New Accounting Software Features

Due to changes implemented by the Australian Taxation Office, the following prior year forms will now longer be supported:

• Company Tax Return (2011–2013)
• Trust Tax Return (2011–2013)
• PAYG Payment Summary (2011–2017)
• Self Managed Super Fund Annual Return (2012–2013)
• Interposed Entity Election or Revocation (2010–2020)
• Family Trust Election, Revocation or Variation (2011–2020)

You can find the list of forms supported by LodgeiT here.

You can now easily print your lodgment receipts! Just click the Print button on the tax return lodgment receipt page to save a hard copy or a digital version for your records.

For when you need to relodge a form, you can now unlock lodged forms. You can also set permissions to control who has access to this feature in your practice.

For additional security, you will now be required to verify your password before making any changes to your two-factor authentication (2FA) settings. This includes:

• Changing Authentication App or Mobile Phone
• Removing Authentication App or Mobile Phone as a 2FA method
• Disabling 2FA

As of 1 November, Spirit Super and CareSuper have merged. Your default payroll settings will require a review depending on your integration with Beam.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides an additional layer of security when accessing your online applications and from 17 October 2024, Swag Payroll Only users will be able to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) in the mobile app.

It is now easier to navigate between employees in the Employees List screen on the payroll platform. At the Employees List, when you select an employee, you can now use the “< Previous | Next >” buttons to go to the previous or next employee.

The Revenue recognition functionality in QuickBooks Online Advanced has been given a visual update to help improve your experience.

Earlier in the year we outlined our plans to upgrade the reporting capability in QuickBooks. We’ve been busily building this new experience, gathering feedback from our customers along the way. We will be providing more information shortly, along with access to training to ensure you get the most out of the new reporting functionality.

To help you manage who can access sensitive information in your practice, additional user permissions have been added to tax file number (TFN) access and ATO electronic fund transfer (EFT) reports.

You can now copy the signing link for each recipient when requesting an e-signature. This feature is especially useful if you need to share the link through alternative channels.

Various enhancements have been made to the Individual form to support foreign rental properties, foreign income conversion and franking credits calculations for dividends.

You now have the flexibility to manually add signatories to legal documents and financial reports offered in QuickBooks Tax.

QuickBooks Online Advanced now offers more control over what your team members can access. Our latest custom role improvements give you the flexibility to choose specific permissions such as view, create, edit, or delete.

These custom role improvements relate to the banking, chart of accounts, registers, reconciliation, customer and supplier areas.

Let’s save you a click! Using Spreadsheet Sync, you can now set your Excel spreadsheets to auto refresh (or not) so you’re always working with the latest data.

The desktop app provided with QuickBooks Online Advanced has been enhanced to display two areas of the product at once. This is great for cross referencing values or simply doing two things at once.

To provide an additional element of security, the QuickBooks login screen has been updated. This new screen now displays the date of the last login activity.

Back in November 2023, the Employment Hero team shared exciting news about the launch of the Swag app and that it would be replacing the Workzone app. As we enter the final phase of the transition, the Workzone app will soon be disabled so now's the perfect time to make the move over to Swag app if you haven’t already.

We recently commenced the process to stop selling standalone QuickBooks Time subscriptions. Importantly, QuickBooks Time remains available to purchase however is only available in conjunction with a QuickBooks Online subscription.

The chart of accounts is important as it defines where you categorise your transactions and underpins your reporting. We’ve updated the design so when you now add or edit a chart of account item, it’s easier to use.

You can now streamline the employee onboarding process by bulk importing employees to commence the employee self setup process. This is particularly handy when you have multiple employees and you’re setting up QuickBooks Payroll powered by Employment Hero.

Spreadsheet Sync still provides powerful two-way integration between QuickBooks Online Advanced and Microsoft Excel however, we’ve taken the opportunity to tweak the look including the reports it creates a little.

Ready for the new financial year, the 2024 tax forms became available in QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT on 1 July. The 2024 forms are automatically created with the relevant field values carrying forward from the 2023 return. Importantly, pre-filling data from the ATO will become available for tax returns as the ATO receives it, with most data being available by the end of July. 

See the ATO's overview of key changes for the new year. 

Tax depreciation reports can now be generated and printed directly within the tax return. Currently available for Individual returns, head to Reports > Tax Depreciation and select the required tax year.

Two new legal templates (Loan Agreement - Div 7A 7 years and Loan Agreement - Div 25 years) have been made available for purchase. Head to the Custom reports area to learn more.

Advisors can now export the details of the QuickBooks subscriptions they pay for to a CSV file.This enables the file to be reworked into the required format to collate costs or for disbursing for example.

In preparation for the new financial year, significant changes have been made to the way assets are managed in QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT. This includes the ability to add pools and assets directly into the tax return instead of adding to a depreciation schedule.

The team at LodgeiT have added legal documents to QuickBooks Tax to support the general legal requirements of your clients. You can choose from their template library or customize your own documents, with client data automatically prefilling into the forms to help you streamline your workflow and save you time.

Along with improving the activation process for new QuickBooks Tax users (see more information here), we have streamlined the renewal process for existing users of QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT.

To renew your subscription, you now simply wait until your subscription expires and then click Renew in the Billing page in LodgeiT. Next year, your subscription will renew automatically as long as you maintain an active connection to your QuickBooks Online Accountant account.

For any assistance, please contact the LodgeiT support team.

