Latest / Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast / August 2025 QuickBooks Online Updates: AI Agents, Customer Leads, and Text Message Payroll
Transcript
- There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript. Alicia Katz Pollock: In this edition of the unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast, Matthew Fulton and I are going to talk about the August 2025 In the Know episode and the Firm of the future article. How are you doing, Matthew? Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Hey, Alicia, it's great to join you again for this month's In the Know. I truly appreciate it. I'm doing well. And yourself? Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm doing pretty good. So Matthew is from Parkway Business Solutions [00:00:30] and the QB community live, and your input is always welcome and encouraged when we do these episodes. So thank you for joining me. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Appreciate it. I always love being a part of this. You know, community is the most important thing. We as accountants know that very, very well. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And that's one of the things I really like about our industry is that we're no longer behind desks, all isolated and where we are really a true community. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So if you haven't figured out how to work from wherever you want, you should be listening to this podcast even [00:01:00] more because you can learn a lot of insightful things. Live your life and enjoy what you do. Alicia Katz Pollock: That's awesome and that's a great way of kicking this off. So let's live our lives and enjoy what we do, and talk about the things that are new and up and coming in QuickBooks online. So this is the In the Know webinar, which happens once a month. It's led by Jacqueline Anku from ProAdvisor Academy. And uh, we are uh, it's where they break down the new developments and the new releases [00:01:30] so that you know what's going on in your QuickBooks so that when things change, you know what to expect, and they show all the things that they're doing to solve our problems. So yeah. Cool. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: What I always love about these is they always have a tendency of breaking them down with, uh, they start off with a couple things like ProAdvisor Academy, different things you need to know about what's going on. Then they break into the different product improvements that are happening, which we'll cover. And then, of course, at the end they also tell us about some great different series that are going to be coming up that people [00:02:00] should be, you know, diving into as well. So shall we get started? Alicia Katz Pollock: Let's do it. Let's help them spread the word. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So I believe this month actually started off kind of talking about some of the changes with the ProAdvisor Academy. Right. Mhm. Um, one of them I know had to do with some new filters and uh, around the CPE credits. Can you tell us a little bit more about how, what that was about and some of the other spotlight things they were doing? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I mean, one of the questions people always have is [00:02:30] where is ProAdvisor Academy and what is it? And when you're in your QuickBooks online for accountants, in the left hand margin, there's a ProAdvisor link. And then when you click on ProAdvisor, there's two options. One for benefits and one for training. And training is where you can get CPE credit for learning about QuickBooks online features as well as take your certification test. And what they just implemented are some new filters so that not only can you search by what topic you want to know about? But if you're like, yeah, I have an hour, what [00:03:00] can I go do right now? You can now filter it by the length and the amount of CPE credit, and they'll show you what, what courses there are that fit those parameters for you. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So one of the things when I first got started with my company, my business partner and I, what we always did is we would take about 15 minutes every Monday and jump in together and start doing some of this training. And it really helped us get through a lot of certifications pretty quickly, and it expanded our knowledge super fast. So those who are listening, [00:03:30] if you're just trying to figure out how can you get some of these tests or these courses done 15 minutes at a time? I strongly suggest it. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, absolutely. It saves your progress. Um, it also shows you where, um, what upcoming webinars are coming up so that you can sign up for those. And if you miss one, you can watch the recordings of the previous sessions where they used to just email them to you. But now there's a library and you can go look um, it also is now, for the first time, saving your CPE certificates [00:04:00] in the my history. Um, which is huge because it used to be they emailed them to you and you had to save them, and that was it. So the fact that you can actually now track your CPE in the my history for the in the nose is pretty darn awesome. I'm happy about that. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now would be a bit remiss if we didn't talk about the The Big Show coming up pretty quick here, right? Intuit Connect October, I think. What is it? October 27th through 29th at the at Aria [00:04:30] in Vegas. I mean, it's a great place. We've been doing it there for many, many years. So that's coming up pretty soon. You are you planning to be there this year? Alicia. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I'm going this year. I'm not speaking this year. At least not yet. Hopefully some. Not that I want anyone to, like, cancel and have a hard time, but you know, I love it if I'm able to just kind of step in. Um, I've been I've recently been a subject matter expert with ProAdvisor Academy and helping proofread their quizzes and the certifications [00:05:00] and the the lessons. And so, you know, QuickBooks connect is kind of my happy place. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So that reminds me two things. Number one, if you are connecting, you run and you see Alisha, you better run up and give her a big hug and be like, we love your podcast. Yay! And for those who have actually been attending the In the Know, uh, webinars, did you know that this month Alicia was one of your Q&A specialists behind the scenes? She was busting her rear behind the scenes [00:05:30] trying to answer as many questions as possible. So thank you for that. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. For this very episode that we're talking about, I was actually helping all of you clarify all of the questions. So it's fun. It's like a fire hose, but it's fun. Um, the last section of the ProAdvisor Academy is that they're actually starting a new series. So in addition to the in the Knows, they're starting a second quarterly event called The Solution Spotlight, where they're going to have Intuit care experts, which is basically support, teach you about [00:06:00] either complex challenges, how to optimize your workflows, and to do some deep dives on some tools that you might not know existed. The very first one is September 25th from 11 to 12 Pacific Time, and then it will be quarterly after that. And they even asked what topics they wanted us, they what we wanted training about. And I was happy to see that the bank transactions and reconciliation was the most popular answer. So I'm sure we'll get some training on that. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: What I'm loving about this is you're recognizing this big corporation [00:06:30] who sees the way that people are absorbing their new their information, and they're adjusting. They're doing what they need to do to try to get the knowledge out to people in a very positive way. So Intuit, thank you so much for doing that. It's a really positive thing. