Should you upgrade to QuickBooks2009? Outgrowing QuickBooks: No Way! is not a first-look type article, especially if you think you are outgrowing QuickBooks. It is from by a CPA who, with his ProAdvisors, spent more than four months heavily pre-release testing QuickBooks 2009 and using it in production. We found long ago that it was the fastest, easiest and most bug free QuickBooks. My pro-QuickBooks bias relates to my CPA legal obligation to act in the interest of small-business clients, not the less than 1% of my income Intuit provides (it takes far longer to earn this 1% than it does to earn comparable client income). This recently made me decide we will only start any new work in QuickBooks 2009.
Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? Why should you waste your time and money on anything else? Why ask us to waste our time and your money, by working in ways that will likely produce something less accurate and more likely to need Intuit / QuickBooks Data Recovery help?
This is the #11 in my articles on Should You Upgrade to QuickBooks 2009 (Why QuickBooks 2009?), with more to come. On October 30 (and on the last Thursday of almost every month) I will again speak at the South Florida QuickBooks Meetup. It has long been the largest QuickBooks Meetup (club) anywhere. The topic will again be Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? It and our GoToMeeting broadcast are free, so see http://quickbooks.meetup.com/34/.
Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009 if you are supposedly outgrowing QuickBooks? Should you spend $15,000 to more than $100,000: No way!
Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? Should you pay more for supposedly outgrowing QuickBooks when it is a near total waste of money: No way!
Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? QuickBooks 2009 and QuickBooks add-ons are clearly the best upgrade for most QuickBooks users, especially for those who think they may be outgrowing QuickBooks. Few even need QuickBooks Enterprise. Should you accept long delays in installing overpriced complex replacements, which impair business management: No way!
Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? The many ways to avoid outgrowing QuickBooks, include:
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Understand why few companies are really outgrowing the QuickBooks 2009 upgrade.
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Truth in advertising – QuickBooks recently had 94.2% of the small business accounting program market at retail. No one else comes close at any level.
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Shrink file sizes.
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QuickBooks add-ons.
This article only deals with the first topic: Understand why few companies are really outgrowing the QuickBooks 2009 upgrade. I will revise it to reference later articles on the other subjects above.
How small should you be to avoid outgrowing the QuickBooks 2009 upgrade?
The Census Bureau does not define small or large business. It has 25 million firms in 2004, of which 20 million had no employees. Only 17,000 (one 1,500) had 500 or more employees. http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.htmlQuickBooks can certainly handle most firms with less than 500 employees, especially if used with payroll software or a payroll service integrating with QuickBooks (see QuickBooks add-ons). Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? Unless you have more than 500 employees, are you outgrowing QuickBooks 2009: No way!
The 17,000 largest firms have more than a million establishments. This averages 60 employees per establishment. Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009 with 60 employees per establishment or are you outgrowing QuickBooks?. This means many big companies have countless establishments that would do very well with QuickBooks 2009, as few employees per establishment need QuickBooks 2009 access at one time. An average 60 employee establishment would not even need QuickBooks Enterprise, especially since some accounting will be done with other programs and at corporate or regional offices. Why upgrade to QuickBooks 2009 when it can help you avoid avoid outgrowing QuickBooks? Unless an your establishment, in a company, has more than 500 employees, are you outgrowing QuickBooks: No way!
Many small establishments, at some very large companies, can benefit from the awards Intuit gets for the fastest and easiest drop-dead-simple QuickBooks interface (based on common business forms). They also will benefit from the lack of data conversion, minimal training, ease of installation and the fast use of more than 100 Preferences to customize and increase internal control. More than 50,000 accountants are ProAdvisors, so more professional accountants support QuickBooks than use almost all other accounting programs. Larger companies using QuickBooks will have millions of users and accountants to provide local and remote support and feedback, while sharing research and programming costs, so many programmers can fix up to 100 problems a month. They especially will have far more support with QuickBooks 2009 due to the new Live Community Center, whihc will revolutionize support for many products with large loyal customer bases. Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? Big-company software cannot have such features and support, so should your establishment (division, location) decide you are outgrowing QuickBooks: No way!
Many programs link to QuickBooks, to quickly and easily transfer data, extensively checked by users and QuickBooks. There are good reasons to expect QuickBooks to be inherently FAR MORE RELIABLE than programs being sold to those supposedly outgrowing QuickBooks. The top 900 Census Bureau firms had 30 million employees in 2004 (around 33,000 employees per firm). This is 25% of total employment. In 2006 the Bureau of Labor Statistics said there were about 3.4 million accountants, auditors, bookkeepers and clerks. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos001, htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos144.htm That probably means there are about 800,000 accountants, auditors, bookkeepers and clerks in big companies. Many programs compete in this market, with many specific to one function. There also is a very big variance in company size, with the largest companies using custom programs. This, and industry figures I see, make it likely that most programs, for those supposedly outgrowing QuickBooks, have less than 40,000 users. Some in the outgrowing QuickBooks field have only a few thousand users. Should you use programs with less than 1% of the users of QuickBooks testing reliability or 1%of the programmers adding features, when you can upgrade to QuickBooks 2009 ifyou are outgrowing QuickBooks: No Way!
Should you upgrade to QuickBooks 2009? Outgrowing QuickBooks: No Way!