We recently communicated changes planned to the roles and permissions in QuickBooks Essentials, Plus and Advanced. The rollout resulted in the planned updates being made to the Accounts Receivable Manager, Accounts Payable Manager and In-House Accountant roles however the addition of the Bookkeeper role and the discontinuation of the Standard No Access and Standard Limited Customer and Supplier roles will be implemented in a future update.

Spreadsheet Sync is set to change the way you use QuickBooks with Excel. Using Spreadsheet Sync you can extract data from QuickBooks Online Advanced to develop customised reports in Excel. You can add and edit data in Excel and sync it back to QuickBooks. You can extract data from several QuickBooks files to create consolidated reports. This functionality unleashes another level of reporting customisation.

Save time, make better business decisions and keep your books up to date by capturing your fixed assets in QuickBooks Online Advanced. Track and manage your fixed assets and have the calculated depreciation automatically posted to your books.

The QuickBooks Online desktop app makes managing your finances easier by enabling you to open multiple files at once and to stay logged in for longer.

Accountants and bookkeepers this one's for you and it’s big! The upgrade of Your Books in QuickBooks Online Accountant to Advanced is now underway. Leverage powerful functionality like enhanced roles and permissions, tasks and workflows to help track and manage key activities in your practice.

Taking advantage of a free subscription to QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT for your firm’s BAS or tax lodgment needs just got easier through improvements in the set up process.

Setting up a QuickBooks Online subscription has been dramatically streamlined from 14 steps down to 6. This means small businesses can be up and managing their books much faster.

You can now create transactions straight from your bank feed to help improve reporting and insights on your business performance. Specifically, Plus and Advanced customers can now add products & services to expenses from the bank feed. And Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced customers can now add money-in transactions from their bank feed as sales receipts.

A range of improvements have been made to the Cash Flow Planner screen to align the Australian experience with the US experience. This includes additional filtering and updates to the table layout.

Securing and efficiently managing your ATO correspondence is now taken care of through the integration of ATO SmartDocs with QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT.

You can now import your FBT return data from Excel directly into QuickBooks Tax using the new template.

Importing client records into QuickBooks Tax has been enhanced with the option to update existing client records. All fields of an existing client will be replaced with the data in the imported file including fields not presented in the file.

The budgeting feature in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced has been updated to deliver more functionality and easier usability. The ability to create multiple budgets, import data from Excel and easily compare actual to budget results including from prior years are just some of the enhancements.

New functionality has been added to the budget import facility so you can import budgets subdivided by Location, Class or Customer.

As outlined last month, we have commenced upgrading the Your Books functionality in QuickBooks Online Accountant with QuickBooks Online Advanced so you can run your practice using the latest Advanced features. This upgrade will be complete by the end of April.

Based on recent research, we’ll be adding a new role, updating three roles and removing two roles from QuickBooks Online Essentials, Plus and Advanced during May.

The new way to pay Super! Functionality has been added to enable the option to automatically create a super payment when finalising a pay run. This feature introduces a seamless integration between pay runs and superannuation payments and reduces the steps required, helping you improve your superannuation compliance obligations.

This feature is only available to full admin users and will be available from the 24 April 2024.

Automatically collect recurring payments with GoCardless, now available for QuickBooks customers. GoCardless can help you create a smooth payment experience for customers, whilst cutting down accounting admin. With GoCardless, collect payments automatically whenever they’re due and spend less time waiting to get paid.

You now have more options over what tasks you’re notified about along with greater control over when you’re notified about task changes.

To help you streamline your end of year accounts preparation, we’re making changes to Prep for Taxes. These changes will occur towards the end of June 2024 and will include additional customisation options, the consolidation of the Docs and Review and Adjust tabs and the removal of the Year End Tasks and Grouping and Statements tabs.

If you manage multiple QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Online Accountant subscriptions, did you know you can pin your most popular subscriptions to the top of the list? When logging in, once presented with your list of subscriptions, simply click on the three dots to the right of the business name and select Pin to Top. You can also Hide subscriptions using the same process.

From mid-March, any documents stored under the Accounts section in the Documents tab in Prep for Taxes will be relocated to the relevant accounts in the Review and Adjust tab. If you have saved any documents in the General section at the top of the Prep for Taxes screen, these will need to be downloaded.

You can now choose the cash basis accounting method when importing financial statements from QuickBooks.

The latest Statement of Cash Flows - Indirect Method is now included in all QuickBooks Tax financial reports.

The team at LodgeiT have added a financial report template for non-profit organisations. This report is part of the Advanced Report pack so is available to purchase You can find the template here.

The Income Tax Return Estimate now includes an Overseas Levy section for 2020 returns onwards.

You can now input decimal quantities in the Shares module which makes managing cryptocurrencies more streamlined and accurate.

Manual fields in financial reports can now reference notes, plus you can now modify client signature text.

When adding a new relationship in QuickBooks Tax, you can now select multiple relationship types.

Save more time preparing returns with prefill options for professional and primary averaging income, as well as annuities on Income Tax Returns.

The Quick view client details screen has been updated to outline the taxpayers age.

The budgeting experience is getting an update to streamline the process to create and update your business budgets. You can now create multiple budgets, reference your business’s actual data to develop your budget, duplicate budgets, run reports and more. 

Coming soon to Plus and Advanced versions is Spreadsheet Sync. This tool will further extend the budgeting functionality, including the ability to seamlessly import spreadsheets from Excel directly into the budgets area in QuickBooks Online. Watch out for this exciting addition.

We’ll shortly be changing the cash flow planner feature by discontinuing the projection and insight functionality. You will still be able to see your cash flow based on your actual data.