Intuit updates QuickBooks cloud applications suite

Intuit continues to expand the capabilities of the widely used QuickBooks accounting platform into other areas of SMB financial management.

The company this week has added a series of new functions to the cloud-based version of the application, which is used by more than 360,000 small-business subscribers. Some of the extensions come through third-party applications that are certified to work with the platform.

Here are some of the highlights:

- A new "downloaded transactions" feature lets small-business owners import new transactions from their credit card or bank accounts. Once a particular sort of transaction is categorized, future ones that are related are automatically filed in the right bucket.

- Intuit has added something called "Money Bar," which centralized income estimates, invoices and sales receipts, and totals for due or past-due transactions. So, the small-business owner can tell at a glance if someone owes him or her money.

- There is a new mobile companion application for the service that allows small-business owners to record payments, or look at invoices or customer balances stored in QuickBooks Online. The application works on either Android or the Apple iOS platform used by the iPhone.

- The company is featuring a series of third-party applications that are part of the Intuit App Center, including Bill.com (a cash flow application), Mavenlink (a project management application), Salesforce for QuickBooks (the CRM application) and SOS Inventory (an order management and inventory application).