If this blog were a gun and Intuit were a person there'd be a smoking hole in the wall somewhere above their left ear and I'd be brandishing for a second shot. It's a good thing there aren't waiting periods for creating new posts on blogs, because I'm angry now.

Alright, I'm not really that angry, but I am perturbed, annoyed, and frustrated. With who? With Intuit. Who's Intuit? They make Quickbooks. What's Quickbooks? It's accounting software for small to mid-size businesses. What are mid-size businesses? They're small businesses that don't like being called small so they had to make up a new term.

The cause of my frustration begins with a phone call I was on with a sales person from Intuit a few weeks ago. On that phone call I asked the person "Can I upgrade from Enterprise 2.0 to Pro 2006?" The answer was "Yes, but you won't have access to the Enterprise features." Turns out the sales guy didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

But since I also didn't have a clue, I promptly purchased Quickbooks Pro 2006. But wait, why was I upgrading to a newer version in the first place? Was I dissatisfied with my version of Quickbooks because everyone had a newer version and I was keen to enjoy all those new features? Was there some compelling feature that made the upgrade necessary in order to deal with the new ways in which business is conducted today? No, as a matter of fact I'm quite happy with Enterprise 2.0 and could go on using it for years. That is, if Intuit hadn't cut off support of payroll features which forced me to upgrade.

Why does Intuit cut off payroll support? Is it because it's just too much work to make it work on older versions? Maybe, but I doubt it. There's an obvious reason, which is that as long as I keep using my outdated software that I'm happy with, they don't make any money. Why not force people to upgrade, we'll make millions! Well, in truth I don't mind that tactic. That's their right to run their company that way, and if I don't like it I have a right to start my own accounting software company and provide unlimited support forever. Intuit's lack of support for software more than three-years old would be only mildly annoying if it weren't for what followed.

I went out and purchased Quickbooks Pro 2006 with Payroll Solutions for $400. I didn't buy the newest version of Enterprise Solutions because 1) I don't need the Enterprise features I've learned, and 2) it costs around $4K, many times what Pro costs.

I installed Pro on our front-desk computer and went to open our Quickbooks file. No dice. I got a message saying something to the effect of Quickbooks Pro not being able to open Enterprise files. Great, so the Intuit representative either 1) lied to me, or 2) didn't know what he was talking about.

So I start searching through Intuit's website and I find Karl Irvin's website. Karl went out and developed a piece of software that can transfer transactions from Enterprise versions of Quickbooks to the Pro version.

Thrilled, I purchased the software. Whoops. It can only transfer within two versions of each other, and Enterprise 2.0 and Pro 2006 are about four versions apart. My problem is that I've already spent a week and a half working on this in between the light work I have here and there running a company, and if I don't get the new software installed real fast I'm not sure how I'm going to cut paychecks. And by the way, I've leaving a lot of the details out of this story to spare you the drama.

Luckily I happen to have a cousin in-law who is a Quickbooks Certified Advisor and has a copy of Enterprise 6.0. I send my assistant on a 2-hour drive to pick up a burned disk, bring it back, and install it, upgrade the file from 2.0 to 6.0. I then proceed to use the software I bought from Karl for $130 to transfer everything to 2006. This takes a while because I'm not very good at reading instructions and so I have to do this multiple times.

"Finally," I'm thinking, "I've finally got it" as I open 2006 and I see all sorts of data in there. Hmmm, but wait. Why is my bank balance a few hundred thousand dollars above what I know it to be? Well, as it turns out Karl's software doesn't transfer everything. One thing it leaves out is payroll transactions. I figure this out by looking around his website as I curse Intuit for not just building functionality into their software to allow me to transfer everything easily from Enterprise to Pro. Karl built his own program, and I know Intuit has teams of developers, so I'm sure they could do it quite easily if they wanted to.

But wait, Karl says he's also built a utility that transfers payroll over. However, it doesn't transfer everything, it just brings the checks over with the total amounts so that your balances will be correct, even if your payroll details aren't. Well, it's better than nothing, so I buy that software for $50.

I try to run the software, but it doesn't work. Turns out it's not compatible with 6.0.

And that's where the matter currently rests. I've had to go back and re-enter in all the information for payroll for 2006, and I'm looking at paying my accountant for several hours to make adjusting entries and such so that our balance comes out right, and who knows what else isn't quite right.

I don't blame Karl for any of this, although I think it would be bonkers if he could get his software to transfer EVERYTHING over, but I'm guessing he faces limitations within Quickbooks that don't make that possible.

I am peeved at Intuit. I wish I had never purchased Enterprise in the first place and I would caution anyone against buying it unless they're comfortable paying a few grand to upgrade it every three years, knowing that if you want to transfer to Pro you're going to have some serious work ahead of you.

All told, I've currently spent $180 more than I planned to, and I suspect I'll be out around $400-500 more after my accountant fixes everything. When I add in my time and the potential for added inconvenience down the road due to unforeseen consequences of this transfer I wonder if I shouldn't have forked out a couple grand for Enterprise 6.0. I think that's what Intuit has planned all along.

