QuickBooks 2020 vs 2019 Comparison, Differences, Features

In previous years, it hasn’t been easy to find your QuickBooks company files. Although the system keeps track of your previously listed companies, it isn’t helpful if you’re trying to locate a file that has been moved or never opened with the existing version of QuickBooks before. In these situations, you’ll have to browse for those files manually. If you don’t know where it is, or you aren’t sure if it’s the right one, the entire process becomes cumbersome and even frustrating.

QuickBooks 2020 changes that. It adds a new option to the ‘New Company Open’ screen called ‘Find a company file’ towards the bottom right. This feature scans your PC for QuickBooks files & puts them on a list. The scan takes a few moments depending on the speed and size of the hard disk. Wait for the entire scan to get completed before you can see the full results.

Once the scan is complete, you can sort your files into any of the available four columns. The ‘date modified’ sorting is very useful in arranging the QuickBooks files that gives an idea of files that are up to date. There is also a search bar on the top. Add the company name in the search bar to locate your file amidst the huge pile of QB files. Not just company files, it can search backup files & accountant copies as well. The list also includes files from different years of QuickBooks. You can use it to find files which you haven’t converted to the current version yet.

In addition to your local PC, you can also switch to removable media files to scan devices such as flash drives and external hard drives.

Caution: It is not recommended to directly open the QuickBooks files from removable media devices. If the write speed is too low, running your file can potentially cause data damage. The best practice to open QuickBooks file is to take a note of the location of the file by hovering over it for the path. Copy the file into onto your local computer first and then open it safely from there.

There is a ‘Network’ tab as well. As of now, QuickBooks doesn’t have ability to scan your networks. But for the time being, all that ‘Network’ tab does is open your browse windows. So, you can’t use this feature to find your QuickBooks file hosted on another computer. You still need to browse to the network location manually. In all other scenarios, finding company files no more means searching your system for missing backups or lost QB company files. Once you locate & open the company file you want, it’ll be available on the list of previously available company file for quick access in future.

Benefit of this feature: Saves time as it makes searching QuickBooks company files easier.

In older versions of QuickBooks, each and every transaction had to be sent in its own email message, even in the ‘Send Forms’ window. It was easy to end up sending your customers a barrage of individual nearly identical emails for all their invoices at once. QuickBooks 2020 quite solves that problem.

There is a checkbox beneath the ‘Send Forms’ window – Combine forms to a recipient in one email.

If you enable it, each customer’s individual emails are merged into a single message with all the transactions attached together.

If you want to combine some but not all of the customer’s form, use individual checkboxes on each message whether to include or exclude from the email. As always, you can edit the details of combined email in the panel on the right.

Benefits of this feature: This simple change would go a long way in keeping your customers happy and bombard their inboxes with redundant clutter.

The ability to group your data into columns by customers or class is very useful on a QB summary report. But it can also be very frustrating if you have a lot of customer jobs or sub classes, where you can end up with a huge number of columns. With such huge data set, it becomes cumbersome to compare the totals for the parent customer or the class. With no way to adjust that level of detail within reports, organizing the useful information can take a lot of effort and time.

For this issue, QuickBooks 2020 introduces a simple tweak which eliminates the problem. When grouping columns by customer jobs or class, you can expand or collapse each parent entry – to show/hide its subentries. You can also use expand/collapse columns to change them all at once.

Benefit of this feature: With expand/collapse column, you can easily switch between the level of details on what you need to know at any given moment.

While making it easier, QuickBooks 2020 also improves the security and authentication features by completely revamping the password reset process. Gone are the days when you need to fill half-a-dozen fields and hoping that you remember which contact info you used to purchase your software.

In QuickBooks 2020 Desktop login, if you click “I forgot my password”, you’ll be prompted to select an email address. The available options are the purchaser’s email and primary contact email for each of the recent licenses to open the file successfully. Plus, the most recent accountant license. This means there could be as less as just one option, or as many as six.

To reset your password in QuickBooks 2020, you have to select the email (from the available list) to which the token will be sent. The email address that you choose will receive an access code, which can be used to set a new password.

In case your email address doesn’t appear in the list, click the option “Don’t see your email in the list above?” & enter your own email address. If you are a contact of any of those three previously mentioned accounts, QuickBooks will send you an access code. Otherwise, you’ll get an error telling your email wasn’t found. This way only authorized users can get to your file. Once you have your access code, type it or copy/paste it in your password reset window. Set a new password (with at least 7 characters including one number & one uppercase letter).

Benefit of this feature: This makes it easier to access your QB company files while still keeping your data secure.

This advanced text recognition feature helps you to easily search text through your PDF or image file. QuickBooks will automatically scan it through OCR, reading the text on your images. When we attach image file, QuickBooks runs its OCR and creates searchable text. Now we can easily search through the attachments any texts that are in our file. For the OCR feature to work best, your images or PDF files should be of high quality with high contrast.

This feature brings all the report customization options into a single window format, which makes it easier to locate and use. Any changes you make in the side bar will be immediately reflected on the report. The side bar has main three tabs: options, filters, format.