WSW - Podcast Navigating the New Main Menu in QuickBooks Online (2026)
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[00:00:00]
Cold Open and Welcome
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Dan DeLong: That was weird. I was waiting for it to ease us in and it was like black. And then here we are. Is that what you saw? [00:01:00]
Rachel Dauchy: I don't know.
Dan DeLong: It's never a dull moment here on the workshop Wednesday brought to you by school bookkeeping.com where you can keep learning QuickBooks your way, and I hit the wrong one. There we go. Casual conversations for serious workflows. So I apologize for skipping last week. We had a client fires last week, so Great.
So we did.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh yeah, you skipped it. I didn't realize
Dan DeLong: you did.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. I just decided, we had other things going on here and they took precedence over,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah,
Dan DeLong: over our
Rachel Dauchy: time.
Baby Shower and Tamagotchi Talk
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Rachel Dauchy: And they had a team member baby shower, which was extremely important,
Dan DeLong: right? You gotta have those. Hopefully that was all happy times.
Rachel Dauchy: It was, really fun. And we did, because we have a virtual firm here, so we did a virtual baby shower and we did virtual [00:02:00] games with real prizes, and it was a lot of fun.
Dan DeLong: Yes. Hopefully it's not a virtual baby.
Rachel Dauchy: I hope so. It's one of those like little key chain babies that we did in the nineties where I was old for that.
That's
Dan DeLong: Tamagotchi.
Rachel Dauchy: You know what I'm talking about?
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Self Care App Detour
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Dan DeLong: The I actually it's funny you bring that up because we're gonna, we're gonna di divert for a second. I found something that's very similar to that, but it's actually for self care. So, it's neat because, what it, what?
It's basic. It's same idea the tamagotchi little creature that you Yeah. That's what it's called to take care. Yeah. That you have to take care of this thing. And the way that you take care of it is by you taking care of yourself. Ah,
Rachel Dauchy: I fail, I take really bad care of myself.[00:03:00]
Dan DeLong: That was that's, the point that, that was why I got interested is that oh I'm not doing I'm not living good habits. I could tell that I was letting things go and so I saw this ad and it was intriguing because in the ad they were like you need to do this, do five pushups.
And
Rachel Dauchy: Wow.
Dan DeLong: And then it's somebody like putting down their phone and then doing five pushups and that unlocks something.
Rachel Dauchy: Wow. That's really cool actually. And there's a similar Black Mirror episode with these little characters you take care of. I won't give it away, but definitely watch it.
Dan DeLong: Yes. Yes. Don't, no spoilers here on the, on the workshop except for QuickBooks spoilers. Yeah. And Jamie did say. Based on all the [00:04:00] symptoms. This is not a virtual baby,
so she would be the one to know this is not a virtual baby for the virtual baby shower.
Workshops Moving In Platform
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Dan DeLong: Before we get into our our, session today, which is all about we're, starting a new series which is all about the new I think the dust has settled on the user interface overhaul for, QuickBooks online.
So I was waiting for that to be complete before we actually go into. The, details of those things. And we're gonna break it down into four or five week topics. But after that series what we're gonna do is, we're gonna shift doing the workshops live and streaming online to.
Something inside of quick. [00:05:00] Not, almost, not so QuickBooks of school of bookkeeping. Yes. My company. I've been struggling for the past two, two to three years trying to figure out how to best notify when we go, live. And some of the things that we're talking about are.
Are general, right? And, they're, available or useful for the general population to watch our, workshops. But what I would love to do is actually have these workshops be. Engaging, right? Where it's more of a, question and answer sort of thing. That really doesn't work out too well when you're streaming things out on YouTube or Facebook or Face Tube or you book out on the interwebs, right? Because there may be. Personally [00:06:00] identifiable information that gets shared on these screens, and we certainly don't wanna do that. Side note, I remember doing a YouTube video one time where my own social security number was on the screen. Oops.
