QuickBooks Online new features and improvements — February 2024

Welcome to February! Intuit QuickBooks has released an article on accountant key insights about Black-owned small businesses from the 2024 Intuit QuickBooks Black History Month Survey.

Here are this month’s new features; we’re sure you’ll find them innovative.

In the Know Webinar

The next In The Know webinar will be held Thursday, Feb. 15 at 11:00 AM PT. In the Know is a monthly webinar to learn more about the latest and greatest product feature updates. This month, join us to learn about forecasting in QuickBooks Online, revenue recognition in QuickBooks Online Advanced, and more. Reserve your spot

Share QuickBooks updates with your associates and clients: Send them this link for QuickBooks innovations relevant to business owners and admins. 

Your Feedback in Action

This is a regular series where we share relevant product improvements specifically driven by feedback from accountants. See the December edition for the latest updates.

What’s new in February

Manage clients’ QuickBooks Time using QuickBooks Online Accountant

Simplifying QuickBooks Time setup in QuickBooks Online Payroll

Share documents with an employee through their profile in QuickBooks Online Payroll

Assign more tasks with custom roles in QuickBooks Online Advanced

Chase Bank statements now automatically import to QuickBooks Online

Cash flow projections to be discontinued on Feb. 2, 2024

Direct deposit transaction matching in QuickBooks Online Payroll

Coming soon: Create a new client’s tax return during ProConnect Tax onboarding

Manage clients’ QuickBooks Time using QuickBooks Online Accountant

In a nutshell: Now you can manage QuickBooks Time for your clients, and access Time for yourself right in QuickBooks Online Accountant, rather than visiting a separate portal.

For clients new to Time, you can also add it in QuickBooks Online Accountant. Whether you add a standalone Time subscription for your client or bundle it with other products, you can select ProAdvisor pricing or revenue share benefits. Learn more about ProAdvisor Preferred Pricing revenue share.

Note: Because this functionality is now available in QuickBooks Online Accountant, the QuickBooks Time PRO Portal and Manage clients feature in QuickBooks Time will soon be discontinued.

Simplifying QuickBooks Time setup in QuickBooks Online Payroll

In a nutshell: Now you and your clients can get started with QuickBooks Payroll and QuickBooks Time faster than ever with a new integrated setup experience for tracking. The setup tasks and workflows for QuickBooks Time are available in both Payroll Overview and Time Overview.

The updated setup for QuickBooks Time guides you through these basics:

• Customizing timesheet fields.
• Enabling time tracking via mobile app or on-site kiosks.
• Inviting team members to track time in the Workforce app.
• Assigning permissions to edit timesheets.
• Setting up tablet or computer-based kiosks for time tracking at a work location.

You can also set up these advanced tasks for QuickBooks Time:

• Assigning groups and managers for approving time.
• Establishing break rules.
• Assigning team members to customers.
• Setting up geofencing for automated time tracking. 

To customize additional settings, select Overview in QuickBooks Time.

Share documents with an employee through their profile in QuickBooks Online Payroll

In a nutshell: To help simplify HR processes and secure private information, your clients can now upload and share documents to their employees’ individual Workforce profiles through QuickBooks Online Payroll.

After an employer shares a document to an employee’s profile, the employee will get an email notification. They can then securely sign in to Workforce, and visit the Documents tab to view any shared documents and tax forms.

Note: At this time, shared documents are accessible through QuickBooks Workforce on the web but not the mobile app.

Learn more

Assign more tasks with custom roles in QuickBooks Online Advanced

In a nutshell: Your clients can now assign more granular access to financial data using custom roles in QuickBooks Online Advanced.

Advanced lets your clients delegate with confidence by assigning roles they’ve customized to fit each team member’s day-to-day tasks. These roles limit access to sensitive financial and payroll data for a more effective separation of duties.

Custom roles now include these three options:

1. Control access to more types of transactions such as invoices, estimates, bills, expenses, purchase orders, and checks.
2. More control of what team members can do with transactions like view-only, create, edit, and delete.
3. More specific access to task areas, including bank feeds, reconciliation, registers, chart of accounts, journal entries, and online bill pay.

In addition, a business owner or an accountant can control who can view, create, edit, or delete transactions and access accounting features such as reconciliation, registers, and chart of accounts.

Learn more

Chase Bank statements now automatically import to QuickBooks Online

In a nutshell: If your clients bank with Chase, it’s simpler than ever to reconcile those transactions in QuickBooks Online because you can see their monthly statements right in QuickBooks. Now you can finish the books without chasing down statements or uploading them manually. 

From the Reconcile screen, just select the Chase bank account and then View statements.

Learn more

Cash flow projections to be discontinued on Feb. 2, 2024

In a nutshell: Starting Feb. 2, 2024, cash flow projections will no longer be available in QuickBooks Online. However, you can still access all historical cash flow data for you and your clients after this date.

Direct deposit transaction matching in QuickBooks Online Payroll

In a nutshell: Starting this month in the United States, QuickBooks Online Payroll paychecks paid with direct deposit will automatically be matched to the corresponding bank transactions, without you or your clients lifting a finger.

With this update, each paycheck paid by direct deposit will be auto-matched to a bank debit in Bank transactions. No more manually matching payroll transactions to paychecks one-by-one—just review the proposed categorization and move on with your day.

Note: After this update, you or your clients will see notifications of automatic matches; you can always turn off this setting if you prefer to match manually. All transactions will appear as “Intuit,” but detailed descriptions will still mention “Payroll.”

Learn more

Coming soon: Create a new client’s tax return during Intuit® ProConnect™ Tax onboarding

In a nutshell: Soon you’ll be able to create a new tax return for a client in Intuit ProConnect Tax by importing their previous year’s 1040 return. Not only will this save you considerable time and effort at tax time, you can use it to fast-track the onboarding process for new clients.

With this update, ProConnect Tax extracts relevant client data and values from the first two pages of your client’s prior-year tax return. This process will help you avoid the risk of data entry error by automatically creating a new client in ProConnect Tax using their taxpayer information, such as name(s), addresses, deduction information, dependent data, bank information, and more. After that, you’ll get a guided review of the data, and can make edits before applying the information to the tax return.

Note: At launch, this update will allow you to upload 1040 returns from tax year 2022 to help create 1040 returns for tax year 2023.