Starting March, accountants using QuickBooks Online Accountant will get upgraded from the Plus plan to the QBO Advanced plan to help them manage their own firms better.
The upgrade is free and automatic, and Intuit promises no loss of data or functionality.
The upgrade, which comes with more features and functionality, arrives at a time when firms and businesses can use the advanced functionality to navigate through the difficulties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
QuickBooks Online Advanced is designed to help accountants grow their firms by managing processes better, and to help bookkeeping professionals work smarter with deeper insights, including tracking important details with enhanced custom fields as well as the ability to visualize performance with custom reports and charts. QBO Advanced works faster than Plus, and includes features like batch transactions and the ability to define and automate specific tasks and workflows. QuickBooks Online Advanced also assists with organization, partly by integrating with Google Sheets, and soon, it will have the ability to create custom roles for team members.
A more detailed look at QBO Advanced features includes:
- Custom fields: This feature allows accountants to track and analyze unique data at any level of granularity. The software supports 48 custom fields, with up to 12 fields available for each customer, vendor, sales forms, purchase order and other expenses. Users can sort, filter, group by and display information in columns of fields in three reports: custom contact list, vendor contact list and unpaid bills.
- Custom chart builder: A highly requested feature of accountants, according to Intuit, the chart builder allows users to increase their advisory services by creating custom key performance indicator dashboards for clients. The custom charts enable clients to make better-informed business decisions, with at-a-glance data provided on key business metrics. Users can set up a comparison while creating a custom chart, allowing them to compae key data against the same period in the previous year. Preset charts also include the ability to view business performance over the fiscal year under a “time period” option.
- Custom roles expansion: Soon, this planned feature will allow accountants to customize user access and ensure only the right people see the right information. With it, accountants can get even more granular with more pre-set roles to use and expand.
- Performance center: This feature allows accountants to track business performance and gain insights with customizable, presentation-ready reports.
To learn more about QBO Advanced, Intuit is offering webinars and training sessions. To access self-paced learning modules and training webinars, accountants can login to QBOA, go to the ProAdvisor tab and select “training.” The “specialty courses” section offers a QuickBooks Online Advanced Specialty option.
