Quickbooks 2006

[Snarpy]

I've gotten several recommendations recently that I should use Quickbooks.

So, I've been looking into getting Quickbooks 2006 Pro. I've found some serious complaints about it:


It's a resource hog and slow, and some people have trouble with crashing.
Intuit forces upgrades every three years
Online banking (which I probably won't use) costs extra by subscription.
Payroll is an extra, expensive, module (I don't know if I'll be wanting to do "payroll" just for me). Someone said it works by subscription also.
It's generally buggy.
On the other hand, there are plenty of rave reviews. Do any of you know anything about these complaints?

Quickbooks Premier is just too expensive - but do you know what advantages having the Professional Services edition might have? Someone said that Premier didn't offer that much over Pro, and I'm having trouble really determining what additional functionality there is.

[NoahM]

I am still on 2004 Pro and it works well for me, so I can't say much about the problems with 2006.

You may want to see this page (http://quickbooks.intuit.com/commerce/compare/qbcom/compare_result.jhtml?_requestid=3301) for a comparison of product features.

[JMT]

I use QuickBooks Pro 2005 and have had no problems with bugs or resources.

I e-mail my invoices through their service which costs nothing. To use the service you must be on a current release although you don't have to be on the very latest.

The most challenging part of Quickbooks is setting up the initial chart of accounts, items and classes. Once that is in place it works great.

[Snarpy]

The negative comments I've read are mostly from users of 2003, 2004, and 2005 that have upgraded.

Some new users have complained, too, but the majority of negative comments are from people used to the way it used to be. I think the slowness might be related to people who have a large, existing database. 2006 makes it even bigger and runs slower than previous versions.

I guess I'm most concerned about bugs in the new version, what the real story is on the resource issues (will it be a problem for me?), and extra costs and add-ons.

[Matt]

I hate Quickbooks, so if you're not using it yet and not an accountant, my recommendation is to stay away from it. It is not a user friendly piece of software and although it may be powerful, there's a huge learning curve associated with using it effectively. -Matt

[Randall]

Some new users have complained, too, but the majority of negative comments are from people used to the way it used to be. I think the slowness might be related to people who have a large, existing database. Generally speaking, the program gets bigger with each new release. I can't say that I find it any slower than 2005, and that's operating over a slow network to begin with. (My only gripe so far is that the bank reconciliation reports aren't sorted by check number.) I can't think of anything that's crashed the program, and we deal with a few dozen different client files.

There are a lot of things that I'd change if I could -- stuff that's been annoying me year after year -- but overall I rather like it, and the past few releases have added some features that make it easier to work with. 2006 in particular does a good job of bringing together information that used to be scattered throughout the program.

The Premier version has some nice features for those of us on the accounting side of the fence, but Pro is sufficient for the majority of people.

The tricky part is getting yourself set up right, because the program tends to assume that you have more accounting knowledge than the average person. And as Matt says, the learning curve can be pretty steep.

There's a new version called Simple Start (http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting_software/simple_start_bookkeeping_software.jhtml) that's supposed to be much easier to set up (and reasonably priced as well). Intuit sent us a bunch of CDs with a free version that's limited to 20 customers/vendors/etc, which I'd be happy to mail out to you. You can get your feet wet with the "newbie" version and decide whether it's worth having.

Randall

[Mandi]

Let us know what you think of the Simple Start version, if you take Randall up on that, Snarpy. I'd like to hear about it.

I've used Quicken's Home/Small Biz combo for a couple years, and I like that well enough.

I do think it's oversimplified to say something is a resource hog, without asking what your resources are in the first place - how much RAM are you talking about, what processor . . . ?

[Randall]

I do think it's oversimplified to say something is a resource hog, without asking what your resources are in the first place - how much RAM are you talking about, what processor . . . ? Up until last year I was doing my work on a wheezy old P-II machine, so yeah, QuickBooks was a drag on the system. But just about everything else was, too. Running it on a modern P4 system with lots of RAM certainly helps.

This version actually feels more responsive than 2005 when I'm entering transactions. They probably tweaked a few things to give it the illusion of "The Snappy," but I'll take what I can get. :winky:

Oh, and about the forced upgrade thing: Unless you're using one of Intuit's add-on subscription services, you can be using QB 99 and still get your work done. Accountants are the true victims of the upgrade cycle, since we have to have whatever versions our clients are using.

Randall