For 2012, Intuit is phasing out the online QuickBooks Attached Documents and including a capability for free local document storage.

Let’s summarize the changes based on the year of your QuickBooks version and the impact of those changes based on whether they add capabilities (good), remove them (bad), or it’s too early to assess the impact (unclear):

QuickBooks 2012

Good: Local document storage on the computer running QuickBooks is now free, and the new Doc Center supports a drag-and-drop interface, including the ability to add Microsoft Outlook emails to Doc Center. Supported documents can be attached to QuickBooks lists or transactions. Users of QuickBooks Attached Documents have access to a tool to migrate online documents to local storage.

Bad: Users can no longer sign up and pay for an extra cost, cloud-based storage solution from Intuit. Users requiring cloud-based solutions will have to turn to third-party add-ons, some of which have been in existence longer than Intuit’s cloud-based storage.

QuickBooks 2011

Good: Intuit has lowered the price of QuickBooks Attached Documents, where the maximum monthly fee is now $9.95 for unlimited document storage.

Bad: Since QuickBooks Attached Documents is being phased out, existing users of the service can continue to use it subject to Intuit’s sunshine policy. Under that policy, and assuming Intuit keeps the service live until that point, QuickBooks 2011 users can continue to use QuickBooks Attached Documents until May, 2014 – provided that they continue to run that same version of QuickBooks. Once QuickBooks 2012 is formally available to the public, QuickBooks 2011 users can not sign up for new subscriptions to QuickBooks Attached Documents. This change effectively limits the users of this version of the program to 2 undesirable choices: don’t upgrade QuickBooks and keep the Attached Documents service for a limited time or upgrade QuickBooks and lose the ability to attach documents and store them on Intuit’s secure servers. The first blocks access to new QuickBooks features, and the second blocks access to a service that may be important to an organization. It should be noted that users that do opt to upgrade QuickBooks will only lose the ability to attach documents stored in the cloud; they will not lose access to the documents themselves, since access in all likelihood will be preserved until May, 2014.

Unclear: While users of QuickBooks 2012 have access to a tool to migrate existing online documents to local storage, it’s not clear if that tool will be made available to users of QuickBooks 2011 without first upgrading to QuickBooks 2012. Without such a tool, there is no obvious way to migrate documents from Intuit’s cloud storage other than saving them one by one, which would be a time consuming process for active users of the service.

QuickBooks 2010

Good: For users that have stuck with Intuit’s Document Management, there is little good to report. For those that have migrated to Attached Documents before the introduction of QuickBooks 2012, the lower pricing of Attached Documents is a benefit to QuickBooks 2010 users.

Bad: Similar to the fate of QuickBooks 2011 users, QuickBooks 2010 users of online document storage (either Document Management or Attached Documents) can use the service subject to Intuit’s sunshine policy. However, since QuickBooks 2010 was released 1 year before QuickBooks 2011, the sunshine date is 1 year earlier, or May 2013. New, free subscriptions to Document Management with a cap of 100 Mb can be created, but these were intended to allow evaluation of the service when it was first introduced; it’s unlikely anyone would want to evaluate a service that is being phased out, and the 100 Mb cap has little practical value outside of evaluation testing.

The changes to document attachment are significant, and many QuickBooks users that have avoided attaching documents in QuickBooks because of cost considerations will be pleased at the free local document storage in QuickBooks 2012. On the other hand, organizations that have used Intuit’s cloud-based system will be disappointed to see that low-cost service disappear, but they’ll have ample time to implement other approaches to document storage.

Highlighting the changes are:

• New Calendar View
• Improved To-Do List
• Ability to update existing Excel reports directly from QuickBooks
• Improved memorized transactions
• Changes to document management
• New Lead Center to manage leads and prospects directly in QuickBooks

Enterprise Solutions 12.0 users will have the ability to use FIFO inventory costing with an extra-cost service. For industry specific products, such as QuickBooks Premier Accountant Edition, there are additional enhancements, such as the inclusion of Intuit Statement Writer.

Our first impression is that QuickBooks 2012 seems to perform faster than previous versions on the same company files.

Every QuickBooks user will have his or her own favorite, but for those that prepare reports in Excel, if that feature can deliver on the promise, it will prove a huge timesaver.

