QuickBooks is the worst

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David Waldmann

David Waldmann

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Really, when is someone going to come up with a reasonable competitor?

They have some good features, but soooo much of their program is buggy, slow and unintuitive.

Something as simple as, you edit an invoice or whatever, and click "SAVE" and it says "You changed this, did you want to Save it?" Ummmmm, that just might be why I clicked the SAVE button?

So much other stuff I won't even post, but the ACH payment fee has gotten completely out of control. It used to be $1.00 when I started (less than 10 years ago), now it's a percentage. Why? They don't pay a percentage (if they do, they need to find a new bank - out bank doesn't charge ANYTHING for ACH transfers). I only have relatively small payments - less than $1000. But for companies that do real business - $10k, $50k etc, why should they be paying 1% (that's $100 - $500) when it costs QB NOTHING to implement (OK, they had to set up the infrastucture - years ago, when they were charging $1.00).

Yes, I KNOW there are other options out there, but none that have the ability to email Invoices with ACH payment options. Please, PLEASE, PLEASE tell me if I'm wrong.
 
Intuit has had a 21x growth in the last 10 years (S26.65- close of 2015 to $633.84 today). They have a 21.99% ROI. They are controlled by the Big guys of wall street to maximize their profits and are a cash cow for the investors.
Another case of Corporate greed with no real competition in their market.
 
Unfortunately, I am a User, not an Investor...
 
You get Dirk's gold star, for the day.
He often cusses QuickBooks, and not always like Yosemite Sam.
 
I have started to absolutely hate QB. We don't use all the features. I loved the regular desktop version without any bells and whistles. I get asked every so often to sign in again with my password. Aggravating. I don't use any of their services (payroll, invoicing, receiving payments) and never will.

I did look at Avanquest and am waiting for their 2026 version to come out. I will play a bit with it first and then hopefully next year I can cancel QB. The fee is outrageous for what I use it for. I will both run Avanquest and QB at the same time until November, when my QB would renew.
 
Horrid program.
I now know why.
Never looked it up before, but one of the founders was a graduate of the leland stanfurd Junior university.
No further evidence of a dark heart needed.
Home screen now has more space dedicated to advertisements for their own add-on products as is dedicated to actual user functions.
Every stupid update is a new version of Where's Waldo. Bookkeeping is a necessary adjunct to operating a small business, not the primary purpose. Once habits are formed, it's a disservice to change procedures unnecessarily. Such as the feature several months ago that required the user to uncheck the option to use QB to handle credit card transactions, which then disappeared after a month or two.
On the day that QB suggests the same starting check number when going from the save screen to the print screen is the day I go out to buy a lottery ticket.
QB provides different forms for sales receipts and customer invoices. They used to allow separate number sequences. Not anymore.
Can't undo the default sales tax by customer location that was first established with the mandated switch to the online version. I don't dare enter a customer address if it's not within our taxing district.
Do any of us really think a stanfurd mercenary wouldn't actively market our financial information stored on "The Cloud."
One fine day (thank you, Carole King), a software David will come along to slay the software Goliath with a product that serves the needs of small businesses.
 
The program I used was called Account Edge. I don't think I'd ever done more than balance a check book when book keeping for the shop was thrust on me on the death of my wife and I picked it up pretty quick and it got the job done for my business. It's the only system I've ever worked with so I have no idea how it differs from Quickbooks and I'm sure all programs have their quircks but it may be worth looking into.
 
I know until the 2023 version, it was lifetime license (basically just the code to install the software). Seems stacksocial is legit, a sort of marketplace for different vendors.
I will wait for the Avanquest 2026, assuming that will come out soon
 
Ylva said:
I found this. Is this a scam or legit?

Page Not Found | StackSocial

www.stacksocial.com www.stacksocial.com
Click to expand...
I bought this and fortunately was ultimately able to cancel the charge. It worked for a couple of days and then QB told me to renew my subscription . . . at the full price for an accountant's version. I'm still running QB 2020, the last desktop/non-subscription version.
 
