QuickBooks 2010 Document Management
QuickBooks 2010 adds an integrated Document Management System to QuickBooks that is very simple to use. This article gives a brief overview of this new feature.
A Document Management System (DMS) is a program that is used to store documents and/or images of paper documents. This can be a very valuable tool for your business. If you have a customer PO that relates to an invoice, you want to be able to find that PO quickly. If you are creating estimates for clients and you are creating supporting documents, you need to be able to access those documents when working with the estimate. A DMS system will help you organize this information and, if it integrates with QuickBooks, let you associate the documents with transactions or other records in QuickBooks.
UPDATE: See my article on QuickBooks 2011 and Attached Documents - the feature that will REPLACE QuickBooks Document Management
Update 9/20/2011: Intuit is making MAJOR CHANGES to this feature starting in September 2011. See this article on the changes: http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2011/09/quickbooks-2012-document-management/
The QuickBooks Document Management feature is a subscription service that is available for a fee (a limited amount of storage is available for free). You must be connected to the Internet, as your documents are stored in the Intuit Workplace. This is an online application center that Intuit uses to provide “cloud” based features.
Once you have set up the service with your company file, attaching documents to transactions in QuickBooks is simple – look for the paper clip symbol or an “attach” button.
Attaching Documents to Transactions
In this sample I’ve created an invoice. Look for the paper clip symbol in the upper right corner of the transaction window (sometimes it is hidden off to the side).
When you click on this symbol QuickBooks will connect to the DMS program via the Internet, and open the attachment window.
You can use this window to attach a document to the transaction, delete an attached document, or even view the attached document.
There are three options for attaching a document:
- Local Files opens a file dialog so you can attach a file on your computer. Note that if you are using an unsupported scanner, you would save your scan as a file and attach it this way.
- Scanner will scan the document directly from your Twain compliant scanner.
- Online Document Inbox (which is discussed later) holds documents that you have added before they are associated with a transaction or list.
Note that on the bottom of the screen you are told how much storage space you are using, and how much you have available. The fee you pay is based on the amount of storage you use.
Once you have attached a document to the transaction Note that the paper clip is now green – this tells you that there is an attachment.
Attaching to Lists
Lists have an “attach” button. Note the addition of an “attach” column that tells you that there is an attachment You can also double click in that column to attach or view attachments
In some lists you can see the green icon that shows that there is an attachment. 
Managing Documents
You can manage your files via the Doc Center icon in the toolbar.
This opens the Document Management Center window, which allows you to locate and manage the documents that you have stored in your document database.
The Document Management Center provides you with a number of filters to refine the view. You can, for example select just invoices, or invoices for a particular customer
You have the ability to enter descriptive information for each document.
Using the “Inbox”
You can add documents to your document database directly, without going through QuickBooks. In the Document Management Center, click Add Document to Inbox.
Click on the Browse button to locate the file on your computer, and enter the descriptive information.
The document now shows in your “Inbox”. 
Later, in QuickBooks, when you click the Attach icon, you can use the online document inbox option as the source for the document.
Sharing Documents
An important feature of the program is the ability to share documents with other users without having to give them access to your entire set of documents. Select the document in the Document Management Center and select the “share” action. This opens a window that lets you enter an email address and a message – QuickBooks will send a link to the document.
The person gets an email from notify@workplace.intuit.com (so you have to make sure that they can receive messages from this address) that provides a link – click on it and you are given a standard “open or download” dialog from your browser. You can, if you wish, “un-share” the document.
Good Points
- Easy to use, works right from within QuickBooks and the integration seems to be very smooth.
- Online storage means that you can see your documents from any web connected computer, even if you don’t have access to your QuickBooks company file.
- The viewer in QuickBooks itself will open the document in “native” mode for viewing.
- The online document manager provides a variety of ways to locate a document easily.
- It is very easy to see that there is a document attached to the list or transaction.
Bad Points
- Not local database, so you are depending on Intuit for security and backups. For some people this may be a problem. For others, it isn’t. You have to decide if this fits your business model. Note that Intuit has a very secure online database system.
- If you stop paying for the service, you will lose access to your documents.
- You cannot create non-QuickBooks records, so you can’t attach documents to something not related to QuickBooks.
- No ability to add your own columns to define other kinds of information to track with the documents.
