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Intuit's small-business accounting solution, QuickBooks, has gotten more than just a pretty facelift with its new QuickBooks Accounting 2009 for Mac edition. Not only does the user interface utilize Mac OS X's Leopard look and feel, but it also it now sports handy new features that are exclusive to the Mac platform.
Available now, the latest version represents a significant upgrade to the product, many versions of which are designed to let small-business owners get their accounting work done and out of the way as quickly as possible.
"People don't start their small business because they want to do accounting -- they do it because they have an idea or a passion," Ian Vacin, QuickBooks for Mac product manager, told MacNewsWorld.
Starting at Home
While QuickBooks is geared for small businesses, it's also a little more complicated than most applications computer users get their hands on -- after all, it has to handle many of the same accounting rules that drive larger businesses. Previously, a lot of customers had a hard time understanding what they could do in QuickBooks, and those who understood the basics often didn't know what they were missing, Vacin said.
"So what we did was to create the Home Page, and the Home Page is the springboard that tells you how things work together," Vacin explained. "So, money coming into your business ... it estimates that flow to create invoices, that flow to receiving payments that are then recorded as deposits. Money coming out of your business ... you've got purchase orders, you may receive inventory against it, and then you enter and pay bills."
The Home Page, then, is a graphical representation that can help a business owner see and act on the the key components of their own business. From a productivity standpoint, it offers one-click access to commonly used tasks.
New Report Centers
"For most companies, someone will call up and want to know something specific about a transaction or their account, and you've only got about seven seconds or so to provide the information they expect before they get frustrated," Vacin said.
To address the issue, Intuit has added consolidated Customer, Vendor, Transaction and Report Centers that group all important customer 
, vendor, transaction information and reports into single page views. Previously, users had to search multiple places for data, such as contact or transactional information, making it harder to find customer activity. Now, if a customer calls in with a problem, a user can quickly search and find all the relevant customer information and activity based on a name, invoice number, or even just a date -- and this new search capability uses the power of Mac OS X Leopard to get the job done.
"For example, if you type in 'Brian Cook,' the search field will start paring down the customer list as you type it -- just like you expect search to work on a Mac. Any way you type it, you'll get it," Vacin explained. All the customer's information becomes readily available, and it even includes handy features like the ability generate directions and maps to a customer location.
Like the Customer and Vendor Centers, the Transaction Center, which is unique to the Mac product, gives business owners a consolidated view of all transactions, and -- get this -- the design is similar to iTunes. The left side source column has the familiar look and feel of the popular Mac app.
"Another piece that's Leopard-specific and unique to the Mac is the Report Center," Vacin added.
"The Report Center is a Cover Flow-like view of all the different reports in QuickBooks," he explained, noting that it uses easy-to-understand layman's terms for the reports, with the Cover Flow preview for a visual confirmation.
"If you look at each of these features, we're using what people expect to see in the platform, whether it's Cover Flow or the iTunes-esque source list on the left, plus buttons on the bottom left -- these are changes we've been making to the product. It's a Mac application. It's built by Mac engineers, and it's for Mac users," Vacin said, noting that many of the changes are underneath the covers.
E-Mail, Chunky Style
Other notable new features include batch e-mail for invoices, integration with Xsilva's Lightspeed Point of Sale retail systems, as well as improved online banking, iCal integration, maps, and directions.
QuickBooks Accounting 2009 for Mac retails for about US$199. Because of the new functionality that leverages features in Leopard, it requires Mac OS X 10.5.4 or later.
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