Customer Reviews

QuickBooks Pro 2005

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

I've been a QuickBooks fan since starting up my company and realizing how much of a tremendous help QuickBooks was. I started out with QuickBooks 2003 and just a little while ago, I thought it was the time to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Well, I have to warn you that the latest, isn't the greatest. I still like QuickBooks 2003 much better, and in fact I sold my copy of 2005 on eBay and am continuing to use 2003. A lot of really handy features were removed from 2005, and many of them were the best features, like the E-Filing and E-Pay. I think I'm just going to stick with my current version of QuickBooks until Intuit gets on the ball again and puts these features back when they release 2006.

Two parts of my review, because Quickbooks is really a combination of Software and Services:

1. The software

A mature blend of features that for many, will get the job done. Big improvements now are the ability to put invoice fields in TWO places on the print outs for tear-out-send-back-with-payment sheets. Why did it take YEARS for that basic feature that more than half of QB users use for payments!?

2. The support. Ok, here we go:

To their credit, in 1999/2000 I made 3-4 calls to the call center for both technical and customer support related issues and was so impressed that I actually told others how good it was - and remember it today. The reps were humorous and helpful, and seemed to "relate" to my needs as a QB user.

Now, in 2004, "John" (with an INTENSE Indian Accent) required me to spend 70 minutes on the phone, while repeating "Just a moment, thank you for your patience, just a moment, I'm getting that information, just a moment, please hold,..." and ON and ON and ON until I had a headache from the netherworld.

And you'd think a 70-minute call would be over some intensely complex technical issue... BUT... this was a call to the billing department to ask about a charge I didn't recognize! I had my statement, card number, charge code, and amount in front of me. AND THEY NEVER COULD HELP ME. I hung up the phone without having my problem solved and disputed the charge with the Credit card company.

The charge dispute process took 7 minutes. Flat. Done. Thanks FirstUSA for keeping your support top-notch.

Back to Intuit:

Hold a moment. Thank you for holding. One moment. Thank you for holding. I'm getting that information. [click]

Intuit is penny wise and pound foolish by outsourcing to this level.

Update: Another call, November 2004, was even worse. Accent (and 'recording-like' attitude) prevented us from doing business on the phone. I eventually appologized and hung up.

I have used QB since 2000 when I started my business. The application is fine in many respects. But if you buy this, you should also factor in that upgrading the product is necessary if you want certain features to continue to work.

I did my first upgrade in 2002 when I learned you could email invoices directly from the program. This was a very useful feature that they introduced in the 2001 upgrade. In the 2002 upgrade, they also enabled emailing statements, also a feature I've found very useful. I am convinced that Intuit rolls out upgrades in such a way as to strongly encourage their customers to upgrade each year. Being able to e-mail invoices and statements should have occurred in one upgrade, not two.

Not only that, my 2002 version emailing feature stopped working earlier this year as the 2002 version is no longer officially supported. I have never heard of a product that disabled functionality in this way. When I initially upgraded, I had no idea that there was a built-in time bomb. But again, this is a way of "encouraging" you to upgrade. So if you want to use this program, be prepared to purchase upgrades indefinitely or else you may find you can't use some feature a few years from now.

When the email feature was disabled, I called Intuit and the gal that I talked to didn't believe me at first, but after checking, she acknowledged that yes that feature is disabled and the solution is to upgrade.

I have no particular problems with the software, but I do have problems with the policies of Intuit. If you buy it, expect you may have to upgrade. Intuit is very interested in revenue, which is fine and necessary for a company to survive. But they are interested in it to a degree which can alienate customers and which I suspect will cost them quite a bit of money in the long run, especially as Microsoft is just about to roll out their Small Business Accounting program - perhaps the first worthy competitor to QB.

Upgraded to 2005 with all expectations that things would work as they always did. Imagine my surprise when, creating the first 2005 invoice, I was asked for an e-mail address for the customer. Yes, there's a cancel, but it cancels the invoice. You can't get to the customer profile to change the preferred method of sending when the e-mail window is there. Yes, you can enter your own e-mail address and later delete them all from the "Send" function. Waste of time. There's no way to globally change all clients. I'm now about half way through changing 1200 customer profiles.

Who at Intuit thought it would be a good idea to default customer profiles to e-mail invoices? Who tested this and said "Wow, good idea." Stupid!!!

I agree with the above users, there are better software out there. Please look around and be more futuristic. QuickBooks is for very small companies only. It slows down when the size of your database goes up. I tested some software and found some really good, with reasonable price: BusinessWorks, Small Business Manager (microsoft.com), Quick Business Manager (bisaim.com),Vision Point 2000 (ACCPAC), BusinessVision 32 (Softline).

