Customer Reviews

QuickBooks Pro 2003

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

 

 

This is a perfect example of a good program gone from bad to worse... I started using Quicken when it first came out over a decade ago and thought it was great. I upgraded to QuickBooks and eventually to QuickBooks Pro '99 due to business needs. But I won't upgrade again.

I have used the upgraded editions with other clients and have decided NOT to upgrade for my own business use because of the following problems which have been brought to the attention of Intuit, but which have NOT been addressed:

1. LOUSY and expensive customer support, often for problems due directly to Intuit errors
2. Constant addition of fees for what should be basic accounting processes (pay roll, tax forms, etc.) AND lack of adequate notice that these fees will be encountered until after purchase has been made
3. Yearly upgrades that do not offer better program usability but DO cost more and more each year
4. Forced upgrades by "Dropping" of support AND cancellation of on-line banking capabilities for all "outdated" versions of the program (which are often better than the newer versions)
5. Lack of true versatility for business users - i.e. can't really change the invoice forms to work for a variety of businesses billing in a variety of ways
6. Lack of compatability with other commonly used programs - i.e. unable to import / export with most MS Word and MS Office functions

Finally, I object to a strong trend I am seeing with QuickBooks - It is becoming the exclusive realm of the "professional" bookkeepers. There are expensive classes, "QuickBooks" consultants and accountants who will gladly teach you how to use the program, set up your books for you and require that all your year end business records be submitted in QuickBooks - or they won't touch your taxes. All for a fee of course! If you can't keep your own books, then you shouldn't be in business and you certainly shouldn't waste your time with this product.

After buying the 2003 upgrade, we have had real problems. Although earler versions ran well and the computer fully meets system requirements, the 2003 version is extremely slow. When you put the cursor over the menu bar, it takes two seconds before it is recognized. Click on the item and it takes up to 5 seconds for the menu to appear. Call Intuit and they want your credit card to talk to a "software engineer." I understand how they can charge for company specific accounting questions, but charge for software problems? My advice, save your money and don't upgrade. As a long time Intuit/Quicken customer I am very disheartened with the company and their products.

I wish I had evaluated Simply Accounting, PC Magazine's choice, prior to purchasing Quickbooks. It's only $40.00 and you can get a free demo over the internet to evaluate.

Quickbooks can probably handle any transaction or any expense, in any manner you choose. The developers have clearly designed Quickbooks to accomodate any possible way you might do business, and for a wide variety of businesses.

Now that sounds very positive yet you do NOT want to buy this software. Why - it seems no one at Quicken ever thought about day to day use. You can, given some effort, find a way to record sales and expenses the way you want. But its highly unlikely you can record any of that information in a user- friendly or intuitive manner - highly unlikely!!!!!

For example: I had a number of items I wanted to add to my Quickbooks inventory of products to be sold. For sixty items - all from the same supplier, all very similar, I was forced to key in every piece of data and make a number of repetitive selections about how to handle them. Even routine paste and copy doesn't work within Quicken, easily. Not only doesn't Quicken easily allow pasting, it doesn't remember a thing you did previously. It was clear no one in the Quicken design team had ever tried entering 60 items into an inventory. In fact, I don't think you could make that simple task more difficult or less intuitive to do than what Quicken has created in this software.

Another example of bad design: my business does phone and internet sales. Quicken provides/recommends a form for such sales. On that form you can put in buyers name, address, (no email/phone though), and the items purchased. That sounds OK - perhaps less than perfect but things get worse. Processing the credit card is disastorous! There are no provided fields for credit card or expiration date. I even subscribed to Quicken's merchant services (meaning credit card processing service). When you are ready to process the order you click "process credit card" (a Quicken exclusive for 2003) and you have a new screen with the amount of the sale entered for you from the preceding form but (if you can believe this) the fields are blank for the name/address of the purchaser you just filled out in the previous screen. So now you but you have no choice but to ask the customer for that information all over again. And NO ------ you can't start with the credit card screen first nor can you see the first screen. Now, what is even worse ------ is once the order is processed you have NO record of the credit card number used!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I find it impossible to believe that Quicken ever, even for a single minute, tried to see if this was a useable solution for those of us who sell a product and take credit card payments in full at the time of sale. To get around this ------- I write out everything long hand on a piece of paper, file a hard copy and then enter it in Quicken!!!!!! Uselsess software!!!