And it was out there for two, three years, thank goodness it was not popular.
Rachel Dauchy: You didn't have 85,000 views on that one.
Dan DeLong: Yeah I did not have have a, good view rate on that particular video. Certainly went through quick, really quickly and blurred that out. And, of course didn't have, certain a multitude of.
Credit cards being opened in my name, which is good. So dodge the bullet there. So what we're gonna do [00:07:00] is we're actually going to broadcast or do the workshops live inside of school bookkeeping. So that means, you'll have to register, and be in be a member of school bookkeeping in order to participate in the live workshops.
Now you can still do that for free. We do have an option. For you if I could find the right thing here. So there's a, QR code for workshop access. It's totally free if you're not a paid member of, of School of Bookkeeping. But we do, what we do after the workshops is we take them, we sweeten them up, we edit them, if you're ever watching them streaming.
Sometimes the volume's not right or the video's blurry or something like that. We. We we, reedit them so that they're actually viewable. And we put them [00:08:00] in our workshop listing inside of School of bookkeeping. The challenge is that, putting a sequence to remind send out emails to those that might be registered the platform that we're using really doesn't, think that's a great way to do things. So setting up a recurring email, where it goes out and follow up and all that stuff. I've been trying to crack that nut for a while, and really it's just not, it's just not working. So what we're gonna do instead is we're going to. Do the workshops inside of School of Bookkeeping.
We'll do, we'll start that after this series in four or five weeks or so, we'll do the workshops inside of School of Bookkeeping. But you'll just want to. And sure if you want to participate in those workshops you wanna register as a [00:09:00] free member so that you have the workshop access.
The good news is, that when we go live, you'll get notified, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. That's nice. And I know there's a lot of other communities that do it that way and you register ahead of time and rather than it just being a live stream, and that's good that you'll edit them after the fact because. You know what, if there's a wardrobe malfunction or something like that,
Dan DeLong: can't have that. No. Lemme just double check here. Yes, I am wearing pants. So that's, that's good. So I'm gonna put the link in the, chat as well. For anyone watching on our streaming platforms you can certainly use that to register for the free access for the workshops. And once you.
That's all you have to do. And then when we do go live, when we transition over you'll get an automatic alert when we do go [00:10:00] live. And then you can maybe put that on your calendar if you wanted to and or just join. Join in, right? So we'll give that a try and maybe you'll find us back here streaming if that doesn't work.
We're, not, we're not married to the way that we do things here. We're, open to change. That's one thing I did learn at Intuit is that don't get attached to the way things are being run because they certainly can change. It's like walking watching the Walking dead right?
And don't get attached to any character. Their chances are one of 'em is gonna die soon.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh man. Or Game of Thrones. I didn't see that show, but I heard it was really good. But
Dan DeLong: Just same with Game of Thrones somebody would die
Rachel Dauchy: actually.
Change Fatigue and AI Concerns
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Rachel Dauchy: Especially with just right now I, can't even tell you how rapidly everything is changing.
It's just bonkers. And [00:11:00] just the stuff that I'm keeping up with. Even as it pertains to AI is. Just in our industry and the software that we use, it's just so rapidly changing that it really doesn't make sense to get stuck on one thing because you gotta keep up.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. That, that was my question of the day or the, thought that I was thinking of for today.
Because there's this whole mindset or concept of, accountants don't like change, but I don't think anybody likes change to a degree of and, I think it's exacerbated by, by the field of accounting. Because I think in most cases, a lot of times your workflows are.
A habit of muscle memory. I [00:12:00] go over here, I click this. I think the 10 key is probably the best example of muscle memory to to in, in accounting, right? Because if you have your 10, your, keyboard with a 10 key on it you Your fingers end up doing the, dancing in just such a way that it makes it a lot easier than of course having your numbers across the top of your keyboard. Like when you gotta sit there and search and destroy. Do you find Rachel, that's true for more so for accountants than it would be for.
