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QuickBooks vs. Peachtree, QuickBooks add-ons

David Chermak did a good QuickBooks vs. Peachtree review. I appreciate his effort, as he has much more balanced expert QuickBooks vs. Peachtree experience than I now have.

I once used Peachtree exclusively and still occasionally suggest it, mainly for serialized inventory at low cost. However, there are good reasons that QuickBooks now has 94% of the small business accounting program market. These reasons were so dominant that Microsoft dropped Microsoft Money (leaving Quicken almost no competition) and should soon drop Microsoft Accounting. This leaves the once dominant Peachtree number two, in a crowded field of QuickBooks vs. Peachtree.

The reasons for the overwhelming dominance of QuickBooks vs. Peachtree partly relate to the perspective of those who, unlike Mr. Chermak, did not know accounting, much less IT, before learning Peachtree. Many now learn QuickBooks as they learn bookkeeping or accounting. One of the first few QuickBooks Learning Center video tutorials should be mandatory for every business student and businessperson, not simply for accountants and bookkeepers. You might start every bookkeeping or accounting course with it, as I have known many older graduate accountants who never really “got it.”

You should mention the QuickBooks market share in any QuickBooks vs. Peachtree review, as it results in far more extensive pre-release QuickBooks testing. The QuickBooks vs. Peachtree market share also results in abundant low-cost local staff and professional support, compared to other programs. It even relates to maximum savings in exchanging data with accountants, for taxes and financial statements. This can save far more than the annual cost of any QuickBooks except Enterprise. The differences in QuickBooks vs. Peachtree tech and web support mirrors the overwhelming QuickBooks market share. The QuickBooks Wikis and tech-support-backed user-to-user help (which I helped create) won an international award.

Any QuickBooks vs. Peachtree review that leaves out add-on programs also does its readers a disservice. QuickBooks add-ons blow away all QuickBooks vs. Peachtree feature comparisons. These QuickBooks add-ons are the fastest, easiest low-cost way to make QuickBooks far more powerful and feature rich, for far more users, than even most big company programs. These QuickBooks add-ons avoid many separate error-prone databases, with overlapping information, while drastically cutting related time and training needed. Peachtree was once way ahead in this area. It even had a single-user open database version, which excited many of us. Then came the disastrous Sage acquisition. Sage justified the cost by saying, in SEC filed documents, that it would switch many Peachtree users to its higher priced products. It soon dropped the near ready multi-user Peachtree database version. One developer sued over this, since he had done so much in reliance on earlier statements. The biggest blow, however, was that Sage increased the cost of Peachtree add-on listings from $1,000 to $10,000, which NO developer would pay. Today there are almost no Peachtree add-ons. Many that exist are QuickBooks add-on conversions.

By contrast, QuickBooks provided a free Software Development Kit for linking programs to QuickBooks. There were 25,000 SDK downloads the first few days. In 7 years, no upgrade to this SDK or QuickBooks ever broke a working QuickBooks SDK add-on. One QuickBooks keyboard macro add-on failed due to a QuickBooks upgrade. The program did state unemployment tax reports before QuickBooks did, so it effectively competed with QuickBooks when it failed. It also failed the week before Christmas, when Intuit is busy with QuickBooks and tax table upgrades, installs and bug fixes. Despite this, I notified the amazing Brad Smith, now QuickBooks CEO, at the request of a developer that I never met. Two days later Brad’s team had a tentative fix for testing. Three days after that QuickBooks distributed the fix to everyone. That approach is why there were soon thousands of QuickBooks add-ons at QuickBooks-add-ons.com. Six hundred of the best QuickBooks add-ons are tested, reviewed and rated at Marketplace.intuit.com.

Intuit is now extending these QuickBooks add-ons to the web cloud as Intuit Federated Applications. Soon this will give any web developer the fastest, easiest and least expensive way to link any web application and database to QuickBooks. There are now five million QuickBooks companies with 25 million employees. It seems likely that Intuit will soon add the 25+ million users of Quicken, TurboTax and its other programs to this. This should create an international network of immense value. At that point Peachtree and Sage’s larger company programs may find that the best way to get the add-ons their users want will be to link to the Intuit QuickBooks cloud. That will make many QuickBooks vs. Peachtree comparisons meaningless. Therefore, the big question is whether you want to benefit from QuickBooks vs. Peachtree sooner or much later.

Victor Audit Report Released, QuickBooks Enterprises

Even CPAs often do not seem to understand QuickBooks, QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks add-ons. I recently wrote this response to a Google News featured story, Victor Audit Report Released.

I did many CPA audits of government funded agencies in NY, NJ and Florida. I am a QuickBooks specialist and a former Rochester landowner, Oneonta farm hand and Florida elected official. This week I will again answer all “Ask the Expert” questions for the maker of QuickBooks.

I had no personal knowledge of Victor before your August 22 Victor Audit Report Released story. It includes, “… kept the town’s financial records using Quickbooks Enterprise, computer software that’s better suited for small businesses… Fully integrated accounting software designed for municipalities would be more appropriate.” I only read the part of the audit report in the story, as the full audit is not yet on the linked Victor website.