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I agree, I'm looking forward to those sessions because anything I can do to learn something new is. Happy for me. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So one of the last things they talked about before we jump into like product innovations, talking about enterprise and some of the other things was for us accountants [00:07:00] was the accountant tools. Mhm. Um, I know within that they've kind of done an update towards it a bit. Um, I believe some of the stuff they were talking about is where you can kind of create your own personal navigation side of it. But there are other, other aspects of it that they were discussing as well. Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, yeah. They, they basically, uh, what was the accountant tools or the toolbox or the briefcase? You know, that's what the icon used to look like is now in the left hand sidebar when you're in [00:07:30] Qbo. It looks like a little, um, it still looks like a little toolbox, but it's now called my menu. And what's actually really cool about it, and this is current events here. Um, I, there was a somebody was ranting on Facebook about how they The new window tool was gone, which they used. I mean, I literally have never clicked it in my entire life because I right click on everything to make new tabs. But for them, [00:08:00] it was essential equipment and it wasn't there. And, um, I don't know if they didn't see it, I didn't see it or it literally just got released today. But there's a new customized button in my menu and you can now customize it. You can rearrange the sections, you can add things that you want to the different sections, including the new the new window, so you can bring it up. And for those of you who like having your bookmarks just on the screen, when [00:08:30] you open my menu, it's now persistent and it will stay as a sidebar so you can completely make your own toolbars and not have to go through all the fly thrus. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So this kind of leads into a little bit of the elephant in the room that there's definitely a new look with QuickBooks online. But once everybody starts to feel and understand how these things work out. I think they're really going to appreciate how they've been laid out very nicely. Um, I think it leads into a bigger platform environment, especially understanding the MailChimp and all these other [00:09:00] different aspects of it. So it's going to be a great thing. Alicia Katz Pollock: So yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now I think that the next big thing they jumped into when we start talking about some of the product innovations, uh, which is a big focus has to do around Intuit Enterprise Suite. And I know the three areas, but then I'm going to ask you to kind of dive into them is the they they basically introduced how the shared chart of accounts shared dimensions and then the multi entity transactions, which I'm really excited to hear a little bit more about. [00:09:30] Those are some of the primary upgrades for the the enterprise suite. Is that correct? Alicia Katz Pollock: That is correct. Now we just did an episode about all the changes to Intuit Enterprise Suite. Um, Hector was on I think two weeks ago and did a whole like an hour and a half breakdown of all of the features. So we're just going to kind of do this in an essential nutshell. And if you want all the nuts and bolts, head back to episode 103. So [00:10:00] the first one is a shared chart of accounts that my favorite thing about Intuit Enterprise Suite is the Multi-company tools, so that when you have multiple entities that are all in one ownership, you can manage them all in one place. And one of the things that was missing is the fact that most companies, when they get set up, have completely distinct charts of accounts. Which means when you run a consolidated report, all the numbers are on different lines and you can't just read across to [00:10:30] see how they compare together. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That's huge. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So what they've done is they've made a shared chart of accounts where you can now have a tool to make a consolidated, consistent chart of accounts between the entities. So the way that it works, you turn it on and then once you turn it on, you can actually no longer edit the chart of accounts from inside the individual entities. You have to go up to the primary company to this tool in order to get it all set [00:11:00] up. And so basically what you do is for each of the accounts, you can assign which of the entities you want to see that account in. And you can also pick one of the charts of accounts to be the main reference. And the AI agent will go through all the other entities and map the accounts together to each other. And then you review it, you approve it, and it will go through and do all of the renaming and the merging for you, so that you don't have [00:11:30] to sit here and edit, you know, three or 20 or 50 different entities to make all the charts of accounts match. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So to reiterate what you were just saying, which this sounds pretty powerful as the primary admin. You go in, you choose which of the chart of accounts you want to be your primary one, and then you're able to go. And we call that kind of the cleanup phase. You're able to use the AI to then go and have it say, okay, we think these are going to go to these. You still have the ability to review [00:12:00] and say, yep, I you got this right. And it's going to be able to go through and clean these things up for you so you don't have to spend the two hours trying to do it yourself. Is that what I heard? Alicia Katz Pollock: That's exactly what it is. Yeah. And so the only person who can actually do this is, like you said, the primary had been on the parent account, so that specific one. But I didn't get the sense that it has to be the primary company's chart of accounts that you can use as the basis when you do the cleanup [00:12:30] phase. And you do actually have to do this cleanup phase once in order to use it, that you have to go through the process to make it work. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I mean, that makes sense. I mean, whenever you're trying to do something this complex, there's going to be some hand-holding through it. But I can tell you, as an accountant, the time and energy it takes to try to normalize a chart of accounts is extensive. There's a lot of thought and knowledge and wisdom that goes into it. So the ability to do this and have I help [00:13:00] you. And then if you you to still be able to review it before it's selected is pretty powerful. Yeah. Um, and so I know dimensions. Dimensions is another thing that they're, they're playing with continuously. And as a reminder, can you remind our listeners what dimensions are first and then explain what it is that's that's changing with it. Alicia Katz Pollock: So dimensions are like classes on steroids, whereas we're used to just having one class and maybe some subclasses underneath it. Dimensions. Your first [00:13:30] class, your original class becomes your first dimension. And then you can have multiple dimensions. So basically it's multiple classes which I can kind of find all kinds of use cases for. And so what they're beginning to do is now make the dimensions shared between the entities as well. So you can pick one of the dimensions and say which of the entities you want to see it in. And the good news is that anybody who has access to the permissions for dimensions will be able to manage [00:14:00] this. It doesn't have to be the primary user. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So we can do accounting from the fourth or fifth dimension. Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay. Sorry. Nerd joke words. Um, so now the one other area I really want to talk about was this new the multi entity transactions. Because this is a big deal if we're talking about like if you're making an invoice from one entity to another, how do you handle some of that stuff or bills back [00:14:30] and forth. What does that look like. Alicia Katz Pollock: So they're doing a new automation that when you make an invoice and you pick the customer, that is the other entity. And now let me just as an aside, each of the entities gets their own customer and vendor that's specifically designated so that, you know, it's not just an it's internal and not external. And so if you make an invoice and you pick the other company to be the customer on that invoice, it [00:15:00] will actually go into that company and make the associated bill for it and include the PDF of the invoice in the bill in the other company. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That's huge. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. It's huge. Now, it did sound like you still have to go in and edit it. Like it might not get the category or the item right. Because especially if your products and services lists don't exactly match. And that doesn't surprise me, because even now that that pane on the left where you can [00:15:30] upload a bill, it doesn't know what products to assign it to, it doesn't get that right yet. So that's like, you know, a few years into the future before. That's something that we can actually use and trust. But even so, the fact that it made the bill attached to the invoice and now all we have to go are just assign the line items. That's a big help. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So, Alicia, you and I were nerding out. We've been doing this accounting stuff for quite some time. Can I ask a favor? And can you kind of break this down a little bit more? Like, what is this really talking about? Like when a company owns multiple, [00:16:00] multiple subsidiaries. What are we talking about here? Alicia Katz Pollock: So the thing is that when you have multiple, multiple subsidiaries and you do a consolidated report like a consolidated PNL, you actually your income and your expenses can be inflated if the companies are doing business together because, you know, like if one company buys a product from the other company, you're getting the income and the expense and they both wash. But really, all you did was move the the [00:16:30] physical inventory asset from company to company. And so it can get complicated that if you're not careful, you are double counting your revenues, your expenses, and that can mislead your stakeholders. So the concept is called eliminations. And Intuit Enterprise Suite is now built to do those eliminations for you. So all these intercompany transactions are actually not in the reports. Or you can specify if you want to see internal transactions or [00:17:00] external transactions. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah, I have a company I've been working with now for some time, and they have multiple multiple entities. And this is a perfect example of it. Uh, prior to something like enterprise, the back and forth between the two companies, the only way to truly make sure you got this right is you would pull up two browsers, you'd have both companies up, and you look at the intercompany exchanges between one company and the other, and you kind of go line by line by line to make sure both [00:17:30] sides are there, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And if they don't exactly equal out, well, you know, you got to start asking questions. You got to start doing extra work. So like you're saying with this, this is going to help because it's going to recognize which companies are, you know, there's always a parent company and the other ones are connected to this. It's going to help recognize those and create the intercompany transactions automatically for you. So they're going to line up nice and clean. [00:18:00] Is that is that a good way to say it. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah it's a good way of saying it. Typically what people use when they're doing that painstaking detail are called due to from accounts where you have either an asset or a liability, and you have it in both the files, and you have to at every step along the way, make sure the due to firms are actually equal and the fact that you don't have to do it now with journal entries and the manual matching like you were talking about, for example, you can that what's new? One of the things that Daniel mentioned is that the R and [00:18:30] AP aging summaries can now be filtered to either see all transactions or just see internal transactions between the companies, or just external transactions without the company, the entities. And then that way you can actually see everything happening without managing all those due to froms. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And I want to say it a different way, because this is the way it sticks in my head. I want to know if I'm a business owner and I have multiple entities, entities that [00:19:00] if I'm funneling money into company B all the time to make it solvent from company A, I want to see quickly what company owes what company money back and forth, and this will help streamline that a lot easier. And if you have to explain your cash flow, if you're funding different aspects, maybe startups or anything else, where's the money going? Why? Maybe challenging in one company, the parent company because you're funding [00:19:30] this other startup within your entities. This will help you do that. That's huge. Alicia Katz Pollock: Absolutely. Now for me, I have only a couple companies who are multi entity and they're really small. They're micro. It's like holding companies right where like they have the real estate and the only the real estate company with the building in it, and the only activity it has at all is the rent payment and the utility payments and that's [00:20:00] it. And she's got this one client has seven of them. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Alicia Katz Pollock: But and so we spent we spent hours on the do to Froms. But she's not a good fit for Intuit Enterprise Suite because all her companies are literally QuickBooks Ledger or Simple Start. And I even though this would be a huge power solve for her, her entities are too small to be worth the price tag for the whole thing. So I'm kind [00:20:30] of into it. I'm going to put a bug in your ear that you need eyes. Light that doesn't have the project management and all the other bells and whistles. And it's just the consolidations. Like they don't need dimensions, they don't need project management, they just need the multi-company functions. So I think they should make a version. That's just that. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Alicia, I have to agree with you there. While enterprise is phenomenal, I think there are so many more companies that can continue to use this. If we also had an enterprise [00:21:00] lite, because the ability to use some of this intercompany stuff would be super powerful. The other things they would also benefit from, it could also be some of their consolidated reporting, like aren't they doing some consolidated like PNL reports and some other reports as well? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I mean, the consolidated PNL has been kind of the hallmark of the whole entire thing. One of the things that that's also new is now you can also make portfolios like groups of your entities. So if you only want to see consolidated PNL Personnel on this group of them over here, or [00:21:30] this handful of them over here, you can, you know, if you have a lot of different ones and some of them are real estate and some of them are investment companies, whatever. But you can now not just have the consolidated PNL across all of the entities. You can have consolidated PNL on just specific portfolios of them. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now they also have a consolidated transaction report. But there are some limitations, I believe, to that at the moment. Right. Something about, um, I believe you can't click through [00:22:00] open transactions because that would entail opening two different companies and one is once. Is that correct? Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. Because you're looking at a consolidated report and it's done from the parent account. And so you would have to if you if the transaction was in one of the subsidiary entities, you would have to open up that entity to see the transaction. And right now they just they have not figured out that technology yet. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So before we we go on to some of the other stuff that's coming up. Pretty cool agents and things. I'd love to ask the listeners to [00:22:30] reach out and comment and let us know. Are you using enterprise yet? If you are, what features are you loving? If you aren't, what features are you most enticed towards? So we can kind of help keep you educated as to what things are evolving and improving along the way. Um, I think it'd be good to hear from people what they want to hear more about. What do you think? Alicia Katz Pollock: I think that I absolutely want to hear from people. In fact, we actually just started a LinkedIn group specifically for this podcast. [00:23:00] And so we have a place to discuss the episodes so you can head over to LinkedIn and search for the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, and go find our LinkedIn group and let us know, you know, how are you feeling about all of these AI agents? Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I'm sure you'll add those into the notes, of course, of the show, and be sure to let everybody know have spot back. No, I'm just kidding. So we got agents. We've got one of the biggest ones right off the bat is the payments [00:23:30] agent. And, um, tell us a little bit more about what that's about. Alicia Katz Pollock: So payments agent is basically QuickBooks payments paying attention to your activity. And so you'll see suggestions from it when you're in invoices or estimates. And in the sales area, the customers area, the business feed. Um, basically in the last year they've released a lot of new ways to get paid payment links, recurring payments, all kinds of things, with the goal of getting [00:24:00] the payment information out of your hands for PCI compliance, but not a. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Lot of money. I'm sorry to interrupt. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Show me the money. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That Jerry Maguire thing is just popping in my head. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Show me the money. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Pay me. Sorry. Keep going. Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly. Um. And the thing is, is that not everybody knows about them yet. And so even us bookkeepers and Proadvisors haven't tried them, so we haven't experienced them. We don't have time to let our clients know that these payment methods are available, and [00:24:30] they may really be a game changer for some of our clients. You know, the payment links are great for people who are teaching classes because people can just show up and click the QR, you know, take a picture of the QR code and pay. So there's some cool stuff. And we did an episode about the, the, the different payment methods with Dan a few months ago. So definitely check out that episode. Um, but in any case, because we don't know about them and our clients don't know about them, and even if you did know about them, how do [00:25:00] you tell your 25 or 100 clients which ones are right for them? So that's where the payments agent comes in. It's helping spread the word about it. Um, if you're cynical, you're thinking that it's upsells and marketing, but it's not like they're paying any more. They already have QuickBooks payments in the product. So you might as well use it. Right? So the way it works is that when you're in, for example, an invoice, there's the little sparkle for Intuit assist [00:25:30] on the left hand side. And when it opens up, the thing that you're going to notice most is that you can now create an invoice by pasting in text, or pasting in a picture, or dropping in a PDF, and it will parse it out and do its best to turn it into an invoice, or at least get it started for you. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Pretty cool. It really is. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And again, like I said earlier, it doesn't do the line items that well yet. But you know, it's just the infancy of the technology. But what it also will do is when you select a customer, it [00:26:00] will show you how long they've been a customer, how many invoices they've paid in the last 12 months, how many open invoices they have, and how many of those open invoices are overdue. And they didn't show it in the demo. But I've also seen it tell you how long they usually take to pay on average. And so what it will do is based on the customer's history And what settings you already have turned on. If you don't have all the settings on, for example, it will make suggestions that you can add additional ways to pay on this invoice. [00:26:30] There's there's an option for cash, which of course most of us aren't going to use ACH, PayPal, Venmo. And when it makes the suggestion, it will show you how many days it's going to take to receive the money on average. And it actually includes their payment time in that, which is a little weird. And it just, you know, anybody who is watching the in the know, if you noticed on the slide it said ACH 14 days. It wasn't that ACH takes 14 days to clear. It's that the client, the customer takes [00:27:00] on average nine days to pay. And then you have the, the 3 to 5 days it takes to clear. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So I want to interrupt you real quick there, because the whole point of a lot of this AI and understanding this is cash flow, right? It's as business owners all too often and we shouldn't be doing this. We're relying on too small of margins to where we are super sensitive to cash flow, and if it's going to take somebody longer to pay, we need to know that. And [00:27:30] if opening up other methods of payment may invoke faster payment, perhaps it's worth the extra percentage to do that. Right. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, as much as friends don't let friends use Venmo if that's what your client prefers, that's, you know, you should let them pay the way that they like to pay. Yeah. Yeah. And something else that was kind of cool is that when it makes the suggestions, it also tells you what your fees are for the different options. So you can turn them on and off based on the fees that you're going [00:28:00] to pay. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I've also noticed because I've been using this as well for my own company. Uh, one of the things they do is you can kind of, um, change the tone of the reminders that are going out. And I do want to stress when you're starting to use this, pay attention to it. Um, I've had some clients that were rather outstanding and it goes straight to the stern one and I'm. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Like, I'm not a stern person. I'd like to lighten this up a little bit so you can change the attitude [00:28:30] of the message, but you're not having to write the whole thing out, which is pretty nice, right? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The fact that it at least gets you started and then you can customize it. I mean, I think that your email messages are part of your branding, you know, what's your attitude? What's your sense of humor? Maybe you have no sense of humor. That can be okay. But you know, the the fact that it it at least gets you started. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Can you write a really dry email that has no context to it at all, please? Thank you. Sorry. Alicia Katz Pollock: And [00:29:00] along those lines, if you know my my subject lines on my invoices are really dry and straightforward, but it will it even gives you options that, you know, have shown that it cuts down the time that people take to actually open up the email. So that's some of the suggestions that they're making and why they're making those suggestions. It's just to get you paid faster. