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QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

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Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#21

Post by chorsestudios »

stadium wrote: post #19
ilamont wrote: post #15

I use Quickbooks Online, an overpriced, poorly designed piece of garbage for the business I run (small business, lots of online transactions). For instance, the official PayPal app is problematic, my accountant says, because of the way transactions are recorded on the QBO ledger (the issue is mentioned here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU ). This means manual processes, which sucks for me in terms of ext…

Besides banking, what are your other "must-have" integrations? Any sense as to why QuickBooks is so entrenched with accounting firms? I've seen Xero mentioned more often lately, and curious how they broke through the QB barrier to entry.

I manage QBO for a small business and would love to dump QBO as well. I have encountered a lot of bugs that required support to resolve. My other "must-have" integrations are Shopify and Fishbowl Inventory. Xero seems to be the other viable alternative, and at least in my case they broke the QB barrier by supporting my current business critical software as well as several other potential services I have my eye on.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#22

Post by donmcronald »

It's a massive price hike for people like me that are frugal with software purchases. I just checked and I paid $171 CAD for QuickBooks Desktop Pro 2018 because I bought it on sale. The same subscription version is $199, which I assume is USD, so ~$250 CAD per year.

Now I don't have a PHD in math or anything, but $1250 over 5 years vs $171 for a perpetual license that I estimate should last me to the 5 year mark is a bit of a difference.

There won't be any more sales and everyone knows what happens next. They'll start charging addon pricing for features or charging "per something" for things where they can and before you know it the cost of your bookkeeping software will be getting married to your revenue in some way. They'll push until they're getting a cut of all your revenue.

I work with a lot of small businesses. They're not dumb. They know they're getting completely screwed by stuff like this, but there's nothing they can do about it. It's abusive, anti-competitive behavior and Intuit should be on the list of companies that needs to be scrutinized by the government.

Edit: Re-reading the fine print, it's $199 for the first year then it jumps to $299, so it's actually ~$1770 CAD over 5 year. That's a 10x price increase for me. TEN TIMES!!

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#24

Post by _td9r »

donmcronald wrote: post #22

It's a massive price hike for people like me that are frugal with software purchases. I just checked and I paid $171 CAD for QuickBooks Desktop Pro 2018 because I bought it on sale. The same subscription version is $199, which I assume is USD, so ~$250 CAD per year . Now I don't have a PHD in math or anything, but $1250 over 5 years vs $171 for a perpetual license that I estimate should last me to the 5 year mark is…

Switch to plaintextaccounting.org. See my other comment on this. I highly doubt you need Quickbooks.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#25

Post by no_wizard »

Just by reading the comments here, there seems to be a business opportunity in having a frontend for business owners / non accountant users that fixes the usability of quickbooks and maintains some level of feature parity, but has some way to export to a quickbooks compatible format to hand over to the accountant, who would be none the wiser, no?

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#26

Post by WorldMaker »

codegeek wrote: post #10
encryptluks2 wrote: post #2

Good. Hopefully this will cause more people to leave Intuit and search out alternatives. This is just one more reason to add to the list.

It is the network effect. Inuit is very aggressive in killing any competition and they are widely used by CPAs and accounting firms. My CPA told me flat that if I don't go with Quickbooks, she would have a harder time playing with a more "fancy" system. So unless the CPAs and accountants are onboard, it is tough to kill Intuit.

It's not just the network effects of CPAs/Accountants, but also banks and vendor invoice software. It's also the decades of lock in where all of a company's accounting data has been in QB.

From what I've heard part of why CPAs/Accountants are reluctant to learn some other system that isn't QB isn't because QB is good for them, but that they have decades of accumulated cruft like Excel macros and similar hacks to try to make okay double entry lemonade from QB's awful single entry lemons. It's relearning/rebuilding all that that they don't want to do, even if they don't directly realize a lot of their pain stems from the fact that QB is just bad at its job (and has been for a long time).

