Customer Reviews

QuickBooks 2010 for Mac [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(36)

 

 

Updated to delete mention of issues that were fixed in the R4 patch...

Intuit's Quickbooks for Mac team has been busy fixing bugs since this product was released, already having published four bug-fixing updates. There are still some issues with the product which can be read about in the Intuit Community forum, but it is clear that Intuit is working to correct reported issues.

Some reports still do not work properly. For example, a Time by Job Summary report is not sorted, and cannot be sorted. Sorting in most reports is somewhat problematic, only sorting a single field (and often not sorting that field in order). The team needs to look at the Windows version of the product to see how data is supposed to be organized.

Itemized statements duplicate some lines and omit others, so that the sum of the items does not add up to the total shown.

There are a few rough edges that require extra mouse clicks vs the Windows product. For example, if you delete a transaction in a screen such as Enter Bills, the window closes and you have to re-open it to delete another. Of, if you are entering certain kinds of time or transactional activity, you only have an OK button to save the result, and then have to click to open the dialog to make another entry. In the Windows version, the dialogs/windows stay open until closed and there are "Save and New" and "Save and Close" buttons.

The Invoice screen on Mac has a pure white background. On Windows, every other line is highlighted in pale blue to make it easier to read the data for the line. Little things like this make Quickbooks Mac feel less polished.

Enter single activity time - has no timer function as on Windows. On Windows you can click start/stop to accumulate time without jotting down the hour from your watch. Intuit provides a new applet called My Time which provides this stopwatch capability, although it is not as full-features as the Windows Quickbooks Timer app. My Time has some very rough edges, most notably that it can only record time for a single employee for a single company.

Windows users have many more shortcuts available for data entry than Intuit offers in their Mac version. For example, in Windows you can use the Ctrl-S shortcut, as in Quicken, to open up the split transaction view of a register entry, or in a date field you can enter "t" for "today", "m" for the first day of the current month and many other date shortcuts. With QB Mac 2010, none of these are available.

Also, QB Mac does not use context menus (right click pop-up menu) consistently or well. When in a checking account register, for example, a right click offers no QuickBooks commands. The Windows version offers most appropriate commands there. QB Mac does use context menus in other areas, so this must just be an unintended omission.

Two service companies without payroll seemed to import fine from QB Win 2008. A third company with payroll brought over less employee information than I would have hoped, even given that Intuit advertises Quickbooks Mac as not having integrated payroll. First, there is no nice Employee Center as there is in QB Win; you just get a list of employees. Second, double-clicking an employee name brings up only the basic address information along with SSN and hire date from "Personal Info". Date of birth and gender are gone - not even automatically created as custom fields to preserve the data. No payroll and compensation data is brought over to QB Mac . Zilch. So, no items, pay rates, frequency, filing status, allowances, withholding, etc. All gone. Presumably all of this has to be entered manually into the online payroll service that Intuit sells. There is no built-in (private and secure to your computer) payroll option as with the Windows version. The online payroll costs considerably more than basic payroll (1 to 3 employees) for QB Win and does not make economic sense for a firm with a small payroll.

Existing paychecks and payroll liability payments, however, display full split detail, but no payroll liability accounts were created in QB Mac, so proper reports for converted payroll cannot be generated. (Actually, NO reports for payroll can be generated - the option just is not there. My memorized payroll reports came across and do report on the payroll items which are otherwise inaccessible in QB Mac. That is really bizarre. If I had not had any memorized payroll reports, then none would be available in QB Mac for my converted transactions.)

The split detail refers to Payroll Items as in QB Pro Win, but there is no way to access, edit or report on these items in QB Mac. It seems impossible to create a new check with the same format. How hard would it be to have a "New paycheck" or "New liability payment" option that gave you the same split info for new transactions? Intuit KB article 1009746 suggests that you must create liability accounts manually and issue checks in a completely different way than the imported checks. So, how can you generate coherent payroll reports for an entire year, where you switched from Windows to Mac in the middle of the year? I don't think it is possible.

A 570 page e-book is part of the product, downloadable from the Help menu. This book, "Quickbooks Mac 2010 The Official eBook" by Maria Langer and published by McGraw Hill, is a tremendous value for anyone just starting out doing accounting with Quickbooks Mac, and even for experienced users looking at features that they may not have used before.

I recommend that you download the free trial of this product before purchasing if you have any questions about whether it can handle your accounting needs.