- The product does not integrate with Microsoft Office, unlike other products (like PaperSave Plus, which I review in this article). If you have an email in Outlook, for example, you have to print it as a PDF and then attach it separately.
- This is a new product, while others have been around longer. I’m always nervous about new releases of products from Intuit. I haven’t seen problems, I’m just cautious.
Pricing
I had to dig around a bit to find this, it wasn’t listed on the initial web pages or announcements of this service. I believe the costs to be:
- Free for up to 100 MB of storage.
- $4.95 a month for up to 500 MB of storage.
- $14.95 a month for up to 1 GB of storage.
- $29.95 for up to 5 GB of storage.
I can’t translate these into the number of documents you can store in the volumes provided.
Is It a Good Deal?
Certainly it is worth looking at if you need this kind of service. This is an example of one of the “cloud” based applications that Intuit will be pushing very strongly. It is the direction that they are going to push in the future for addon products.
My biggest concern is that you cannot download a copy of your documents to a local drive. I am hoping that they will add this as a feature in the future (it wasn’t available in the beta test version that I reviewed). SmartVault has this feature, and they charge a fee, so I expect that Intuit will add a similar feature in future releases (hey, it is another source of income, and they don’t pass things like that up very often). And PaperSave Plus stores all your documents locally.
If you want local storage, or don’t have reliable Internet connections, look at PaperSave Plus (reviewed here). If you need integration with Outlook, look at PaperSave Plus or even SmartVault (more limited than PaperSave Plus in this regard, but better than Intuit), which I review here.
At this time the Intuit product has a lower per-month fee than SmartVault, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that company changes its pricing structure.
Category: Program Updates, QB 2010
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He’s been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70′s, focusing on inventory and accounting software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Look for Charlie’s articles in the QuickBooks and Beyond blog, as well as his California Wildflower Hikes blog.
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Thanks for the good write-up, Charlie. Very interesting…
Very nice article. I love their concept, and their implementation sounds well done… except for the forced online storage!
The storage fees seem reasonable (see below), but there is simply no way I’m going to scan all of my documents into a cloud that won’t let me easily store my primary copy locally and that won’t let me download them back to my hard drive.
Since all of our data is automatically backed-up offsite nightly anyway, I’d much rather store locally and let BackupSolutions store the backups for me.
That aside, Intuit claims “Total file storage 100MB or about 1000 2 page PDFs” (or about 2,000 pages).
Extrapolating that out would give you:
500MB – 10,000 pages – $4.95/monthly
1GB – 20,000 pages – $14.95/monthly
5GB – 100,000 pages – $29.95/monthly
Looks like when we implement DMS we’ll have to use a program like PaperSave Plus. Sorry Intuit!
Thank you, Chris. I’m not surprised that it is an online system – Intuit will be strongly pushing in that direction with most if not all of their addons in the future. They also want to force third party developers that way.
Note also that many people won’t just want to store PDF files. I often want to store Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and more. These usually take quite a bit of space.
But until they give me a way to back up my documents locally, I won’t use this approach myself…
Charlie you are absolutely right to be hesitant. Let’s see POS Webstore lasted 1 year as did Business Analysis. I won’t be recommending this to any of my clients until at least year 2. I am just so thankful that I didn’t recommend either product I just mentioned in the past year.
Terri, that is a good point. Also, Intuit had a DMS system on the market about a year ago (I don’t recall the details) that wasn’t web based – I purchased it, started using it, and they discontinued it just a month or two after introduction.
I think that this particular product is more likely to continue, however, based on the approach that they are using. This type of “cloud” based product is going to be what they emphasize as we move forward. Of course, you never know…
And there are good alternatives already available that are time tested.
I scan docs already into Neat Desk and so have a copy locally saved, this is may just be a convenient way for me to pull up docs that I may need to refer back to in conjunction with bills etc that have a lot of detail involved. I am still trying to figure it all out (not hard)- have not spent any $ on it yet, just a little time!
“If you stop paying for the service, you will lose access to your documents.”
Actually this isn’t the case. You can downgrade to the free plan and Intuit will not delete your documents but they also won’t let you add any documents until you reduce your storage space below the free 100mb space. If you call into support and ask them to totally cancel the service instead of downgrading to free than I believe you have until the end of your billing period to access your documents.