(Disclaimer/source: Way back in ought six, I was an intern on Microsoft's attempt at the space in a product called Small Business Accounting and then briefly Office Accounting before it died. Among other things SBA chased after CPA/Accountant buy-in and from what I heard nearly had it, as it was proper double-entry for one reason. The takeaway that winning over CPAs/Accountants alone isn't sufficient is mine based only a peripheral reading of what went wrong with that project and what I managed to gather of why that product didn't exist any longer by the time I graduated.)

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#27

Post by nulbyte »

client4 wrote: post #12

I used Quickbooks desktop and found it antiquated; create an export and email it to your accountant? No thank you. I then tried Quickbooks Online and it was hands-down the worst piece of software I've ever used. I ultimately landed on Xero, which is "good enough". To echo a number of other comments on this page, my accountants were generally slaves to the software. I actually had to change firms going from QBO to Xer…

I also use Xero for a nonprofit. They seem to be trapped in a growth mindset to the exclusion of finishing half-baked functionality, but still better than QuickBooks, IMO. Their support is also a lot easier to reach, compared to Intuit, and the folks at Xero seem to know their product better, too. Luckily, our accountant was perfectly fine figuring out Xero.

While it's said to see more software go to subscription models, I will gladly pay Xero more for better functionality. Or until I roll my own, which I keep threatening, but never get around to.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#28

Post by ilamont »

donmcronald wrote: post #22

It's a massive price hike for people like me that are frugal with software purchases. I just checked and I paid $171 CAD for QuickBooks Desktop Pro 2018 because I bought it on sale. The same subscription version is $199, which I assume is USD, so ~$250 CAD per year . Now I don't have a PHD in math or anything, but $1250 over 5 years vs $171 for a perpetual license that I estimate should last me to the 5 year mark is…

Oh, and they will probably jack up your subscription price, too, if my experience with Quickbooks Online in the states is anything to go by.

Here's the message I received after paying US$425/year for a few years:

Your QuickBooks Online Plus subscription will increase to $755 per year, plus tax where applicable on your next billing date on or after December 1, 2019

That's a 78% increase in the annual subscription price.

After getting this message and consulting with my accountant, I decided to DOWNGRADE the account to QBO Essentials, which is about US$310/year.

I would dump Intuit and its software permanently if I could. They are parasites on small businesses and individuals who get tricked into paying for their tax software.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#29

Post by dawnerd »

ilamont wrote: post #15

I use Quickbooks Online, an overpriced, poorly designed piece of garbage for the business I run (small business, lots of online transactions). For instance, the official PayPal app is problematic, my accountant says, because of the way transactions are recorded on the QBO ledger (the issue is mentioned here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU ). This means manual processes, which sucks for me in terms of ext…

And don’t forget they have a similar for self employed people which you’d think would be the same app just gated off but no, it’s seemingly a completely different app that their own support people don’t even understand and give answers for QBO even tho QBSE doesn’t support.

Found it cheaper to just hire someone to deal with it than having it all messed up end of year by QB.

Re: QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model

#30

Post by reaperducer »

stadium wrote: post #19
ilamont wrote: post #15

I use Quickbooks Online, an overpriced, poorly designed piece of garbage for the business I run (small business, lots of online transactions). For instance, the official PayPal app is problematic, my accountant says, because of the way transactions are recorded on the QBO ledger (the issue is mentioned here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU ). This means manual processes, which sucks for me in terms of ext…

Besides banking, what are your other "must-have" integrations? Any sense as to why QuickBooks is so entrenched with accounting firms? I've seen Xero mentioned more often lately, and curious how they broke through the QB barrier to entry.

I ended up on QuickBooks because my accountant insisted on it when i started my business. About ten years later i found out she's part of some kind of insider program. She probably thinks it's just cool for her to get special access to stuff. But i don't think she realizes it's a plot to lure small businesses into the QuickBooks platform.
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