This was shocking to two CPAs who know QuickBooks Enterprise. I most respectfully submit that Intuit, or the 47 QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisors within 25 miles of Victor, could easily win a suit over these damaging misstatements. The auditor seems not to understand QuickBooks Enterprise, which created the municipal financial records for audit and can assist with internal control.

QuickBooks fully integrates accounting. It has about 94% of the small business accounting program market. QuickBooks Enterprise is the very successful large version, for firms with up to 500 employees, who need up to 30 simultaneous users. The Census Bureau does not define large or small firms, but found only 18,000 firms with more than 500 employees in 2006. Victor had less than 10,000 residents in the 2000 Census, so it cannot come close to testing QuickBooks Enterprise limits. Moreover, the QuickBooks Enterprise, which Victor probably uses, costs about $3,000, or 3% to 5% of the cost of municipal software mentioned in the story. QuickBooks users are readily available anywhere, for far less than the cost of hard-to- find users of much less tested specialty software. Victor also need not convert data for new software. Such a conversion, and the related training and installation, may take up to a year, while requiring substantial consultant and audit fees, for a total of more than of 20 to 30 times the Victor annual QuickBooks cost.

I feel QuickBooks Enterprise is uniquely suited to municipal accounting. It has full fixed asset accounting and an always-on audit trail. It probably has far more extra internal control settings than Victor can use and far more than there are in competing municipal accounting programs. It also can combine reports from many QuickBooks files, on different fiscal periods (for the possible periods of different Victor funding sources). Auditors can work on an Accountant Copy, as Victor employees work on original files. Anyone can then quickly and easily merge in the audit entries. Other equally capable software is probably prohibitively expensive.

Perhaps most important, some of the THOUSANDS of QuickBooks add-ons are the fastest, easiest and least expensive way for Victor auditors and managers to get extra functions. They can have industry-standard big-company reports or automatic printing or emailing of QuickBooks reports, on any schedule. Victor can attach support documents to QuickBooks list items or transactions, to increase internal control and minimize audit time and cost. It can integrate GPS tracking to minimize vehicle misuse, while providing better service. Remote expense and time tracking, scale measurement, utility billing and much more are readily available. There are even 13,000 Google references to: municipal OR fund + accounting + quickbooks + 'add-ons' OR 'interfaces'. Together these add-on programs can have many hundreds of users at once, who batch QuickBooks work. This can make QuickBooks Enterprise suitable for organizations with thousands of employees. They can get work done faster, with fewer errors, as there are no separate databases with duplicate inconsistent data and no posting errors or delays. Even expensive competing programs cannot do what QuickBooks Enterprise does, because few have add-ons

I, therefore, again most respectfully, submit that Victor should keep using QuickBooks Enterprise (and possibly QuickBooks add-ons) to get the extra capability it wants, at minimal cost. My QuickBooks friends may even honor my request to treat Victor as an eligible charity, to reduce its QuickBooks Enterprise costs.

Free QuickBooks 2010, fix QuickBooks Errors and Speeding Up QuickBooks Performance

Here is the fastest and easiest way to get a Free QuickBooks 2010 and a low-cost (possibly resellable) QuickBooks 2009, while experts fix QuickBooks Errors, Speeding Up QuickBooks Performance. This QuickBooks insider tip is from Intuit's 8/24-8/28/09 "QuickBooks Errors and Speeding Up QuickBooks two-time "Ask the Expert,"Mike Block CPA.

Buy QuickBooks 2009 NOW, even if you do not need it. Newegg and Staples recently had them for less than half off, but see pricegrabber.com. QuickBooks has a no-questions-asked, 60 day guarantee (Google: QuickBooks Software License Agreement). QuickBooks 2010 will be out on September 28. Call QuickBooks within 60 days of purchase and you can get a Free QuickBooks 2010 download ($15.95 for the the CD). This License Agreement says you must return the old copy, but Intuit people may not require this. Your new Free QuickBooks 2010 should fix QuickBooks Errors in old QuickBooks files. The QuickBooks Data Recovery Service also does not charge ProAdvisors like Mike Block CPA to fix any QuickBooks Errors found in during QuickBooks upgrades. The new Utilities, Cleanup function also will substantially cut QuickBooks file size. This will make the Free QuickBooks 2010 upgrade the fastest and esiest way to fix QuickBooks Errors, Speeding Up QuickBooks Performance.

Mike Block CPA has a unique Intuit relationship, so subscribe to his QuickBooks-Blog and Mike Block CPA Twitter account, for the fastest and easiest QuickBooks shortcuts and insider tips. After all, former Intuit (QuickBooks, Quicken, TurboTax) CEO Steve Bennett asked current CEO Brad Smith to contact Mike before reporting to work. Steve wrote that Mike should, "Keep raising hell when Intuit does something wrong." Brad wrote Mike that he reads everything Mike writes to Intuit and, “You’re fantastic Mike. Absolutely fantastic!"