QuickBooks 2009 for Mac Gives Small Businesses Most Significant Upgrade in Product History

Latest Version Delivers Modern Mac Look,Giant Leap in Productivity and Simplicity

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Answering Mac users’ need for simplicity and performance, Intuit offers small business owners its most significant update in the product’s history: QuickBooks® Accounting 2009 for Mac.

Built for the Mac OS X Leopard operating system, the new QuickBooks version from Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) offers a sleek Mac interface with the ease of use and organizational efficiency that Mac users expect. This small business accounting software is scheduled to become available later this month.

QuickBooks 2009 for Mac will include major customer-requested features to boost productivity that leverage modern Mac OS X user-interface design paradigms:

1. A Home Page that shows how business tasks fit together with one-click access to key tasks.
2. Customer, Vendor, Transaction and Report Centers that organize respective data into single-page views to make it easier to find and act on data.
3. A Company Snapshot that gives a real-time macro view of a business’s financial picture.

“Small business owners spoke, and we listened,” said Rick Jensen, senior vice president of Intuit’s Small Business Division. “From a modern interface to easier ways to access and view information, QuickBooks for Mac better meets the needs of the many small business owners who use a Mac.”

Customers who tested early versions of the product agree.

“QuickBooks for Mac is like a fine wine -- it keeps getting better with age,” said Jeff Yarberry of Integrity Marketing Services, LLC in Fort Collins, Colo. “I’m a long time Mac user and this latest version really hits the mark. It now feels and responds intuitively like my other Mac apps so I can just do what I need to do without having to think about it.”

New Productivity Features With Modern Mac User Interface

Building on the power of Leopard, QuickBooks 2009 for Mac makes it easier than ever to create, find, and customize information in QuickBooks in the way Mac users prefer.

Home Page: To help quickly boost productivity, the new Home Page provides a single view of how key business tasks fit together. Arrows guide small business owners from one task to the next, making it easier to understand what and when things need to be done.

The Home Page also includes one-click access to common tasks, such as preparing invoices, paying bills and tracking timesheets. At the same time, it uses notification badges, a common Mac OS X design element, to notify business owners of items requiring their immediate attention.

Centers: To more easily find and search critical business information, QuickBooks for Mac now organizes all customer, vendor, transaction and report information into a single-page view for each. Previously, users had to search for data, such as contact information, in one place and then move to another to find transactional information, such as unpaid invoices. Now, all related information is grouped together with enhancements that make it easy to spontaneously search and instantly filter data so users can quickly find and act on the data they need.

The Report Center contains reports such as profit and loss statements and balance sheets. Using “Cover Flow” in Mac OS X, the Report Center lets users easily flip through and choose reports by displaying a large preview of the first page of the report along with a short description of its content.

Company Snapshot: This real-time view of business performance gives up-to-the-minute information on income and expenses, account, customer and vendor balances, and important reminders - all on one screen. Now users no longer need to shuffle through a variety of reports to get the critical business information they need.

Save Time on Routine Tasks

Improved online banking connectivity reduces manual data entry, letting business owners easily import information from many banks directly into QuickBooks for Mac. The new Online Banking Setup Assistant lets businesses easily set up and import bank and credit card data from the more than 3,000 financial institutions that support Direct Correct and/or Web Connect.

Business owners will also find it more convenient to e-mail forms from QuickBooks for Mac. A new, batch e-mail function lets users send documents, such as invoices, all at once, when it’s convenient for them, rather than one-by-one. Users can also edit the emails before sending them from either their Apple Mail or Microsoft Entourage e-mail accounts.

To help business owners stay on top of their busy schedules, there is now improved integration between iCal and QuickBooks that syncs To-Dos and updates reminders. For example, to avoid missing important dates such as a customer payment due date, users can click the “Show in iCal” box when creating an invoice in QuickBooks to automatically update the information in iCal. If the user changes the due date of the invoice in QuickBooks later on, iCal will automatically update to reflect the new date.

Integrates With Point of Sale Software

Retail store owners will now find it easy to transfer their store’s sales data into QuickBooks. Reducing manual data entry, QuickBooks 2009 for Mac imports sales data with Xsilva’s LightSpeed Point of Sale system in just a few clicks.

Pricing and Availability

QuickBooks 2009 for Mac is scheduled to be available at the end of September for a suggested retail price of $199.95. It can be ordered directly from Intuit at www.quickbooks.com/mac or by calling 888-729-1996. The product is scheduled to be available at Apple retail stores, www.apple.com, Amazon.com, CompUSA, Office Max, Fry’s Electronics, CDW, Mac Zone and MacMall in mid-October.