Murph's QB 2024 Product Summary

This article was originally published on InsightfulAccountant.com in September 2023 and has been moved to this site in its entirety.

Intuit has just announced the release of the QuickBooks Desktop 2024 product line. The products are being made available to the ProAdvisor and accounting community today, Sept. 26, 2023, and will become available to the Intuit customers through its website and QuickBooks Solution Providers on Oct. 3, 2023.

QuickBooks users with current subscriptions will begin receiving email notifications from Intuit about the product's availability for download and installation between these dates. It still is unclear when product download notifications regarding update eligibility will begin.

In addition to this synopsis, Insightful Accountant will publish articles on this year's products' new and enhanced features. Many features released in 2024 QuickBooks Desktop Plus, QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Desktop Accountant are enhancements meeting long-requested functionalities and user feedback requests.

I have been using various pre-release versions of QuickBooks 2024 for the past several months. I've exchanged numerous communications with QuickBooks team members regarding these new features and functionalities in order to ensure you get the information you need about the products.

Over the next several days, Insightful Accountant will publish several in-depth articles covering the new features. The summary and related articles should help prepare you and your clients to use the 2024 QuickBooks products. 

I will conclude this year's series with "My Favorite Newbies," discussing the specific product changes I liked best and why.

You can view the recording of Murph's webinar on QB Desktop 2024 our YouTube Page 

QuickBooks 2024 Desktop Plus, Enterprise and Accountant Features

This article is a synopsis of the following new features:

• Enhanced product security and update efficiency
• Customer prepayments/deposits
• Improved list search functionality
• Enhanced item categorization
• Reporting enhancements
• Employee center improvements
• Improved employee capital management features for Enhanced Payroll subscribers

Enhanced Product Security and Update Efficiency

QuickBooks Desktop 2024 has been enhanced with features providing more robust data protection and increased efficiency. Unfortunately, these are not features that garner much attention, nor do they show up as new windows, new preferences or even graphic images.

QuickBooks Desktop 2024 software requires 64-bit compatible computers running on Windows 10 or newer operating systems. These quicker, more reliable operating systems should help you accomplish many QuickBooks tasks faster.

Enhanced Security Built Into QuickBooks Desktop 2024

Data security is paramount to anyone maintaining accounting information and personal data regarding customers, vendors, and employees. That's why all versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2024, in both the US and Canada, have been bolstered with enhanced, industry-leading encryption to keep your data more secure than ever.

Data encryption and decryption protocols have been improved from AES 128 to AES 256.

This means your most sensitive financial information is better protected from increasing cyber threats by a new layer of security. The added security layer safeguards critical customer, vendor and employee information such as bank accounts, tax identification numbers, credit card details and social security numbers.

Additionally, this industry-leading encryption compliance extends the safety and protection of your business data when used with cloud resources such as online backup, hosting and third-party applications.

Unfortunately, one result is that external accountants using QuickBooks Desktop 2024 cannot upgrade their client's company files using their accountant credentials when those company files are QuickBooks Desktop 2023 or an earlier version.

Improved Efficiency through Seamless Background Updates

QuickBooks Desktop 2024 is designed to ensure US customers use the most current product releases and updates available via seamless background update installations to avoid disruption.

The new update process means users can update QuickBooks 2024 without interrupting their work. They also can learn about the changes incorporated into the update before it takes place. 

A future release version of QuickBooks Desktop 2024 will permit users to schedule product updates according to their work schedules.

This enhancement is available in all US versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2024 (Plus, Enterprise, Accountant and Enterprise Accountant).

'New' Customer Prepayments/Deposits Feature

In my way of thinking, the most impressive new feature needed for a long time is Prepayments (Customer Deposits). Even if your business uses different terminology for these transactions, perhaps "Customer Retainers," "Project Prepayments" or "Sales Deposits," this is the feature you have been waiting for.

This new feature is available to all Enterprise and Enterprise Accountant users in the US and Canada.

Before this feature, you had only two choices in QuickBooks to handle such payments. The first was accepting a payment without an associated invoice, resulting in a negative accounts receivable, which shouldn't happen under GAAP accounting standards.

The second was an elaborate workaround involving creating a two-sided item associated with an 'other liability' (Prepayments, Deposits, or Retainers) account. This method included numerous transactions, using the other liability associated item in the correct order to properly offset a prepayment against a subsequent invoice.

This new feature allows Enterprise users to receive prepayments (Customer Deposits) on Sales Orders and track them.

These prepayments get credited to an other current liabilities account you designate for such payments and get posted (on the debit side) to your Undeposited funds account. 

The Sales Order can be printed reflecting the prepayment.

When the Sales Order is converted to an Invoice, the prepayment can be applied to the Invoice and the open Invoice reflects the applied prepayment (shown below).

