What’s wrong with QuickBooks?
We’ve been using the UK version of QuickBooks since 2005 – and it has served us well since then. However as our business has moved on, QuickBooks hasn’t kept up and there’s currently nothing available from Intuit which helps much. Hence QuickBooks – No More!
QuickBooks limitations
- Lack of support
- No management of client information
- No API
- Tied to Windows operating system
- Not ideal for multiple users
- Not easy to update/upgrade
- Limited import/export
Lack of QuickBooks support
Now, this might just be a UK version thing, but the UK version of QuickBooks doesn’t seem to ever have been a fully supported version. Compound that problem by the fact that we have the 2005 version and our chances of finding meaningful support are looking bleak.
No management of clients in QuickBooks
We must have been one of only a handful of people to buy the stunningly awful Customer Manager add-on to QuickBooks. We were hoping for something resembling ACT! – a way of managing the sales process with each of our clients – but ended up with something which integrated OK with QuickBooks but not with anything else. There is no integrated CRM for QuickBooks, and no easy way of integrating external systems with it either.
No QuickBooks API
A more proprietary and closed system you would be hard pushed to find. Not only is there no published way of exchanging data with QuickBooks, its database format is deliberately obscure and fragile. If you’ve ever tried to integrate applications by directly accessing the QuickBooks QIF file, you know how non-trivial and frustrating this is.
QuickBooks is tied to a Windows desktop
Even though the Internet had been around a while when we purchased our 2005 version of QuickBooks, the application is blissfully unaware of it – except for using email every now and then. This is an offline, single user, desktop programme. If you have multiple users or some of them are in different offices, networking QuickBooks will cause as many problems as it will solve.
QuickBooks is not ideal for multiple users
You can buy multiple licences for QuickBooks (we did) and they can (in theory) all be accessing the client database at the same time. You will, however, hear your accounting people shouting at one another “Have you got the record for XYZ client open?” You see QuickBooks isn’t using a ‘real’ database and it struggles with permissions and locked files. Multiple users of QuickBooks is a pain if they’re in the same office – and almost impossible if they’re not.
QuickBooks is not easy to update or upgrade
There is no migration path from our version of QuickBooks to QuickBooks Online. There is no update available for our version of QuickBooks. The only upgrade path within the QuickBooks family is costly – and doesn’t solve many of the other problems already highlighted. That’s why we set about documenting this process of weaning ourselves off of QuickBooks – and in the process ditching WorldPay too
QuickBooks offers limited import & export facilities
The deliberately closed db format makes it very difficult to integrate other applications with QuickBooks – so too does it’s lack of import and export facilities. When we moved to using Highrise as our main CRM – we found that there was no way to extract client notes from the Customer Manager add-on to QuickBooks. We actually had to print the notes to a PDF document and attach them to the new Highrise record for each client – over 5,000 of them.
Luckily a little bit of windows scripting turned this horrendous manual task into a semi-automatic one – but there’s no excuse for such a lack of data export from QuickBooks
Solutions?
The obvious solution to all of these problems would seem to be met by an open, independent online-billing and accounting application. Se we set about figuring out who the players were and what each of them had to offer. While we were doing this, it became clear that now was a good time to rethink our choice of WorldPay to process credit card transactions.
Next step: What’s wrong with WorldPay?
28. January 2009 at 12:16 pm :
Hello,
I’ve just found your site via a link on UK Business Forums.
I’m an accountant who’s used QuickBooks with one or two clients. I tend to find that accountants either love QuickBooks or they loathe it. Me, I fall into the latter category.
Getting meaningful information from QuickBooks was a mare, and as for making certain that the VAT had been reconciled properly… no way Jose!
Here’s a blog post I did about QuickBooks a while back http://tinyurl.com/7ajfwl
M
29. January 2009 at 10:23 pm :
Actually, QuickBooks does have a pretty good API – maybe it doesn’t work with the UK version?
http://developer.intuit.com/
Your other points are definitely valid, however.
31. March 2009 at 5:46 am :
It’s great to have found this site. As an IT journalist I reviewed many accounts packages for Personal Computer World magazine and others. In my companies, we have been users of Intuit accounting products since early versions of Quicken, which was revolutionary in its ability to do basic double-entry accounting in a simple, easy to understand way, whilst being versatile enough to cope with a wide range of small businesses. I never got on so well with QuickBooks. As an accounting package, I preferred TAS Books.
