06
Nov
08

Quickbooks 2009 Online Banking is Absolutely Horrible

By Joshua Steimle 31 Comments Categories: Reviews & How-To

If you’re considering upgrading to Quickbooks Pro 2009 and you use the Online Banking feature, I have some advice for you–DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT DO IT!!!

I just upgraded from Quickbooks 2006 because you have to upgrade every three years–they force you to by not supporting versions that are more than three years old, meaning you can’t get payroll updates once they’re three years old, meaning if you cut paychecks through QB (as I do) then you have to upgrade every three years.

It’s annoying enough that they’ve created a racket by which I’m forced to upgrade software that works just fine for me, but with Quickbooks 2009 they’ve now forced me to upgrade to software that doesn’t work. I don’t mean that Online Banking in Quickbooks 2009 is just different, or that I’m having to learn new ways of doing things (which I am, and which is also annoying), I mean the software actually does not do the things it used to and should continue to do. Here are my three major problems, so far.

1. I have an open invoice for a few thousand dollars. Each month the customer’s credit card is debited for $200, and so once each month that transaction creates a deposit in my bank account which gets downloaded. In QB 2006 I would match the $200 to the open invoice, apply it as an underpayment, and I was done. Now there is no way to apply an underpayment. I just get an error saying the downloaded transaction amount doesn’t match the open invoice amount. Yeah, duh, I know that, I’m applying a partial payment. But apparently OB doesn’t do partial payments anymore. So I have no idea what to do with that transaction.

2. I have a line of credit with my bank that is automatically triggered as an overdraft account. So I download transactions that transfer money from my LOC acccount to my checking account. The only problem is that QB OB only gives me the option of matching the deposit with an open invoice which, of course, is ridiculous. Why can’t I change the deposit to a transfer in OB? Again, like #1 I have no idea what to do with this transaction. It’s just sitting, unmatched, in OB until this gets figured out.

3. I deposited a check that was printed several months ago. OB did not automatically match the check, and so it is asking me to specify a payee and an amount, and gives me no option to match the downloaded transaction with the check that is in the register like 2006 used to.

I am AMAZINGLY frustrated with online banking in QB 2009. I cannot believe how bad this release is. If I could just go back to 2006 I’d be a happy man. From now on I’m going to always upgrade to the version that’s already been out for a year.

Related posts:

  1. Quickbooks Pro PC vs. Quickbooks Online vs. Quickbooks Mac
  2. Upgrading Quickbooks Enterprise 2.0 to Pro 2006 – A Nightmare
  3. Is 24-hour electronic banking really that difficult?
  • http://www.BetterBottomLine.com Scott Gregory

    Joshua:

    As a QuickBooks specialist, I’m hearing similar concerns from other QuickBooks users for sure.

    Thought you’d like to see the discussion going on here:
    http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/db1_IYMvSr3yp1acfARklS

    There are some major fixes in the works for Online Banking due out in mid to late December if you can hold out that long.

    Scott Gregory, QuickBooks Specialist
    http://www.BetterBottomLine.com

  • Joshua Steimle

    Thanks for posting that link. I had seen and posted on that forum thread but then couldn’t find it later. If anyone needs more convincing as to the serious nature of the problems with Quickbooks 2009 Online Banking just go check out that forum and you’ll see what I mean.

  • Mark

    Have been a user of Quickbooks since 1993, have never seen such a mistake as the online banking for Qbooks 2009. They were asleep at the wheel on this one. I realize that this site is part of Intuit (the best Acctng/Tax Software in the world) but……wow what a mistake.
    I use Qbooks for almost 100 clients most of which use the online banking module. Many, many bugs in this module. I have spoke with reps from the Intuit Presidents office regarding this, and all they can say is that after 2 updates on 09 the 3rd one in December may take issue on the errors.

    Intuit if your are listening!!!!!!!!!!!!fire the individuals responsible for this debaucle it is hurting your company. GO TO GOOGLE AND TYPE “QUICKBOOKS 2009 ONLINE BANKING” you will see an amazing list of individuals that have updated their data to work on 09 and how upset they are. There were so many on your new blog site that you combined all the online banking complaints into one blog that now appears closed.

    It took a week for your company (all be it they insisted twice a 4 hour turn around in a return call) to call me back. I spoke with an individual on the phone that said they were apart of that module planning. They said they made many improvements, but could only come up with ONE! that was the cosemetic appearence of the module. They were not aware of the many issues regarding online banking and played stupid to most of what I was offering as insight. I mentioned to them that I would jump on a plane and pay for my flight to Mountain View to speak at a round table with the concerns of thousands already, at any given notice. They notated.