 

I'll be the odd duck and actually give this version a good review! I use it for my business which is a financial service business (no inventory and no POS through Quickbooks) and I was already using PayCycle (now Intuit Online Payroll) so I have no payroll problems. I also use it as the Treasurer of my Rotary Club.

I've read a bunch of negative reviews but I was pleasantly surprised how will it works! The only thing I'm personally missing is the Fixed Asset List of the windows version but that is simple enough to keep on a spreadsheet. Some of the complaints have been that it doesn't operate identical to the Windows version in term of keyboard shortcuts and that the colors are more primary and less professional.... Give me a break! I LOVE the more Mac like graphical interface and I guess I'm not missing the keyboard shortcuts as much because I use a MacBook Pro and the combination of using hand gestures right below the keyboard is so efficient that I don't really bother with keyboard shortcuts as much as I used to. BTW, there are still some keyboard shortcuts... but they are the more Mac-like keyboard shortcuts. There are comments about the visual look of the reports on screen cutting off fonts... I figured out all you need to do is click Format->Restore Default the first time you use the report and the screen view adjusts to correct that small bug.

I also had no data problems with my conversion because I followed the directions on the support page for Intuit. Could they have just provided the conversion information with program as opposed to digging it up on their website? Yes, but they didn't. Anyway, I downloaded and installed the trial version of the Quickbook for Accountants 2010 version for Windows to open and update my Windows 2009 pro version to 2010. I then used that same trial software to export a Mac 2010 file. It worked perfectly. Would I have preferred that the Mac 2010 version converted an older Windows version automatically? Yes, but the inconvenience of installing the Windows 2010 Accountant version was small.

So bottom line, is it perfect? No... but it works much better for me than I would have ever dreamed based on other reviews! I suggest downloading the 30 day trial from Intuit first and trying it within your business environment. If it works for you, buy it from Amazon like I'm about to.

 

I purchased the upgrade because my bank no longer supported transaction downloads compatible with QB for Mac 2006. Althought the data conversion seemed to go alright, the online banking piece is buggy as hell. I am running on Snow Leopard on a 2008 MacBook and every time I try to import transaction files from my bank or AMEX the software freezes. Even opening the Downloaded Transactions window seems to take forever, I am trying to reach someone at Intuit but there is no obvious way to reach them without a supprt agreement. At this point, I can't recommend it.

 

I purchased this version because I upgraded to Snow Leopard and found out that QB 2007 data will become corrupted. The first time it billed a client 9 billion it was funny. The problem progressed to more clients and accounts. It took surfing different sites to find out the source of the problem. Sure didn't hear it from Intuit. I use QB every day, I had no choice but to upgrade. This new version crashes enough that Intuit has created a new crash catcher screen as the program shuts down.

I am not a newbie, this will be my fourth upgrade in QB. The first time I talked to a support person, he tried to talk me into the $35 a month support fee. He wanted to charge for a data repair on a less than 30 day product. I was told "it takes 3 rebuilds before it will work, call back if that doesn't work." The second time I called, the data file was repaired but sent back without bank data. I noted that on their repair report, I'm guessing no one reads them. Had to reconstruct missing customer payments from my printed records. Not fun.

If Quickbooks delivered to Mac users as promised it would be fine. It never does. I have purchased Moneyworks Express for a new company I'm starting. It's worth a shot to potentially avoid the ongoing frustration with Quickbooks. Moneyworks doesn't appear to have all the bells and whistles, but once you learn their New Zealand accounting terms, it seems to work fine (and works with filemaker pro, btw).

 

I replaced Quickbooks for Mac with Quickbooks for Mac 2010. What a mistake. I imported my lists. I ended up with hundreds of duplications. It crashes between 20 and 30 times each day... little rainbow spinning circle for HOURS! I have to keep force quitting and then it reopens without any password requirements. Most of the time when you type in notes on the client note pad, as soon as you save the sales receipt and eventually FIND the sales receipt again, ALL of the notes are gone! The sales receipts don't save sequentially. In fact, I can't figure out what method of saving it DOES use! When you save a sales receipt, if you want to go back to the previous invoice, you must click "previous" over and over until you find the sales receipt. This could be in the dozens or in the hundreds. I feel amazingly stupid to have spend money to replace a really bad program with a really horrible program.

