Intuit announced QuickBooks Accounting 2009 for Mac Thursday, an upgrade the company called the “most significant upgrade in product history.” The new version offers new features such as a Home Page for one-click access to key tasks, a new
way to view data in real-time called Centers, and Company Snapshot.
QuickBooks is Intuitis line of business accounting products, and QuickBook Accounting 2009 for Mac is the first major upgrade since QuickBooks Pro 2007 for Mac.
Home Page is a new feature intended to offer users a single view of how everything in their business fits together. It uses arrows to guide users from one task to the next, and includes one-click access to common tasks, such as preparing invoices, paying bills and tracking timesheets.
Intuit has also organized customer, vendor, transaction and report information into a single-page view for each called Centers. Centers offer all related information in their respective categories to be grouped together without having to jump around within QuickBooks to find it.
The third major new feature is Company Snapshots, which, as its name suggests, offers live, up-to-the-minute information on income and expenses, account, customer and vendor balances, and important reminders.
Other new features include support for Direct Connect, which almost doubles the number of banks you can directly work with to more than 3,000. Users can also send out batch e-mails of forms from directly within QuickBooks.
The other important aspect of this update is that it is compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” and only Leopard. Intuit has built in many Leopard-specific features such as a Cover Flow view for the Reports Center, and other areas of the product, hence the requirement.
QuickBooks Accounting 2009 for Mac will be available at the end of September for US$199.95. The company has not yet added information about the new version to its Web site.