What looks the most interesting to you?

The look isn’t fully polished yet, and we’re running an alpha version of the forum software, so you may find a rare glitch or two.

But our testing shows that basic functionality works just fine. So without further delay, head on over to our forum and fire away with your questions.

Users log into Intuit’s secure servers using an email address and password. While we’re on the subject of security, there’s one small drawback: the password is not case-sensitive and is therefore not considered a strong password.

A QuickBooks Attached Documents subscription is managed by a Company Administrator, the sole pre-defined role supported by the service. A user with the role of Company Administrator can:

• Edit the business profile
• Add other Attached Documents subscriptions
• Update the current subscription

Here’s a screenshot of the screen to add a new user, which shows the range of security settings. After a user is added, security settings can be modified by clicking on the Manage Users button in the upper right of the browser screen, followed by editing a specific user. You can only manage users from a browser-based interface, not from within QuickBooks itself. The Setup and Manage Users menu selection will only open browser access to Attached Documents.

The service supports 4 levels of application permissions:

• Administrator: can perform all functions and manage users
• Full Access: can perform all functions but cannot manage users
• View Only: can view any attachment in any area but cannot add new attachments and cannot modify or delete existing documents
• Custom Access: controlled access across 8 functional areas

Necessarily, the user with the role of Company Administrator must have Administrator application permissions, but other users can have Administrator application permissions as well. While those users will have powerful capabilities, they won’t have the powers specific to the role of Company Administrator, such as editing the company profile.

The Custom Access permission is used to control access to documents in functional areas of QuickBooks. Custom Access supports 8 functional areas:

1. Sales and Accounts Receivable
2. Purchases and Accounts Payable
3. Checking and Credit Cards
4. Time Tracking
5. Payroll and Employees
6. Inventory
7. Sensitive Accounting Activities
8. Company Documents

Within these 8 areas, there are 4 capabilities:

• Add: this is a global permission; if a user can add an attached document, he can add it to any area
• View: this permission allows a user to look at but not modify or delete a document
• Modify: this permission necessarily includes the View permission
• Delete: this permission is only available to a user with Modify permissions in the same area

Users assigned a Custom Access level can make use of their capabilities (i. e., Add, View, Modify, or Delete) on lists and transactions associated with that area of accounting. A user can be assigned to more than one area, a necessity in a small firm that still wants to set some restrictions on document access.

Before examining how Custom Access applies in specific areas, it’s important to understand how access to files in the Document Inbox is controlled. Any user with View permission in any area can see all unattached documents in the Document Inbox. Custom Access can’t take affect until after a document is attached and put into a specific area. Therefore, for documents requiring controlled access, care must be taken to start the upload process by attaching them from within QuickBooks. If you elect to upload a document to the Document Inbox and attach it later, it is viewable by any user with View permissions until it is attached to a list item or transaction.

8 Functional Areas

Let’s review which lists and transactions are associated with specific areas. Note that a list or transaction type can appear in more than 1 area. For example, the Other Names list appears in both the Sales and Accounts Receivable and the Purchases and Accounts Payable areas.

Sales and Accounts Receivable: Customers, Other Names, Fixed Asset Item List, Estimates, Sales Orders, Invoices, Sales Receipts, Credit Memos, and Payments.

Purchases and Accounts Payable: Vendors, Other Names, Fixed Asset Items, Bills, Bill Credits, Bill Payments, Credit Card charges, Credit Card credits, and Purchase Orders. Note that Checks – which represent a different transaction type – cannot be seen unless the user has View permissions in the area of Checking and Credit Cards.

Checking and Credit Cards: Vendors, Other Names, Fixed Asset Items, Checks, Deposits, Credit Card charges, and Credit Card credits. Note that users with View permission can see documents attached to transactions in bank or credit card accounts but cannot see documents attached to the bank or credit card accounts themselves. Note also that Transfers are not included in this area.

Time Tracking: Other Names and Timers.

Payroll and Employees: Employees, Other Names, Paychecks, Payroll Liability Checks, Liability Adjustments, and Year-To-Date Adjustments.