Quicken also provides only paid support - so good luck with problems and I really doubt Quicken wants to know about problems. Their sole focus seems to be on selling you additional services.

Also, be aware, every aspect of the program is laden with features that are really advertisements for additional Quicken services that will probably work poorly but you can never turn them off, even if you purchase them. The links within the program remain displayed.

I wish I had evaluated Simply Accounting, PC Magazines choice, prior to purchasing Quickbooks. It's only $40.00 and you can get a free demo over the internet. I don't know if it is better but it would be hard for it to be worse than Quickbooks and at least you can try it out for free.

The fact that there is NO SUPPORT without a fee keeps Quicken insulated from customer problems and this alone, given what little feedback they get, may explain such a poorly designed product. Hear no evil should be Quicken's motto.

UPDATE: December 2003

Untuit had an online survey of some of its customers during November 2003 which I participated in. As can be imagined, my comments were not overally kind. To my surprise, I was contacted by Intuit, weeks later for an in depth interview over the phone. I was contacted by a "director" of the corporation who spoke with me for over an hour and a half concerning my complaints. Yet I was offered no solutions other than a call back from a product specialist which I received at the day and time promised. What is interesting is that in both cases I talked with very personable, intelligent individuals. Yet every issue I raised regarding the lack of user friendliness in the Product was or could not be addressed.

In the end, I concluded my final conversation with Intuit (via the product specialist) with the remarks that I had talked with two Intuit representatives that where both clearly intelligent, motivated, and personable. Yet at the same time I was an unpaid "beta" tester of a product that was clearly not user friendly, at least in my case.

I have verified that Quickbooks pro now REQUIRES the Gator SPYWARE to run. They don't tell you this, but it silently installs Gator, a long known spyware program, and if you uninstall the spyware with ad-aware or manually remove the spyware Quickbooks tells you that you are trying to open a document created with a newer version than your software. When you go to the automatic update online, it REINSTALLS Gator spyware. BEWARE. My intrusion detection system showed the PC with Quickbooks/Gator sending ten times the amount of information back to Gator than the pc's infected with the regular version of the Gator spyware. Spyware advice sites report that Gator sends the information you fill into forms back to them. Now imagine filling in a credit card number on a web form...

BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID.

I'm a CPA and QuickBooks advisor, and I like QuickBooks. My clients like QuickBooks, too. I got it when it came out in 1991 and have used it ever since. I make my living working with QuickBooks, but I am trying here to be objective and tell you what I have learned over the years.

I find that it is stressful for users to get used to QB and adapt to it. Even people who have wide computer use experience can have trouble, despite, or perhaps because of, that experience. You need to be patient and determined. I do fault Intuit for implying that it is easy to pick up.

Furthermore, accounting is not a trivial subject that you can pick up in a couple of weeks or months. If you are not an experienced bookkeeper or accountant, you will have a learning curve with QuickBooks. Having said that, however, I did work with a Spanish-speaking immigrant who is an electrical contractor, and in spite of the language barrier and his lack of experience, he caught on and after a couple of months was (and still is) using it happily. If you have no accounting background, you will probaby need help with QuickBooks, and help will reduce your frustration level significantly.

I have clients who use the QuickBooks merchant service and QuickBooks credit cards, and they are very happy with them. I recommend them if you have high volume. But I also have clients who use just the basic software, no payroll, no merchant or credit card service, and their volume is small enough that they are also pleased. If you have no more than 5 employees you can easily do payroll without the payroll service, and even in 2003 you are not forced to subscribe to the payroll tables.

No one can afford to give away our services if we are to stay in business. And neither can Intuit. Consider all the costs involved in running a large call center. Why should those who don't need the support pay for it (as would be the case if support were "free"--included in the purchase price)?