Any other profession or do you feel like it really just doesn't matter? It's we're all creatures of habit.
Rachel Dauchy: I'm sure that there are certain industries in which there is no change, right? I guess if you're a ditch digger and [00:13:00] you do it either with a shovel or with a. A machine. I don't know what those are called.
You're always gonna have to dig it in. That's why you're not a ditch
Dan DeLong: digger.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. There's not really a lot of variety in that, but I think a lot of people understand going to something like accounting that you're always, things are always gonna change and there's gonna be updates, continuing education, things like that, new standards, et cetera.
But I do think that rather than. People don't like change, especially with accounting. I, think it's the better way is, people get used to doing it the way that they're doing it. And so it's not that I disliked the actual change, it's the. Oh, now I'm gonna have to spend the time doing this. Yeah, and I don't really have a lot of extra time on my, I'm already really crappy with time management to [00:14:00] begin with, so that's really more my issue.
I actually like learning new things, so I don't so much mind the change if I am in a good spot with time management now. I can't even tell you how fast everything is changing. I use now Claude for Excel in, in my Excel spreadsheets. Instead of building the formulas now I tell Claude, do this.
And it just comes. And I check everything for sure, but just the way that we're doing that, the reason that I'm afraid of a little bit of change in that area right now is not. In terms of what I can do, it's people's perception of what accounting and bookkeeping is now. Meaning they may think, oh, I can [00:15:00] just put all this in Claude now, or I could put this all in perplexity now and spit it out.
And they're not aware that it's not right. 'cause they don't know controls and they don't know how to check themselves and they don't know. Even to identify what's wrong. So I'm a little worried that inaccurate data is gonna get passed off as accurate data and then we're gonna have a mess going forward.
So that's really my biggest fear about change. If I'm in control, because I'm a total control freak, if I'm in control of. The elements that are changing, and I have a clear view on the steps, I'm okay with it. And I actually welcome it. But this to me is opening up a can of [00:16:00] worms in terms of non bookkeeping professionals.
And you and I know like some of the bookkeepers out there are. Magicians. Not magicians, that's a bad word. I don't mean like they're creating magic. They're, wiz. They're a wiz. They're incredible. Like some of these career bookkeepers that have been doing it 25, 30 years and they can.
Make they get, make sense of a, they could do the bookkeeping for a giant corporation all by themselves, right? They're that good. So what I'm a little worried about is that, people may think that they can just AI themselves into that and it's a true skill. And so that's what my fear is.
A little bit about the whole industry. My. Pushback is always, look, we still wanna use our tools, we still wanna use [00:17:00] our accounting software. We still wanna use this, that, and the other. I approached AI from I can now add this cool thing and I can now do these things, but we still want our fundamental of.
How we're doing it there, and we still need reconciled financial statements. We still need accuracy with the data and then go from there. So I think that it's still super important to have a strong grasp on QuickBooks when Intuit's making changes. We're still talking in our community, making sure that we still know how the software is changing.
For now I guess until. We do, become back to the future where we push a button and then everything appears. I don't know, maybe that will happen. yeah,
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Light Bulb Moment for QuickBooks
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Dan DeLong: It's and I think in the grand scheme of things, right? Once you've chosen [00:18:00] your profession of choice, in this case accounting, bookkeeping, right?
You try to do things that you do more efficiently, right? And that's, there was a preference in QuickBooks desktop. Going back to the example of the 10 key, right? There was the preference in, desktop, to change your, your enter key to, tab, right? So the and that was a workflow efficiency.
Option because if your hand is resting on the 10 key right you can really quickly, again, with that muscle memory while you're entering in numbers, there's an enter key also on the 10 key. So you can change that preference to be your enter key to actually be a tab. So that you, without moving your [00:19:00] hand off of the 10 key, you then can either actually use the same hand that you're using to type the numbers, use that to tab on the 10 key, right?