I’m now so eager to move away from QuickBooks once and for all, so we joined you on your quest a (financial) year ago. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner we even flirted with the idea of moving to Microsoft Office Accounting 2008/2009 but it’s even more awful, and looks anachronistic next to the online offerings. I note that Intuit now has an online offering in the USA, but no sign of it in Britain. Whenever we need support, such as over the Quickbooks 2008 VAT handling “uncategorised amounts” debacle, it’s almost teeth-pullingly painful dealing with the India-based support people. Now we have very little desire to stick with it for the new financial year except as “better the devil we know”.
23. April 2009 at 11:32 pm :
Why do you need a UK version?
All of your problems would be easily solved by upgrading to Enterprise Edition. Except the one about finding support. Any person who’s been in this business for awhile can support any version, any edition. They aren’t very different. Except Online has a few differences that take a bit of getting used to and it’s my least favorite QB product. Okay, except for the customer manager. I’m still using ACT!. And the ACT! QB Link, which means my working version of QB is one version behind the current edition.
That being said, I think the accounting and paper flow, plus good financial management process, are much more important than the software. That’s why i wrote an accounting book, good for any software.
30. May 2009 at 12:07 pm :
Further frustrations with Quickbooks:-
In Australia, the Tax Office updates tax rates etc, free. But you have to *pay* to have the tax table (for payroll) updated in QB. There is no way for the user to update the table or tax rate.
If you use the Vehicle Mileage, Payroll or Assets modules, the data is ‘locked’ and cannot be migrated to another database.
There is ‘enforced’ obsolescence – support for earlier releases is dropped – obviously to force new purchases.
20. July 2009 at 10:30 am :
I am a (struggling) sole trader and I have been using quickbooks pro since 2003 on the recomemdation of Barclays bank, recently my computer crashed and I had to buy another machine, I installed quickbooks and because it is 2003 they point blank refuse to allow me to register
now I cant generate any invoices or do any accounts come to that, without buying 2005 and 2009 version. I CANT AFFORD IT I didnt know it had a sell by date 
30. July 2009 at 10:00 am :
I just came across this site whilst bizarrely looking for information on TAS Books for a customer. Whilst there are some points that MAY have been valid in your arguments, you are way out of date with your comments and really should update your site to reflect the current situation or take your site down.
Lack of support :
QB have always had support available, free initial support for a while after installation and then paid for support. Also a list of professional advisors who can offer local support if required, we are one of them.
No management of client information:
Yes the Customer Manager was totally crap, but QB is an accounts package, maybe you should have be looking at an ERP package with a price tag to match!
No API:
Clearly you didn’t look very closely at this, the QB SDK has been available for QuickBooks from version 2002 and the UK version from 2004, prior to this data import and export was possible, and still is via IIF files, although this latter method is no longer supported.
Tied to Windows operating system
As are most applications, like most software developers Intuit have gone for the market options that cover most end users. Again it looks like a web based ERP package would be better suited to you, I guess you have deep pockets.
Not ideal for multiple users
Multi user systems need to lock records to prevent multiple people updating a record at the same time. I can’t honestly remember how things were back with the 2005 version but we do not have any issues with this in the 2008 version.
Not easy to update/upgrade
QuickBooks generally publish a new version annually and frequently release updates that are downloaded and installed automatically, on a multi-user system these can be shared so that only one download is necessary. Upgrading is generally very straightforward if you follow the instructions. QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online are separate products, I have no experience of the latter, but I would be very surprised if no migration path was available.
Limited import/export
Excel spreadsheets from reports, IIF files, the API. You can do a hell of a lot if you look at it. I have successfully integrated Microsoft CRM with QuickBooks creating all our customer and invoice data in CRM and dynamically importing it into QuickBooks on the fly using the API.
This web page is so out of date, and was never accurate in the first place, that I would suggest to any reader to ignore any content on this site whatsoever.
19. August 2009 at 3:19 pm :
Ian Foulds is the Managing Director of X.act Systems Ltd, one of Intuit’s ProAdvisor certified outfits in the UK. He alludes to this in his comment.
Anyway, I’d take anything he says about QuickBooks with a pinch of salt. Clearly everyone who hates QB is wrong and he is right, eh?
