Rating: 
Summary: The market leader in small business accounting
Review: I have been using QuickBooks Pro since 1998 and have used it for three small businesses. Its functions are intuitive and more than adequate for my needs.QuickBooks is the market leader in small business accounting packages. I am amazed at its diverse clientele. I have seen it being used in tractor supply stores, doctor's offices, computer consultants, non-profits, and many others. Someone is probably already using QuickBooks in a business like yours. If at all possible get a book specific to your industry or ask your accountant how to setup your accounting so that it is effective and efficient. I am writing this review at this time because I am purchasing a copy of QuickBooks for our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate. Most of the affiliates in the US already use QuickBooks. The national office has already written up procedures for setting up QuickBooks to manage the local affiliate's accounting. The combination of existing procedures, several volunteers with QuickBooks experience, and some additional functionality over Peachtree has made a compelling argument for the affiliate to change over to QuickBooks.
Rating: 
Summary: The Good and the Bad
Review: I have been using quickbooks since 1996. If you are a small business and do all of your accounting on one specific computer, then this is most likely the best of the lot. The alternative is to go to a much higher accounting software cost bracket.
I find many of its functions intuitive. The principal draw for upgrading (from version 2002) is the better invoice design facilities, which previously have been a bit archaic in their limitations.
Before critising too much, users must realize that this is a complex product, which has a lot of ins and outs, which is why no one else has created anything better yet. It takes experiece. The bad is the style that inuit has adopted for their uninvited advertising and sales gimicks.
Intuits greed factor is rampant, which does nothing to kinder customer loyalty. When the day comes when a software company has the skill to put together something better, which can also imports quickbook file formats and can effectively market it in a way that respects business professionals, their customer base will rapidly dwindle.
Being a professional software developer, i can only say that they need to clean up their code base. The program is slow to load, and does not look like it would handle a business that grosses over a million per year on moderate ticket size sales.
To bypass their email servers, simply print your invoices or receipts as pdf files, and email the pdf files.
Hopefully someone from intuit will read these reviews and do a rescue for their company. In the software business, you can never rest on your laurals, and in this case those laurals are withering. My personal wish list: the ability to have transactions move across companies. For example if you set up your personal finances as one company, and your business as another, and you give your self a pay check, or move money from one business to the other, then it would be nice if an easy to use pop up box, could record the transaction for you in both companies.
Rating: 
Summary: Loss of Paid for Features
Review: I have been using quickbooks since version 5.0. I have always thought highly of the product and the features it provides, that is until my current version(Quickbooks Pro 2001) became sunseted. I from time to time am forced to email my invoices to clients, I have never really liked the fact that after upgrading I was forced to log onto the Intuit server to email but I lived with it. Today May 12, 2004 I needed to email an invoice per a clients request, the server informed me I would need to upgrade. I spent over 2 hours on the phone to learn that my only option was to upgrade, so I called sales and told them I willing to pay the extorsion money. Imagine my shock when I was informed it would take up to 10 days for them to mail me a CD. So here I sit a client I am unable to bill STILL unable to use the features I have already paid for. Yes I did get the notices about needing to upgrade. I am in the Software industry myself and will always advise my clients to ONLY upgrade if there is a feature or fix in the new version that they require to run there business. In my opinion what intuit is doing is with each new release they are putting in more and more hooks in order that they can force you to upgrade to the latest version, this in my opinion is a form of extorsion. They are in effect trying to shut your business down unless you pay the money they demand. I dont use payroll, I track my G/L and write checks and invoices, track open invoice and recieve payments in Quickbooks. I have found a work around to the email issue that does not involve paying intuit a dime, and I can promise they will never collect another cent from me. If you have not purchased this product, I suggest you dont, there are other options and switching to one of them later will be more painful than if you just buy one of the others now. Good Luck.
Rating:
Summary: Good product, Few service problems.
Review: I have yet to find another product that offers the simplicity of Quickbooks 2004. However, I also disapprove of the requirement of having to upgrade to remain using our payroll services. Im just wondering, to all those that have experienced problems, what other programs would you suggest that makes organizing your business finances this simple? Our company now uses quickbooks for everything from printing 50 invoices a week for our childcare business, to printing our deposit slips out. All professionally looking when done. Support issues. I have never dealt with quickbooks support. Most of the features, with a little exploration, can be figured out quite easily. I have had one of our employees attend a local quickbooks class, which for $200 is a far better deal than spending hours on the phone with helpless support reps. Of course, this seems to be the case with any other computer company anymore. Atleast most of the reps I've talked to at Intuit actually spoke English. If your planning on using qb 2004 to keep your business finances straight, use all of the features. The more you include in the program, the better and easier everything will work. Don't simply use it to print invoices. The only other problem we have had with Intuit was the delivery of our deposit slips. Ordered them in Dec 03 along with some other forms. They never arrived, but indicated as shipped on their website. We had to call twice and finally got someone to fix the problem and ship another set. The checks have always arrived within a week or so of ordering. After using their products for over a year, this was the only time we had a problem.