Inventory: Items, Vendors, Other Names, Fixed Asset Items, Bills, Bill Credits, Bill Payments, Purchase Orders, Item Receipts, Inventory Adjustments, and Build Assemblies.

Sensitive Accounting Activities: Accounts, Journal entries, and Transfers. Note that users with View permission can see documents attached to general ledger Accounts, but to also see documents attached to transactions in a particular area, View permission for that area is required. For example, to view a document attached to a Check, a user must have View permissions in the Checking and Credit Cards area.

Company Documents: Documents attached to the company file itself via the Company Information window.

This last area is not an accounting function similar to managing A/R or A/P. Instead, it includes more general corporate documents that are connected to accounting and recordkeeping. Documents here include those attached to the Company Information via the Company->Company Information… menu selection. A screenshot of this point of attachment is shown below. Examples of documents that might be attached here include corporate organization documents such as articles of incorporation, bylaws, or meeting minutes.

A few examples of how applying security in QuickBooks Attached Documents will illustrate the power and flexibility of this security model. First, consider the need to upload bank statements but to restrict access to selected individuals. Bank statements attached to the Account are only viewable by users with access to Sensitive Accounting Activities, so the specific bank account to which the statement applies is the best point of attachment. We don’t recommend bank statements be attached to other list entities, such as Other Names, because documents attached to those lists are accessible to other areas.

Next, consider the need to upload payroll tax forms. If every user requiring access to the payroll tax forms will also have access to the Sensitive Accounting Activities area, one good point of attachment might be the liability account to which the tax form relates. Another approach might be to treat these forms as Company Documents, and attach them to the Company Information. A workable but slightly less desirable method would be to create employees representing the tax agency as placeholders and attach tax forms to the relevant placeholder employee. However, even though a tax form is often accompanied by a payment to a Vendor, we don’t recommend attaching a tax form to a Vendor because documents attached to that list item would be accessible to other areas, such as Purchase and Accounts Payable.

Both of these examples illustrate an important concept in making use of security in Attached Documents. Start by attaching a document to an area with the greatest restrictions and only attach it to other areas as required. If you attach a document to areas that include lists or transaction types that overlap, you may end up making the document available to a wider audience than you originally intended.

Here are a few pointers on making the best use of keyboard shortcuts:

• Our list is sortable and organized by function; find a small number of shortcuts that are most relevant to your use of QuickBooks and use them over and over, because productivity gains only come with repeated use
• Special keys, such as Alt or Ctrl, are shown in italics, and are often combined with another key that is listed in uppercase for consistency only; you don’t need to enter this key in uppercase
• For some shortcuts, such as those used when starting the program, timing is everything; the shortcut must be invoked when QuickBooks is ready to process it, and if you’re too early or too late, the shortcut will not work

There’s an extensive group of shortcuts that relate to the use of the Alt key. We’ve included this group as a single shortcut at the end of the list. When you press the Alt key, a character in most menus is underlined, and that character is a shortcut to that menu function. For example, pressing Alt + B + L invokes the reconcile function because L is underlined in Banking menu.

Continue on to our list of QuickBooks keyboard shortcuts. This is one example where a shortcut in accounting can be a good thing.

It’s easy to unattach a previously attached document in QuickBooks Attached Documents once you consider some Attached Documents basics:

• Unless you want to remove a document from online storage, you can only unattach documents from within QuickBooks itself – not through the web interface
• QuickBooks refers to the process of unattaching as “deleting the attachment”
• Deleting an attachment from a linked list item or transaction does not necessarily involve deleting the attachment from documents stored on the Attached Documents server

To unattach a document from a list item or transaction, the first step is open the list of documents currently attached to that list item or transaction. For list items in a Center, such as Vendor Center, click on the paperclip next to the name of the vendor with an attachment that you want to unattach from that list item. For transactions, such as a vendor bill, open the transaction and click the paperclip at the top of the transaction form. Both of these approaches will take you to a list of the documents currently attached to that list item or transaction so that you can delete the attachment. Next, select the attachment you want to unattach and click the Delete button. In the screenshot below, the list of currently attached documents has been redacted.