    Please dont make the mistake that I did and load this 2009 on your system. Too many issues with it to name now, just go on Google. I have many clients that have 50-100 items download from their bank at one time, many vendors that the bank pays, have number identifiers after their names, quickbooks no longer recoqnizes that (fedex for example charges) and one at a time entries that use to take about 10 seconds for multiple entries now take about a half hour. THATS AN IMPROVEMENT?

    In closing, if I were the President of Intuit I would have a meeting with the Online Banking Module Orginizers, and the first question I would ask them is…..Show me the differences and improvements between 2008 and 2009. Many would be out of a job real soon

    Get it back together Intuit, your Company has made me quite successful in the business I love and enjoy, thanks to the software your company provides to the world today, but PLEASE look into this!

  • KevinO

    Look what happens when a company gets greedy. They get careless and start taking their customers for granted. GM sound familure?

    What the world needs is another option. One that everyone knows how to use. Peachtree is to…. Can’t find the word. I’ve used both in my small business since pc’s entered our world and feel trapped because to find any office assistant that knows how to use anything else other then Quickbooks is practicly impossible and Uncle Sam is waiting! They want there money so there is no time to learn anything else. We are all trapped! Intuite doesn’t care they just want thier emoney. (excuse any spelling errors)

  • http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/db1_IYMvSr3yp1acfARklS Greg Wright

    Hello,

    My name is Greg Wright and I am the Director of Product Management for QuickBooks. I can promise we didn’t release the online banking feature with the issues it has out of greed or because we don’t care. In fact, we care a lot and are working very hard to fix the problem. I work everyday because I am passionate about helping Small Businesses save time and work smarter, and it kills me that we broke the online banking workflow for existing users. We are working nights and weekends to get fixes out to our customers.

    We will be releasing some of the online banking fixes in mid-December 2008 in a patch to QuickBooks 2009 Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Solutions. The following fixes for online banking will be included:

    • “Quick fill” capability: Type in a dropdown in online banking and have QuickBooks automatically fill in the rest of the name

    • Add new: Select “Add new” from a dropdown and be able to add new names, accounts, and classes within online banking

    • Manual match: Select a QuickBooks transaction to manually match to the downloaded transaction. You will be shown a view of the register that includes transactions that have not yet been reconciled and were not automatically matched by online banking

    I know that there is a big need for the ability to review and add multiple transactions at once — to easily review recognized transactions, edit them, and then save in a batch. We are working hard on a fix for this as well. Check out the community link above and you can see my updates there … I should have an update on timing on this soon.

    We also know that we need to fix the workflow so it doesn’t close other windows and let’s you toggle between other QB forms and the matching screen. We are working on how to do this, but it won’t be a quick fix.

    Bank of America users are also having trouble and this is because BofA has not updated their site yet. They have told me that they will be doing so any day now. So, hopefully that works soon.

    Keep checking the community thread for updates:
    http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/db1_IYMvSr3yp1acfARklS

    Thanks and Happy Holidays,

    Greg Wright

  • Jim Creason

    What about the new “company snapshot” the income & expence is WRONG!!!!!. I upgraded to 07 but when I used it I had to reenter all trans & go back to 06 to see the company center. Then my wife got online with 06 & Intuit took away all my upgrades from 03 (whitch I paid for) I had to work with 03. When they said they had a new “company snapshot” I ordered 09 it took weeks to see it was WRONG!!!! Jim Creason 717-540-5132

  • Mark

    Love the Greg Wright update, all the improvements he mentions ARE the same capabilities that 2008 all ready had. Intuit in my opinion has become a low life company whereas the all mighty dollar stands in the way now of product and performance. Greg mentions so casually that they didnt release the online banking debauckle out of greed, then why did they release it, why wont he answer that. Why are so many Beta Testers speaking out about how Intuit failed to listen to them relating to the release of the product. And, if he’s so passionate about small business, then pull the product for now, offer some sort of compensation for the hundreds of users that were unable to revert back to 08 etc etc. and come clean with what really happened.

    It’s one thing for software providers of income tax software to have to recreate new yearly software for the Federal and State tax returns, but for accounting software that never has to change, why bother. The reason they bother is because they want you to think that the new yearly product is “new and improved” I think they tripped on this one.

  • RPopeCPA

    I have used QuickBooks for about 10 years and in the past I have been pleased with its features. So when QuickBooks 2009 came along and offered better online banking, I jumped on board. I am so dissapointed with the online banking. At this point, I am wondering why I paid good money to torture myself with this software. The experience was so bad that I dumped my 2009 file and went back to 2008 costing me hours of wasted time and effort. I will never again download the newest version of QuickBooks until I read the reviews. I am warning all of my clients to stay away from QuickBooks 2009.

