Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: Today we're welcoming back Eric Foster for another update on bank transactions. He was on the show a few weeks ago to provide an update on bulk and inline reclassification. On this episode, we'll be hearing about items and sales receipts, and will be joined by ProAdvisor correspondents Dan Luthi and Carla Caldwell. 

Hey, ProAdvisors, I hope you're enjoying your summer. I'm Jaclyn and you're watching In the Know. It's the show designed to keep you In the Know on the most exciting updates to QuickBooks Online.  So here's the scoop. 

We heard that you have to spend lots of time adding transactions from the bank feed, and then going back to fix them later, because the bank feed has not historically allowed for adding items such as products or services to transactions. So here's what we've done on money out transactions. You can now add products or services, also known as items, to your expense transactions directly from the bank feed. And on money in transactions, you can now record transactions as sales receipts directly from the bank feed.

And now for the Fast Facts:

• All users on QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced can add items on expense transactions. On sales receipts, it's available to all users on all SKUs, with the exception of QuickBooks Ledger.
• To access these updates, simply visit the banking page.
• Items and sales receipts on bank transactions are available to about 50% of all customers across all regions, with more to come later this summer.

If you find this update interesting or helpful, go ahead and like, comment, and subscribe. 

Eric, welcome back. It's so nice to have you on the show again. Can you take us for another spin?

Eric Foster: Well, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me on the show again, Jaclyn. I'm excited to talk to you about items and sales receipts on bank transactions. 

My name is Eric and I'm a product manager working on bank feeds. I'll start with the money-in-use case. Let's say I'm selling something through Shopify and have a Shopify integration. If you've got the transaction coming in through the bank feed, you can select a product or service right here. This isn't something you could do before.

Let's say I sold toys; now, you can see this transaction is a sales receipt instead of a bank deposit. When I hit add on that transaction, it immediately goes to my books as a sales receipt with that product or service, and if I click right here, I can see that sales receipt transaction. On the money-out side, you can now add a product or service, so now the expense is recorded with a product or service.

But I can also do both, so let's say I bought plastic bags—but there was also a shipping fee and want to use an account for my chart of accounts shipping to keep track of the shipping. But then for the item itself, I want to use the product or service, so I can split the transaction between both of those to have more granularity about exactly what I purchased. This is really helpful, again, for job costing, as you're trying to keep track of exactly what you spent money on.

One thing we're really excited about that's coming soon is credit card credits. If you buy something with your credit card and then return it after you record the initial purchase, you'll also be able to record the return this way so that the two entries zero each other out.

We're really excited about this. We've been hearing feedback for years from people asking about it, and we've already heard a lot from people who've been trying it out. We hope that you're able to try it out as well, and let us know what you think. Thank you again for having me on the show. I’m really excited to see more of you using this feature in the future.

Jacly Anku: Eric, thank you so much. That's great. 

We'll turn now to ProAdvisor correspondents Carla Caldwell and Dan Luthi for them to weigh in. Carla, Dan, thank you so much for joining us on another episode of In the Know. It's awesome to have you here. Carla, let's start with you; tell me why this update is such a big deal.

Carla Caldwell: I actually think that on the sales side, this is going to be a really big timesaver for our nonprofit clients as they book donations that are coming in and didn’t know about the donations ahead of time. 

Recording a sales receipt or invoice doesn't really make sense ahead of time, so once it comes in and deposited, the client can immediately record it and use an item code, which really does help a lot with reporting. We've worked with quite a few nonprofits, so I think this is going to help them out. 

On the expense side, our construction clients are really going to enjoy recording items on the expenses they buy. Let’s say they buy lumber and use that code. I think that's going to help streamline what they do on a day-to-day basis.

Dan Luthi: The part that I love about the deposit side is one of the things we see very common with using third-party merchant systems—merchant fees that come out as a part of it, too. Now you're going to actually be able to record the revenue and the merchant fee as a part of the same transaction, so it ties perfectly. You get the full revenue numbers that are listed and the expense associated with it. That's going to help a lot.

