QuickBooks 2010 R5 Update

Intuit has released the QuickBooks 2010 R5 update to manual update, and probably to automatic update later today. This update includes the features I talked about from the short lived R4 update a few weeks ago, without the sales tax bug that was introduced. Let me summarize the “revision mania” here. Then I’ll talk about the changes, and give a recommendation.

Revisions, revisions

In mid December Intuit released the 2010 R4 update, which resolved a number of issues that people were complaining about. A complete list of the changes wasn’t released at that time. However, the R4 update introduced another problem, affecting a sales tax report, and they removed the update very quickly once this was discovered.

The R5 update includes the R4 updates without introducing that sales tax error.

What about R3? It was never released. Nothing to worry about there.

If you have R1, R2 or R4, you can update directly to R5 without having to do any intermediate updates. And, this change is not as big as upgrading from 2009 to 2010 (or the infamous 2009 R9 update ).

Not sure what you are running now? Run QuickBooks and press the F2 key to see what you are running.

Update 01/04/2010 – If you use a 64 bit system then this update introduces a new bug – see my article on the 64 bit PDF driver.

What has changed

R5 is actually a small change from R4 – the only difference being that the sales tax revenue summary report that was broken by R4 is now fixed. But, since it is very unlikely that you have the R4 update, the R5 update will provide you with a lot of changes. I’m going to summarize them, and only list the ones that I think are important to most commercial users (there are a few additional changes useful to accountants and CPAs). You can see the full list in the Intuit update page.

For many people, the biggest changes are the ability to “hide” more of the annoying Intuit advertisements that took up too much space on the screen. See the Getting Rid of Things section of my article on the R4 update for screen shots and details.

Other changes:

• Accounts Payable: Changing the Quantity on a Purchase Order while a linked Bill is open will now update the Quantity on the Bill. 
• Accounts Receivable: Creating an invoice from an estimate no longer causes 0.00 to appear on description only lines.
• Accounts Receivable:Typing an existing vendor name in customer:job dropdown then tabbing out no longer generates the message “Name not found”.
• Accounts Receivable: Deposits can now be created without selecting payments that are displaying in the Payments to Deposit window.
• Accounts Receivable: Change of customer on a saved invoice now changes the customer to be e-mailed.
• Accounts Receivable: While editing a Bill, Check, or Credit Card Charge you can now edit the Memo or Ref field more than 1 time in the same edit session.
• Accounts Receivable: QuickBooks no longer unexpectedly exits intermittently when a user clicks multiple times on blank line items on forms like invoices or a sales receipts after clicking save.
• Accounts Receivable: Check transactions are now listed in the deposit form even if there aren’t any QuickBooks transactions associated with it.
• Centers: Improved the speed of the time it takes to load the Employee Center.
• Client Data Review: If you are an accountant using this feature (or you are using the Accountants Edition in your own business to get this feature) you should seriously consider this update, as ther eis a long list of errors and changes that affect the Client Data Review feature. See the Intuit update page for details. 27 changes, some of them are significant if you use the particular feature that is changed.
• Company Snapshot: This is becoming one of my favorite features in the 2010 release. There are a number of improvements here. Performance improvements, small fixes, and a number of new Widgets to add (see my R4 article for details on the new widgets). Since the fixes here don’t affect the basic accuracy of your database, the changes aren’t urgent.
• Database: No longer get Not enough disk space warning while opening Company file on network drive that has enough disk space.
• Database: The message “Not enough memory to complete this operation. Exiting program.” no longer appears while performing clean up on the company file.
• Document Management: If you are using the Intuit Document Management feature there are a number of improvements and fixes. The biggest, in my opinion, is that you can now drag and drop files and Microsoft Outlook emails to the Attachments window for QuickBooks Document Management. There are some error messages that have been resolved, and better scanner support.
• Intuit Statement Writer: 17 bug fixes and improvements here. If you use this tool extensively, you should consider updating.
• Inventory: If an existing inventory adjustment is modified by removing one of it’s line items it no longer returns an error.
• Inventory: When a transaction (sales or purchase transaction) have a line item with “empty” quantity, troubleshoot inventory will now count the qty bought/sold number as “1″ instead of “0″.
• Inventory: QuickBooks no longer exits unexpectedly if the company file has a group item or inventory assembly item with “empty subitem line” and you make any item inactive inside the Troubleshoot Inventory feature.
• Lists:  When adding a Job to a customer that already has Job Status picked on the Customer set up, Quickbooks AutoCreates a Job with correct Credit limit.
• Lists: The Sort List button in the Multi-choice List dialog now correctly sorts numbers. Used to go 1, 10, 2 order, now goes 1, 2, 10.
• Lists: The new Custom Fields drop downs now work correctly in Rapid Data Entry.
• Lists: QuickBooks no longer unexpectedly closes if you merge two names that have more than one rep based on them.
• Lists: If an employee name contains a % character, QuickBooks no longer closes unexpectedly when forms are launched.
• Reports and Report Center: There are a number of smaller fixes here, along with some performance improvements.

All in all, so far there are no earth-shaking must have changes here unless you are using R4 with the buggy sales tax report. However, there are also changes affecting Payroll.

Payroll Changes

I don’t normally work with Intuit Payroll, so I’m not really qualified to judge the impact of these changes. My contact at Intuit is saying that there are changes here that you need as a part of your year end update. Note that these changes do not involve any changes in your tax tables, etc., that you might have to deal with in the new year. That is handled separately from this update.

•  Payroll Employee Organizer: Ethnic choices now match EEOC requirements.
• QuickBooks no longer unexpectedly closes when creating Custom Liability payments in Multi-User mode.
• Current year’s wage base limits are no longer shown when payroll is entered for next year.
• Can no longer add an employee with a different name but the same social security number of an already existing employee.
• Employee Organizer no longer creats duplicate state tax items.
• You can now send historical paychecks from the print pay stubs window with the appropriate access level.

My Recommendation on R5

I’m a little bit concerned about this update – mainly because it will be pushed out on automatic update very shortly (one day?) after the manual update. Normally I tell people to wait on the manual update, let other people find out if there are problems, then wait for the automatic update. There typically is about a week between the start of the manual update and the automatic update. However, please note that I am not aware of any problems with this update at this time. I’ve been running R4 (which has the majority of the changes) for several weeks without any noticeable problems.

If you are using R4 then you have all the significant changes, along with a bug in the sales tax revenue summary report. Get the update now.

If you are using R2 and you are not using Intuit Payroll then I would strongly consider waiting until the new year to get this update. Why change things right at the end of the year? Local support (ProAdvisors) is harder to get, people are out for the holidays, and there is the usual end of the year mayhem. I wouldn’t take a chance on the update until things are a bit calmer in a few weeks.

If you are using R2 AND Intuit Payroll then you may want to update now. Look at the list of changes, see if they apply to you. Just be sure to make backups of your database first and watch this carefully.

If you are still using R1 then it is up to you. For the most part, I have the same recommendations for R1 users as I do for R2 users. Note, though, that a few people ran into some problems converting from R1 to R2 (I’ve not seen that myself, I’m just looking at the user forums). Most likely this isn’t an issue.

Let me be clear, the R5 update has a lot of value and it is an update you should install. I’m not aware of any problems at this time. I’m just a very conservative person when it comes to new updates that haven’t been field tested extensively, AND I’m very cautious with any changes that come out right at the end of the year.

Tags: Document Management, Payroll, QuickBooks 2010, Sales Tax

Category: Program Updates, QB 2010