QuickBooks 2009 For Mac [OLD VERSION]

Other products by Intuit

Product Features

• Complete everyday tasks like invoicing, bill tracking, check-writing and payroll
• Track sales and expenses and know where your business stands
• Use the Customer and Vendor Centers to locate customer and vendor data
• Download bank and credit card transactions into QuickBooks
• Stay on top of your business with the Company Snapshot and over 100 customizable reports

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001ECMG9G
• Item model number: 406663
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 14, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #228 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #3 in	Software > Business & Office > Business Accounting > Accounting
  #19 in	Software > Personal Finance
  #83 in	Software > The Mac Software Store

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Business finance software to organize your business with ease. Save time completing routine tasks, payroll and paperwork so you can spend more time on business.

Save time completing routine tasks, payroll and paperwork so you can spend more time on business. Click to enlarge.

Built for Mac Users

Organize data all in one place with Customer, Vendor, & Transaction Centers
Find what you need, when you need it with the new Customer, Vendor, and Transaction Centers. These Centers consolidate key information onto a single screen. The next time a customer calls with a question about his account, simply go to the Customer Center to see his contact information and complete transaction history.

Back up to MobileMe
Prevent painful data loss by backing up your QuickBooks file to MobileMe. Choose one-time or ongoing automatic backup. You can restore it at any time.

Synchronize contacts with Mac OS X Address Book
Never enter a phone number or address twice. Save typing time and errors by effortlessly synchronizing contact information between QuickBooks and your Mac Address Book, cell phone, PDA or other iSync-compatible applications. Activate QuickBooks Contact Sync, and selected contacts appear automatically in Address Book. Update a contact in Address Book...the changes automatically appear in QuickBooks. Leave the feature active to keep contact information, including email addresses, up-to-date at all times.

Add reminders to iCal
QuickBooks integrates with iCal so you can be reminded to print invoices and checks or to pay bills in one consolidated calendar and never miss a bill payment. Simply check the box next to "Show in iCal" on any invoice and a reminder is added to your calendar. And if you later decide to change the payment terms on the invoice in QuickBooks, iCal is automatically updated with the new due date.

Share data with your accountant or other Windows-based users
Share your QuickBooks data with Windows-based users, such as your accountant. Send a Mac file to a Windows user (who can update it) and the Windows user can send it back. Just click the toolbar icon: "Backup to QuickBooks Windows". As QuickBooks creates the backup, it simultaneously creates a PDF file of simple instructions for opening and sending back the file. Send both files to your accountant or Windows user.

Track financial information in one place

Track sales & expenses
Get rid of the piles of paperwork. Easily enter customer payments & bills from vendors. Since QuickBooks organizes everything in one place, you'll be able to access all past payments & bills for each customer and vendor with just a few clicks.

Pay bills & print checks
Easily create and print checks. QuickBooks will keep track of each check so you can keep tabs on where your money is going.

Create & e-mail invoices
Use the data you already have in QuickBooks--such as customer contact info & products/services--to make creating invoices a snap. Choose from pre-designed QuickBooks templates or customize the layout yourself.

Organize data on customers, vendors, and employees all in one place
No more hunting through piles of files or trying to remember where you stashed that important paper. QuickBooks organizes all your important small business information in one place, giving you easy access to a complete picture of your business.

Import data from Excel and Quicken for Mac
Get up and running fast by importing data from the tool you use to track your finances now. However little or much data you currently have, you won't have to start over from scratch.

Back up to MobileMe. Click to enlarge.

Synchronize contacts with Mac OS X Address Book. Click to enlarge.

Save time & be more efficient

Reduce data entry by downloading your bank & credit card transactions into QuickBooks
Save time and avoid data entry errors. Instead of typing in your bank and credit card transactions, download them securely from over 3000 participating financial institutions and easily import them into QuickBooks.

Enter bills and set due-date reminders
QuickBooks helps you ensure you pay your bills on time. Record bills as they come and set a reminder to make sure you pay before the due date.

Export data into Excel
Export data from QuickBooks reports to Excel spreadsheets so that you can do more complex analysis or graphing in Excel.

Manage products & inventory

Create purchase orders
You can create purchase orders in seconds by selecting from vendors and inventory already in your QuickBooks. When you get the inventory in-house and record it in QuickBooks, QuickBooks will remember you have an open purchase order and automatically match the PO to the inventory bill.

Track inventory
Easily track your inventory to avoid overbuying and backorders. Indicate re-order points for each inventory good and turn on reminders to automatically let you know when its time to reorder.

