Quick Books

[Kurly]

Mornin All Hope Your Holidays Were Refreshing:

Is there any reason other than $$ that Quick Books comes out with a new version of Pro every year? I had 2008, updated to 2009, now they want me to update to 2010. I am just a very small business, at $200 a crack it seems meaningless. Thank for allowing me to rant.

You are all great. Have a great tax season. Remember not any one of us is as smart as all of us.

Kurly

[tilt53]

I am not a serious QB user so I may be wrong, but I think Intuit is just greedy. As long as the program is doing what you want/need it to, I see no reason why you should arbitrarily update each year. I hang on to a version until it will no longer perform as I need it to.

[newbie]

I have a few clients that are still using the 2007 version. Like Tilt53 said, unless the newer version supports some new feature no need to update every year.

[RLymanC]

Intuit

"You think Intuit is a little greedy" HA,,,they are extracting millions from unnecessary upgrades.

CCH is running a close 2nd, or they may be in 1st place for the most greedy.

I use Medlin payroll ($50.00 per year) for payroll, and if you can believe this, QB99 for income and expenses for all small sole propriotor's, it has done a great job.

One small (large) problem we men have is if it's faster, newer, more modern, buy it.
My thinking is: MMMMM, the one I'm using works great, why change

Ask the people that went to Vista...HA HA HA, now you have Win7, sure better than Vista, but why in the heck change in the first place when the system in use was probably doin great?

When Win XP Pro came out that was it for me,,,does a great job. I even have 3 extra original disk in case I need to re-install a new machine, If my current HD fails I use my Acronis cloned extra HD, takes me 5 minute to install it and restore the backup I need.

I quess I've spouted off enough,,,Merry Christmas to all, for those that prefere Happy Holidays, sorry, it's Merry Christmas, alway has been and alway will be.

[PIGLEE]

I use QB for about three years then update. Sometimes I update programs, and I am sorry, I liked the old one the way it was.

[JohnH]

Although I get the latest version every year, I usually don't install it for several months, and then only if a client has upgraded and I need to open their file on my computer. It seems there are always "critical" fixes once Intuit does their annual release, complete with urgent emails and all sortd of dire warnings. It's best to let things settle out a bit unless there's a new important feature in the upgrade (I haven't seen anything this important in several years).

They do force users who are using their payroll updates to stay with the current version.

One caveat about using older versions, though. However, if you have a problem and need Intuit's help in recovering data, they'll just blow you off if you're using an old unsupported version. So it's important to think about how much trouble it will be to reconstruct information if the data becomes corrupted to the point that there's no way to revert to a recent backup.

[Gretel]

I send you a private message RLymanC.

[AJsTax]

Kurly:

If you add each of the answers together you would have a pretty good response.
If you are a single company or a small firm with a few customers that don't change often, then one year of QuickBooks can last several years. If you are doing payroll in QuickBooks then Intuit forces you to upgrade every three years. All company payrolls being done in 2007 will have to move to a newer year by April or May.
If youwork in a situation like the office I work in you face what we do. I have had client files open in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 in the last 2 weeks. We keep active years as long as we have a client still using that version. And since we had a couple already upgrade to 2010 we had to install that also.
If you watch the adds, etc. you can buy the current Pro for $99 fairly often. That only means $33 a year if you upgrade every three years. That is dirt cheap for a software that can do so much. Even at the Intuit price that is only $50 a year. Of course that does not include payroll module. And that can go up quickly with premier or enterprise versions.
So if it works and you are not forced to upgrade to keep up with clients I would recommend every three years to stay up with current technology.

[tacks]

Hey Kurly,

Somewhere, perhaps the Quickbooksusers forum, someone gave me some advice that stuck with me.

F--- the 'Premier' version. In fact don't even pay for the latest 'Pro' version. Go on to ebay and buy a dated version. Buy a 'new in the box' 2006 or 2007 version for a fraction of the price.

Next time this will be the route i would go for a client. People don't come to me looking for a way to spend money on XXXX they don't need.

I've been using 2001 for years. It's fine.

good luck to you

Tacks

[geekgirldany]

I am a QuickBooks Pro Advisor and get the new update every year. Proadvisor program is around $650 a year. I wait until after the tax season to install the newest version because as another poster said you usually have "fixes" coming out. I signed up with the ProAdvisor program because it seemed worth it for the extra money. Get the new software each year, payroll subscription is included, and tech support (if you can call it that). The training each year to get certified is good for a refresher.

[AuditorTurnedGood]

I kept pace

with 2008 and 2009 (2008 was my first year with Accountant's Edition). I don't upgrade unless I have a client that is an edition ahead of me, and I don't have any that are using 2010. I did have one that was using 2006 until a few weeks ago. As much as I love handing Intuit needless sums of money, I'll only upgrade if client compatability is at stake -I love the accountant's copy feature, which in 2009 started letting you send back the reconciliations to the client as well.

ATH