I also think that on the e-commerce side, which I think is really convenient here, you can now more or less receive inventory items in the bank feed. Historically, you may have created a P.O. or may have entered a bill with all of the item-level information and shipping. Now you can do it as of this point in time right within the bank feed, which is going to be able to help streamline the process and save you a bunch of time.

Carla Caldwell: Yeah. The expense side of the transaction really can help. We have a very specific way that we record certain things and allow reporting for our construction clients. So this is going to really tie that in. Before, it felt a little bit time consuming for some to enter in the transaction separately—then it clears and they are clear. They are matching it up to the cleared transaction on the bank feed. This just makes one less step that they have to do, which might make it more accurate. We'll see how it all goes.

Dan Luthi: It’s going to speed up their process, right? It's going to make it faster for your construction clients who maybe aren't buying 12,000 different things within a line item. If it's a smaller construction client who is buying materials for one event or one build, they can put all that in as “construction materials.” When they sell it, it'll come out very, very cleanly.

Carla Caldwell: Yep. Exactly.

Jacly Anku: So Carla, you brought up an important word, which is reporting. Does this enable cleaner or better reporting for your clients?

Carla Caldwell: Yeah, I mean, they would have gotten there, but it would have just taken them longer, right? Especially for me, as I'm thinking through some of these things, our nonprofit clients will really like this because we want them using sales receipts and want the items to be able to know the types of things that they're selling as nonprofits.

But even on the expense side, because we have a lot of clients who are using projects for their construction, this is going to help out a lot there as well and provide reports they want that are a little bit more granular.  So our chart of accounts doesn't explode, we're putting them on items, and then that goes to the chart of accounts and their financial statements in a little more summarized form. So the reports will definitely be improved.

Dan Luthi: I love that you mentioned that, Carla, because I think along with this, one of the parts that historically people have tried to use as the chart of accounts is the example to break out all the revenue and expense categories, or they build classes or locations, and things of that nature. Now, you're going to be able to organize all of those a little bit more seamlessly and have additional dimensions; when the deposits or expenses are coming out and you're coding them through the bank feed, you can actually associate it to that sublevel detail.

Carla Caldwell: This is a conversation I have with ProAdvisors all the time. We can use QuickBooks Online to get more information, rather than solely relying on the financial statements, so that we can help our clients with operational reporting and operation management. That's where it gets really fun to me. Yes, we can get the financials that will still get there, but now we have a little bit more information to give our clients inside of those more detailed reports we can get from products and services. I actually think it's going to be a really great conversation to have with clients.

Dan Luthi: I very much agree with you.

Jacly Anku: Carla, in the instance where your client is actually taking the action on bank transactions and you hear about an exciting update like this, how would you train them on the updated workflow or even just get the word out to them?

Carla Caldwell: We send newsletters out to our clients, but we also will create a quick video for them. We have a sample company, walk them through the process, show them how to use it, and ask them to connect with our team members. And of course, we let our team members know, hey, we're going to be sending this out.

Dan Luthi: We start with internal training on our side. We start with the team so they understand if a client's already seeing it because they got a notification through QuickBooks Online or something else like that. This allows us to be more proactive in the conversation, instead of reactive. And then if necessary, we definitely do the same where we send out a bulk notification to all of our clients so that they're best prepared for it.

Jacly Anku: I love that amazing pro tips, especially, of course, the idea for a video. Naturally. Dan. Carla, thank you so much for being on the show. It's always so much fun to spend time with you, so I appreciate your time and insight and we'll catch you next time. Bye! 

Dan Luthi Thank you so much.

Carla Caldwell Bye!

Jacly Anku And thank you for watching this episode.  I'm Jaclyn, the host of In The Know and leader of ProAdvisor Training and Certification. Be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so that you don't miss a single episode. We'll catch you next time.

Meet the ProAdvisors

ProAdvisor Carla Caldwell: Founder, Caldwell Consulting & Training LLC.

ProAdvisor Dan Luthi: COO Ignite Spot