But I'm going to make it my goal that their plan backfires on them, at least to the extent I can affect things. Whereas Intuit hoped to make a few extra grand off of me, they haven't. And with my angry rant of a blog post, who knows how many others, who otherwise may have purchased Enterprise, will now opt for Pro instead, costing Intuit tens, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or maybe they'll even buy Peachtree or Great Plains, who knows.

Tell the people, don't let my sufferings have been in vain!

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Comments

I used Quickbooks premier for my first year, then switched to Quickbooks Online which has worked out really well.

"What are mid-size businesses? They're small businesses that don't like being called small so they had to make up a new term."

I love it!

Update: It gets worse. Turns out Karl's software didn't transfer necessary parts of the data. For example, I've got a few hundred thousand dollars worth of invoices that are open now that weren't open before. We've received payments for them, but the connection between payments that were received and the invoices for which they were received has disappeared. The same thing has happened with accounts payable, so I now have several hundred bills that haven't been paid, according to the system.

So I am having to do exactly what I was trying to avoid in the first place--start over. Yes, we are going to leave the company history in Enterprise and start a new company file in Quickbooks Pro 2006 with a clean slate. We're going to re-enter all the 2006 data and make some adjusting entries to make sure our balances are all correct, and then we should be good going forward, although looking up historical data will require some inconvenience.

Apparently we're not the only ones frustrated with Intuit about their upgrade process - http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,69081,00.html?tw=rss.TOP, nor is this a new issue for them.

I learnt stuff the hard way too. 2 weeks into my data conversion woes, I learnt of a data recovery company called E-Tech Recovery. For $299, you get peace of mind and they transferred everything over. Try them at www.quickbooksfilerepair.com

i sit here on a sunday morning trying to go back to Pro from Enterprize and can't. I will cut my losses and start over.
I have tryed eveything, all i can seem to do is get my vendor list and customer list imported and exported and thats it
Years worth of history lost thanks Quickbooks.

Thanks for the tip SK, I got my Quickbooks Enterprise file converted to Pro. ETech Recovery did a fantastic job. I highly recommend them.

Reprehensible money grubbing policy. It illustrates what's wrong with buisness attitude. @#$@# the customer any time you get the chance. This also happened to me when I found out my accountant doesn't use enterprise, which BTW is an outlandishly overpriced POS for what is little added functionality. It's obvious that Intuit intuitively knows many Enterprise users will find this out and try to retreat to premier or pro and that this is why the purposely block the transfer. It's worse than a slap in the face. It's understanding that you made a multi-thousand dollar mistake.

I, of course, will discourage any person I meet to avoid buying Enterprise at all costs. I can only pray for karma for that sociopathic company.

I too am looking to upgrade from Quickbooks Premier. In talking to a phone tech they said that if you have more thatn 14,000 customer accounts, not hard to do in the course of 5 years, that the Premier edition will not function and I would need to upgrade to a newer version or I would need to get Enterprize.

After reading this blog I was wondering if there is anyone that could given some good advice as far as making the upgrade or looking for another program that would not have all these "by the ways". If I would have known about the limitations of this program I would have never invested the money in the first place and found a program from the onset that would be able to grow with the company. There are enough events to worry about in business without having to wonder why the accounting software is not functioning.

Any ideas anyone? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ticked off in Tucson = (

The Data Transfer Utility links Receive Payment transactions and invoices and marks them paid. It does the same for BIlls and Bill Payment Checks. You can download the free trial and verify this.

Wow! I hate Quickbooks. Don, your suffering is not in vain. I was suffering trying to use Karl's software to convert Quickbooks Enterprise to Pro. Desperate, I turned to the web for a solution since some parts of the data file don't convert over easily. After spending the amount of time and money, I had something going but checking all the years of data was a formidable task. Thanks to your post, I contacted E-Tech Recovery and they did it in 12 hours flat! Their tech support was awesome and the conversion was clean. We were up and running the next day.

This post saved my proverbial a**. I can't thank you enough Don.

Don -- you deserve a huge HUG !

This post helped with my conversion and they gave me a nice bonus for helping my company put with their conversion. They had been trying to convert QB Enterprise 5.0 to QB Pemiere 2007 with tons of problems. Each day was making it look bad to worse......till I did some research on the internet, used the tip by SK and helped them out. I am no longer the rookie in the company and it has got me a lot of respect. Did I mention I got a bonus. This post is the reason.

Did anyone discover any issues with the conversions done by: www.quickbooksfilerepair.com

If so what were the issues?

Is it worth taking a risk with the conversion or should we just spend the money and buy the license?

Hi Yasmin,

I did a conversion from Quickbooks Enterprise 6.0 to Quickbooks premiere 2007 with Quickbooksfilerepair.com yesterday. They got my file back in less than 3 hours and did a perfect conversion. We had zero issues after the conversion -- I would get the file converted rather than continue with Enterprise. Just my 2 cents.

JE

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