CPAs and accounting firms love QuickBooks accounting software for all its features and functionalities. But for Intuit – the financial software company behind QuickBooks, it is crucial to keep upgrading the features to meet the end consumers’ various demands and needs. This can be why this famous software company keeps releasing new versions of QuickBooks with upgraded features and functionalities. These upgrades not only bring more value to the users but also improve their operations.
In September 2020, Intuit released QuickBooks 2021 version with several enhanced features to enable task automation, time-savings and improved work efficiency. If you have been using the earlier versions of the QuickBooks desktop version paired with QuickBooks hosting, you must know about the new features to make the required switch if needed.
Let’s get into the details of the features of QuickBooks 2021 desktop version.
QuickBooks 2021 Feature List
1. Bank Feeds Import
With QuickBooks desktop version, you get a bank feeds feature that connects credit card accounts with online banking. This connection enables the users to download financial transactions and eliminate the time-consuming steps to record them manually.
In QuickBooks 2021 version, you can import bank feeds easily. This will help in categorizing complex bank transactions using enhanced rules, batch editing, and improved matching. As a result, you can review transactional discrepancies quickly and resolve them in less time. This feature was not available in QuickBooks 2020 and 2019 versions.
You can access these features by following the steps given below:
- Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Checking using the menus.
- You will see bank feeds and their three modes – Advanced, Express, and Classic.
- Select Advanced mode and launch feed using the Banking option.
Also Read: Why Switch to QuickBooks Hosting in 2021?
2. Automatic Statements and Payment Reminders
Reminding clients to process the payments is common with several types of businesses. If you also want a solution to get paid faster, this new feature of QuickBooks 2021 can help you out. As the name suggests, it enables you to remind your clients to pay the overdue payments. You can automate the reminder process to send emails regularly and get the payments cleared earlier than expected.
With this automated statement feature, you get access to pre-defined email templates that you can use to set up reminders. You can then send these statements from QuickBooks with the template you choose. You also get the facility to the email body and then send different emails to different clients.
To access this new QuickBooks 2021 feature, use the following steps:
- Use Customers -> Payment reminders.
- Use Schedule Payment Reminders.
- This will show you a pop-up to automate the process of sending statements.
With QuickBooks 2020, you do not get the automatic statements feature. However, you can set payment reminders in that version. QuickBooks 2019 version does not have any of these advanced features.
3. Payment Receipt Formatting
Payment receipts sent to the customers are an excellent base to promote your brand. With the new formatting feature of QuickBooks 2021, you can customize the payment receipts before sending them to your clients. The extent of customization is limited to adding a logo to give the receipts a more professional, business-oriented look.
Using QuickBooks 2021, you can also set a default template for your payment receipts. Besides this, you can categorize and review multiple receipts at once without doing the same one by one.
To access the receipt management and formatting feature with QuickBooks 2021, follow these steps:
- Select Vendors -> Receipt Management from the main menu.
This feature is not available with both 2020 or 2019 versions of QuickBooks. To get the benefits of cloud technology, you can choose QuickBooks hosting and get the software hosted on the cloud.
4. Rule-Based Customer Groups
Creating rule-based customer groups implies classifying the customers into different groups based on various fields like type, balance, sales rep, balances, and similar others. With QuickBooks 2021 version, you can create customer groups to stay organized and keep your business operations in order. This new version also enables automatic inclusion or removal of customers from pre-defined conditions, with which you can improve the engagement rate with the end customers.
To access this new feature, use the following steps:
- Go to Customers -> Manage Customer Groups from the payment reminders option.
QuickBooks 2019 and 2020 do not have this feature. It is an exclusive feature of QuickBooks 2020 version.
5. QuickBooks Desktop Manager
In the previous versions of QuickBooks, you could access the official website of Intuit directly from QuickBooks and then proceed with installing different QuickBooks desktop products. However, with QuickBooks 2021 version, you get QuickBooks Desktop manager, which helps you install various QB products.
In other words, this tool helps make different QB products accessible in one place in just a few clicks. It is newly introduced in the 2021 QuickBooks desktop version.
Getting a detailed comparison of QuickBooks 2021 version with its earlier version can help you choose the right version for your business. If you want to benefit from hosting QuickBooks 2021 on cloud, let our team help you with that. Connect with us at 1-855-583-7486.