Good Luck in your search.

extremely poor technical support. I had to contact sales to get the answer because, Alex,Andrew,Adam all living in India could not answer the question and appeared not to really understand the question.I asked them why they use american names they said the company thought we the buyer might be more receptive if they use good old USA names. The program it self is fine I have been using it since 2002 but when a problem arises there is no support to count on.

Stay far, far away from QuickBooks.

The "literally every year forever" charge for "tax table updates" is completely unethical - based on very simple numerical updates available in IRS Circular E, Intuit charges you (currently, and increasing every year) $ 214 per year for these updates - which happen about once every few months.

Problem is, if you discontinue your "tax table update" service, ALL tax tables are removed from your program and your are essentially unable to do payroll based on the free tax table data which you can enter yourself. There is no "internal", empty tax table into which you can plug the percentages/calculations.

It is inexcusable that Intuit does not provide the facility for manually entering the very simple tax table data yourself and continuing to process payroll - especially for small businesses with less than 10 employees. Note that you can continue to manually calculate each of the deductions and enter them yourself on each paycheck screen - and thus trod through payroll. A site such as [...]
The above site will calculate an entire paycheck and all deductions, all you need is W-4 (withholding allowance) info for each employee

Intuit is engaged in extortion - declaring themselves a non-government institution levying a tax on all businesses. Once you buy (and keep using QuickBooks), you MUST subsidize Intuit every month - FOREVER!

In addition to their famed unreachable and unusable support, this company, which was once a fantastic provider of wonderful software and essential business tools has taken the downturn into corporate greed and unethical business practices.

Expect to see many class action lawsuits coming soon towards Intuit for the way they are holding their customers hostage and disabling the ability to REALLY do "Do-It-Yourself" payroll, organized calls for FTC and Justice Department intervention, organized boycotts, major magazine articles, action by CPA groups, state constitutional amendment petitions and legislative action.

Intuit, according to their published data, controls 85% of the market (which is more than Microsoft in its market) and has a profit margin in excess of 75%. They make tons of money off their software and ancillary services.

[...]

Don't run your business with this software if you are careful with your money - as most small businesspeople are.

Every few years you have to upgrade in order to maintain the ridiculously expensive payroll tax update. I wish I had never upgraded from the early 1990's version.

You used to be able to manually enter the federal and state withholding infomation in the earlier versions, which makes sense for a very small business like ours. But you can't do that anymore. In order to even OPEN the payroll window, you MUST subscribe to the payroll update service! I seem to recall that it's almost $200 per year now, and increases annually!

It is now May, 2005, and I just received a notice that Intuit will no longer be providing tax tables for the 2003 version. I dread opening mail from Quickbooks, because notices like this are not uncommon.

I am looking for a different software program for 2006.

If you have used Quicken, you probably take automated downloads of your bank, credit card, and brokerage transactions for granted. You would expect that QuickBooks, a more expensive product positioned as an upgrade by Intuit, would have at least comparable capability.

Wrong.

Using Quickbooks with any bank, credit card, or brokerage is truly miserable. If your financial institution is one of the few that supports downloads of transactions to QuickBooks, the interface is so miserable you may go back to typing in transactions by hand. (You have to individually approve each transaction, often answering three or more questions for each.) And, if you think, you will just use QIF files, or Excel files, or even text files that your bank produces to get your transactions into QuickBooks, you are out of luck.

The only type of import files QuickBooks accepts are IIF or "Web Connect"(QBO)files. Intuit craftily does not let you import transactions from Excel files and does not let you export transactions in any form. I bought a third party converter to produce IIF files from QIF files, but it is hard to use and does not always work. The only Excel to IIF converter I could find did not work at all. I couldn't find any utility that made a QBO file.

Bottom line: you probably will end up typing in every check, charge, deposit, and payment by hand. Welcome to 1987 technology!

The only reason to buy QuickBooks would be if you needed time accounting, invoicing, or payroll so badly that you were willing to type in all your transactions by hand.

It is astounding that Intuit would throw this inconvenience into their user's faces. Worse, there is no way to convert back to Quicken from QuickBooks.

I have been using QB Pro 2004 for over a year now. My main complaint is that online banking has been broken since installing (It's a credit card and a checking account...fairly simple, but can't get both to work at the same time. My QB-certified accountant can't get it to work either...if you want boring details, email me!)

You've already read about how bad the phone support is...my experience was no different, and they want to charge you for everything.

Hey Intuit, why not make sure the software that your customers purchase WORKS at least ONCE before charging for support?

I can't believe after all these years that some other software giant can't crush these guys with something basic and workable. After reading reviews of all the accounting packages, it still appears that QB is the "least worst". ;-)