Episode 26 – QuickBooks Desktop
I have listened to some podcast episodes about QuickBooks desktop, and everyone is very happy about this situation. Me? Not so much. But you probably knew that 😊 I’m Paul Rosenblum
I recently got an email from Intuit that said the following:
After July 31, 2024, Intuit will no longer sell new subscriptions of the following Desktop products in the US:
- QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus
- QuickBooks Desktop Premier Plus
- QuickBooks Desktop Mac Plus
- QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll
What is not changing:
- Existing Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus, Mac Plus, and Enhanced Payroll subscribers can continue to renew their subscription after July 31, 2024*. We will continue to provide security updates, product updates, and support for existing subscribers.
- All QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise subscriptions (Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond) will continue to be available for purchase for new subscribers after July 31, 2024. Enterprise Gold, Platinum, and Diamond include integrated payroll.
- Accountants can continue purchasing QuickBooks Accountant Desktop Solutions, including ProAdvisor bundles, through our Accountant Sales team after July 31, 2024.
What does this mean exactly? For one thing, it’s clear that after July of 2024, you will not be able to purchase a new subscription to some of the specific products of QuickBooks desktop. They will, however, continue supporting existing customers and allow you to renew your subscription to those products. They will also add product updates, not just security updates, presumably the same way that Windows does -- by downloading the updates through the software directly.
What is unclear to me is the Accountant Edition of QuickBooks for windows. They will keep on selling it (which is good), but not sure if they will update to a new version every year or do the same thing that they are doing with the other versions -- adding product updates through downloads. It’s also unclear to me what happens if I decide not to pay for my Pro-Advisor status -- will I lose access to my own Accountants edition? These are the open questions in my mind. Now that it’s tax season, I don’t have the time to follow up on this until the end of April – heck – I don’t even have the time to sleep or eat that much! So, eventually, I’ll follow up on this and share what I find out with all of you. If anyone wants to follow up and share with me, please feel free to do so by writing me at bookkeepermensch@gmail.com and let me know what you find out.
So, this might be Phase 1 of the end of the desktop edition(s) of QuickBooks. Remember, the desktop edition has been out since 1994, and the first Windows edition came out in 1995, and they have been upgrading every year for Windows, although they skipped some years with the MAC version.
I understand that our world is going online for everything, and I’m really very adaptable to change when it has to do with electronics and ‘newfangled inventions’. But, let me tell you a story of many people’s reaction when QuickBooks online was first announced at an Accountants/bookkeepers in person seminar many years ago that an online version of QuickBooks was coming out.
There were about 250 of us – we were there to learn the new edition of the desktop (I think it was around 2006 or 2007), and they announced that they were coming out with an online product. We all clapped. We were happy that they were ‘keeping up with the times’ and dipping their toe into the online accounting field. We all thought that they would basically ‘clone’ the desktop software and put it online (almost like the QuickBooks hosting services were doing with the desktop—logging into a server, even with a MAC, and using the Windows edition of the QuickBooks desktop product).
However, when they showed us the product on the 5 large screens that surrounded us, the audience fell silent.
They changed the entire interphase, the menus, everything about it. It looked awful, and as they showed the features, it was clunky, slower than the desktop, and all in all, not very impressive.
And now for my rant:
15+years later, I still consider QuickBooks Online in a BETA test -- still not as fast as it should be (even with very fast internet and a very fast PC that I use in the office – every other website loads in half a second – just not QBO), and still clunky to get around, the screens don’t refresh themselves, functions work and then don’t work, and is generally not well thought out for bookkeepers and accountants. The only people who I have met who like QBO are people who have never seen the desktop editions, or don’t even know that they have ever existed. I get it -- we move forward, and not backward – but there are things with QuickBooks online – such as downloading transactions from the bank account directly, without forcing you to enter the vendor name in the vendor name field, which voids all of your vendor reports, if you have no vendor name in the vendor field.
How about reconciling a bank account and letting you change or delete an already reconciled transaction? You’ve always been able to do that with the desktop edition, but this could have been a chance to fix that situation. I know you can go into the settings and set a date and a password after you reconcile, but most people forget to do that or not realize that there is a function to lock the database with a password.
And by the way, this is why Intuit would never want to sponsor this podcast -- I say really what’s on my mind sometimes – (Sorry, Intuit) –
QuickBooks online is supposed to be for Small Business Owners and Small Business bookkeepers, which is who this podcast is for, generally, but the most popular (features that most people need), edition of QBO is $90.00 a month, which is over $1,000.00 a year just for the software, not including the actual bookkeeping costs.
I have 50+ clients who are on QuickBooks online and I use it every day. But I don’t have to like it. My bookkeeping is just as high quality as it is using the desktop, but to get there, it’s more work for me, in general, using QuickBooks online than the desktop.
I keep as many clients’ as possible who I can on the desktop edition, and now that QuickBooks desktop is beginning the retirement tour, by the time it really disappears, it’ll be time for me to retire (actually, I could have retired 4 years ago, but didn’t, I know, that’s another story – I’m a glutton for punishment)
As I have said, I am very adaptable to new things in the accounting world, but I expect them to work properly, especially after 10+ years of being available. They are starting to use AI in QuickBooks online. One of the names of one of my client’s companies has the three letters ‘irs’ in the middle of their name, and many expense transactions come in to QuickBooks thinking that the vendor is the IRS. I have to edit the downloaded transaction to make it right.
There are at least a few times a year that I accept every bank transaction downloaded, and the reconciliation is $12K off and there are no extra transactions just sitting there. I go through the bank statement line by line and eventually find out that there is a week of transactions just missing from the bank download. No way of getting them, so they have to be entered manually. Error checking downloads in QBO? I guess not.
I’m sorry to rant here – as you know, I usually don’t do this – but again, I don’t have to make a possible sponsor happy. I’ll let them sponsor other Pods.
My philosophy, if you haven’t guessed by now, is that I want to try and do the best bookkeeping that is possible. Software should help me do that. Not make it tougher. It should not create other problems and situations that have never happened before. If I am going to download transactions directly from the bank, they should be complete and match the bank statement. Someone, or some computer, somewhere, should check the uploads from the bank and make sure that they include every transaction that’s on the printed statement. Am I wrong? And why does American Express close the paper statement in the middle of the day, so that the paper statement will never match the dates of the transactions on the download?
Once in a while, in this podcast series, I’ll just throw out things that everyone should think about. Is progress really progressing or moving forward? Is online bookkeeping really making things easier for people and more efficient? In some ways, sure – I agree with that. However, the level of bookkeeping using online products has been going downhill for several years now. Bookkeeping used to be a white-collar profession that people were proud to be part of -- that has changed. Not in my office, however, as I hope you have gathered by listening to all of these episodes in this podcast.
Ok … my rant is now over. Back to your regularly scheduled program. Back to tax season. Back to my stress in getting everything done. Back to drinking too much coffee (after being off of it for a few months).
Don’t let my rant scare you -- I am still available by email to answer any questions or to field comments about this podcast. Or to help in any way that I can with your bookkeeping. Please reach out or leave me a voicemail on the website.
I’m--- over-worked, tired, stressed, and working too hard --- Paul Rosenblum