Thanks for confirming what I feared, Larry! From what I know, there never was a non subscription version in 2024. I couldn't remember when the last year was that they had the non-subscription version.
My computer crashed a few years ago and my old QB version was no longer working/supported. That's when I found out that they now only offer by subscription. At first it was around $600 a year. Now it's double. So I am actively looking to replace QB with something that will work well enough
 
Quickbooks really has you behind the eight ball if you use an accountant because most accountants use Quickbooks. I retired in 2021 and was using Quickbooks 2020 at that time. I was always peeved by having to buy a new version every three years because Intuit changed the encryption on all the data files so the old files couldn't be read after the old version was outdated.
 
My accountant uses QB and kept older versions of it so he could open older files. I still used the 2009 version a few years back without any problems.

I have sent the link to avanquest to our accountant and he said 'it might work'. I will give it a try and ask if he is willing to work with that. I can't justify the high cost of QB for I need it for. At the $600 mark I was not that bothered (although felt it was insane to have to pay that every year). Now that it's doubled, I am starting to seriously look around.
I like the desktop version, which apparently is no longer available for new subscribers. I tried out the online version and hated it.
 
I can add unlimited companies for no extra charge to our ERP system. There are only two negatives to that:
  • It's fairly complex to set up compared to QB.
  • I would have to get my tenants to pay some other way. To me, the biggest advantage of QB is that you can send an invoice that will include a link to pay by ACH/Bank Transfer. I need to find a way to make it easy for someone to pay me, and easy for me to get the $$.
I'm not too worried about my accountant - our main company does not run on QB and it's at least 1000 times more complex than the companies I have in QB, and they have no problem working with the reports I send them.
 
I first bought QuickBooks at Sam's Club back around 1997. It was QuickBooks 5. In the early fall of 1999 they made available a Y2K patch so the program would work with the new year. I kept using that for a number of years because my business is just me and I don't need any extra stuff, just the basics. I put that Y2K patch on a floppy and used that when I needed to install QB on a new computer.

Then around 2012/2013 I was concerned that my Y2K floppy disk might get a glitch and not be able to be read, so I started looking for a later version. I didn't want to get the latest because the price went up quite a bit from what I bought in 1997. I happened to be walking around town and saw a sign that a church was having a rummage sale so I went in. Looking around I saw on a table a complete boxed version of QuickBooks 2000. It was $5 so I bought it.

Let me say that QB installs differently than a lot of other software that I've had. Usually you just need the serial number that's on the disc or user manual and you're good to go.
With QB, you need that serial number to install, but then you also need a registration number for it to run. The program can connect online to generate a number, but since it was 2013 when I tried installing a 2000 program, it couldn't connect. So I called customer service. They initially said the program was too old and couldn't generate a number and I would have to buy the latest version. I complained saying I've used this for years, but my computer just died, blah, blah. So they sent me up the ladder to a higher tech. That person put me on hold and then came back and said they were able to generate a registration number, but DO NOT lose the number because they won't be able to generate another one because the software was too old.

So, I have changed computers a few times since 2013 and I'm still using QB 2000 and it installs fine with those numbers (I'm using the latest up to date version of Windows 11).

Bottom line: if you have an older version and most importantly have those 2 numbers, it should still work for you - if you don't need the latest bells and whistles.
If you need to do payroll or other stuff, then you'll need the latest version or use some other method for doing your payroll. A while back I did look around a little online for other programs, but they all seem to be cloud based or subscription based. So I'll keep using what I have.
 
Arghhhhh

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I think this is the end for me. You can only get so much blood out of a beet.

I am going to try using my ERP system instead. It's "free" other than the time to set it up, which will be a one-time thing. Assuming I'm around for another 10 years, that's a savings of $11,000 (plus other price increases). I think I can "afford" the effort to convert.
 
The company was sold to venture capital groups a couple times, each one gets more greedy.

We use a couple licenses of QBO (Quickbooks Online) at my FT job. Each has a monthly fee. Add on feature modules are additional fees, on top of that.

We still use an ancient "Quicken Home and Office" small business edition for our shop, but I'm unable to move it from the current Windows 10 computer to the replacement Windows 11 computer. I'll have to figure something out soon, too.
 
Won't be long before their ads for additional services cover the home page to the extent that no one will be able to find the underlying application.
 
Finally got everything converted over yesterday. Gonna be good. Should have just done it from the beginning...
 
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