Because you've got the enter key, right? So I think that's an and I think it, Remi, it reminds me of, when we were at Intuit Connect and Sasan was on the stage and he was talking about. The light bulb wasn't invented from the continuous improvement of the candle, right? So at some point you have to go from, a candle and, continuously improving and making workflow enhancements to the candle to eventually saying, okay, we need more.
And we need a different way to, to get light. And it's not gonna come from this candle anymore. It's gonna come from this light bulb, which means that we have to. Basically break everything down. [00:20:00] And that's what we have here in QuickBooks today, is we have a new light bulb.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And I don't care if the 10 key goes away.
I'm not hand entering numbers anymore. Sorry.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Hash that not,
Rachel Dauchy: sorry.
Dan DeLong: There's only so much. You're gonna be able, so much efficiency that you're gonna be able to do by manually entering in data. That's only gonna get you so far. And, what's the, tall tail? The, I can't remember the, guy, the miner against the machine.
The, I can't even remember the, that guy's name. It was like, paul Bun. I know, I
navigating-the-new-main-menu-in-quickbooks-online-(2026)-Apr-29-2026-restream: don't,
Rachel Dauchy: I don't know that story.
Dan DeLong: Not Paul Bunion is like a, and it's not Jesse Owens. There's like an Owens something in there. Oh, Henry, if anybody knows Henry. Henry, yes. John Henry.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, Henry. Oh, Henry.
Dan DeLong: John Henry.
Yes. Yes.
Rachel Dauchy: John
Dan DeLong: Henry, John, he, John Henry. He was the [00:21:00] minor and they brought in a. A machine, and then it was the man versus machine thing, right?
Of course he worked himself so hard he died. So what's the lesson there? Yeah. So that's where we're at here, is that we've got a new light bulb inside of QuickBooks online because they've changed.
The, entire overview or the entire user interface more so than what it was before.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And also, not to interrupt you, but gee, even just to say this, is that now the landscape is so cluttered and so overpopulated that it's overwhelming and it's almost better to really focus on being a master of something rather than.
And master of none, or what do you call it, like
Dan DeLong: jack of all [00:22:00] trades,
Rachel Dauchy: master of none, jack of all trades, but a master of none. I don't know. There's, now I'm like the sheer volume of things out there, it's giving me fatigue. So you have to say, look, I'm gonna pick these few things and really become an expert, and that's the way I do it.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And I think that's a, that is a good good approach because we can get fatigue fatigue pretty easily by, especially if you're at a, an accounting conference and you go down to the exhibition floor and then there's, Ooh, what about this one? Ooh, what do they do? What the, maybe
Rachel Dauchy: I should do that.
Yeah. I need even coming back from shop Talk, I I'm now talking to this app that they do returns. That sync really well and with things, but they, it also has an IMS, it also has a full general ledger. It also has this, and I'm like, oh my gosh. Stop already I'm not [00:23:00] gonna switch a whole system over to something else.
I don't know. It's, a lot. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Oh yeah.
QBO vs Desktop and Intercompany
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Dan DeLong: I was just talking to somebody about. They're on QuickBooks Online and they're entertaining going to back to QuickBooks Desktop for the sole reason of intercompany transfers. Being able to do that's and so yes, you can do intercompany transfers in QuickBooks Desktop, but that could actually bring up all sorts of other.
Hidden problems. Yeah. If, that's the thing that you're solving for. Now there's a cost, there's a cost aspect, right? Because they've got four QuickBooks online companies, they would only have one enterprise subscription. So they may be thinking, okay, we could save some money and have more functionality at the same time.
But that come, that comes from a per [00:24:00] perspective of someone who has never converted their data from online to desktop to see to potentially have all of the surprises that come along with that. So my suggestion was if that's what's driving you look for a solution that allows you to do intercompany transfers and.
