Since we acquired Qsales last May we have completely rewritten the application and added many new features. This drive comes from the fact that we use Qsales internally, and we're always wanting the program to do more. Needless to say, our customers are not much different, which is why we're very excited to announce the release of two major new features to the Qsales subscription product.

• QBilling: Technically QBilling is not a new product so much as a complete refactoring of an old one called QBilling Module. We initiated this rewrite on account of two reasons:
  • the old architecture wasn't supported by our new API technology
  • we didn't find the old QBilling workflow intuitive enough

Much like before, QBilling is designed to allow users to assign billable histories in Act!, and then convert those histories into transactions. The difference with this new version is we've added faster searching of billable Histories, and we've designed the workflow to convert one or more of these Histories into a single Opportunity first, which can then in turn be converted into a QuickBooks transaction.

Once a History is converted into a line item in an Opportunity, it cannot be converted again.

This simple change in workflow allows users to aggregate all Histories for one customer over a set period of time, and then add billable details as needed to the Opp before it is sent to QuickBooks as a transaction. We feel this workflow is not only more intuitive, but it also provides a clearer audit trail in Act! than the previous method.

• Recurring Transactions: QuickBooks has a feature called Memorized Transactions, and it's useful if you have a small number of recurring transactions you need to automatically create. However in our case, we have thousands of Annual and Monthly transactions we need to track and recreate, and for that volume, this QuickBooks feature is completely inadequate. You would need a separate database manager just to sort, filter, and find all these individual transactions. That's why we developed Recurring Transactions that allow you to create the recurring activity under the contact record in Act!, and not strictly at the global list level where it can be easily lost in a morass of other similar activities.
  
  The mechanics are that Qsync will scan the database daily for new recurring transactions and create the ones that are due to be added to QuickBooks. Like QuickBooks Memorized Transactions, you can convert an existing transaction into a recurring template, and add renewal options for annual, semi-annual, quarterly, monthly, bi-weekly, and weekly. There will also be options to add the transaction for a set number of days in advance of the invoice date.

We're excited about these two additions to Qsales, and our customers will be excited to learn they're free upgrades. That's right, these two new features will become part of the regular subscription offering at no extra cost. So if you haven't upgraded to v13.x, now is the time to make the move.