UK users give QuickBooks 2008 the raspberry
A 'first looks' piece about the UK edition of QuickBooks 2008 on the UKs AccountingWeb site has drawn a succession of criticisms and a huge raspberry from professional advisors who are key influencers in the UKs SMB accounting market. Upgrades are seen as potentially tortuous and pricing comes in for criticism, one commenter said:
As a user of QuickBooks for the last 14 years and as a QuickBooks Professional Advisor, I have recently received my copy of QuickBooks Accountant 2008 from Intuit. What an utter disaster!
The problems of installation and upgrading data files from the previous version (QB2006) are immense and any existing users of earlier versions should seriously consider whether they should upgrade. I have spent about eight hours trying to install the program and upgrade just one company data file and with very limited success. It takes approximately 6 minutes to just open the program from the desktop, and that is on a fairly high spec machine.
Upgrading the data file from QB2006 to QB2008 took several attempts and a couple of hours. Over many years, I have been installing and setting up QBs for clients and training them in the use of the program. I can install and set up QB2006 within an hour. I cannot even satisfactorily install and set up QB2008 on my own computer in eight hours.
One problem I did encounter straight away, when I eventually managed to get into the program, is that templates for invoices, etc. will not transfer across into the new program. Having spent many hours designing and formatting invoices and credit notes in QB2006, I would have to start all over again in QB2008.
What other problems are lurking in there? In my opinion, this program is presently unusable. Beware.
On pricing, another said:
The overwhelming opinion was that £300 was too much for them at this stage, so they would stick to 2006 Regular. Off they all went to get their orders in to Amazon, while there's still some stock left.But what happens when all the 2006 versions in the warehouses are mopped up? Effectively, from now on I don't have a competitive QuickBooks product to recommend to new businesses.
But the main gripe was reserved for the lack of multi-currency handling. With much of the UK and Ireland trading around the world, this is a serious mis-step on Intuit's part. Regular Accounting Web reviewer David Carter summed up the views of many when he said:
Intuit seem to be shooting themselves in the foot on this multicurrency issue.
Intuit's attempts at providing software for non-US markets have been something of a see-saw affair with the company at one moment expressing serious interest in non-US markets but then backing off. At its last earnings call, the company seemed to be de-emphasizing international expansion. This level of critique will leave many UK professionals rethinking their client advice.