Guess what Intuit Enterprise Suite might be.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: The best option for you because it caters to multiple entities and the intercompany transfers is one of the things. Or you can have a really good,
Rachel Dauchy: do it correctly or that
Dan DeLong: Exactly. Exactly. And you can also build in automations with that.
Because in online you're gonna have that ability. Maybe add something and configure something into Zapier or something like that. You're, on a platform that will cater to [00:25:00] some of those things greater than going back, to desktop. Now. Yes, that certainly could be the case.
It may not be. There's, more to the story with that, but, we'll I'll keep you posted. Okay.
New QBO UI Apps Explained
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Dan DeLong: So let's, let's launch QuickBooks Online. This is now the most stable, option that we have. So the biggest thing that we wanna the first thing we wanna talk about is, some of the terminology changes in this user interface.
Change. And the biggest thing is, apps and integrations, right? The old interface apps used to represent third party applications that in integrate into QuickBooks. And now they are called the apps are called, [00:26:00] the apps themselves are dealing with the QuickBooks apps.
So these these apps are applications or things that you can do inside of QuickBooks. So you'll see them here. In the all apps section you'll have pinned apps. Along the left side that will be more common that we might use. You can customize them on the left side to be able to put the apps that you do use on a more regular basis.
You can pin the ones that you, use regularly, but these are the groupings of, workflows or of specific transactions, so you can reorder them here. So if you wanna put the, customer hub above the accounting hub, then you can you can do that, right? So now your customers [00:27:00] are listed now above accountings, right?
So the terminology of apps is the biggest. Glossary, I guess is the best way to de to describe about that. So then the question is what happened to apps?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. It's just really confusing. Why couldn't they have used a word like widget or something like that? You know what I mean? Yeah.
I don't know.
Dan DeLong: I'm sure there were probably several focus groups. And how they ended up on the Word app, because as a fun fact, the apps.com, like if you go to apps.com, that's actually QuickBooks is App Marketplace, right? So
yeah
A small oversight in the Apple ecosystem that they didn't buy [00:28:00] apps.com and Intuit has it.
But, so they still use the word app, right? And here it says it's an app's marketplace, so it's not consistent. An app is an app. It's it, there's a lot to, to comb through for sure. But inside of QuickBooks all apps represents. Workflow groupings, right? So you have the apps here on the left side as well as across the top.
And oh, I just noticed that they, mirror the order in the customization, right? So if I just move this up here and I don't pin it, refresh, now my sales tax is up here. So that's a, that's an interesting way to, to group your, group, your apps, up here at the top. So you can sort them there. [00:29:00] Now, third party applications, in the apps that we used to think of, right?
Now, oh, and by
Rachel Dauchy: the way, PS the ones that every other piece of software still calls apps. So, it's not there isn't confusion with that too,
Dan DeLong: right? Yeah. Terminology across third party applications, it's that's another, story that's, like a, bigger, fish to fry.
That's another workshop. But if you go up here to this little icon, it's supposed to be, I think. Two computers talking to each other. This this at the global bar, across the top that's where you find your integrations and then you can click on find integrations. And this is where you get the apps [00:30:00] that you would be getting over here at the app marketplace.
So the, terminology is really the first thing to. To make sure that you understand. And that's the biggest change in the two. This other change the terminology. Terminology.
My Menu and Customization Tips
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Dan DeLong: In the past we had a toolbox for accountants that had this icon of the briefcase here in the upper right or upper left.
That moved from the top bar here to this my menu, right? So that's, another terminology change. This is solely for accountants. Regular users don't have this little briefcase. But it's the same icon. It's just now called instead of accountant tools, it's just called My Menu. And you can customize that as well.
Oops. It's let [00:31:00] make it too big for, I can't see.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I just I really that everything is customizable.
Dan DeLong: Yes.
Rachel Dauchy: And it's not tiny little print.