Monitor performance & gain insights

Generate reports with one click to see how your business is doing
Get pre-designed, customizable business reports to gain insights into your business. See all available reports in one screen to easily choose the right one. Drill down with one click to see the detail behind the numbers. Export any report to Excel--your QuickBooks formatting and formulas go with it.

Get a real-time snapshot of your business, in one central location with the Company Snapshot
Stay on top of your business- see who owes you money, who you owe money to, important reminders, and income/expense performance, all in one centralized location

Manage Employees

Manage payroll & payroll taxes ; offer Direct Deposit (paid subscription required)
QuickBooks Payroll for Mac powered by PayCycle saves you time by eliminating steps and giving you the tools to get your payroll done right.

Automatically populate and print 1099s for independent contractors and federal filing
Create and print 1099 tax forms for you and your independent contractors.

Add reminders to iCal. Click to enlarge.

Share data with your accountant or other Windows-based users. Click to enlarge.

Track time & billing

Track employee time and expenses
Track time by employee, service, and customer with timesheets in QuickBooks. When you select a client to bill, QuickBooks automatically reminds you of unbilled time and expenses for that client.

Attract Customers & Manage Customer Relationships

Track customer information and related transactions
Keep customer contact and transaction information in QuicKBooks, so you can follow up on past-due accounts and answer customer requests faster. See contact information and complete transaction history for any customer.

Create & customize professional-looking invoices and other forms with advanced customization tools
Create professional-looking forms, including invoices & sales receipts. You can also customize the templates by adding your company logo and tag line to present your business uniquely to your customers.

Multiple Users

Set individual access levels for each user
Restrict access for other users to only certain parts of your QuickBooks data so that employees only see the data they need to get their work done.

Reports

With QuickBooks reports, you'll always know where your business stands. See who owes you money and how much. Find out who your best customers are and what they're buying. Learn where your business is profitable and where you're losing money. You can also customize report templates to best meet your needs.

Some of the many QuickBooks reports:

• Profit & Loss Standard
  How much money did my company make or lose over a specific period of time?
  
  
• Profit & Loss Budget Performance
  How do the actual income and expenses compare to what has been budgeted for the current month and year?
  
  
• A/P Aging Detail
  Which bills are due and overdue?
  
  
• Statement of Cash Flows
  What was the cash inflow (from profit and additional cash received) and cash outflow (cash spent) during a specific period of time?
  
  
• Income Tax Detail
  What transactions make up each amount on my company's income tax forms?
  
  
• Inventory Stock Status by Vendor
  What is the detailed information about each inventory item, organized by vendor?
  
  
• Time by Item
  How much time has my company spent on each service we provide?
  
  
• Purchases by Item Summary
  For each item or service, how many has my company bought, and what is the total amount spent?
  
  

Product Description

Organize your business finances quickly and easily with QuickBooks 2009 for Mac. Access everyday tasks like invoicing, bill tracking, check-writing and payroll from a convenient home page. Track sales and expenses and know where your business stands. Use the Customer and Vendor Centers to locate customer and vendor data when you need it. Download bank and credit card transactions into QuickBooks and save time. Stay on top of your business with the Company Snapshot and over 100 customizable reports. Share your data with Microsoft Excel and your accountant. Save time completing routine tasks and paperwork and spend more time on your business.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

140 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get 30-day free trial version first, then decide if worth it (update), November 19, 2008

By	Paulo "Paulo" (South Dakota) - See all my reviews

Try the 30-day trial version first, decide if features are worth it

UPDATE 11/22/08 (*also note edits in main review): During my test of the 30 day trial (instructions on where to find it are 7 paragraphs down), I had a crash (the first day). A crash report was automatically generated, which I allowed to be sent to Intuit. Lo and Behold, within a few hours, a Mac-oriented software engineer responded to my crash report with further questions, opening a dialog by email which also solved a vexing problem I'd had with large fonts appearing in reports. He told me this used to happen when QB files were sent to a Windows user and back repeatedly (such as from me to my accountant). You can fix it in the Company Setup sub-menus, something regular tech support had not mentioned when I contacted them some time ago..

This technician, with his kind offer of help in clear, well-written sentences, was a godsend to me. I have such a negative opinion of Intuit and he has started to turn this around a bit.

I did learn that the version of the trial I downloaded was not the most currently available version of the Mac software...believe it or not, Intuit is apparently so large that getting a new version posted by its own people does not happen in a day, possibly not in a week.