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So what do you think, Alicia? If I put the subject that just says, show me the money. If we go back to that on there, would that be a good thing? Maybe. Give me. Alicia Katz Pollock: I think you should try it. I want to know, you know, [00:29:30] make make that your default text. I don't think the AI is going to recommend it, but you can absolutely set your own defaults. Okay. Yeah. One last thing that the payments agent is doing is it's also suggesting that you turn on the reminders, and the reminders have been there for a really long time. You have up to three reminders that, you know, maybe it's a good practice to set it up three days or five days before the invoice is due, the day it's due, a couple weeks after it's due, maybe a couple months after it's due. But [00:30:00] my big deal breaker with it is that it's for all customers. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That is. So I was kind of waiting to ask you about this. My big concern has been, yes, I want reminders going out to people, but I'd be afraid they'd have the wrong tone. Or if they all said show me the money, as I was joking earlier. Is this a situation? Is it going to remind you to send a reminder, or is it just going to automatically send the reminders for you and sometimes help? Sometimes, as I always say, sometimes [00:30:30] my helping isn't helping. And I think this may be an example of that. Would you agree? Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, the reminders you do set the subject line and the text it. You can use the AI to craft it the first time, but once you set it, it's boilerplate. It will put in the customer's name and the information about the invoice number, date, all of that for you. But it's not like it's going to shift the mood. You can start it with the mood, you know, be lighthearted for the Preis and Manufacturable [00:31:00] on the day and stern after afterwards. My my issue is really just I have clients, I have placeholder invoices or I have agreements with customers that it's okay that they're not going to pay theirs for another 90 days. And yeah, maybe I should just be changing the due dates on these. Oh, you know, I didn't think about that. There's my solve. Well, is changing my due dates. If I don't expect it or I don't want it to be triggered on these reminders, [00:31:30] make sure my due date is whatever it should be to avoid the reminders. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Which is a good thing. So those who are listening. If you've got an answer to this, this is an honest question. I was wondering also based on the terms of due date, how does that impact the I and the reminder schedule? So we can't test everything before we do these recordings. So this is where we need you all to be our army of knowledge or wisdom. Let us know. Have you tried some of this stuff or not? And if there are different, [00:32:00] uh, due dates set up or anything else, how would it work? I'd love to hear from everybody else what they think. Yeah. So now customer leads is another part of it. Um, I believe this is starting off. It's as traditional. It's starting off in kind of a small beta group, right? Currently it's Gmail only, and it's going to be coming for outlook. I'm an outlook person. You're a Gmail outlook, which are you, Alicia? Alicia Katz Pollock: Uh, it's [00:32:30] a corporate Gmail. So it doesn't look like Gmail. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Um, and then so that's going to what else is going on involved with that? I believe there's kind of they're trying to do some stuff with kind of a sales pipeline as well. Is that right? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So you've probably noticed by now that customers have been moved out of the sales section into their own section, and it has estimates and it has leads, and it has a lot of features which are only now in a very small beta and only beginning to roll out. So you might not even have the ability yet. And in fact, [00:33:00] I do. I do have an upcoming episode where I did record a demo of the leads and really broke it down for you. But, you know, we keep pushing that episode out as more important things come up. So eventually you're going to hear the customer leads episode. Um, and, um, but what if. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You haven't subscribed? Subscribe now. So you're notified once it does. Please. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So in a nutshell, what the customer leads section is going to do is take a look at your Gmail and look [00:33:30] for customer interactions and where it can find maybe a customer emails you and you've got an inquiry. It will pull it in and say, hey, you've got an inquiry. Or if you are in negotiation with somebody, it will put it in in negotiation. But it's really a whole sales pipeline where you are you an inquiry, negotiation, finalization, contracted or did you lose the client. And it also allows you to say, you know, is it cold, warm or hot. And then it also gives [00:34:00] you the ability to create an estimate, schedule a meeting, or draft an email right from the leads center. So it's a way of keeping tabs on all the conversations you're having with your customers so that nobody falls through the cracks. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I don't know if you if you feel kind of the same way, but starting my business so many, many years ago, it took me so much time to establish these kind of sales funnels and third party programs that to now start to see that these things are all coming all into one piece and not [00:34:30] having to zap them in, if you will. Uh, it's really exciting. I know we're still at the infancy of this, but I'm excited to see that this is happening within our, um, lifetime of accounting services. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I mean, it's a customer relationship manager. It's a CRM. I'm right now using method. And so in method I keep all of these things and it can read my customer list. And so in method, if they turn into a customer I can go ahead and turn them into a customer. And instead of [00:35:00] being a lead. But it is all in an external system. And so this will be really nice to be able to just keep it right inside qbo and not have to go to another app. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Like you. I mean, I've been using 17 hats, but the challenge I've always had is the integration piece. Like, I can handle all this stuff up to the estimate and I can invoice somebody, but it's always been external. And I've always like the in the estimate coming in has never been perfect. So man, I can't wait for this to all be in one single piece and one less place to be watching out for at [00:35:30] all. That's great. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, and I'm fantasizing right now, but I'm looking forward to MailChimp showing up. Oh yeah, as well. Um, I'm going to be doing a future episode on MailChimp. I have actually gone into MailChimp and searched for my customers to see, like, everybody on my wholesale program, and then made a MailChimp email to everybody on my wholesale program, letting them know about the next price increase that's coming up between now and October. And so I was actually able to use MailChimp with my Qbo [00:36:00] product list. And so there's so much possibility around that. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So the next agent we're going to be talking about is something of major interest to me. It's the payroll agent. And on my YouTube, I've done a pretty big video a little while back, but it's still very concurrent of how to go through the whole payroll processing. But with this new payroll agent, there's a lot of stuff that's going to be changing to make it even more efficient, to be able to process payroll for business [00:36:30] owners. Once you agree. Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, for once, I might not really. Um, this one makes me a little nervous. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I can see why payroll is the one thing we. With respect. Payroll is the one thing we cannot afford to ever make a mistake. Right? If you if you don't pay an employee correctly, they will always remind you you didn't. Um. So I guess I kind of hear what you're saying, that [00:37:00] this is an area where I. Right off the bat, you have to be sensitive to how you test it out. But I do believe when we get to the further down the road, uh, the functionality, uh, minus any potential bugs will be powerful, right? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. So we we kind of gave the, the, the the criticism before actually saying even what it does. So let's back up a second because technologically it's pretty cool. Yeah. [00:37:30] So basically what they're trying to do is reduce the amount of time that you spend collecting your employees hours and entering them and reviewing employee time cards. You know, for for us, we use cube time, and that has absolutely streamlined things. But a lot of people are still using paper time sheets or spreadsheets. And if you're using any kind of manual data collection, this is bringing you into not just the modern age, but the Gen Z age. Your Gen Zers are going to love this. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Alicia, I [00:38:00] don't like you bringing Gen Z into this Gen X conversation. Uh, but it's okay. So I think we need to pause real quick. Quickly for all the listeners. How much time are you spending on your payroll right now? Look in your rearview mirror. If you're listening while you're driving, and think to yourself how much time is wasted. And I want you to think about how much time could be saved with this. Right. And then let us know. So what do you think? How much time do you think this will end up saving people? Alicia Katz Pollock: Maybe we still haven't even told them what it is yet. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Oh. That's true. Well, [00:38:30] okay. Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I'm butter the bread too soon. My bad. Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, so what this is going to allow you to do is collect hours over time and paycheck tips using SMS text messaging. So if you're already using the workforce app, you know your your employees have the ability to do their time cards right on their phones. And that's what we use here at Royal Wise. It's awesome. But now for your millennials who are used to just dictating and texting everything. [00:39:00] Thing. Basically, what you do is you set up a messaging system where, uh, first, obviously you're going to set it, set it all up, but it will send the employee a text message to first ask their consent. Is it okay if we do this? And if they say yes, then it will ask them, well, what how many hours did you have? What was your overtime? How much did you get in tips. And they can say, oh, I worked 40 hours. I had two hours of overtime and [00:39:30] I made $635 in tips. And then the payroll agent collects all of this information, tells the payroll manager what everybody got, also gives them a grand total summary of everybody's. And then they can approve it. And then it will get automatically entered in Qbo. It will show up in the audit log. And then if you would prove it, you [00:40:00] can even run payroll right from your text messages. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I think I'm understanding your reluctance already. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I love employees. Employees are great. I was one once. I found out I'm not a good one anymore. Um. How many employees are always completely honest with their hours and their overtime and their tips? What's the time theft thing about? Oh, boy. I don't know. Am I wrong. Alicia Katz Pollock: Here? If they're not keeping a time card, you know they're going to overestimate how much they actually. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Worked 85 hours in [00:40:30] a week, so. Alicia Katz Pollock: Or they'll just tell you they worked 40 even if it was 23. Right? Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I'm sure they're putting some stuff into place around that. And these are we're just giving you kind of the bullet points and trying to make it a little bit humorous at the same time. But this is a great step forward, especially with a great team that you can trust in it. But the most important thing is the payroll manager still has to approve all of it right. Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. So you know if you're not so you you still get to look at the time sheets and make sure that everybody is in [00:41:00] on the up and up and, you know, do your due diligence to make sure it's all honest. Um, some of the things that are cool about it is that if you have hourly employees, you can actually set a schedule for what day and what time it will reach out to ask the employee. And I think the employee has to give consent for every single payroll. I'm not sure if it's one blanket payroll or not. And then you can choose also what it's asking for. If you don't have tips, you just you don't [00:41:30] ask for tips. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Well, okay. So actually now to give the reverse positive situation with this, there's a lot of times with like construction companies where you have to have people, especially workers comp everything else, you have to have people where they they had to be signing off on their time cards. So I can imagine, you know, this is probably a situation where it's like every day they're having to say, I worked from this time to this time and they're having to certify by by responding back to this the amount [00:42:00] of time they worked. Now I want to stress this is an assumption we need to do a little bit deeper dive. We'll know more once this has been out and about for a while. But I could see where this could be huge time savings as it evolves and really improves to make sure that it's a quality check ahead of time. I've got a client of mine, good friend of mine, Donny, that runs a construction company. And one of his biggest things is always having to go through and like, evaluate the time of clock in, clock out to make sure [00:42:30] everything's accurate, that people took their breaks appropriate and matched them in everything else. So those are the areas where I think this could really start to be time saved. Once we know, we trust it as accountants. And that's the hardest part, is getting us as accountants to trust it. Right? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, I think the technology is going to be great. It's the humans that you can't trust in this particular issue. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So a few more things about the nuts and bolts of being able to use text messages to track your hours. Um, if they're on salary, [00:43:00] you can still set it for paycheck. Tips and and overtime. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay. Alicia Katz Pollock: Uh, you can update policies like your wages, but they weren't really specific about it. They just said you can make policy updates. Um, it will call up anomalies. So if somebody is unusually high or unusually low, it will notice. And it also right now is really, really limited for who it's going to work for. This is like absolutely in beta. It's only available in the US and it's only available [00:43:30] for customers who don't use auto Payroll, don't use QuickBooks time, have one pay schedule, and only use very specific pay types to calculate their payroll, which is going to eliminate a lot of people out of the test environment. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Well, but then okay, so maybe we should have led with that part of it because that makes a lot of sense. Like let's make sure the core works completely on how this is working before we give it to all the, the, the crazies out there that are like. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I'm working from home for one hour for 40 hours [00:44:00] a week kind of thing. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That makes good sense. So, um, they're rolling this out in a great way. It's only in the US as well at this current time, right? Yeah. Um, so I like that part of it. And then it's going to expand further. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And you know, their their rollout schedule right now says that they're hoping to make it available to everybody without those limitations by September. But I can't imagine that that is realistic. So until it goes slow on this one, we want to actually see use cases [00:44:30] before it becomes universal. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: We're going to finish what we about the webinar. But there's some other cool stuff we're going to talk about in another from the future article that's happening with some payroll stuff we'll come back to in a second here. Um, but before we go to that, there's some other stuff. You know, we kind of conclude this going into kind of what's around the corner. What are some of the other, um, events they've got coming up? And I know there's one in September, which I want to give a big shout out to our good friend Caleb Jenkins, [00:45:00] who's going to be part of. Right. September 3rd. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So Jacqueline announced a few different webinars that are available to you for for different parts of what we do as ProAdvisor. And so on September 3rd at 10 a.m. Pacific, there's an event called Future Proof Your Firm A Roadmap to Modernization and growth. And it's got, um, it's sponsored by Wright Works. It has four speakers for panelists Caleb Jenkins, our friend, uh, Derek Distin, who's [00:45:30] the vice president of community at Wright. Works, uh, Jim Buffington, CPA, who is, uh, part of Intuit accountants. He's advisory services. And Leah Hartmann, who is a professional services senior specialist. So the four of them are going to be talking about how to modernize and grow your firm. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Nice. And then, of course, they always have their On the Books podcast itself, which is always great. And then next month they've got some stuff that will be for in the know. We can kind of tease it ahead of time, [00:46:00] but of course, tune in here and we'll give you the recap. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So just what they have said is on the agenda is the check remittance feature. So I'm curious to know what that is myself, uh, how to use the payment approval workflows and talking about the business network, which I really want to hear what they have to say about that, because I've seen the vestiges of it. I've been wanting to do an episode about it, but I still never really felt like I really grok the whole concept. So I will look forward to really getting [00:46:30] some expertise around that. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Have you been noticing? I've been noticing more and more within my own clients that I serve. More companies are popping in that business network than they did before. So it's growing. It's definitely something to be a part of, and I believe the whole concept of it is the more companies that join into it put their information in is the payments back and forth. The information back and forth gets shared, the 1099 information gets shared. So I think next month we'll be able to talk more about that, which would be pretty [00:47:00] cool. So be sure to tune into that. Alicia Katz Pollock: You know, I do just want to share that. I did have one really cool experience with the business network. I mean, not just one, but I went to use the online bill pay and the vendors ACH information was already there. Nice. I didn't have to collect it because it just went up and boom, there it was. And you can do the same thing yourself. If you go into your account and settings for your company, you can put in your own ACH information. And then if [00:47:30] somebody goes to pay you, your information will be right there and then you don't have to go fill it in for every single person who's paying you. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And that's the key. I don't want to pay everybody else faster, but I want to get paid as quick as possible. So let's do it. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So now from the future to twist it a little bit from the future, had some other stuff coming up that especially around some of the payroll changes. Uh, what can you share about that? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So there was changes to payroll and there's changes to sales tax. [00:48:00] And I always go to the firm of the future and go read the articles, because there's always a little really cool nuggets in there. So for payroll, you can now schedule the effective date for changes to your employee compensation. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That's huge. It's huge. Alicia Katz Pollock: That's huge. Huge huge. So if you are giving annual raises, you can preprogram the raises that they'll just kick in on the day. You don't have to like, go oh my God. Wait. I forgot to give them their raise. Yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Like, [00:48:30] this is sunlight shining down onto us. If we're doing payroll and there's scheduled things like that, and you can have it. Oh. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. You can schedule your Christmas bonuses and they'll just run. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So we can take a vacation instead at the end of the year two. Right. Like that's huge. That. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Have I said it's huge? It's huge. Alicia Katz Pollock: You said it's huge. Yeah. One one of the things that is really huge is I really this particular use case. Um, I had a client whose [00:49:00] employee broke their field service iPad and was reimbursing them out of their payroll. And so they had to pay like $15 for six months or something like that. And so with this new tool, she would we would have been able to go in and say, I want $15 taken out of this paycheck until this day. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: See? Okay, now I may be asking too much. Does this also mean at the beginning of the year when, like in the past and [00:49:30] we didn't talk about this, so I'm throwing a total turkey bone here, if that's what I'm supposed to say. Um, when you set up loans for an employee to be repaying at the beginning of the next year, if you don't turn those loans off, they restart Start again. So I don't know if it solves that, but, um, it sounds like it may be directed a little closer to that, but. Yes. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes it does. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Oh, why didn't we into it? I'm loving you again. Alicia Katz Pollock: See? [00:50:00] Yeah, yeah. It's not all scary change. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: It's okay. What about the sales tax, though? I mean, end that way. Alicia Katz Pollock: But I'm actually glad that we get to end on this one, because I kind of think it's funny. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay. Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So sales tax filing has always been manual. It will tell you what you're supposed to pay, but you have to log into your state's Department of Revenue in order to do it. And last year at Intuit Connect, they told us that they were starting to roll it out one state at a time where you could [00:50:30] actually pay within the interface. And North Carolina was the first state. I know they added a second state, but I don't remember exactly what it was. But they are now adding in Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia. And so you will use the sales tax center to run your sales tax. And then you will be able to pay it directly to the state and track the status of your return. Store your returns right [00:51:00] inside QuickBooks so that you can reference them and get reminders about your tax deadlines. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I'd like to congratulate all those accountants who are listening in those states that have local clients. Congratulations. And if you are outside of those states, go search for those clients. It would be phenomenal. I don't think they'll get to California anytime soon. Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, now here's the part that cracks me up. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay. Alicia Katz Pollock: The price. It's it's $40 per filing. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay. So until we love you. But my [00:51:30] question is like in California, this is why California is not part of it. California sales tax are ridiculous. And you've got different filings for I'm sure it's other states as well. But I'm going to talk about what I know city, county, all these different things. Right. So how many filings are you doing and how does that work on all of that stuff? And then. Nexus, we should even we should be talking to like, the sales tax sisters on some of this stuff. Like there's so many things around sales tax, but [00:52:00] it's a great leap forward. One this is one small step for accountants, one giant leap for sales tax compliance. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Now, I suspect that it's $40 per filing to prevent people from using it until they dialing it in and to compensate them for all the manual work that they're going to have to do to get it right. Well. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Well, actually, hold on a second. That's reasonable because I, I think and I don't quote me on this, even though I'm saying it on a podcast, um, different [00:52:30] services like in Avalara everything else, I think they're filing per file. They're filing per filing. I think that's the right way to say it is still around, that you still have to pay per First date, so I don't think the pricing will probably change because I think that's I think that's market rate for a lot of them. Is it. Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay? I live in Oregon. We don't have sales tax. I only support my customers in fixing their sales tax calculations in their qbo. I'm not responsible for paying anybody's sales tax. So forgive my ignorance [00:53:00] and cynicism. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah, well, you know, you want to switch states. You don't. Alicia Katz Pollock: But but like Avalara, is it really 40 bucks per state? Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Well, it it's per filing and and I don't want to like corner out avalara. I think that like taxjar these other ones, most of the different companies, when you're having to file different tax sales tax filings in the different states, it is something like $40 per filing. So I think that's the market growing rate. But again, [00:53:30] I keep saying it throughout the episode. Listeners, please educate us. Tell us what you've found. We'd love to learn from it. We do pay attention to the comments. Everything else. Let us know what you found out there, please. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, and you know, if I say something wrong, make sure you call me out because I'm not. I'm not proud. I want to make sure I'm giving you my. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Or if I do, blame it on Alicia, but that's right on. Alicia Katz Pollock: All right, so that wraps up all of the innovations happening in, uh, in the Intuit [00:54:00] space, at least the ones I've told us about this month. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Alicia. I mean, look, you've always got a whole bunch of stuff going on, and we all appreciate everything you do with this podcast. What's coming up in your world? Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, because everybody is so preoccupied with all the changes that are going on in the QuickBooks interface and the navigation, I'm having two free before and after sessions, and they're on August [00:54:30] 26th and August 28th. And I think this episode is coming out in time for the 28th. So like if you're listening to this while you're walking the dog at six in the morning, you can make it to one of these at 11:00 today. Um, and if you are listening to this, after both of them have gone by, we will have them up on YouTube so that you will be able to listen to them. And this is also kind of just the beginning for me. I am starting my entire curriculum from scratch in [00:55:00] September, which starts with the business classes for your clients and for you as beginning bookkeepers, and will reframe the whole entire all the changes even when you're you know how to do the transactions. Now I'm going to reframe how you're getting there. There's a link in the show notes. I'm calling this whole project for me, the great Qbo refresh. And so you can go to the page all about the all about what I'm up to so that you can participate yourself, [00:55:30] uh, either for yourself or your clients. And since this is such an amazing opportunity for you to learn from the beginning as well. We're having a membership drive and a contest, and so if you become a member before September 16th, you get eligible to win prizes as well. So the link to check it out is ROI. That's the shortcode for ROI slash. Refresh. [00:56:00] And that will take you to the page with all of your options, so that you can decide which of our programs is right for you. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I'm sure you'll add those in the show notes as well for this show, but they will only be available for a limited amount of time. So if you're listening to this later, reach out. We can talk about what's available at the time, but this is a special time deal. Alicia Katz Pollock: Absolutely. And then I actually just cracked myself up a little bit because I mentioned reframe in the concept of reframing [00:56:30] qbo. And so like I've got Reframe Frame conference in. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: We got to give a shout out to reframe. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So reframe. I've been proud to have gone to reframe last year. It's an amazing, amazing conference for accounts. And it's coming up again. This will be their third year. So this that's coming up again this year. It's going to be in Florida again at the beginning of November I believe. Is that correct? Beginning of November by Hector and Carlos Garcia. It's [00:57:00] an amazing, amazing event. Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The theme this year is pricing with confidence. And so kind of what I like about it is it's not just it's not just pricing, it's confidence. What I, what I like about reframe is it's not it's even more than just the accounting industry. It's really reframing yourself and your own mindsets. Matthew "Spot" Fulton: It is by far, hands down, the best conference I've been to in years. Um, I've even gone to some of their sub events. I went to Carlos's event recently. [00:57:30] It was kind of promoted by ADP in LA. One of the things I love about it is when you get there, they ask you no computers. They give you a workbook that you have to actually use. And they're like, you don't need your computer, you don't need your phone. Please feel free to use your phone to take pictures of slides or anything else. But you're here to be here and to learn. And it is the best conference I've been to in a very long time. Uh, I truly, truly recommend it. Last year during [00:58:00] lunch, they give lunch breaks long enough. I went out and swam in the Atlantic Ocean and then came back and still had plenty of time. It was phenomenal. You guys want to attend? Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, it's really a class act for sure. All right. So I think that brings us to the end of another unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, and we will see you in the next one.