickBooks Online Payroll certification

QuickBooks Online left navigation menu test

In a nutshell: To help small business owners find what they need more quickly and easily, we’re testing a reorganized left navigation menu with a portion of new QuickBooks Online customers. The consolidated menu and new terminology are accessible by selecting Business View from the account settings.

Why are we making these changes?

We’ve heard from new QuickBooks Online customers that it’s hard to find what they need quickly because the navigation has too many options. We’ve designed the new navigation based on customers’ feedback, recommended terminology and groupings, and tasks they’ve told us they’re trying to complete. We rely on testing to ensure that we’re improving the experience before broadly making a change.

As business owners increasingly turn to QuickBooks to solve more business needs – from money movement and worker management, to coordinating e-commerce and financial planning – it is our goal to ensure they can easily and effectively run their business.

What’s different?

The simplified navigation includes new terms like Business overview, which groups cash flow, reports, planner, and projects – and Get paid & pay, which groups vendors, sales, and time. All of the same pages and workflows are available, but the way your client might access them has changed. Additionally, similarly to the original experience, the QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted tab is only visible to customers who are not connected to an accountant.

If you or your client would like to work with the old navigation instead of the consolidated test version, select Accountant View in settings. Here are more detailed instructions on how to switch your view.

If you have any feedback on this experience, please let us know.

Improved chart of accounts experience for new QuickBooks Online customers

In a nutshell: A reimagined chart of accounts experience lets you find and review data quicker, using simpler search terms and detailed accounts that fit your business entity.

The chart of accounts lists a company’s accounts and their balances. And since you use it to categorize transactions on everything from sales forms to reports and tax forms, we made a few improvements, so that data searches become easier when you’re ready for tax time.

• New chart of accounts structure based on business entity.
• Smarter search functionality, so you can search for accounts using your own keywords.
• New “create new” account drawer, along with guardrails for business view customers, so they can avoid creating duplicate or redundant accounts that might mess up their books.

This new experience will be available by the end of October 2021. Learn more 

Search enhancements for QuickBooks Desktop migrators  

In a nutshell: Starting now, you’ll notice improvements to the search experience as you migrate Desktop clients to QuickBooks Online.

The search experience was recently updated for QuickBooks Online users, but Desktop migrators had to make do with the old search experience. With this new rollout, it’ll be much easier to search across all imported data after migration from Desktop to QuickBooks Online is complete.

Auto Payroll now supports multiple pay schedules 

In a nutshell: If you have employees on multiple pay schedules, you can now use Auto Payroll to automate and accurately process Payroll for your team.

Auto Payroll was designed to save you time spent on repetitive payroll tasks. The feature initially supported clients with just one pay schedule (for example, bi-weekly), but now supports those with multiple pay schedules. With this added flexibility, you can customize the frequency at which employees are paid, whether it’s on a monthly basis, weekly, or whatever your needs may be.

You can view the status of employees and manage pay schedules on the Auto Payroll details page.

QuickBooks Online Payroll: Flexibility for employee tax settings

In a nutshell: Nobody likes interruptions to their workflow. That’s why we’ve added options that let you seamlessly make changes to employee tax information right in QuickBooks – no need to contact customer service.

Specifically, if you’re a Full-service payroll customer (Core/Premium/Elite), you will now have much more flexibility to:

• Change an employee’s tax exemptions
• Update an employee’s local tax settings

To change an employee’s tax exemptions, go to their tax withholding section (where you enter tax details like W-4) and select Tax exemptions. This will expand the section and show you options you can choose from.

To update an employee’s local tax settings, go to their tax withholding section and select Local taxes. Select the Edit location link if you don’t see the applicable local taxes you are looking for.

Paycheck corrections in QuickBooks Online Payroll 

In a nutshell: By the end of October, all online payroll customers (Core, Premium, Elite) will have the option to void, delete, and edit past paychecks right in QuickBooks, without having to call customer care. Note, paycheck corrections can only be made if taxes have not been filed for that period.

Newly adjusted paychecks will include next steps you can take to view tax liability changes and resolve any overpayment or underpayment issues.

New QuickBooks Online Payroll certification 

In a nutshell: ProAdvisors® who are QuickBooks Online certified now also have the option to become certified in QuickBooks Payroll.

Payroll certification will make it easier to deliver value to your clients, while consulting about their payroll needs.

Course details:

• 4 modules providing in-depth product feature training
• New Payroll Specialist Fundamentals course (8 modules that provide foundational knowledge for payroll compliance and regulations)
• New Payroll certification exam and a certification prep course to set exam expectations

What you get with certification:

• Foundational knowledge for offering payroll services for the first time
• 100 tier points and a Payroll certification badge for use in your marketing materials
• Listing on the Find-a-ProAdvisor directory

Learn more