I am trying to figure out what is the BEST method for document management for my small business clients that are looking to go great… i am as alot are, hesitate at the online quickbooks DMS… and the offline version paper plus, seems to have alot of minus, with the data base issues and installations.. anyone else have any other suggestions?? with enough complaints to you think QB will offer an Offline version of this???? I would think that would be the best approach, and give them the option of online storage as an added benefit and back up protecting the data…..
Joanne, there are other DMS systems that say they work with QuickBooks, I haven’t been able to look at them all.
I doubt that Intuit will come up with a DMS system that actually stores the data locally. That isn’t the direction they are going. All I would hope for is that they would have a way to make a copy of your data locally, for backup.
Tester, thank you for that clarification. That doesn’t resolve my primary concern – you are totally dependent on their security. You have no way of getting your data out for backup (or to move to another system, for example) other than to look at individual documents and then copying them one by one. And, as you point out, if you cancel the service you lose that access at the end of the billing period. I consider this to be the primary drawback of the system at this time.
If only Intuit understood that if I’d pay for them to backup my documents online IF their system also stored a copy locally…
I understand their desire to increase revenue, but many just aren’t ready to have their ONLY copy online. If you want to force us to subscribe to the online backup to use the system – fine (the fees are reasonable). But give us the option to save a local copy at the same time.
My first though when I looked at the pricing structure was ‘Really, they have to be kidding’ …. and after a few days of thinking about it; that is still my response.
You don’t have to look very hard to get 1-2 gigs of online storage at n/c. I just purchased a 1 Terabyte external for $99 … it’s easy enough to scan locally and set an automatic back-up to an external drive (even more then one) and much more cost effective. I also have certain folders set to automatically back-up off-site … way cheaper then Intuit is offering. There are things I do not want up in ‘the cloud’ … period. My set up is inexpensive, easy to set-up and use, and very automatic … and it’s mine
The only thing I don’t have in place, is the ability to attach a document within QB’s. While this is a nice feature, it is not worth the current downsides and cost:
- $360/year (way to high for only 4 gigs)
- No local back-up
- Losing your documents if you don’t pay … face it, if you are paying you are already over your free limit.
- Internet access goes down … well, enough said! Not just their server (which I’ve had plenty of issues so far with ‘server busy’), but our own Internet connections.
- Yet another monthly fee … at every turn there is a new fee or a service that stops working, it’s getting to be to much and clients are resenting it.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think the service will be very useful and certainly catch on. However it needs work and they REALLY need to rethink their pricing structure. I’ve already had client’s make the same comment I did when they saw how much was free … And quite frankly there is some resentment and pushback because of that alone.
Rox
Thanks, Rox:
I have mixed feelings on this. There are times when it would be very helpful to be able to easily share documents, or access the documents, online. If they had a backup feature I’d be more willing to endorse this.
You do have options with other DMS products that let you store online with local backups (SmartVault, although their prices initially are higher), or to have it entirely local (PaperSave Plus, although there are some installation issues).
Unfortunately, with Intuit’s entry, I’m concerned that these other options might be hidden.
Hi:
Is there going to be a charge for Enterprise users as well?
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce, as far as I know, the fee is the same for every edition. I haven’t seen anything that comments on that. But I would assume, given their business model, that it is a charge for Enterprise users as well.
I have since downloaded install and became an affliate for paper save plus.. and i love it.. i had no installation issues.. it works in and outside of QB and it is real easy to use.. my world has gotten alot easier.. i am going to set up my clients wanting paperless bookkeeping on QB 2010 with paper save plus and set up a back up system to automatically back up another copy locally and/or online.
My concern comparing SmartVault, which I use now, and Intuit’s version: calling customer service. With the Intuit version, if I have a problem will I have to speak to someone in India who has no clue what I am talking about?
Brett, that is a good question. Since I didn’t have a need to call Intuit tech support with this product, I don’t know the answer, and I didn’t make a comment about that. I also didn’t have a reason to call SmartVault tech support, so I wouldn’t have anything factual to report there.
My GUESS is that Intuit support will be through the normal route – via their standard tech support options. In most cases when I have an issue with a “special” feature relating to Intuit I’ve found that it is difficult to get good support (which is one of the reasons why I dropped my QuickBooks Merchant account). I’ve been told by others (as well as getting a note from the SmartVault people) that another advantage to SmartVault is their tech support.
