Quickbooks extortion

[HCHTech]

Surprising no one, I suspect, Intuit has joined the rest of the universe and has moved the desktop software to a "subscription only" pricing model. In the past, we always chose and recommended Quickbooks Desktop unless there was a specific use case where the online version was indicated (like multiple locations, for example). The desktop version has a richer feature-set and is less expensive, especially if you only purchase it every 3 years. Quickbooks desktop would generally "work" for 3 years before you had to upgrade. If you didn't use any online services like bank feeds or their payroll system, it would likely work much longer. There was the one thing that if your accountant was a "Quickbooks Pro Advisor", then part of the requirements for using that title was forcing your clients to upgrade at least every 3 years. Those were the rules they set, so those were the rules I played by.

I have 2 licenses for my business, and previously always used the "Premier" version because it had support for "Assemblies". This allowed you to build a thing out of inventory parts, and then only show the final assembled thing on the invoice to the customer, instead of the individual parts. The last time we purchased the software was in 2019, and we paid about $750 for 2 seats. Back in 2016, we got an even better deal and paid just $450 for a 2-user version of 2016 Premier. In 2013, we paid just $260 for 2 seats from Newegg - they must have had a sale or something. For purposes of this discussion, though, let's go with the 2019 price of $750 for 2 users for 3 years = $125/user/year.

Enter 2022. You can now only buy Quickbooks Desktop as a subscription, and it phones home when you open the software so it will quit working as soon as you quite paying. Quickbooks Premier is $550/year for one user, and $850/year for 2 users. So that works out to $425/user/year for me, only 340% of what I'm paying now. If I give up on Premier and go back down to Pro (not sure what all I would lose in the process, but I'll be looking into it), then that now costs $350/year for one user and $550/year for 2 users, or $275/user/year, or 220% of what I'm paying now.

I don't see me switching to Xero or Freshbooks, so I'm sure I'll end up just paying, but yikes - too much sticker shock for a Monday. I wish I could raise MY prices by 340% and not lose customers...

 

[Porthos]

They did that a while back for Quicken. After that, I saw the writing on the wall for Quick Books.
Next will be Office.

 

[callthatgirl]

@Porthos I agree, and Windows "To get the next set of updates, subscribe here for $9.99 a month" lol

 

[Sky-Knight]

Been this way for several years now... and why I'm still on QB Pro 2017.

It's only $300 a year for 3 people to be in QB Online Essentials... that's where they really want you to be.

I'm probably going to jump to ZipBooks at some point... at least they're a small American firm.

If I want to self host... been eyeballing https://akaunting.com

That one is FOSS, GPL v3 so I can just slap it on a *nix VM somewhere and never pay anyone if I wanted.

 

[britechguy]

Next will be Office.

What do you mean by this, exactly? Since M365 is already a subscription service, I'm not quite clear about what you're trying to get at.

(When I see "Office," capitalized and without other qualification, the only thing that means to me is Microsoft Office or its current subscription-based equivalent).

 

[Sky-Knight]

And M365 has such a huge amount of baked in value it will be a LONG TIME of increases before anyone can rightly call it extortionate.

But I am concerned about that too...

 

[Porthos]

What do you mean by this, exactly? Since M365 is already a subscription service, I'm not quite clear about what you're trying to get at.

There is destined to be no other versions other than M365 sold in the future. No stand-alone copies.
I am not stating that it is something that has been announced just that that is where the industry is heading.

 

[Diggs]

Don't forget about Wave Accounting. Well rated and free. I wish I would have set up my books with it but was already down the Quickbooks Online path and it was too much of a hassle for me to change.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah they're pricey, we run on Premier for 4 users, still at 2021.

Last night I did an upgrade at a distie for contractors...big masonry place, they run on Enterprise Platinum Edition. That's over $1,000.00 PER USER. (I think $1,070.00 per)

The thing with Quickbooks, it's almost like Microsoft....not quite, but almost...as it's a "gold standard" for businesses, and soooo many other 3rd part software and services "integrate" with it. Yes I know there are a couple of other accounting apps that some services can integrate with, but...by far and wide, Quickbooks has the most.

Also, it's desirable to use software that your accountant can work with...."accountants copy" exports for example. Accountants run the Accountants version of Quickbooks that can open all sorts of various client versions of QB's.

Boy do I hate their support though. I needed their support last night, started this project after 1900 hours, around 2020. Support has me opt for either email support, or a return phone call if you leave your number...and when I plugged my cell # in, a message that I'd receive a call within 5 minutes.

It's over 12 hours later now...still no call from them...lol. Luckily I figured it out and was done by 2200.

 

[sapphirescales]

If you want a good software that's only a one time purchase, check out Express Accounts. That's what we use:

Accounting and Bookkeeping Software for PC/Mac - Download Free

Manage, track and report on small business income, expenditures and cash flow with Express Accounts free small business accounting and bookkeeping software.

www.nchsoftware.com

It's 100x easier than QuickBooks and has literally NO problems (unlike QuickBooks). Frankly I'm amazed that QuickBooks still exists. It's the Norton of antivirus software and should have died a looooooooooooooooong time ago. Slow, buggy, complicated, expensive. What's to like about it exactly?

