Customer Reviews

Peachtree Premium Accounting 2008

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have been a Peachtree customer for over 17 years. I had not upgraded for a few years and felt this would be the time to do so. Some of the new features looked quite attractive. The first thing I noticed after insalling the multi-user version on my network is that they had changed the datbase from the Novell btrieve format to Pervasive SQL. I thought this would be good as I have usually noticed SQL databases run faster. Boy was I mistaken. The program ran so slow it was unusable. Different windows might take 30 seconds to pop up and another screen would take 20 seconds to save. The confusing thing was the behavior was not consistent it would run fast for a few transactions then revert to running slow. Peachtree technical support told me my server was not fast enough to handle the new version even though all my other software programs ran fine on the network. I should have been suspicious because Peachtree ran this slow even when I was the only one using the network. Nevertheless, I bought a new $3,600 Server and much to my dismay Peachtree ran just as slow. Then Peachtree Technical support claimed it was my network switch so I bought a newer one for $650. No improvement. I could see what was coming next. They claimed it was my workstations. I was about to upgrade the 3 bookkeeping computers anyway so I spent $1,950 each to buy very fast systems for the 3 of them. Still no change. I have searched around the Internet and found that I am not the only one to have these problems. It seems that the newest versions of Peachtree with the Pervasive SQL database where only designed to be run in Single user mode and not on a network. They built the network functions on later. I am very upset with Peachtree technical support for lying to me. If they would have told me the truth that there where some problems with the network abilities in the new version of Peachtree and that they were working on them, I would have saved thousands of dollars in new hardware that they claimed I needed. The last thing they told me was that I just needed to upgrade to Peachtree Quantum Accounting because it ran much faster. That would cost me thousands more. They must be kidding. I will never trust them again. My old version ran fine but they tell me there is now way to downgrade my data files. I am looking around for another brand of software now. If it can painlessly convert my Peachtree data I will switch.

I will preface this by stating that I have never submitted a product review before, but feel so strongly about Peachtree Premium Accounting 2008 that I am submitting this review.

This is simply the very worst business accounting software I have ever used.

I am a finance professional by trade and the interface in this software makes little sense. There is no editable transaction ledger for non-cash accounts. For example, if your business has a credit card, you will enter each transaction (as a "check") while not being able to see other transactions. If you want to view the history of the account, you have to generate a report and if it doesn't reconcile, it is VERY VERY difficult to get to the erroneous transaction. The makers of this software have very clearly never run a small business.

Also of note, the company data is stored in a series of files, not one file, and cannot be stored on a file server (Peachtree won't open it). You HAVE to store the files on a system with Peachtree installed.

Finally, after registering this software, you will be inundated with offers for support packages for the software.

Excellent accounting package. Easy to use. Easy to inport and export data in CSV format. Integrated Crystal Report makes report generation very flexible.