But I am assured, and have confidence it's true, that the Mac team is reading all "feedback reports" you can send from within Quickbooks, even if they don't respond to them, and they do try to fix known issues.

Upshot to my update: there is at least one good Mac guy at Intuit, but he's working in a corporate structure which does not appear to care much about Mac users (an obvious example being they don't offer a reduced upgrade cost to those of us who have been running QB for years, we pay the same price as someone just starting to use QB with the latest version).

I still don't know if I will actually purchase the new Mac version, but I'm closer than I was when I wrote the review below....

Original review continues: This will be a long review since I know others rely on these as much as I do before making a purchase (thanks, Amazon!) I also feel this is a significant way for users to get Intuit's attention about the many problems with their product and maybe by 2012 or 2015 they'll have something that works as well as the dozen of other Mac apps I run every day.There are relatively few new features worth paying around $200. for. Details below...

If you are considering this "upgrade", you should definitely run the TRIAL version first (it's good for 30 days, all features apparently enabled). However, you will NOT SEE the trial version link on the main product page of Quickbooks 2009 for Mac over at Intuit. I finally found it on a page titled "switching to Mac" (where it was also offered for sale). Look for that page over at Intuit.

Scroll to the bottom of the page "switching to Mac", and there's a link titled "download free trial of QuickBooks 2009 for Mac". You then have to log in with your Intuit account (or set one up, I suppose) in order to go through checkout for the trial, for which you will be "charged" $0.00. Bizarre, but since I had already registered my 2007 version it went OK and the download proceeded (around 80mb size). (Note: this procedure is an improvement over the rigamarole Intuit had for downloading the 2007 trial version.)

Now for the review:

Let me first say, I'm getting by OK with QB 2007, and I use it almost every day. I don't have payroll, or massive inventory issues, I just use it to invoice and generate receipts for a few items and services, and keep track of who has paid me and who still owes me money. I also use it to generate a sales tax report each month, and I give the data file to my accountant every year for Federal taxes. This more or less works with QB 2007.

I like my invoices and receipts to look a little nicer (they are free advertising pieces), and the 2007 form designer does work, with some glitches...one being that I have found that no matter how I configure fonts on my form, the text will appear in a related, though different font...italic instead of bold for example. By fooling around with it repeatedly, I got to something I could live with. Like I said, Quickbooks works more or less.

OK, I got my 30-day trial version downloaded, and it installed without a single hitch (Mac OS 10.5.4). I had taken the precaution of backing up my entire hard drive to a separate bootable drive, just in case things got really whacky. At a minimum, you want to make a backup copy of your current data file, and let the 2009 version convert THAT, rather than your main working data file. GOOD NEWS: I found I was able to run the new version, and still launch my old version, side by side, so I could continue to do business while testing the new version. Just make sure you know which data file you're in, they look very similar (the logo for the software is identical except for the name).

QB 2009 launched OK, offered to convert my file once I pointed it to the test file, and a couple minutes later I was using it, the conversion went smoothly. The "about" splash screen says I'm running "Version T10.0", however when I run "Check for updates" it says I have "the latest version", QuickBooks 10.0f1627, whatever that means. I would assume Intuit would offer the "patched" versions for download, but who knows. (UPDATE: at the time I downloaded the trial, it was NOT the same latest version which was shipping at that time, an Intuit Mac engineer told me. Your mileage may vary.)

What's GOOD about the new version:
There's a company snapshot feature which is a very quick way to see the status of your payments, invoices, overdue invoices, etc. Very useful, but not alone worth the price.

In spite of what has been said negatively in other reviews, I found a search function in the "Transaction Center", which let me find a client, or even a check number, by typing the first few letters....a list quickly appeared, which got shorter as I typed more letters. Very useful, possibly the most useful new feature I found.

There is a lot more room for description in the invoice and receipt windows (and possibly elsewhere), it doesn't cut you off after a few words in the item description.

I had no problem printing to my Epson 2200 printer, current or past invoices or receipts or reports. (One other user I think reported printing problems, possibly before installing a patch Intuit issued.)

Runs side-by-side with old version (2007) so you can throw away 2009 when you decide it's not worth keeping.

What's BAD about the new version, from my perspective:

My online bank, which appears in the 2007 version "online" listing of banks, is not shown in the 2009 version list of banks. I won't bother trying to find out why, that's another deal killer here. (*update: a later version of 2009 QB does now include my bank, and I was able to use the feature of downloading account data and then importing it into QB 2009. This also works in the 2007 version, it is not a new feature).

