Mike Finley

This is a thread for Intuit to understand what upgrades contractors are looking for in their accounting software.

Personally I find Quickbooks to be one of the most successful 'dumb' products on the market. One of the most useful and useless both at the same time products on the market.

I would hope that Intuit finds this thread on the web and listens to it's contractor users and adds some much needed feature upgrades to make it's product the best on the market.

First off - Cudos to adding the ability to track a subs GL and WC and pop a window warning you when you are writing a check to them that their GL or WC has expired.

For me this is one of the truly positive features I have seen that really is a great feature for contractors.

Now I've listed many different times the shortfalls of quickbooks, so I'll start with one that is just a no-brainer, a I can't believe this works this way.

Your calendar date picker - that little calendar symbol next to the date that is all over quickbooks, great feature, but WTF is going on with no highlight of today's date in it????????????????????????????

Come on guys, this is a no-brainer. Every simple calendar picker I've ever seen highlights todays date so when you open the calendar, you don't have to cursor down to the windows tool bar and roll over the time to see what today's date is!

Come on now! What in the world is going on? This is something that you guys should have done about 6 years ago, on a program that has been around this long.

In the picture I included today is July 19th, however you'd never know it from your pop up.

Highlight todays date in the calendar window that pops up.

Thank you.

Attached Images

 

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firemike

Mike, you are so right about QuickBooks being a useful yet totally useless program at the same time. I was very disappointed with the new version, not much has changed. I quit buying each new version as very little changes from year to year, and since they quit giving the upgrade pricing, another reason I quit upgrading every year. So much for customer loyalty.

One thing I would like to see is a SAVE button in the forms. All you get is SAVE AND CLOSE or SAVE AND NEW - Sucks when you are working on a complex invoice and you enter several line items and just want to save it so you won't lose your work for whatever reason. Sure you can forward or back the form and it askes you if you want to save the changes, or click PRINT and it will do the same thing, but what a waste of time. A simple SAVE button would make things so much faster.

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RayContracting

A proper schedule would be quite helpful as well. Great thread, Mike. I hope everyone reads this and adds to it.

MOTB

Mike,
Intuit is a fantastic company and has a great program, but they are not tailoring themselves to contractors in my opinion. They are a huge corporation who wants fast traction to whatever it is they decide to do. I am sure we will agree that from a global perspective, contractors continue to be slower than others to embrace technology. It is doing MUCH BETTER, but not at the speed of acceptance for a firm of their size. Intuit will naturally pay attention to news such as the following http://www.misgroupusa.com/ when a large player in the industry has one of their largest distrubutors close its' doors (just a few weeks ago). Intuit will always have a product that they market to contractors to have their foot in the door, but their attention will always be on the generic side, not our industry specific, especially in this economy. Sure, there will be a feature here and there to appease the community, but that is where it will stop, at least in the near future. Remember, it was not just long ago that they sold the larger business for contractors to Sage
http://web.intuit.com/about_intuit/p...006/05-08.html
then they created Easy Estimate for smaller contractors http://web.intuit.com/about_intuit/p...006/06-06.html
and simultaneously discountinued it a year later.
While you and others may be hoping for more attention, I would think the writing would be on the wall that their attention will be elsewhere, at least for a large company like them .... NOT ME AND MY COMPANY FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH. Brian

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hungry4knowhow

By far my biggest complaint about QB is the fact that you are damn near forced to upgrade every 3 years....No more email function, no more online banking account reconcilliation, etc...seems ridiculous that you would force me to upgrade in order to continue to use these features when I already pay for the avenues that allow QB to even have those features. IE...I pay my internet connection, web hosting thereby I have email anyway....I pay my bank 10-15 a month in order to import my account into QB for quicker reconcilliation...seems ludicrous to me.

Thats my biggest complaint. Otherwise im pretty happy with it, though over the last couple of years I have started to browse other options such as SAGE, and I believe another is called Timberline.

Oh wait one other HUGE complaint....the ENORMOUS cost for multiple user licenses. Ridiculous.

dougchips

When I failed to upgrade they would not let me process credit cards anymore. Now they have lost my business forever, not really a big deal for them or me. I do think it's kind of funny that they are willing to give up all of the money they could make off of me in CC fees over an upgrade fee.

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DeanV

The reports need to operate better without needing their payroll service. It stinks that they force you to buy additional services to make the program do what it advertises.

72chevy4x4

when adding a transaction (I do this in the account's register-where it shows all the transactions for your account), I would like to see a split window that stays open at the bottom instead of closing after every transaction entry. This would allow applying job's to the transaction without opening the "splits" window every time. Sort fo like the "write checks" window, but I often have debit card transactions that get entered as a batch and 'cleared' while reconciling against the bank statement.

Sarah9910

You are aware that many of the payroll report export to excel and are HUGE, right? Just making sure. Maybe you don't have the payroll module because you use a service. Just an idea.

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DeanV

I have my CPA do payroll currently, so I do not have the module for it.

Sarah9910

Unfortunately (for the cost ) this happens with all the software packages out there that continue to update their software (fortunate that they continue the improvements).

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www.successif.biz

Sarah9910

Your CPA should be printing the reports for you. They are there at their fingertips. They work for you now that you know the reports are there, you can request them. (all they need to do is save them as an excel file and send them to you).

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Success In-Formation LLC
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Warren

What a joke that quickbooks only offers its payroll for companys of 3 or fewer employees. My payroll company keeps creeping up the prices. I would love someday to do it myself, but with so many other things to keep up on, it's just not feasible. I do all of my own accounting and taxes, so I know payroll would not be too big of an issue. I would just hate to jump in in the middle of the year. Perhaps if I research it enough, I can start it in 2010. Your loss Quickbooks!

ABLE1

Say what??? Can someone shed some light on this. Not that it really matters to me but I did not know that there was a limit on the number of employees.

I know I have about 12 or so that are inactive in QB right now with another 2 that are active and it seems to me that all I have to do is re-activate and it is done.

Again not that I have or may ever have an issue with this, just curious.

TIA

Les

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ABLE1

Double-A

QB has more than one payroll module. One the low end, is the basic, for up to 3 employees. Next is "unlimited employees".

I think Warren is mistaken.

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ABLE1

I bought my 2009 as a package with the payroll module. I just checked and it is set to 3 employees. Again not a big deal. I made all of my inactive employees active and when I tried to do payroll I got a flag saying I need to upgrade for some fee. That is when I closed the program.

Don't understand why they would limit to 3 other than greed but it is a capitalist country we live in, right???

Then again if the next step is unlimited then the extra $'s should not be an issue.

Hope that helps.

Les

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ABLE1

SewerRatz

We been using MYOB for many years. They had a full packaged system in the beginning that included inventory and payroll, but we ended up upgrading and noticed they want extra fro the payroll feature and inventory.

I still like them way better than QB since they do not force us to upgrade every few years. But they do want you to verify your account key every year to ensure you are not using a pirated version. If you are on the internet it will auto validate with out any issues.

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