I guess I could sit on hold for hours to get help from that weird little Indian guy for $4.99 per minute, but it seems stupid to me to get ripped off by their horrible programmers and to then get ripped off again by some idiot who doesn't even know how the program works to ask insulting questions like "Sir, did you install the disk shiny side down?". I've used Quickbooks for TWO decades now, yes, I installed the disk shiny side down. But it doesn't really matter because the program doesn't work any better than if I had installed it shiny side up!

So, finally... I quit. I am now shopping for a point of sale program that works with MAC, that actually works, and I'm done pounding money into the Quickbooks hole in my desk!

This is the worst program that I have ever used, on any computer, with any operating system, by any company that I've been unfortunate enough to have been ripped off by!

What a strange way to treat a TWO decade loyal customer?????

 

I know my review title is a little strange, but think about it. What is the most important attribute of a new version of your accounting software?
It still works. That means you can send your invoices and get paid.

I upgraded from QB 2007 Mac because I upgraded to Snow Leopard and Intuit would not support 2007 under Mac OS 10.6.

The install process was trivial and everything seems to work.

I just wish Intuit cared about their Mac customers and didn't treat us like second-class customers.

This version should never have been released. Others have reviewed saying that various calculations and such are incorrect. There is something more basic: the program cannot even correctly print checks printed by Intuit! The various data does not line up with the proper places on the voucher check. There is no real way to align the appropriate areas. How can they release a program that cannot even do something basic as print out checks? Is it incompetency or do they just not care? When I tried technical support, it took them 45 minutes to tell me that it will be corrected in the next release! Oh, and supposedly the checks print correctly in the previous version, so they broke something that should not have been touched. Totally irresponsible. All things considered, how can I recommend this product or future releases when there is no way to find out if it works correctly except to read past and future reviews here?

Switched from PC 2007 to Mac 2010. What a nightmare. If I knew how much trouble it would be I would never have gotten rid of PC. Very buggy and the payroll service you have to use online is complete crap. I am thinking of switching accounting firm of 10 years because I want out of QB. The people that run the help desk can't even figure it out and you have to pay for the service! Intuits online references are very vague. Either they want to cover up the fact that they sell crap in a box or they want you to pay for support.

To start, I have to say that I have been a daily QuickBooks user for the last 4 years.I know it is a huge pain in the butt to run a windows emulation on your Mac, but PLEASE, PLEASE consider yourself warned and get QB for PC if you have to get it at all. It is so worth it to bite the bullet and run Parallels and Windows XP so that you can use the PC version of QuickBooks. The Mac version is terrible and doesn't have over a dozen options that are basic QuickBooks principals that you would expect to be there.

-Can't apply credits to invoices without extra stupid steps.
-Can't give change to a customer unless you write them a virtual check from a cash account.
-Sales tax is sorely lacking in options making it hard to use.
-Generating reports takes WAY longer than it did in my PC 2007 version a on a machine that was half as fast and was running in a virtual environment.
-Apply Payments button is GONE from the bottom of your invoice screen. (WHAT???)
-The item list NO LONGER has item number fields. When I converted to Mac, all of my model numbers were lost as they had no place to go. Now I have to call an item "800967445" instead of "Piano method book 1" so that the model number shows up on my PO's properly and all my vendors will actually fill my orders. NOW I HAVE TO CONVERT EVERY ITEM IN MY LIST!!! SO MUCH TIME! STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!
-Can't calculate cost in the the "New Item" set up box. I use to enter the cost and then it let you do a little math to take your percentage off right there so you didn't need a calculator or whatever. Great time saver that they got RID of for some DUMB reason.

THE LIST GOES ON AND ON!!!!

I have been in touch with 3 different people at Intuit and they say it's because of the Mac platform and there are "certain limitations" which is A TOTAL LIE. They are just too lazy to write quality code for the Mac and make it a properly running program.
This makes me so mad, as QB is the missing link for my business being otherwise very happy on all Macintosh computers. I am looking into Mac's "Checkout 3" <[...]> to see if I can relieve some of the need for Quickbooks at all. I am totally unimpressed with the company, their service and their product. The only reason they are still in business is because they have everyone over a barrel being that the program is industry standard.

Again, PLEASE avoid buying this mac version at all costs! You will only be disappointed and your accountant will hate you for having to deal with it. I know mine does...

 

DO NOT BUY....yet....The upgrade may have fancy new features but the old ones don't work...at alll.....glitchy...buggy...takes longer to print Statements. When I called Intuit to complain, they gave me "free" month of support. Which means I get to call and sit on hold for SIXTY to NINETY minutes before I can even speak to a human. If I new how to back my data out into 2009 format I would..