QuickBooks 2012 R5 Released

Intuit has released the QuickBooks 2012 R5 update to the U.S. versions of QuickBooks. There are quite a few changes here, ranging from minor and cosmetic issues all the way up to some major changes. There are some important changes to permissions and data access as well as some fixes for tricky issues in Enterprise price/cost updates that could be very important for you.

Please note that I have NOT tested all of these changes (there are a lot of them!). All of the information here comes from one or another source at Intuit – and there are a couple of things that were noted that I either cannot find (perhaps I misunderstood the short descriptions) or that seem to me to have already been fixed in prior releases. I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps some of the things listed as fixes in R5 may have actually been fixed in R4 (which you may already have installed), and they are just being documented now (or, tested!). The R4 release had just a couple of fixes, and I think that it was rushed out to get the big Enterprise bug fix out quickly. Some of the bug fixes here may sound familiar because they were recently implemented in the 2011 R9 release and the 2012 product is catching up. My apologies for any confusion on mypart.

At the time I’m writing this, the release is available as a manual update from the Intuit support web site. If all goes well with the manual update you can expect this to go out as an automatic update in about a week. My usual recommendation is that you wait a week or so before you implement any update (let OTHER people find out if there are problems!), but Intuit has been testing this release for awhile. Look at the fixes in the Permissions and Access and Enterprise Price/Cost Update sections below – if these issues affect you it may be important to get the update soon.

Permissions and Access

If you use User accounts to control who can see or work with different aspects of QuickBooks (and you SHOULD!), then this update has some very important changes.

• • There is a new permission added for Calendar payroll access (in QuickBooks Enterprise). You can use this permission to restrict user accounts from seeing payroll transactions on the calendar. It is set to full access for all default users. This is a big change that relates to an issue that has caused quite a lot of complaints about the calendar feature.
  • Users with view-only access are no longer able to edit the amount of customer payments.
  • In QuickBooks Accountant, users with limited/restricted access are no longer able to view sensitive banking data in the Accountant Center.
  • A new user permission has been added, “Find Report”. This allows you to restrict a user from viewing or printing results of the “Find” option (Enterprise only).
  • You will no longer see the message You need Time Tracking permissions to perform this action if you open the calendar as a limited user

Enterprise Price/Cost Update

These changes are found only in QuickBooks Enterprise, and relate to the cost and price update feature. This feature has had a lot of problems in the early releases, and R5 fixes some more issues. Many of these are subtle problems that you may not have noticed but that can cause headaches. If you are using Enterprise V12 I recommend that you get the R5 update soon.

• Here’s a tricky one that got fixed. If you click on the Edit Markup button in the Edit Item window, change the type of markup, close the window, open it again, the type would revert to the prior setting. If you close the window then that old setting would be saved. This should be fixed in R5.
• Price and markup calculations will now calculate properly when a markup value has been defined in the Time and Billing Preferences.
• Price Markup settings on a new item are now set to “use default” for cost and price updating.
• The “Use Default” markup settings are no longer lost when you associate an item with a build assembly. I’m not clear if this means when you add an item to the assembly component list in Edit Item, or at some other point.
• The cost and price are no longer changing for build assemblies when an item cost is changed. Again, I’m not sure if they are talking about when you are in the Edit Item window? I’m not sure if this is restricted to Enterprise.
• You can now update the price to match a new cost having a zero percentage markup.
• The Edit Markup option will no longer be available for Service and Non-Inventory items that are not used in assemblies.
• All items set to use the default preferences for Price Markup will keep these preference when updating to the latest release unless you manually edit the individual item.
• Price markup amount will calculate correctly when the Markup Type changes from Percent to Amount.
• If you have a file converted from an older version of QuickBooks (2011 or older) and you had hidden the Cost Changed alert, this also would suppress the newer cost changed alert regardless of your settings. This should be fixed now.
• Price and markup percentages are now calculated correctly when the cost and price are modified during purchases.

Advanced Inventory

This is an optional (additional charge) feature in Enterprise. Most of these changes are cleaning up issues that you might not have run into, rather than being big bugs. The first two I list are notable.