5. March 2010 at 10:54 am :
PS – Take a look at Diamond Discovery
18. June 2010 at 10:52 am :
Here’s an up to date comment for Ian foulds. Just purchased quick books pro 2010 three days ago 18th june 2010. Did so direct from intuit so i could download it there and then,. Their servers were down and I couldn’t download it. When three days later the software arrived, they duplicated my order, and so took another £300 pounds from my account. Bearing in mind that quickbooks pro is for small business like plumbers etc, having an unexpected extra £300 taken out of their account is crazy. The refund won’t be for another 28 days (.I’m a professional software developer and network architect and so the overpayment isn’t such an issue for me).
However, the licence and product numbers (for either invoice) are not included as stated, so I have to ring up intuit. 40 minutes of being passed back and forth and I’m asked for, guess what ? my license and product number. 5 minutes of further waiting, and my call gets cut off.
The india call centre is pathetic and extremely frustrating. I’ve still not had any emails from intuit, even thought they say they’re going to email me the detaikls there and then. My last call to intuit was to cancel the order.
I’m not a liar Mr Foulds, this information isn’t out of date or inaccurate.
24. July 2010 at 6:08 pm :
I’ve come across this site whilst deciding to upgrade my ancient version of Quickbooks – which I’ve always found ok. But I now find that it doesn’t support online banking from any bank apart from Barclays in the UK! How did this come about?
26. January 2011 at 4:05 pm :
Just been reading through, I have been lucky enough to just keep using my basic quickbooks 2001 and am now looking to upgrade to 2010 – mainly to be able to integrate online banking and VAT filing – how are people finding that? easy with the years updates or still a pain – don’t really want to upgrade if they still are giving poor UK service and things are clunky to use, I am not an accountant and its not a great side of my job to do accounting to want it to be made easy and idiot proof for a non accounting person.
12. February 2011 at 3:38 pm :
I have been using QuickBooks for perhaps 16 Years ! For the first 6 or 7 years I had no problems whatsoever. My clients were Rental Property companies and Costruction companies with the addition of some smaller Plumbers,Opticians etc. I became a Professional Advisor (which them days anyone with the ability to pay for the Intuit product was enrolled) and received a good disount on Intuit products. Then Intuit ( In their supposed wisdom ) reduced the PA’s discount which meant my clients could buy the software cheaper than I could from Staples and similar stores. After losing so many PA’s they re-introduced the original discount but it was too late !!
QuickBooks is a solid ease to use Accounts Package and I 110% support the software BUT now Intuit have insisted on another bright idea of selling QB on a subscription system that ties purchasers in and what is worse if you have Payroll they do not notify you before 5th April (When you can close the Years Payroll and move from QB but they let you carry on until your license expires on a 12 month basis. This means that say perhaps your licence expires September you either have to accept their ridiculously high priced subscription service OR buy other Payroll Software and enter all Payroll records back to the 6th April. Have Intuit gone mad ???
I have had numerous problems with my clients who do not want to pay month by month and each time I phone Intuit they say “You have no choice” and the Intuit management support them !!!
I have now moved my main clients to Sage or similar and given them the software at the price I paid and also reduced my “Support Rates” when installing the software to cost only. A few of my clients are waiting until April 2011 before cancelling their subscriptions and software and they will be left with 1000′s of Cheques , Invoices, Payslips etc etc that were purchased to be used on the QB systems. I once again state QuickBooks is the best Accounts Solution for SME’s the problem is Intuit needs NEW MANAGEMENT in the UK and the QUICKBOOKS THEY GO THE BETTER
12. February 2011 at 3:50 pm :
Re Devlin January 2011 Comment
Please Please Please look at all the alternatives before Upgrading to QuickBooks 2010. Read my comments in February 2011. God only knows what the Genius ??? minds in the Intuit Management are going to introduce this year—-Perhaps a charge for Online Payroll Year End Filing to HMRC-Perhaps a usage charge for Keyboard Inputs in to QuickBooks—Or perhaps a charge if you do not send them a Christmas Card every year—Who knows ?? I will pray for Existing and Future Intuit customers ( If there are any left ) God have mercy on you all
15. March 2011 at 6:56 am :
Two years ago I after some due diligence I decided to upgrade my Quickbooks 2000/01 to 2008/09. To my horror I found that almost all the updates I had researched pertained to the US version only. In 8 years the only update to the Australian version was new tax tables and a lone button that allowed me to put my icon on the payroll summary. Well whoop-de-do!.. Whereas QB premier is about $350 to $400 in the US the same software costs $1550 in Australia! ($1US = $1AUS). As somone already mentioned if you want a tax table update you have to update your QB at $800 per year!