 

[Sky-Knight]

There is destined to be no other versions other than M365 sold in the future. No stand-alone copies.
I am not stating that it is something that has been announced just that that is where the industry is heading.

There is some clarity that needs to be drawn here...

M365 is NOT Microsoft Office.

The latter can be had via machine based perpetual licensing, and probably always will be.

The former is a series of cloud services that tightly integrate with the latter and other software. The fact that M365 can also include Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows licensing is almost irrelevant. But the part I take issue with is the conflation between the two products. Microsoft 365 is not, and never has been Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Windows. These are three distinctly different products.

The former is obviously a subscription based service for obvious reasons. The latter two are also, but also available via traditional perpetual licensing. Will they remain so forever? I have no idea... But I see no evidence that these two things are going to change anytime soon. And even if they do so what? We have alternatives for those that don't want to pay that subscription fee.

I'm more concerned with the inevitable future time when Microsoft decides to increase profits by increasing rates for arbitrary reasons. That pressure will build over time as more and more use the platform.

 

[britechguy]

There is destined to be no other versions other than M365 sold in the future. No stand-alone copies.
I am not stating that it is something that has been announced just that that is where the industry is heading.

1. I'll agree, 100%, with regard to Microsoft Office and about the trend more broadly.

2. I'll note that there are a number of smaller players who are already strategically setting themselves up for the scrum that will occur because there exists a significant part of the market that will not now, and will not ever, be willing to "go the subscription route." And those are not all open-source projects, either.

I have no intention of going the subscription route for anything where I can avoid it. I know that this means that Microsoft Office will eventually be something I'm not actively using anymore.

There's zero doubt that Microsoft will continue to dominate the office suite market as it has for decades. But the market is changing and those who want standalone software still exist in large numbers.

 

[Robbieau]

Could see this happening years ago with intuit, basically any main public business Lob application that isnt user subscription based has limited timing on it. Perpetual is long gone.

 

[HCHTech]

Dredging this thread back up to post an email I got from Intuit today.

============
What happened?
As of June 15, 2022, Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer 11, which is the default browser on QuickBooks Desktop. This may introduce a future security vulnerability to your product because you are currently using an unsupported version of QuickBooks Desktop. We recommend that you move to QuickBooks Online to receive the latest security and critical updates automatically1. For more information about this, please visit [link removed].
============

Yeah, I suppose it would be too much to ask that they update their stupid software to not use a 9 year old browser. I have two words for you, Intuit: the first one begins with "F" and the 2nd one begins with "O".

 

[britechguy]

Is it not possible to use MS-Edge in IE mode here? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/business/ie-mode

 

[timeshifter]

Dredging this thread back up to post an email I got from Intuit today.

============
What happened?
As of June 15, 2022, Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer 11, which is the default browser on QuickBooks Desktop. This may introduce a future security vulnerability to your product because you are currently using an unsupported version of QuickBooks Desktop. We recommend that you move to QuickBooks Online to receive the latest security and critical updates automatically1. For more information about this, please visit [link removed].
============

Yeah, I suppose it would be too much to ask that they update their stupid software to not use a 9 year old browser. I have two words for you, Intuit: the first one begins with "F" and the 2nd one begins with "O".

What version of QuickBooks are you on, 2016?

This came up for me with 2022 but I think it was resolved with a minor update

Retirement if Internet Explorer 11 related to QuickBooks and in general

We all know that Internet Explorer 11 is being phased out and I'd be 99% of us and our clients don't use it as a browser and haven't for a very long time. But last week and today I've been getting several inquiries about it. One was a user who was paying attention to notices from Microsoft and...

www.technibble.com

 

[Sky-Knight]

Is it not possible to use MS-Edge in IE mode here? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/business/ie-mode

That's just it... it is...

IE is retired, the IE components used by apps via API calls are not. Those components are now part of New Edge.

They are using this announcement to use fear to sell new product, where I'm not certain it's warranted. It's still not a great idea to be reliant on out of support software. But this specific upgrade or die scenario smells funny to me.

 

[britechguy]

They are using this announcement to use fear to sell new product

A practice that's all too common.

I'm all for keeping things up to date, but there is software where that's absolutely critical, others where it's preferable, and still others where if "it does everything I need it to do" and there are no known big security risks, it can be used indefinitely.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Moved a clients Quickbooks to Right Networks this morning, a good Quickbooks (and other accounting software) host based out of New Hampshire.

For years, Quickbooks has had a "we only support the past 3 versions" rule. IMO...accounting software is important. Something goes wrong, there's a LOT of important info there...I don't want to be on the hook for. Majority of our clients keep their QB's within supported versions...and it's our rule of thumb for other line of business software you want our help on. Else, you're on your own!

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

Moved a clients Quickbooks to Right Networks this morning, a good Quickbooks (and other accounting software) host based out of New Hampshire.

For years, Quickbooks has had a "we only support the past 3 versions" rule. IMO...accounting software is important. Something goes wrong, there's a LOT of important info there...I don't want to be on the hook for. Majority of our clients keep their QB's within supported versions...and it's our rule of thumb for other line of business software you want our help on. Else, you're on your own!

Wow! They are expensive