And suppose you are telling yourself, "What more could I ask for in prepayments?" In that case, a new Open Prepayments by Customer report (shown in this article's Reporting Enhancements section) is designed to identify prepayments that have not yet been applied against an invoice.

I always appreciate the related reporting being available when a new feature is released.

Many businesses will appreciate this streamlined workflow for prepayments, and most accountants will enjoy not having to deal with negative accounts receivable resulting from improperly applied prepayments.

Improved List Search Functionality

For 2024, enhancements have been made to the Search Look-up functionality for the Memorized Transactions, Payroll Items and Fixed Asset Items lists.

The new feature affords users of all versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2024 in the US and Canada to quickly search through the items and related transactions without having to scroll through one of these lists to find the specific item or transaction they are looking for. 

When you open any of these three lists, you will see that the "Look for' search feature has been expanded to include an additional box that defaults to All fields. There also is a new Search within results checkbox (shown in the bottom list below).

• Enter any text (name, type, account, amount) in the Look for search box and search all fields in the list by leaving the search set to All fields. 

• You can even search within your specific results.

This feature works just as great with a list of 400 items as with 10 items.

Enhanced Item Categorization

Before the release of QuickBooks 2023, users had limited ways to define items. Those identities were the Item Name/Number, Purchase and Sales Descriptions, and Manufacturer's Part Number. 

But QuickBooks 2023 provided a new user-defined Item Categories feature. Release updates during 2023 made several enhancements to the Item Category feature. 

For Enterprise and Enterprise Accountant users in the US and Canada, QuickBooks 2024 has further enhanced Item Categorization and the user experience associated with this feature:

• Users can assign and manage Item Categories in a new Category List, providing basic operations like add, edit, delete and batch move/reallocate items within categories. 

• Users can now copy and paste items from Excel into the categorical hierarchy simply by pasting items using the Multiple List entries feature.

• Enhanced search capabilities have been provided in most transactions using Find & Select for item categories.

• Users also can benefit from Item Category Find & Search availability within Inventory cycle counts and Advanced Pricing.

• The Item Category field has been added to multiple Inventory and Sales reports, like the Inventory Valuation Summary (shown below).

Reporting Enhancements

Several new or enhanced reports are available within the US and Canadian versions of QuickBooks 2024. Please note the reports shown herein are pre-release versions. Your reports may appear different in the final release product versions.

You also should be aware that some reports shown here will only be available to specific versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2024. For example, lot and serial number reports require QuickBooks Enterprise with an Advanced Inventory subscription.  

• For those using the lot/serial number feature within Advanced Inventory, QuickBooks 2024 is offering a new Inventory Stock Status by Lot Numbers report. You may see this same report called a Master Inventory Stock Status Report in some stories about QBD-24. This report is under Reports > Inventory > Inventory Stock Status by Lot Number.

But even though the new Master report is the only one officially released, there are a lot of other reports associated with new features that can be produced with a little bit of customization.

• Expiration Dates were a new feature released in QuickBooks Enterprise (v23). QuickBooks Enterprise (v24) provides improved reporting of expiration dates. Expiration Dates now can be included in the new Inventory Stock Status by Lot Number report (shown below).

• The new Prepayments Detail by Customer report (shown below) is designed to show prepayments that have not been applied against an invoice. Note: In the example below, I have changed that report status from Open to All; in this case, both the payment and offsetting Journal Entry to Accounts Receivable are reflected.

• Additional reports have been modified to work with the new Customer Prepayments feature. For example, the Open Sales Orders by Customer report (shown below) now includes a column that reflects the Prepayment Open Balance.

• Additional Inventory and Sales reports now have Item Categories as the primary sort or offer Item Categories as a field with sort functionality. The Sales by Item Summary (shown below) is one such report.

Employee Center Improvements

QuickBooks Desktop 2024 provides an improved User experience within the Employee Center, making it easier to complete required information for employees. 

The redesigned experience includes a new Required Info tab that keeps an employee's required information on a single tab. Information previously recorded on the Personal and Address & Contact tabs has been relocated to this new tab. 

To streamline the process of completing an employee's profile with all the required information, new visual cues (shown below) are now incorporated into the improved Employee Center, making it easy to distinguish incomplete employee profiles. 

Advisory information (shown below) pop-up messaging has also been built into the Employee Center to inform you of the need and benefits of having complete employee profile information.

This feature is available for all QuickBooks Desktop 2024 (Plus, Enterprise, Accountant, and Enterprise Accountant) within the US when subscribed to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll₁.

Improved Human Capital Management features for Enhanced Payroll Customers

QuickBooks Desktop 2024 expands the capability for a fully integrated 401(k) retirement plan as part of improved HCM (Human Capital Management) features. These retirement plans are made available through Guideline₂.