• Here’s another one I would like more information on. Serial Number and Lot Number features now work correctly after a file has been condensed when these features were enabled.
• The Inventory Stock Status by Site report has been changed to no longer include the Drop Ship site by default. You can still add it by modifying the report. If you have been using this report it is important to take note of this change!
• QuickBooks should perform faster in large files that have serial number tracking enabled.
• If you select Print Item Information in the Inventory Center, site-specific data will now print.
• Serial and Lot Number reports are now filtered to exclude items without serial or lot numbers, or negative numbers.
• If you do a Quick Zoom on a lot number field in a report you will no longer see the Lot Numbers Quick View.
• The Add Multiple Serial Numbers window now has the Select All button enabled in search results.
• If you select a blank line item for a Lot Number adjustment the value 0.00 no longer appears in the Count Adjustment field.
• If you filter the Inventory Worksheet by site it will no longer change what is displayed in the item list and inventory center.
• The Transfer Inventory form now includes a description column.
• Assembly item descriptions no longer display in any of the stock reports when no items are listed.
• When transferring inventory to different sites, the purchase description will appear in the description field if an inventory item does not have a sales description.
• If you do a Quick Zoom in the Lot Numbers in Stock or Lot Numbers in Stock by Site reports the Lot Numbers count will now be displayed.
• Serial and Lot Number fields will save the values when you enter the maximum 40 characters for the field.
• You will no longer see an extra number in the quantity field when entering a specific lot of 9,999,999,999.99999.
• You will no longer see the warning message about Serial Numbers being blank when the preferences are set to not warn you.
• You will no longer see the message “Sorry, you cannot select/use this message now” when emailing transactions with serial numbers.

Enhanced Inventory Receiving (EIR)

Enhanced Inventory Receiving is an optional feature that is generating a LOT of discussion. It addresses some important issues, but there are some people that believe that it introduces more problems. I’m looking into this further and hope to have another article on it next month. The fixes here don’t seem to relate to major issues.

• I wish I had more details on this one! The conversion to Enhanced Inventory Receiving has been improved to allow more customers to successfully convert to EIR.
• In a bill, on the items tab, Select POs & Item Receipts has been renamed to Select Related Transactions, and it is displayed correctly.
• You will no longer receive an Unexpected Error C=47 when saving changes to a purchase order linked to an unsaved item receipt.
• You can now manually close a purchase order and have it linked to an item receipt during the receiving process.
• Manually closed purchase orders can be linked to bills.
• Purchase orders that are Closed or Received in Full will no longer appear in the Select Related Transactions list when they have a subtotal line, group item description only line or blank line.
• It you are converting an item receipt into a bill you will no longer get the message “Sorry, you cannot change this item receipt now…”. This fixes a problem where you had to switch to single-user mode to receive against the items (or delete the item receipt).
• If Verify/Rebuild fails when converting a file to use EIR, the error message has been expanded to make it clearer what the issue is and what you should do.

User Interface

Cleaning up some details…

• The names list on the timesheet will now start with employees.
• If you use the keyboard shortcut to save a journal entry, this now refreshes the screen for the next entry.
• Pending invoices are now listed in the customer center when the filter is set to all invoices.
• The inventory menu will no longer be displayed when no company file is open.
• There are a number of fixes in the Help file that I won’t list in detail.

QuickBooks Online Banking

Only one problem that is really significant here.

• If you have a linked deposit and the exchange rate is not 1, you will no longer see a “System.Access…” error.
• If you cancel the import of a WebConnect file the program will no longer display the WebConnect Account Setup message.
• If you are working with Bank of America there is a terminology change. QuickBooks will ask for a passcode instead of a PIN. As I understand it, this isn’t a functional change, it is just that the proper term is being used to avoid confusion.

Payroll

If you are using Payroll you may have run into these issues – if so, you should get this update soon.

• If you edit a pending paycheck the program will now correctly update Sick & Vacation balances.
• When you turn on the phone number to print on paystubs the phone number will no longer print in the return address section.
• If you open the Edit Payment Due Dates/Methods screen QuickBooks will no longer display the message “Payroll already in use”.