QB is also sloooow and unstable. Unless you have the money for the enterprise version (about $4000 in Australia)- which runs with a different database setup – files that get bigger than about 10 Meg suddenly experience significant drops in speed and reliability. The QBi series was supposed to fix this problem, but has actually made it worse.
QB has very limited inventory facilities. Construct an order for 30 items and convert it to an invoice and QB will tell you that one of the items are oversold, but it won’t tell you which one! So you have to go through each of the 30 items one by one! This is only one example.
Support is only available at $890/year through their “advantage” system, an expensive price, even if the product is not working properly. (any company that requires you to quote your 10 digit customer number before providing any support is not dealing with you as a person). So we have to pay $800/yr for up to date tax tables plus about $890/yr for support to make sure the software works!
Inventory is limited,
CRM is non existent, (I don’t think you should need a $30,000 ERP program for CRM),
Importing/Exporting of transactions can be done, but only with third party software such as from Baystate Consulting etc,
Every year you need to refresh your Quickbooks licence, which can be quite frustrating experience if the local website is not working properly. I have waited on the phone for hours to get the licence renewed.
“Updates” are not really updates. Very little changes for users from year to year, sometimes some changes are made for accountant, as distinct from the users, as accountants seem to be more important to Quicken than the end users. I think the logic is that if the accountant uses quickbooks then the user will be forced to also use quickbooks. Usually the main changes are color schemes.
All I can say is cloud accounting – roll on, destroy those evil QB providers!
25. April 2011 at 10:10 am :
Well, I am really not sure what to do?
I used Qbooks up to 2006 and left the company I was working for very happy with QB. This was a small church with charity status with a turnover of @£350K p.a. so there was not vat requirements or sales and payroll was managed externally.
I am now working for a company, just started but with a projected turnover of £4.5mill in the first year. I spoke to our accountant and he wants me to use Sage, but he is old school and knows Sage inside out. I used Sage in the late 90′s but since finding QB so easy to use and with the amount of web based apps that I am told sync with QB – I came on-line this morning to purchase it as I need to claim a vat refund from hmrc….
So, what should I do? Sage or Quickbooks……. HELP……..
25. April 2011 at 10:27 am :
Personally, I’d stay well clear of both of them! We’re using Xero now and it’s working out well. It’s not without fault, but it’s much less of a dinosaur than either Sage or QuickBooks. Our accountant can also access our Xero account online so the flow of information is much easier.
I honestly see most software (even mission-critical stuff) migrating away from being a desktop application to an online service. In that respect alone, services like Xero are the way to go, and QuickBooks and Sage are relics of the past
31. August 2011 at 6:52 pm :
I’ve used Quickbooks for many years and to begin with I really loved it, so easy to use compared to Sage. I had a client who used Sage Instant Accounting for his property empire and only upgraded when he moved to Windows 7. When he enquired as to a compatible Sage product, he was told that his accounts were somewhat complex, Sage IA could cope, but only if you have a full time bookeeper and accountant! I looked at the Sage upgrade and was horrified to seem the same issues that bedevilled Sage IA (Balance Sheet not balancing unless you set up nominals correctly, no Balance column in Reports, greyed out totals that are impossible to read, very limited drill down ability etc, etc). The thought of facing this all over again for another 5 years was too much for me, so I got rid of my client!
Quickbooks are definately trying to earn as much money as they can from their customers. If you are a growing business, then you will want to upgrade each year (there are problems if you skip a few years). But if you want a decent accounts package with no future upgrades, then buy the 2006 version. Everything went downhill after that! There is quite a good knowledge base on the Internet for Quickbooks, after a while one becomes fairly expert oneself.
The problem as I see it is that Quickbooks have not developed the product in the way that their users would like. Instead of really useful improvements (I am still waiting for them to allocate numbers to Bills, an issue I raised back in 2003) they have gone for glitsy changes to make it look up to date.
