QuickBooks Enterprise 15, part 2

On Tuesday we began our look at the new features in QuickBooks Enterprise 15. Today, the rest of the story.

Some QuickBooks users need long, multi-page invoices. A few years ago, the invoice total would show on all pages.

Intuit improved that function so that the total amount would only show on the last page. That was a couple of years ago. However, the blank total field and all the other invoice footer information remained on all pages.

In QuickBooks Enterprise 15, the invoice footer only shows on the final invoice page if the invoice template is setup in this way.

You will need to customize your invoice template in order to activate this feature.

Another optional improvement to printed forms is the ability to shade every other line to make reading the printed form easier.

Use this setting in the print dialogue box when printing forms and they will come out like this:

Another additional capability when customizing templates is to add a Cost field. This is not the average cost that QuickBooks computes for inventory type items. It is the cost field within the Item Setup window.

Sometimes the cost information is helpful in creating a sales form. The cost information cannot be printed. It can only be added to the on-screen view of the sales form.

When creating a new customer, vendor, or item, it is possible to setup an opening balance. Once a QuickBooks company file has been established, there should not be a situation where these fields need to be used.

In fact, using these fields in an established company file will be very problematic. There is now a remedy for this. In Preferences->Accounting->Company Preferences, there is a new setting “Hide opening balance fields in Names and Items”.

In QuickBooks Enterprise 15, it is now possible to prevent creating an invoice for a customer with an overdue balance.

When the overdue customer’s name is selected for an invoice, QuickBooks immediately flashes the message denying the QuickBooks user the ability to continue.

The setting is located at Preferences->Sales & Customers->Company Preferences.

The feature is very basic at present. There is no override. To allow an exception, the Admin user would have to login to the QuickBooks file and uncheck the setting.

Then, if they still wanted the setting as a default, after the one sale exception was created for the overdue customer, the Admin user would again have to login and re-select the setting.

It is also interesting that the setting is very specific. In at least some cases, if a customer has more than one job setup on the customer list, only the one job will be considered overdue. Invoices can still be created on the others.

There is one more major enhancement to QuickBooks Enterprise 15. No negative inventory.

QuickBooks has always allowed the selling of inventory type items, even if the quantity on hand was insufficient.

A warning message would display. But if one wanted to sell what was not in stock, at least as far as QuickBooks was concerned, they could.

Now, that can be prevented.

This setting may have more value than many people realize. QuickBooks is always trying to maintain the average cost of each inventory item and use that cost as an expense when items are sold.

Selling into negative quantities plays havoc with that computation and can cause problems with the QuickBooks company file. Now, it can be prevented.

Hector Garcia, CPA
Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor
12401 Orange Drive #136
Davie, FL 33330
954-414-1524
hector@garciacpa.com