Upon clicking the Delete button, you’ll see the Delete Attachment window. In this window, you’ll have the option to simply unattach the document but keep the document stored on the Attached Documents servers or to unattach the document and remove the document from Intuit’s servers at the same time. To unattach the document and permanently delete the file, simply click the checkbox for Also permanently delete this document from online storage.

Of course, you can delete a document using the web interface of Attached Documents. That will break the attachment to the list item or transaction in QuickBooks since the document will be removed from online storage. That list item or transaction will appear to have an attachment in QuickBooks until you attempt to access it or run the utility Sync and Clean Up Attachment Links on the Company->Attached Documents->Utilities menu.

QuickBooks Attached Documents allows a QuickBooks user to attach an unlimited number of documents to a transaction or list item and store the attachments on Intuit’s secure servers.  It replaces the Document Management service introduced with QuickBooks 2010.  QuickBooks Attached Documents costs $19.95 per month for each company file that will make use of the service.

Before we delve into the details, here are some important points about the service.  It supports:

• an unlimited number of attachments per transaction and list item but each attachment must be under 100 Mb in size;
• attaching documents to most – but not all – QuickBooks list items;
• 1 company file per subscription;
• local storage for QuickBooks 2011 users – but even exclusive use of local storage requires a paid subscription;
• a Document Inbox of unattached documents – an important tool for simplifying workflow;
• attaching most common file types, including PDF and Microsoft Office formats;
• linking an attachment to a QuickBooks list item or transaction from within QuickBooks only;
• searching for a document by file name, title, description and keyword, user who attached the document, and the QuickBooks record to which the attachment is linked;
• filtering documents based on any 1 list item or transaction type plus a date selected as 1 of 4 pre-set options or a custom range but multiple list/transaction filters cannot be selected, such as filtering for all bills (a transaction type) for a specific vendor (a list item);
• drag-and-drop uploading of attachments through QuickBooks but not a web browser;
• sharing 1 document at a time via email with 1 or more individuals who are not subscribers; and
• web browsers that include support for Adobe Flash.

It’s also important to understand what Attached Documents does not do.  The service can’t:

• attach the same document to more than 1 list item or transaction;
• add multiple documents at a time via the web interface; or
• store documents in a traditional folder structure.

There are 2 distinct ways of looking at the functionality of QuickBooks Attached Documents: from a web interface or from within QuickBooks.

Using Attached Documents With A Web Browser

Let’s start by taking a look at the service from a web browser after you’ve signed up for the service.  The first step is to sign in at Intuit’s Workplace secure sign in page.  In the screenshot below, note the lock symbol indicating the site is secure from the start.

Depending on the other Intuit services you’ve purchased, you may start out at the Intuit Workplace, which shows icons for the applications assigned to your account plus teasers to entice you to buy more apps.  For our purposes, we’ll click the icon for QuickBooks Attached Documents and jump in.

If you’ve just signed up for the service, your QuickBooks company file is not linked to QuickBooks Attached Documents.  That’s a step you have to complete from within QuickBooks, which we’ll cover later in this article.  For now, let’s close this welcome screen since we’ll tackle the linking issue once we launch QuickBooks.

Here’s the Online Document Center, the main screen of QuickBooks Attached Documents in a web browser:

Basics of Adding a Document

Uploading new documents is a critical step for any document management program.  Adding a new document to QuickBooks Attached Documents is a straightforward process.

Once you click the Add Document To Inbox link in the upper left corner of the Online Document Center, you’ll be greeted with the Document Record window, shown below.

Using your operating system’s file browser, you can locate a document on your local disk system and record the title, description, and a comma-separated list of keywords.  There are a few important limitations of adding a document via a web browser: you can only add 1 document at a time and the web interface does not support drag-and-drop.  Both of these features are available when working from inside QuickBooks itself.

When you add a new document, it starts its online life in the Document Inbox.  The Document Inbox is a handy workflow tool because it represents the documents that haven’t been attached to a list item or transaction in QuickBooks.  You can think of it as your “to do list” for attaching.  When viewing the Document Inbox, there’s a checkbox marked Include Previously Attached, and you’ll want to make sure this checkbox is not checked so that documents linked in QuickBooks don’t show up in the inbox.