To compensate for those who wanted something basic, they brought out Simple Quickbooks. free if you download. Avoid at all costs! It is only good for raising Invoices, it can’t cope with the payment or anything else connected with payments.
Re the earlier comment about importing transactions: Yes in theory, no in practice. I had a charity that needed to move to a new company file (that’s another issue. it either gets too big, or the records develope problems that can’t be fixed by the rebuild utility). There were lots of receipts that had to be brought into the new file. Importing Nominal Accounts, Customers etc was fine, very easy infact. But when it came to transactions, I found there were bits that wouldn’t import properly each time I tried it. Spent 2 weeks trying to resolve this, matching up the receipt with the bank was the stumbling block. Eventually I found the solution; print out a report showing the receipts and re-enter them manually into the new Quickbooks file. This turned out to be surprisingly easy, as the one thing Quickbooks is good at is entering transactions.
One day Quickbooks will be blown away with an Open Source online solution, till then I’ll just stick with my old Quickbooks version
28. November 2011 at 2:52 pm :
How about stipulating clearly on your box what version this is, UK or US as I have now purchased the US version and can not restore my company files as the previous version was UK
1. December 2011 at 6:59 am :
I HAVE HAD IT WITH THIS USELESS PIECE OF ****!
It’s now 05:45AM. I have been wrestling with my VAT return since midnight. Until I upgraded from QB2006 to QB2008, this was accomplished at the click of a button. Seemples!
I’m a one-woman band, and the relevant sales/purchase entries would fit on once side of A4. The numbers QB is spewing out are madness – apparently my turnover has been about 5 times what it actually was, and it expects me to pay the VAT Man several thousand more than I actually owe (presumably with the money I don’t actually have).
Ever since I made the *monstrous* mistake of upgrading, I’ve wrestled with the legendary ‘uncategorised VAT amounts’ problem every VAT quarter. No advice anywhere. The built-in help doesn’t cover it. It sends you to a link to the QB support website. Which doesn’t open from the built-in link. So I go to the QB site myself. Eventually find the right FAQ link re uncategorised VAT (not easily done) only to find a ‘This page doesn’t exist anymore’ notice.
So this is what I get for my £45/month licence fee, including the non-existent tech support which QB twisted my arm into getting the first time I had to call to get them to help me with this – at a cost of £35 for the phone call. Of course, the tech support option has to be taken out for a whole year, no refunds. Why am I even paying a monthly fee anyway when I bought the software outright, initially? I never wanted the stupid upgrades – 2006 did everything I wanted. The upgrades have caused me nothing but grief. Steer well clear is my advice.
Tomorrow I’m cancelling my subscription. I’d rather go back to using an Excel spreadsheet – it was much quicker and easier. Come to that, I’d rather use a pencil and paper… or an abacus.
2. January 2012 at 4:54 pm :
I bought Quickbooks V6 when the Millenium brought my previous accounting software grinding to a halt. V6 has been superb since but then I only use it for running charity /not-for-profit organisations accounts. Sadly itnever allowed me to export data to XL, it generated a windows fault notice and closed. I can generate reports, invoices and stgatements as pdf’s which allows me to email to my members. Last year I tried to update my software and Intuit demanded megga dosh without any regard to my charities limited income. No I have upgraded my laptop to take to meetings and find that my old softyware will not load onto my new laptop.
I decided to upgrade and again am faced with high costs but having read this blog I am now looking for a reliable alternative. Isn’t it sad that Intuit can be so out of tune with its customers. Bookkeeping should be a support function of a business and allow the business owner to focus on his own business and do what he does best, it seems that Intuit expect the business administration to take more time than running the business.
What will be the wake up call?
21. January 2012 at 11:44 am :
I recently moved from a desktop to a laptop running Win 7 and QB Pro 2008. You need an activation code so I rang up and spoke to an Indian chap. He point blank refused to give me a valid activation code, kept giving me one which Quickbooks said was not valid. He stated that Quickbooks wouldn’t work on Windows 7 and I had to upgrade to the latest version, or install XP! He got quite rude and said perhaps I wasn’t understanding the English language! There’s a difference between doesn’t work and not certified.
In the end I asked to escalate it as I was getting nowhere. Got put through to the UK and the woman gave me a valid activation code straight away, with the caveat that it’s not certified on Windows 7.
What a shambles of a company.