Like the Finder, Mail, iTunes, and other Mac OS savvy applications, QuickBooks now includes some sophisticated search features that allow you to find transactions and other financial information based upon very specific criteria. As is the case with other applications that offer these kinds of search tools, data in your query's found set is updated as you type and the data can also be fine-tuned by filtering out data in specific fields. Once a query has been created you have the option to save the search so that you can use it again later. An important note here, though: QuickBooks has always had a pretty sophisticated but challenging-to-use tool for finding transactions. That tool has not gone away and is available from the new find interface with the click of a button.

One of the new features I really like in QuickBooks 2012 is progress invoicing. Previous versions of QuickBooks made it difficult to manage partial invoices. In many cases, if you wanted to invoice for a portion of a job that had been completed, you had to use some kind of spreadsheet or other ledger system to track what portion of a job had been completed, what portion of that portion had already been billed for, and then bill for the portion that you'd just completed.

Progress invoicing in the new version of QuickBooks should eliminate the need to use third-party applications for tracking partial invoices. When creating a progress invoice, you have the option of billing for a percentage of the work that has been done, selecting only the items that you want to invoice for, or you can select percentages or dollar amounts for specific line items on your invoice.