Intuit QuickBooks announces a host of new product innovations for small businesses and the self-employed

London, UK - 3 March 2021

Intuit QuickBooks, the small business platform today announces a host of new innovations to support small businesses and the self-employed. Unveiled at QuickBooks Connect, the innovations will help small businesses and the self-employed thrive by automating bookkeeping and taxes, facilitating money coming in and going out, managing their team, driving faster payments and providing smarter insights to power growth and manage cash flow better.

Stay on top of cash flow

80% of small business failures come as a result of cash flow issues. Because of this, QuickBooks is helping to manage cash flow and so small businesses can make smarter business decisions. The new innovations include:

QuickBooks Business Account

The QuickBooks Business Account, currently in pilot, is a new digital business account specifically designed for small businesses. Built in collaboration with the Payments-as-a-Service FinTech Modulr, it combines an industry leading business account with QuickBooks’ suite of bookkeeping, accounting and tax tools. 

The Business Account enables small businesses to manage and act on all business incomings and outgoings - in one single place. Before, small businesses could manage this process, but couldn’t act on it by paying a bill or accepting a payment directly into the QuickBooks account. And when small businesses get paid through the QuickBooks Business Account, funds can be available to spend immediately through a QuickBooks Business Account card which is coming soon.

The Business Account also combines seamlessly with the QuickBooks Cash Flow Planner, enabling small businesses to project up to three months ahead based on historical data going back 24 months. They can even scenario plan to get a sense check of their financial health and plan for the immediate future, for example in investments such as temporary staff, stock and new equipment. Small businesses can also easily create dedicated savings to get ahead of payroll, taxes, or new equipment - without opening multiple new bank accounts.

Sales Overview

There is currently over fifty billion pounds of outstanding invoices to small businesses in the UK. Waiting on an unpaid invoice is a painful experience for small businesses and can even cause them to close.

Sales Overview in QuickBooks aims to solve this. It is a dashboard of new and outstanding invoices - one place to keep track of all payment needs. Small Businesses can create pay-enabled invoices directly from the Sales Overview dashboard and choose how they prefer to be paid, and even allow their customers to choose how they pay from the invoice.

Not only do pay-enabled invoices get paid 20% faster, but soon, small businesses will be able to get paid in one click using the latest Opening Banking technology. By connecting a bank account once, customers have a range of options to get paid safe and securely - using card, PayPal, direct debit and coming soon, through digital bank transfers.

Manage employees

Employees are the most important part of any small business. That’s why QuickBooks is unveiling two innovations that will help managing employees easy.

Automate time tracking

There’s a new name and a new look in time tracking software. QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is a standalone, best-in-class time tracking service, available on its own mobile app and on PC. It lets small business owners streamline their admin, improve accuracy and understand the profitability of every project.

QuickBooks Time removes the confusion of paper time sheets and Excel documents, giving real-time visibility of who’s working where and when. It’s easy for staff to clock in and out using any device and employers can use geofencing to ensure accountability. When it’s time to run payroll, approved hours can be directly exported to a payroll provider (including QuickBooks Standard Payroll), ready for a stress-free payday.

As well as saving hours on calculating wages, QuickBooks Time makes invoicing more accurate, clearly showing the difference between estimated and actual labour costs. It provides valuable insights too. By using QuickBooks Time to track the hours spent on individual projects, it’s easy to see which work is the most profitable and move the business in the right direction.

Streamline pensions

For a small business, employees are like family. Looking after them is important, especially in tough times like furlough, reduced hours, or - as a last resort - letting employees go. QuickBooks payroll products make it easy to manage everything in one place - so small businesses can save time and stay organised.

QuickBooks can also announce today its integration with Nest Pensions in QuickBooks Standard Payroll. What used to be a manual, multi-step process of downloading payroll data - uploading to Nest - reconciling back in QuickBooks -  is now a simple, streamlined experience. 

When it comes time to organise pension contributions, small business owners will see a reminder in QuickBooks. They simply need to click on the reminder, add their Nest account user details, and the data from QuickBooks is pulled, and the pension contribution information is securely submitted to Nest. 

This will help small businesses to be confident that pensions are submitted accurately and on-time every time, and it’s also easy to download pension reports and total contributions over time.

Take care of taxes

HMRC began transforming the UK tax system with MTD in 2019 and QuickBooks helped small businesses navigate new rules and regulations for digital records and submissions. As HMRC continues to expand MTD, QuickBooks has become the one place to take care of tax through more smart automation and time-saving tools - taking the guess-work out of tax-time. 

Self-assessment for income tax

QuickBooks data shows that sole traders, like consultants or freelancers, find preparing for income taxes painful. This often means waiting until year-end to manually add up sales, categorise transactions, and deduct expenses can lead to errors. Last year one in six people believed they overpaid their tax bill as a result of mistakes made in HMRC forms.

That’s why QuickBooks has worked to make Self-Assessment easier with Income Tax Estimate. The self-employed can now track income and categorise expenses throughout the year while QuickBooks Online automatically calculates the estimated income tax. This allows real-time updates and helps avoid surprises come January. It also allows self-employed to view a detailed breakdown of what they owe including National Insurance contributions, income and expense categories, as well as total net profit. 

This means no more manual equations or trying to keep track of changing tax laws - when it’s time to file your self-assessment, the data is organised and ready to be filed.

Filing VAT

Filing VAT is stressful for almost every business. QuickBooks data shows businesses can spend over an hour re-checking their VAT return before submitting. QuickBooks error-checking technology, a tool unique to QuickBooks, spots common errors, duplicates and anomalies in VAT. When ready to file a VAT return, customers can simply choose to run an error-check before submitting.

Doing this will give customers a VAT snapshot so they can see everything is accounted for. They can also review the largest expense or income transactions and when finished, submit to HMRC right from QuickBooks. 

With the next phase of Making Tax Digital for VAT coming in April and with the discontinuation of XML submission, QuickBooks is set to make compliance easy with a best in class Making Tax Digital VAT suite.

Construction workers

QuickBooks has taken the labour out of paying the monthly Construction Industry Scheme. Construction business owners can now manage unlimited contractors or subcontractors and automatically calculate CIS deductions to file directly to HMRC from QuickBooks Online. This is a faster and secure way to file, gives confidence that CIS is sorted, with accurate, automatic calculations.

Viktoria Ruubel, Director of Product Europe at Intuit, said “Every morning the team here at QuickBooks gets up with one aim - to solve the challenges faced by small businesses. They power our economy and this year more than ever we need to do everything we can to support them with the burden of admin, cash flow, late payments in and out, and confidence.”

We believe we can help by putting digital technology at the core of their business. It can automate bookkeeping, accounting and tax, help manage staff, be the centre of growth, and facilitate money coming in and going out of a business to make cash flow easy. The launch of today’s innovations are a significant step on this journey and we’re excited to continue to use digital technology to power the prosperity of small businesses.”

For more information about Intuit QuickBooks and to learn about QuickBooks products, please visit here.

Disclaimer

This information is intended to outline our general product direction, but represents no obligation and should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. Additional terms, conditions and fees may apply with certain features and functionality. Eligibility criteria may apply. Product offers, features, and functionality are subject to change without notice.

About Intuit

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