More businesses are offering 401(k) retirement plans for their employee's well-being and to aid in retaining talented individuals. By incorporating Guideline into the available offerings and payroll functionality, QuickBooks Desktop users with Enhanced Payroll₁ now can offer their personnel a variety of 401 (k) retirement plans.

When subscribed to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll, this feature is available to all QuickBooks Desktop users (Plus, Enterprise, Accountant and Enterprise Accountant) within the US.

Businesses with QuickBooks Desktop 2024 and payroll can quickly sign up for a fully integrated and affordable Guideline 401(k).

Guideline makes it easy for employers to choose from a list of plan options suiting their needs and the needs of their employees.

Because of the depth of integration, it is easy to configure the deductions and contributions within Enhanced Payroll to maintain all the record-keeping and simplify benefits administration fully.

If you think you saw this functionality last year in QuickBooks 2023, you have a right to be confused. The 2023 release of the Guideline 401(k) offering was limited to QuickBooks Desktop users with QuickBooks "Assisted" Payroll. QuickBooks 2024 expands the offering to QuickBooks "Enhanced" Payroll subscribers.

Concluding Remarks

Please remember, we will continue our series on QuickBooks Desktop 2023 tomorrow with the first of our in-depth articles on the various features summarized in this article.

Also, please attend our September "QB Talks" webinar, scheduled for 2 p.m. (EST) on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. Murph will bring you "A First Look at QuickBooks Desktop 2024." He will give you the Intuit hype regarding the new features and enhancements and his earnest opinion based on his testing experiences.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the product managers, team leaders, developers and Alpha/Beta test team members working behind the scenes striving to deliver a new and better QuickBooks Desktop every year. It's far too easy to forget to thank these folks who "make QuickBooks a reality."

I especially appreciate Nipun Bhatia, Ninad Marathe, and Shobhit Sharma of the QuickBooks Desktop and Enterprise teams in India for assistance in affirming features and feature-related issues presented in this article. 

My special "thank you" goes out to Intuit's Kim Amsbaugh, who always keeps me "in the loop."

Finally, to everyone involved at Intuit and the various QuickBooks teams, "Thank you."

Nomenclature used herein:

^{QuickBooks 2024 refers to all versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2024 and QuickBooks Enterprise (v24). [This designation may also appear as QB24.]}

^{QuickBooks Desktop 2024 refers to all versions of QuickBooks Desktop Plus and QuickBooks Desktop Accountant for 2024. [This designation may also appear as QBD24.]}

^{QuickBooks Enterprise 2024 refers to all versions of QuickBooks Enterprise v24 and QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant for 2024. [This designation may also appear as QBES24.]}

^{Otherwise products are specifically referenced by individual product names.}

Footnotes:

₁ - ^{QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll subscriptions are in addition to any other QuickBooks subscription unless they are part of a combination package. The payroll subscription may require a unique setup; contact your QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll support specialist for more information.}

₂ - ^{Guideline 401(k) offerings are provided and administered by Guideline, an independent third party, and not offered by Intuit. Intuit is not a 401(k) plan administrator, fiduciary, or provider. Requires acceptance of Guideline's Client Relationship Summary and Privacy Policy. Additional 401(k) plan fees will apply. Employees may manage their contributions directly with Guideline. Admin and payroll access are required to sign up for a 401(k) plan with Guideline.}

_{3 -} ^{All QuickBooks Desktop 2024 versions require computers that are 64-bit compatible, and running on Windows 10 or newer operating systems. The quicker, more reliable operating system should help you accomplish tasks faster.}

Disclosures:

Materials within this feature, including graphic illustrations, were developed from various pre-release versions of QuickBooks 2024.  As such, the final product version you acquire may appear, act, or be somewhat different from that described or illustrated herein.

Portions of this feature have been adapted from Intuit QuickBooks Desktop 2024-related content, including in-product help resources. All such source materials were adapted by Insightful Accountant solely for educational purposes.

As used herein, QuickBooks, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, QuickBooks Desktop Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise (all versions), and QuickBooks Desktop Accountant refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., a NASDAQ "INTU" publicly traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California (USA).

Other trade names used herein, including any other vendor (app/software) products discussed, may be registered, trademarked, or otherwise held by their respective owners and are now acknowledged accordingly. They have been referenced for informational and educational purposes only.

This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. No vendors within this article have paid Insightful Accountant or the Author any remuneration to be included within this feature. This article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.

The publication of this article does not represent any form of endorsement by either the author or Insightful Accountant.

_{Note: Registered Trademark ® and Copyright © symbols have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they might otherwise appear or be repeated. We attempt to credit such trademarked products or copyrighted materials within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.}