The Actions Button

QuickBooks Attached Documents supports 3 basic actions, Download, Share…, and Edit.  You’ll find all of these tasks on the Actions button, shown in the screenshot below.

Download allows you to save a copy of the document locally.  Share… allows you to send an email link to provide viewing access to the document with users who don’t have access to your Attached Documents subscription.  The Edit menu selection gives you access to change the information in the Document Record window, recorded when you first added the document.

Finding a Document

By far, one of the biggest questions that comes up in considering the value of a service such as QuickBooks Attached Documents is the ease with which you can locate a document you’ve uploaded.

Attached Documents has 2 basic methods: you can search for a document or you can filter the list of displayed documents.  If your filter reduces the list of displayed documents down to a small number, you can pick the document out from the list of those displayed or you can search the filtered list.

Documents are searchable based on 6 criteria:

1. file name
2. title
3. description
4. keyword
5. the user who initially uploaded the document
6. the QuickBooks record to which the attachment is linked

Search results are based on the current filter applied to the documents listed, and you can narrow that filter to get better search results.

You can filter by date using one of 4 preset date ranges or a custom date range.

You can also filter by any 1 list item or transaction, combined with a date filter.  By default, QuickBooks Attached Documents displays a limited set of list item and transaction filters, but you can customize that list by clicking the Customize Filters link at the lower left of the Online Document Center.

QuickBooks Attached Documents gives you the ability to filter by most – but not all – list items and transactions. You can’t filter or attach documents to: price levels, billing rate levels, classes, and customer/vendor profile list items (such as terms or sales reps).  While that might seem to exclude a lot of possible attachments, the likelihood that you’ll want to attach a document to one of these list items is small.  A simple workaround is to create a “placeholder” record in an existing list that can accept attachments, such as the Other Names list.

You can attach a document to most transaction types.  A good rule of thumb is that if the transaction is recorded and can be viewed on a QuickBooks form, such as a vendor bill or customer invoice, you can attach a document to the transaction.  For transactions not recorded or viewable on a form (such as a statement charge, which is viewable on a register), you can’t attach a document.

One important limitation of filters in QuickBooks Attached Documents is that you can only filter on a single list item or transaction type.  That means you cannot filter on bills for a vendor, for example.  To achieve a similar result, you’ll have to combine a filter with a search.

Adding Users

QuickBooks Attached Documents allows you to add an unlimited number of users to your subscription and manage their access to documents.  You can provide access in 1 of 4 pre-defined roles: Administrator, Full Access, View Only, or Custom Access.  Only users with Administrator privileges can manage users, and only users with Administrator or Full Access privileges can delete documents.   Custom Access allows you to control the ability to add a document to any area and to view and modify documents in 8 pre-defined areas:

1. Sales and Accounts Receivable
2. Purchases and Accounts Payable
3. Checking and Credit Cards
4. Time Tracking
5. Payroll and Employees
6. Inventory
7. Sensitive Accounting Activities
8. Company Documents

If a user is assigned the Custom Access privilege to add documents, the user can add any document; control over adding documents is not granular to the same degree as viewing or modifying them.

Document Sharing

QuickBooks Attached Documents allows you to share a link to a document with another party via email without adding that person as a user on your Attached Documents subscription.

One limitation of the service is that you can only share a link to a single document at a time, so if you need to share several documents, count on your colleagues receiving multiple emails.

The first time you share a document, you’ll see this summary of how sharing works, and you can turn it off for future sharing by clicking the Don’t show this message again checkbox at the bottom of the form.

When you’re ready to share a document, choose the Share… link on the Actions menu for the document you want to share.  You’ll be able to customize an email to your intended recipients.

Here’s the email your sharing recipients will receive:

Using Attached Documents Inside QuickBooks

Many users will opt to use Attached Documents almost exclusively from within QuickBooks.  Those that do will find features not available when accessing the service via a web browser.

Establishing the Connection To QuickBooks

As we covered near the top of the article, once you launch QuickBooks, the first step to using QuickBooks Attached Documents is to connect your company file with your service subscription.  To do so, visit the Company -> Attached Documents -> Learn About Attached Documents menu selection, sign in to your Attached Documents subscription, and QuickBooks will perform the connection.