Dan DeLong: Exactly. Yes. So you have those options there, so you can customize the sections that you see. And within those sections you can add your favorites and bookmarks and sort them.
That's what these, icons or this, these dots. I don't know. I don't know why, do some have. Three dots, and then this was six dots. I guess three is like the universal symbol for. There's more.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: There's a sub menu.
navigating-the-new-main-menu-in-quickbooks-online-(2026)-Apr-29-2026-restream: This,
Rachel Dauchy: it always looks like this when it's a rearrange thing.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: And I am so sorry, Dan, but I do have to leave unfortunately.
It's okay. I sent you a chat, but I, have to leave. I have two minutes, but then I have to run. We have an internal thing we have to go over.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. We won't take too much [00:32:00] longer than, what we have here. But I understand if you have to, if you have to jump off duty calls whether you're.
Doing the livestream or not.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah, no problem. I've got two minutes, but I'll let you finish up.
Dan DeLong: Yep.
Rachel Dauchy: What you're doing,
Dan DeLong: so you can customize the bookmarks, you can customize the create section as well as the tools. And inside the bookmarks you can bookmark any page. So if you do, if you want to add the app center as a bookmark, you certainly can.
Now it's a bookmark.
Integrations Feed and Navigation
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Rachel Dauchy: By the way, you're on the integration page and I'm seeing Wix. I'm seeing WooCommerce. Yeah. Now are, is this the app store or are these app transactions?
Dan DeLong: These are free integrations built by QuickBooks, which ultimately end up going into the app. The app store? Or [00:33:00] the app.
Okay.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, because
Dan DeLong: the inter,
Rachel Dauchy: it's a, it looks a little different than
Typically.
Dan DeLong: It's if we go over here, it's got featured apps built by into it's just organized differently,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah. This is normally, you couldn't see those in QuickBooks before you had to go to the app store.
Oh. The only ones that you could see were the ones that were. App transactions.
Dan DeLong: Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I think
Rachel Dauchy: they, where now it's actually bringing recommended integrations in from the app store.
Dan DeLong: Very good.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah this is, very different. Okay, cool.
Dan DeLong: And then you do have your this little icon here for feed.
Is the business feed, and this is the homepage for ai. So depending on the version that you have, you may see different things here on the on the business feed. [00:34:00] But this is where you're gonna see things AI related. Dealing with your QuickBooks reports obviously is gonna take you to the report section.
And then we have our, all app. So we kinda worked up from the, bottom up here on the left side. And it can be expanded. So once you do look at something let's see, we're going into projects, for example. This ends up giving a. The international symbol of the hamburger button, because that's what this is for.
Instead of three dots, we have hamburger buttons, which is horizontal. But that will expand things, and this is a good best practice. I learned this from Alicia Katz Pollock, that if you click on this rather than trying to hover over and get to things, once you click on something. That side menu shows up and then you can expand it with the hamburger button and now it just [00:35:00] stays there.
Oh. So you can use this as a way to get around a little better than than trying to find, your way, but you have other options and that's one of the hallmarks of Intuit. There is no, not just one way. To do things inside of QuickBooks. There's plenty of different ways to get around.
Once you find something, you can put it as a bookmark or put your favorites in there. And then, oh, we didn't talk about the quick create which is now was the plus new button. Is now create,
Rachel Dauchy: now it says create.
Dan DeLong: So you have all
Rachel Dauchy: that. And I, we do have to go, but Dan, I just realized I can't because you, I have to end the stream, right?
Dan DeLong: No, I can do it. I can.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, okay. Alright. I'm so sorry everybody. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Dan DeLong: All righty.
Wrap Up and Next Topic Teaser
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Dan DeLong: And actually we are gonna, we're gonna wrap it up here today. Next time [00:36:00] we're gonna be talking about the global search up here at the top. But today we wanted to talk about just the major changes and the left side navigator.
So we will see you next time on the workshop Wednesday, [00:37:00]