Rating: 
Summary: service is a total scam
Review: I ordered Quickbooks 2003 pro edition based on accountant's suggestion. I then of course called in to Quickbooks as I ran into a probelm and decided on the $300+ annual support, which before any "support" was provided, seemed like a good idea. Turns out that the "support" kept me online for over 2 hours trying to solve a problem and at the end of 2 hours said he couldn't fix it. The only other time I called in to Quickbooks "support" was to cancel my "support" and was sent a letter saying that they can't cancel it and will continue billing me $29.00 a month. I now pay someone who specializes in Quickbooks to walk me through any problems I come across.
Rating:
Summary: Very poor performance in a multi-user environment
Review: I purchased QuickBooks but now when my business grows and we want to use it in a network the performance decrease so much. I think it is only for very small businesses that do not need to grow! I think this is the main reason people do not like QuickBooks anymore. Look for accounting software which grows as your business grows, don't get locked in this software. Do not waste your time entering all these data in a program which will have a big performance problem.
Rating:
Summary: Huge improvements in invoice/statement output
Review: I rated Quickbooks Pro 2003 as very poor (one star) but this one really surged forward for our business. The huge feature to me was the addition of the ability to duplicate fields on invoice/statement templates so we can use tear-off strips that have all invoice information. Our invoices/statements now look very high-end and customers like them better. I find lots to like about this new software and find it was worth the upgrade money for this alone. Hopefully without sounding protectionist, one feature I very much dislike is the Indian-based customer service. Not only were they difficult to converse with, but they had a very 'don't care' attitude (3 calls over past 6 months.) I am always pleased when I call and get US based representatives.
Rating:
Summary: Allow me to summarize for everyone....
Review: I seems that there is a trend in the software industry that is moving toward an "us against them" attitude in policies. I realize that software piracy is a real problem that needs some kind of solution, but what Intuit is doing just isn't right. Their legitimate customers are not their enemies, but they sure are made to feel that way. Intuit's short-sighted policies are deeply scarring the reputation of their company and their otherwise good product just to ensure themselves recurring revenue. Everything about the company screams greed. Should I really have to put up with a barage of advertisments from a product I have paid full price for? Should a mainstream product be allowed to invade my system and lock up valuable resources for their own benefit? Is it right to sunset a functioning product that is only 3 years old when there is no technical reason to do so? And do they really have the right to force me to use a subscription service just to get the advertised functionality out of the program? It's unreal how many negative comments have been posted across the Internet about Quickbooks, and yet they continue with these ridiculous policies. You would think someone in the company would look around and realize the damage they are doing to themselves long term. All I can say is watch your back Intuit. The day someone comes out with a viable alternative, you and your monopolistic, "do whatever we want" attitude are going to feel the pain you've caused your faithful customers.
Rating:
Summary: Run! Run!! Run for your life!!!
Review: I used this product back when it was in its 1.0 for DOS days. Back then, it was a great application. Designed to make double-entry accounting accessible to those of us who don't really know a credit from a debit, it did everything I needed it to do, simply.
It is now mostly an advertisement for add-on products. It still comes with the basic features, although many are no longer so simple, but so many of the feature buttons just take you to a web-based, "You can buy this add-on here now!" type site.
It's no longer intuitive either. The design is such that many common features (i.e. Receive Payment) are not available on the myriad buttons all over the screen. (Those are reserved for add-on products.) You have to navigate around things to find the simple functions you need.
Finally, gone are the days when you could get some level of decent free support for the software. I'm not talking about, telephone support, or significant hand-holding. I'm talking about things like Newsgroups. Places where people can ask questions and get ideas from other people. Microsoft has that. Intuit doesn't. Instead, if you want to ask anything beyond, "how do I install this?", you have to pay for a freakin' service plan! And it's not just a one-time $100+ fee either. After that, you have to pay them a monthly too!
I'm not sure what I'm going to switch to, but this product just bites. I'm getting out. In short, my advice is stay faaaaar away from these guys.
Rating:
Summary: Unwanted "Upgrade" a "Degrade" w/Payroll Tax Errors!
Review: I was a very satisfied Quickbooks Pro 2001 user. Program did everything I wanted and needed with no problems or issues. Was forced to buy Quickbooks Pro 2004 in order to continue to be able to do payroll. Not happy with Intuit about that move. You would think that with the Cdilla fiasco last year in Turbotax, Intuit would be changing its tune. Greedy company totally destroying the goodwill it had built up over many years. Quickbooks Pro 2004 is a bloated program that runs more slowly than 2001. Maybe it has more features than 2001, but nothing I would use. When I tried to cut a payroll check, 2004 screwed up my payroll taxes by not including my Medicare taxes! Glad I caught that one and manually overrode before I ended up with payroll penalties! This was after I ensured I had the latest updates. 2001 never had any of these problems. I am just about fed up with Intuit and will be looking for an alternative to Quickbooks next time.
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