There are a few important restrictions on connecting to QuickBooks.  First, document attachment services first became available with QuickBooks 2010, so if you’re using an older version of QuickBooks, you need to upgrade your QuickBooks version.  Second, in QuickBooks 2010, the service of this type had a different name, Document Management, so your menu choice will refer to that service.  If you previously used the Document Management service, you’ll have to remove that service from your company file before you can use Attached Documents, and that’s a process that will require sending your company file to Intuit.  Lastly, while you can use Attached Documents with QuickBooks 2010, you can’t use the ability to store documents locally unless you have QuickBooks 2011.

Once you’re connected, here’s the Attached Documents menu structure in QuickBooks 2011:

Add To Online Document Inbox

We’ve already covered adding documents via a web browser and the role of the Document Inbox, so we’ll just focus on what’s new when accessing the Document Inbox from inside QuickBooks.  To start, visit the Company -> Attached Documents -> Add to Online Document Inbox menu selection.

From within QuickBooks, click the Local Files button at the top of the window to add new documents.  Adding documents from within QuickBooks gives you several important capabilities: adding multiple documents at a time and adding documents by drag-and-drop.  Those improvements are offset by a small change in workflow: you’re not automatically capturing the Document Record information on upload.  You’ll have to edit the Document Record from the Actions button in a web browser for each document you upload using this method.

If you’re working within QuickBooks, you can also choose to add a document to your Online Document Inbox directly from your scanner.  QuickBooks supports several profiles for Twain-compatible scanners:

Attaching Documents

You can only attach a document to a list item or transaction from within QuickBooks with your company file open.  For list items, the specific method to attach a document varies by list item, but the general approach is the same:

1. use the Attach button at the bottom of the list display;
2. invoke the context menu (by right clicking) on a list item in a center, such as Customer Center; or
3. double-click in the Attach column on the list item.

Any of those methods will open a window where you can choose from an existing document already added to the Online Document Inbox or a new document on a local disk.

A QuickBooks list item or transaction with an attached document is marked in one of several ways.  For list items, a paper clip appears in the Attach column for any list item with at least 1 attachment.  For transactions, you’ll have to open a form for the transaction and observe the color of the paper clip at the top of the form window.  As the Enter Bills window below illustrates, when the paper clip is green, the transaction has an attachment; when it’s gray, it doesn’t.

Intuit could make existing attachments more obvious in centers, such as the Vendor Center, by adding an Attach column to the list of transactions.  So far, as of R5 for QuickBooks 2011, it’s not there, so you’re stuck having to open a form to learn if an attachment has been made.

Conclusions

Now that we’ve covered all of the ins and outs of QuickBooks Attached Documents, is it worth it?  For now, we’ll give it a qualified thumbs up.  The prior incarnation of this type of service, Document Management for QuickBooks 2010, lacked the ability to store unlimited documents.  That made it difficult for those organizations who would most benefit from a service of this kind to even consider it.  Attached Documents overcomes that limitation and comes in at a price point that is virtually unbeatable.

The price advantage that Attached Documents has over most big name competitors jumps out once you adjust for the number of users accessing the service or consider caps on storage.  Intuit is offering an unlimited number of users an unlimited amount of storage for $19.95 per month.  By comparison, cloud-based storage competitor Box.net offers 500 Gb total storage for $15 per user per month.  For most companies, that’s a lot of storage, but at just 2 users, Box.net works out to be 50% more expensive than QuickBooks Attached Documents.  The more users you need, the bigger the price advantage for QuickBooks Attached Documents.  Dropbox, another popular cloud storage service,  charges $19.95 per month for 100 Gb of storage.  The cost of these services includes primarily cloud-based storage and doesn’t include the biggest feature of QuickBooks Attached Documents – the ability to link documents to accounting records.  The productivity gains from not having to maintain an index that connects documents to accounting information are huge.  And that’s a differentiating feature that generic storage systems can’t offer.

Beyond generic cloud-based storage solutions, QuickBooks Attached Documents does have competition in the market for linking documents to accounting records.  SmartVault offers plans that range from $19 to $69 per month, but those plans include caps on storage, the number of users, and in some cases, the number of guests for document sharing.  The company’s $69 per month plan caps disk storage at 30 Gb for 5 users.  That’s 3 1/2 times the price of Intuit’s service that doesn’t carry those same limits. 