For those who are willing to take a bit longer to do manual payrolls, from within QuickBooks, we can do that without paying for payroll tax tables. We may not get all the bells and whistles that come with the payroll tax tables, but at least we can manage to get it done. As with everything else in life, there are tradeoffs to QuickBooks--cost vs convenience. Those who are truly small can manage quite well with Quicken. You shouldn't move up to QuickBooks unless you can afford not only the software but also support. I hate to say it, but if you're having trouble, you need to bite the bullet and get the support so they can walk you through your problems. One thing I have learned in my years with QuickBooks--if there is a problem, it is me almost all the time. I may not be looking at a situation right, or there may be some quirk about using the system, but 99% of the time it is me or my client. QuickBooks is very stable and I have had only one problem in the last couple of years that I blame on Intuit. I do sometimes find that Intuit hasn't thought through some feature or process, but these are the exceptions. The multi-user version is a bit slow, but the program has many features (you might call it bloat-ware but there is also the need to remain competitive and offer the features other accounting software does).

The on-line help (the How-do-I buttons in almost every screen) is excellent and you need to explore it extensively.

You need to get help when you set up QuickBooks. Especially with payroll. I hear from people who are just getting started with QuickBooks and they don't really want to pay for help in getting started up. And I hear from people who have been using QuickBooks for several years and their payroll and sales taxes are completely messed up. I have even come across people who have never set up and paid state unemployment taxes, because they didn't know they were supposed to. If you are going into business, you really need to find out about the taxes you need to pay so they don't come along a couple of years later to take a bite out of you when you don't expect it.

I also find it very frustrating dealing with Intuit--submitting questions or comments. They do not respond. I wish they would.

I could only chuckle seeing as the ONLY positive review about QB2003 comes from someone who has a business depending on it (the Nancy Schiff review).

I know the program in and out, not only from user's experience but (as a 23-year-in-business software developer) also programming-wise. I can tell you the last two versions are examples of absolutely horrible "bloatware"; comments about them working slow are right on target. So are gripes about Intuit sub-par "support" and the fee structure hidden at the time of purchase and becoming apparent only after many users have no way out.

As a sign of things to come, Intuit is embroiled in probably the biggest software user revolt of the present time, see the article

and is losing customers by the thousands because of this. Somehow they thought they are another Microsoft with a lock on the market, and are surprised now when tax software users are going to other packages rather than swallowing Intuit's (absolutely horrible) scheme.
In short, Turbotax2002 installs the "C-dilla" spyware on the user's computer behind the user's back, compromising user's privacy and messing up with the computer on several levels (including apparently low-level sector data on the hard drive, so the spyware cannot be eradicated even by reformatting). Being stung by vicious press reports and users jumping ship by the thousands, Intuit quickly put an uninstaller on the market but it also disables Turbotax (logically) so all those ex-users are simply lost to competitors.

I don't want to go on a long rant here, but as someone watching the industry trends since the very beginning of the PC era in 1981 I can see the writing on the wall for Intuit if they keep on doing what they are doing, both in QB (bad support, too many fees), in Quicken (the horribly cluttered 2003 interface) and now the spyware addition in Turbotax. I personally would think twice about pinning my business on Intuit long term. I have seen so many former "invincible champions" going bust (dBase, WordPerfect, what-have-you) it wouldn't surprise me at all if people were asking in 2006 "what's Quickbooks"?

I have been using all three lines of Intuit products (QB, Quicken, Turbotax) for many, many years. However, effective just this month I have replaced ALL THREE with competing software and consciously left ALL Intuit programs forever. From what I hear, an awfully large number of people are doing exactly the same.

Just my 2c :-)

As a user of Quickbooks for seven years, I found that each newer versions of Quickbooks worst than the previous versions. If you download the update patches, it converts your data file so that it is no longer compatible with your accountant's version unless he install the patches also. If you upgrade to a newer version and find that it is not to your liking, you can't go back to an older version because Quickbooks converted your data files. The Tax Table updates are short of robbery. I am locked in with Quickbooks for now, but is looking for a different product.