If anyone has any experience with either – let us know!
Great insight. For a mid market environment where HIPPA and FINRA compliance is important, I would study the compliance issues before going with it. How secure are the documents and how do you shut the DMS off by user or role? Thanks for the study.
They should make their Quickbooks DMS like Quicken. It’s easy to attach file(s) and It’s local. I used PaperSave Plus. It’s is very slow because you need to run SQL service in your computer and there is no indication if a transaction has file attachment. Any other suggestion would very much appriciated.
Intuit’s direction for the future is “cloud” based. They have an online database system called “QuickBase” and any new data storage concepts will be stored there, rather than locally. So you won’t see them, in my opinion, create any new database to be stored locally, for any new feature.
Curious if anyone has tried SourceLink. It also saves the files locally. http://www.personable.com/ A comparison to papersaver plus would be great.
I think the intuit or smartvault products look nice, but we would like to store all sorts of proofs and related art files that would quickly fill up an online database.
Ken
I was excited at the idea of linking to all of the supporting files for each of my customers and ordered QB 2010. It came yesterday and I am not happy. I wish I’d read this blog first.
My problem is that I don’t want or need “cloud” storage. My Internet connection is satellite based and places a limit on how much bandwidth we can use. Our 2009 customer files are already nearly 2GB.
My next problem is that I see no reason to pay for what should be a really simple solution: Let me link to my local files.
Ken –
I am currently using Sourcelink and really like it. I tried Papersave first, but I was disappointed. The installation wasn’t too smooth (as described in a review here) and once installed certain features – for example “remember my answer to this question” at a save prompt – didn’t always work, forcing me to always have to say yes every time I saved something of the same type. The main reason I chose not to continue with Papersave was that I couldn’t attach documents to invoices I created, which was the most important reason in my case for needing this kind of software. I could only attach them to invoices from vendors. When I spoke to the company about this issue, they confirmed it. They claimed to have a 30 day money back guarantee, so I requested a refund. That’s where the problems started. After a lot of phone tag, I sat through two lengthy phone calls while they tried to convince me to keep the software, even though it clearly didn’t meet my needs. The finally agreed to give me a refund and then didn’t. More phone calls, lots of runaround, was told check was in the mail twice even though it wasn’t (and for some reason they couldn’t just put it back on the credit card I had paid with), then the accountants were off work for a “holiday”, etc.. I finally contacted my credit card company and even with that it took more than two months to finally get my money back.
So then I tried Sourcelink and it turned out to be a great little program that did what I needed it to do. Fewer mouse clicks to create and save an image or document, better customization, I can attach a document to an invoice I create, and most important of all – absolutely stellar customer support! Hands down the best I’ve ever dealt with. Every time I had question or problem, I was able to speak to someone quickly, they solved the problem and were friendly and professional to boot. Great company, great software, and I highly reccommend it.
Katherine: Thank you for your comment.
At this time I don’t have a review of Sourcelink scheduled – I may get back to documentation management later this year, and if I do I’ll consider that.
I would like to relay some of my own experience with Papersave. I initially purchased the program as a part of a survey I was doing for a customer. I used the product for several weeks, and then requested a refund as I don’t need a DMS product for my own business. I did everything via email, not via the phone. I didn’t have any problem, and the refund showed on my next credit card statement. So in my case things worked smoothly.
I did have a conversation with their technical support staff via phone while I was doing the test, and found that they were readily available and answered my question clearly.
I’m curious about your statement that you cannot attach a document to an invoice – as you can see from my screen shots, that is what I was doing in the review. I would like to note that I was testing a new version that had just been released, and it is possible that you had been using an older version than the one I tried. I don’t know what features they added with the new version.
Any update on Quickbooks DMS being local? Thanks.
David, I’m not sure what you are looking for. The Intuit DMS system is not going to store your data locally, period. It isn’t their intent. This is designed from the ground up to be an online storage of your document data. If you want a local database for your documents, look at this review (and there are other products than this one): http://qbblog.ccrsoftware.info/2009/08/review-papersave-plus-documentation-management-for-quickbooks/
Is the 100mb free space is for every company file or every Quickbooks license? Thanks.
David, it is my understanding that the amount of space is per company file, but you probably should confirm that. It is definately not per license – that is, if you have a five user license for QuickBooks you don’t get five times the space for a company file.