Papersave Plus skips the cloud altogether and sells a software product based on a per user license that stores documents locally.  Prices range from $199 for a 1 user license to $699 for 5 users.  A local-storage only approach does save recurring monthly subscription fees for a much higher initial investment but gives up the disaster recovery benefits of off-site storage, a big advantage of cloud-based systems.  We’d rather make our document management do double-duty and provide both accounting record-keeping and disaster recovery.

With the big pricing advantage and strong QuickBooks integration, what qualifications are we attaching to our thumbs up assessment?  QuickBooks Attached Documents is a big improvement over its earlier offering, but it lacks a few features found in other document management systems, and these features are often behind big productivity gains.  Here’s our wishlist for improvements to Attached Documents.  Intuit needs to add:

• the ability to have an auto-syncing folder on a local disk, where documents in the folder are automatically added to the Document Inbox;
• the ability to drag-and-drop new files, including more than a single file, into the Document Inbox using the web interface;
• the ability to print a file or a Microsoft Office email message to the Document Inbox directly;
• the ability to search within the contents of files in addition to the meta-descriptions of files; and
• the ability to set multiple filters for cases where a filter plus search are less effective.

Most of these improvements are features that exist in the document management world.  It’s simply a matter of Intuit devoting the resources to add them to QuickBooks Attached Documents to make a good product a great one.

The question on data source for foreign exchange rates often arises out of a misunderstanding of how rates downloaded by QuickBooks should be used. These rates are only a guide, and the exchange rate recorded on a multicurrency transaction should match the exchange rate used for that specific transaction. Therefore, the real source of the exchange rates you should be recording in QuickBooks is the business or financial institution with which you engaged in a foreign currency transaction. The rate downloaded by QuickBooks can be used for comparison or, in some circumstances, an estimate in the absence of other information.

One problem with downloading foreign exchange rates in QuickBooks is that there is no ability to download rates for a day other than the current business day; in other words, QuickBooks doesn’t provide access to historical exchange rates for those times when you didn’t download a particular daily rate.

See our article on online sources for historical foreign exchange rates.

See our article on all of the Item types supported by QuickBooks for more information.

Generally speaking, Items are designed to pre-fill invoicing and purchasing forms. An Inventory Part represents an item that your firm keeps on hand for sale to customers. It can be stocked and sold on its own or included as part of an inventory assembly.

Here’s a screenshot of the QuickBooks Item List showing a range of inventory parts:

QuickBooks tracks certain information that apply only to Inventory Parts. Fields tracked only for Inventory Parts include:

• Quantity On Hand
• Quantity On Purchase Order
• Quantity On Sales Order
• Reorder Point
• Asset Account

Some fields are tracked both for Inventory Parts and other item types, such as Inventory Assemblies and Non-Inventory Parts. Some – but not all – of these fields also may be tracked for other item types if you select the checkbox This item is used in assemblies or is a reimbursable charge. These fields are:

• Quantity On Pending Builds
• COGS Account
• Preferred Vendor

The above screenshot shows a mix of inventory parts and sub-items of inventory parts. This structure is often described as a “parent child relationship”, where a sub-item is a child of its parent. While both parent and child items are labeled as Inventory Parts, QuickBooks only tracks quantity information for sub-items (i. e., child items) when this structure is used. It does not aggregate information for parent items where sub-items exist for that parent item.

Unfortunately, dropping the forum format forced a change in how you might pose a new question. A forum can allow anyone to make a new post, but that’s not possible right now using our new approach. The best place to ask a question is on an existing article that relates to the same topic.

What about an entirely new question, one that isn’t covered by an existing article? In that event, post it in the comments here.

UPDATE: We’re in the early stages of setting up a forum for new questions. The look isn’t fully polished yet, and we’re running a not-yet-released version of the forum software, so you may find a rare glitch or two. But our testing shows that basic functionality works just fine, so without further delay, head on over to our forum.

If it turns out your question triggers a new article, we’ll post the article with a link in our reply.