I kind of feel compelled to wade into this firefight because some readers will know me or of me and maybe, just maybe, I can be a little more credible than some of the other reviews.

Before I get to that, however, let me make a couple of disclosures. First, I am the author of both QuickBooks for Dummies and Quicken for Dummies (so that might make you think I'm going to pander to Intuit), however, I am also the most prolific computer book writer in the world. (More than 150 books, most of which aren't on Intuit products.) Second, I'm a CPA (in Seattle area) and what I do is help small businesses do their taxes and get going with QuickBooks. Enough on that.

Here are my considered comments:
1. SUPPORT...Tech Support from Intuit does, to me, seem kind of expensive compared to the old days when support was free. And I, too, have had the experience of calling with what I'm sure is a software bug--but then having Intuit say, "Dude, you got to pay." So that .... But I also know that many, perhaps most, of the problems that people have with QuickBooks stem from inadequate accounting skills or QuickBooks knowledge. In my opinion, then, the blame goes both ways. Yes, Intuit should be better in the way they manage their support programs. But customers should expect to pay for what often amounts to consulting and training.

My suggestion? Buy a support program (they have several) and just consider that support program cost part of the cost of owning QuickBooks. You're still getting a great deal.

2. PAYROLL... As I've written about in my books, payroll has been a less than satisfactory component of QuickBooks. Part of that, again, is QuickBooks. But you have easy and relatively inexpensive payroll solutions that you can use in place of QuickBooks payroll if you have troubles. E.g., you can go to outside payroll service bureaus (like ADP and Paychex) where you're almost guaranteed to get good service. You'll pay probably several hundred to a couple thousand dollars a year for this service (depending on the number of employees and the frequency of payroll). But you know what? If you're having trouble getting your payroll done correctly, the service bureau route is a good approach.

Tangential comment: If you add a good support program and work with an outside service bureau, your accounting costs do go up. But you know what? If you're running a small business with employees, you got to have a good accounting system. And a good accounting system costs money.

3. BUGS AND SUCH... I haven't found QuickBooks 2003 to be particularly or uniquely buggy.

4. FEE-BASED ADD-ONS... I agree with this point. But it's a bit like complaining your kids won't pick up their bedrooms. Yeah, it's an annoyance, but truthfully it's not really much more than that..

5. FINAL COMMENT... OK, even considering everything said here and all the problems one has, QuickBooks is still a GREAT PRODUCT! It's easy to use. It's inexpensive (even after you add costs for support and payroll) as compared to the old days where you needed to hire a bookkeeper or CPA to do your books. And it can be a powerful tool for better managing your business.

Steve

P.S. If somebody has a quick question about QuickBooks, it's okay to email me. I don't know if it's kosher to stick my email address into this post so won't. But you can easily search on my name and locate contact information...

Intuit has done it again with quickbooks 2003. I just noticed that one of the new features is that you can print W-2s on blank paper. When you try to do this operation you are told that you need to subscribe to their payroll service $$$. Intuit has got to be the worst example of [messing with]their customers I've ever seen. Pretty good program, lousy company. Try other programs before you settle on Quickbooks and get locked in.

I have used Intuit's Quicken products for many years and have always been happy with them, so when I started a business a couple of years ago, I bought Quickbooks 2001. Immediately I felt betrayed when I found I could not do payroll without paying Intuit's high priced subscription fee. That was one of the main reasons for buying Quickbooks. I now do payroll manually and just use Quickbooks to keep the checkbook balanced and to send out invoices.

Recently I tried to do an online update of my checking account and ran into some errors. I spent several hours with their incompetent tech support telling me it was a network issue. After some research I am told I will have to upgrade to 2003 to be able to use the online update feature.

I am going to upgrade, but it is going to be to something that doesn't say Intuit or Microsoft on the box. That alone will be an upgrade.

Do not buy. Terrible product, even worse product service. I would recommend a pencil and a napkin over this product.