Haven’t Upgraded QuickBooks Point of Sale Recently?
A recent user interface makeover and new program features make upgrading your Quickbooks Point of Sale worth serious consideration.
Software upgrades are good news/bad news propositions. They cost money. It takes time to master the new functions and workflow. And sometimes, something you liked in the previous version disappears.
So it’s not something we take lightly. In the early QuickBooks days, the software was taking on new features so fast and furiously that upgrades every year or two were inevitable.
These days, the decision to upgrade requires more study. The desktop version of QuickBooks, for example, has matured so capably that the most significant changes involve integration with cloud-based apps and services.
QuickBooks Point of Sale is another story. It’s not as old as QuickBooks, so it still offers opportunities for growth. This is evident in the most recent version, QuickBooks Point of Sale 2013. A new and more easily navigable user interface can shave time off of your transactions.
Having just gone through the holiday shopping season, you know how critical speed is. So if your retail location requires you to ring up more than a few sales every hour, we recommend that you consider this version. It may also be that you’re growing enough to move up to a more sophisticated edition, like going from Basic to Pro.
Let’s look at the changes in QuickBooks Point of Sale 2013 first.
New Changes
Improved user interface. Much of the software’s innards remain the same, but it’s now a lot easier to get to them quickly. Intuit has updated and balanced the home page layout, freshening up the graphics and adding collapsible panels. Navigation is much improved because access to your most urgent tasks is right there.
The In Progress view. Retail store managers must be masters at multitasking. You know how often you’re halfway through a task when something more critical comes up. You attend to that, and then forget what it is you were working on before. QuickBooks POS 2013 now has a small In Progress window that opens to display your list of unfinished tasks so you can complete them in order of importance.
Enhanced customization. Not happy with the labels on the big blue buttons in the Tasks panel? Change them by clicking the Customize button.
Now that you can navigate to so many screens from the home page, you may not always want the scrolling sticky note pane and the task bar to even appear some of the time. QuickBooks POS 2013 lets you customize your working screen by collapsing both of those panes.
Better mobility. The software’s Mobile Sync feature, used in tandem with the Intuit GoPayment app and an Intuit Payments account, makes it possible to make remote sales that are recorded in the program itself.
Improved Quick Pick flexibility. Managing your Quick Picks is easier now, thanks to the new ability to add items and view their details as well as create and manage Groups without exiting the Quick Pick window.
Built-in payment processing. It’s much more convenient to accept payments from within QuickBooks Point of Sale 2013, now that that capability is built in.
Basic, Pro or Multi-Store?
Like QuickBooks itself, QuickBooks POS comes in multiple versions at different prices. It’s important that you choose the one that most closely meets your needs without buying too much or too little functionality. If you feel that you’re stretching the boundaries of your current version and are considering moving up, let us help you make that decision and learn the ropes as you install and implement the more powerful application.
Running a retail operation isn’t for the faint of heart, as you well know. But if you select the right version of QuickBooks Point of Sale and let us train you on its use, you’ll find that it doesn’t just help you manage and track sales and inventory. It can strengthen customer relationships, maximize your sales potential and enable a workflow that will please both you and your staff.