To Do

• To Do dates are no longer changed by one day when the file is updated from a previous version.
• To Do items can now be deleted.
• You can sort the To Do list by the Done column.

Excel

• The values for the Sales by Item Summary and Average Days to Pay reports will now correctly export to Excel.
• Excel no longer shows the opposite sign values in the %Change column for comparison reports.
• The Profit and Loss by Job report no longer has additional rows added when sending an update to an existing copy of the report in Excel.
• The message Excel update failed will no longer display when sending an update to an existing Excel worksheet that has a space in the name.
• You can now update an Excel workbook even when new formulas and columns have bee added or changed since the report was originally exported.

Accountant Specific

• Memorized Report Groups with “&” in the label will now show in the Accountant Center.
• A long dash will no longer cause an error when sending Accountants Copy Changes back to the client.
• The Support option in the Help menu will no open ProAdvisor Support when you are using QuickBooks Accountant.
• The Sales Tax preference will be retained after upgrading a QBA file.
• The Accountant Center is now more dependent on the permissions of the logged in user as far as what data will be displayed.

Other General Changes

• If you double-click on an item in the physical inventory worksheet the program will now open a QuickReport, rather than opening the Edit Item window.
• If you have a QuickBooks Compatible program that uses the SDK you might have run into a problem with that program not being able to open QuickBooks by itself, without QuickBooks actually having the file open first. You would get an “unexpected error”. This has been fixed.
• Sales tax items will no longer show in the Best Selling items section of the company snapshot.
• Although the new PDF driver introduced in the 2011 version solved a lot of PDF printing problems, some people still find that there are issues, particularly with Windows XP. With this release, when QuickBooks starts and the required XPS driver is not found then the user will be asked to install it and restart the machine. If you do this, then it works. If you skip this, then you will still have a problem.
• Price Levels are no longer rounded to 2 decimal places when No Rounding is selected when you update a price level.
• The email address for a Lead now appears in the email field and not the CC field when the lead is converted to a customer.
• Information deleted from a Lead will no longer appear for other users.
• You will no longer get error 1334 – the file QBW32EnterpriseAccountant.exe cannot be installed if you change the edition of Premier you have installed, or run a “repair” of the installation.
• QuickBooks will no longer open the wrong company file if you sort the list of files in the No Company File Open screen.
• You will no longer get the message Could not print to printer when emailing large batches of statements.
• If you double click on an item in the send forms list it will no longer immediately email that item and all others that were selected.
• Converting an Item Receipt to a Bill will no longer cause the attachment column to disappear.
• The Condense Data feature no removes timesheets when the all transactions option is selected.
• The extra row at the bottom of the Calendar has been removed.
• Loan Manager and Cash Flow Projector now work if you have Internet Explorer 9.0 installed. Prior to this release MOST people were able to resolve this with a registry patch, although some people had to do some extra work. Now we won’t have to worry about the patch.
• There are a number of improvements in the 1099 wizard relating to account mapping, 1099 thresholds and vendor address information. Intuit recommends that you install R5 before completing your 1099 forms.
• You will not see any issues with Verify Data when you have a QuickBooks 2012 file that is in the R3, R4 or R5 format opened with an R1 version of the program.
• The Edit List link in the No Company File Open window is now available in all editions.
• The QuickBooks company file conversion tool will now work on Windows 7 and Windows Vista.
• QuickBooks will now allow non-inventory items to have a negative cost or price.
• There is a new collapse reports feature. It allows you to expand or collapse sections of reports easily. If you collapse a section on screen it will print or export to Excel the same way. In the screen shots below, note the arrows next to lines in the report. Clicking on them will collapse (or expand) that section of the report. This is a very convenient feature. UPDATE: Please note that this feature is ONLY AVAILABLE in the special ProAdvisor versions of QuickBooks Accountant, and the Plus subscription versions of Pro and Premier. No Enterprise versions. Everyone else will probably not see this until the 2013 version.