Intuit Puts Cash Flow At The Forefront Of New QuickBooks

The 2004 editions of QuickBooks Premier, Pro, and Basic all sport new features and tools, said Ravi Bellur, the product manager for Intuit's flagship accounting and financial program, and mark the company's biggest launch ever in the small business market.

A $499.95, Premier is the most expensive of the trio and the most feature laden. The 2004 edition sports 30 new enhancements and additions, including a 'Cash Flow Projector' that lets business owners get a more accurate idea of how much money they actually have not yet promised suppliers, as opposed to what currently appears on their bank statement.

Intuit paid particular attention to cash flow in this newest release of QuickBooks, said Bellur, because of the lackluster economy's impact on small businesses and their cash positions. Eight of the thirty new tools in Premier concentrate on cash flow.

"Small businesses definitely have had some pain this year," he said. "The economic downturn has made cash flow huge in small business owners' minds."

The Cash Flow Projector allows users to project what cash they have available for up to six weeks in the future, with the data based on spending and income previously entered within the accounting package. "Our customers aren't the Intels of the world," said Bellur. "They don't need 12-month projections, and rarely look down the road more than six weeks."

QuickBooks Pro, which sells for $299.95, is a subset of Premier, and like its more expensive sibling, now includes the ability to e-mail most of the product's forms, such as invoices, statements, and purchase orders to customers and suppliers.

QuickBooks Basic, Intuit's entry-level financial package, retails for $199.95, and offers features such as the 'New Business Checklist' to help start-ups manage more than their money. The checklist, which is also included in Pro and Premier, offers up tools for start-up chores such as obtaining a federal tax ID number and registering the business's name with the state, said Bellur.

Although QuickBooks targets companies with up to 20 employees -- and up to five concurrent users -- Intuit also refreshed its QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Pro Enterprise Solutions, versions aimed at firms with between 20 and 250 workers. The Enterprise Solutions editions, which cost $3,500, allow up to 10 simultaneous users and include unlimited tech support and rights to free upgrades for the next year.

Intuit also added three new specialty editions of QuickBooks for the retail, manufacturing/wholesale, and professional services vertical markets. The company has previously released vertical market versions for building contractors, accountants, non-profit organizations, and healthcare firms.

The new vertical market versions sport customized reports for those industries, flexible billing rates for professional service providers, and a financial analysis tools especially crafted for retailers.

Also on Thursday, Intuit released an enhanced edition of its QuickBooks SDK (software development kit) for third-party vendors looking to tie their own products into the QuickBooks 2004 line. Version 3.0 of the SDK now lets developers add menu items to the QuickBooks interface, notify their own apps of QuickBooks events such as changed data, and allow their products to modify certain data within QuickBooks, including sales orders, bills, and job estimates.

For the moment, said Bellur, Intuit is happy with the integrated approach to financials that its software takes, as opposed to the more modular strategy that other financial applications in the mid-sized business market offer. Microsoft, for instance, sells individual accounting modules out of its Great Plains line that customers can pick and choose from to craft their own system.

"But if there's a segment [of our customers] that has a different preference, we'll change," Bellur concluded.

This story courtesy of TechWeb .