"Email as PDF", a useful function I need almost daily in the 2007 version, DOES NOT WORK in the 2009 version. The menu item is there, it just doesn't do anything. During testing, I could "print" a PDF file of an invoice to my desktop, thanks to Mac's basic software, then save that PDF and attach it to an email, but not directly from Quickbooks.

When I clicked a link "tell me more about blah blah blah" in one of the new panels, the help viewer launched but there was no content whatsoever shown in it. However, the help viewer DID work in another area.

There are some new user interface features (such as the "Transaction Center") which are useful, but behind them are mostly the same menu items and displays as in the 2007 version. For example, the accept payments window, the accounts window, the invoice window, all look exactly the same as far as I can tell.

I'm going to stop here...I didn't test every feature, but I found that the ones that concern me most either have not been improved, or are in some cases worse. There is little reason to upgrade if you are already running the 2007 version. If running a version prior to 2007, I believe there would be some benefit to going to the 2007 version which is still for sale here and there. If buying your first copy of QuickBooks/Mac, I suppose no harm would be done buying the 2009 version except it probably costs more than the 2007.


There are other reviews, almost universally critical of this upgrade, elsewhere on the internet. Try google on macworld and/or macnn along with "Quickbooks Mac 2009". 90% of these reviews make it quite clear that Intuit and Quickbooks are despised by most of their Mac users for a poor product, poor tech support, and an apparent lack of interest in trying to do any better over a period of time now stretching into a decade.

*Update: The Mac engineer mentioned at the beginning of this review changed my feelings about all this considerably. I still believe Intuit as a company is not all that interested in the Mac market but I believe the Mac team there is trying hard in spite of this!

74 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars oh my god what a nightmare, November 7, 2008

By	O. Hyacinth "DharmaBum" (Tulsa, OK United States) - See all my reviews

i bought this software for my small business, running mac os leopard 10.5.5. immediately i had problems printing statements - the first DAY. i would get an inexplicable error message and the statements would not print.

since Intuit has ZERO FREE TECH SUPPORT, even when the problem is theirs and not yours, i had to pay $79.00 to get a tech support guy from india on the phone. he told me to delete two files off my hard drive from the installation, and voila! the statements started printing. why they haven't fixed this in a patch i have no idea.

but then it got worse. the next time i launched, the files were back. not to mention every time you delete these files, you have to re-register your edition online. and the printing problem was WORSE. so three more hours spent on tech support with another guy in india, and he determines that my data file is corrupted and i need to send it to Intuit so they can fix it for me. so he directs me to the Intuit website so i can upload my entire data file (full of confidential information), but apparently the Intuit data services website is only compatible with internet explorer! no uploads from safari or mozilla foxfire are possible. he actually had the nerve to ask me if i had access to a windows-based computer to upload to their website!

so i asked him if i could just email the file, and after waiting 10 minutes on hold, he comes back to advise me that no, he cannot provide me with an email address, i must BURN MY DATA FILE TO A DISK AND MAIL IT TO THEM.

dude. FORGET THAT. this is 2008, welcome to email.

so i opened a new data file and recreated my ENTIRE COMPANY FILE from scratch.

and guess what? two days later the same error message started popping up in my new, fresh data file.

data file error? yeah, right. this is a major software error that they can't fix, and in the mean time i can't send out a single statement to my clients. i am uninstalling and seeking something that actually works.

Intuit pays lip service to being mac compatible, but this software is glitch-ridden and if your data gets lost, you have absolutely no recourse. you can pay money to talk to a tech support person about the problems within THEIR software, but they can't help you. they don't have a clue.

mac users, don't waste your time and money.

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stop BEFORE YOU BUY THIS PROGRAM!, January 7, 2009

By	DELTA HEALTH WORKS INC "Jim Adams" (Cleveland, MS United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What a CON job! I've used Quickbooks for 9 years, switched to Mac, and bought this without READING THE FINE PRINT. Oh, yeah, it there as it talks about what the program will do, only it's at the bottom of the list. YOU CANNOT MAKE A PAYROLL CHECK FROM YOUR COMPUTER BUT HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR A $24 MONTH FEE TO AN ONLINE SERVICE! I know this is unbelievable, but for a small business, it makes no business sense. This Intuit program therefore fits into the category of a con job. Nothing but a con job. What company can use a program that doesn't allow you to make a payroll...for a not so small fee, of course!

Jim