  • Herbg90502

    I am using QBP 2008 on-line bill pay to BofA
    Untio Oct 7, 2008 bills were being paid electronicly
    but Oct 7, and after they are all “paper checks by snail mail” resulting in all payments being late!!

    QBP indicates they will be paid electronicaly yet the BofA On-line statements/tranactions all indicate by paper.

    I spent about 3 hrs on phone with BofA was was told by a BillPAy supervisor that I had “failed an internal audit that caused this”.

    However, if I use BofA bill pay the transactions do go electonically (to utility and other large companies).

    I now suspect that it is an incapability between QBP2008 and BofA trying to handle QBP2009.

    I was considering upgrading to QBP2009 (I usually wait for almost a year). After seeing all the bad press on QBP2009 it may be better to wait until QBO2010 or change accounting software but not seeing anyone interfacing to a full accounting software other than QBP.

    Herb

  • Mark

    Herb: keeep this in mind, if you are still having problems with the B of A thing do this! This can also be used with just about any “institution to quickbooks problems” go into the online banking setup routine and delete the account, in your case Bank of America. Make sure you know your username and passcode for the bank when you set it up. Then, go back through and re-setup the bank of america account as though it were the first time routine, using the passcode and username. All should work fine, and integrate just fine from now on. This came from tecnical support at Inutit! It will work with any banks or credit cards that you once had set up. For some reason, 09 lost touch with some banks when you updated, but this will work.

  • Beverly

    I just had one of my clients update to 2009 Enterprise Solutions. What a mistake! The bank downloading feature is practically disabled. We have a very complicated set up with Sweep accounts and Zero Balance accounts, now I can no longer automatically add a deposit against an invoice or add transfers. I can’t add a transaction, take the memo and then restore it because I don’t get the memos from B of A anymore, so we don’t know where our deposit came from without going on to B of A’s website to check. This is a disaster, if QuickBooks doesn’t go back to the amazingly efficient system of 07 and 08 my business will be ruined. My specialty is going to clients and downloading very complex banking systems QUICKLY! If we will be forced to use this version I’m afraid I will be out of a job. Also, the new system doesn’t recognize accounts in the chart of accounts unless I add the number of the account. I have 5 clients that all use different numbers so now I have to go in to the drop down and search for the right account. I am having my client go back to 08 and get our money back for the upgrade. QuickBooks you need to start over with 09. Why is QuickBooks always trying to dumb down their software? I thought Quicken was the dumbed down version.

  • Mark

    Beverly could you copy and paste your comment and put it on Intuits OLB issue site also at http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/aDJvSQXt8r3BT3acfAQhOa

  • AJ

    This “improved” 09 online banking is a disaster. Unfortunately most of us cannot roll back to an earlier version because of the other disastrous Intuit move of my time, reverse incompatibility. Meaning once a file has been opened in 2009 or a later version than the one it was created in, you cannot open it again in an older version, one of the dumbest and greediest moves I have seen from a software company ever.

    For any potential new QB users- I strongly recommend using 2008 or older. The patches and fixes for the multitude of 2009 online banking issues have not arrived as promised. What once took 20 minutes now takes hours. Extremely dumb to put it mildy, and frustrating for those of us who have used the older versions which worked and now are stuck losing hours and having to bill clients for this inefficiency and ineptitude.

  • AJ

    Edit: The latest update restores adding multiples capability as well as adding new vendor names in through the online banking module (however, the latter is a little jiggy). It also restored functionality of account lists dropping down automatically again as opposed to having to pull through them with your mouse. Online banking module still freezes you out of the rest of the program as before.

  • Joshua Steimle

    I just downloaded the second update to QB yesterday and I’m happy to say they are fixing things. I’m not sure yet if it’s 100%, but it’s much, MUCH better than it was back in December.

  • http://www.caregiverpartnership.com Tom Wilson

    I have to agree with the comments how horrible QB ’09 online banking is. I’ve used QB and Quicken since 1994 and was a beta tester. The project manager on this should be fired. Its not only poor — its totally unusable. Usually when you change something, you make it better, not useless.

    If you don’t need to go to 2009 and use online banking – DO NOT DO IT. I am so sad I did. For the first time, I’m considering a move to Peachtree which my accountant would like us to do.

  • Kathleen

    I agree – QB’s 2009 is horrible. I got it for a new client of mine (I’m an Independent Bookkeeper) & the “improvements” are horrible. I feel like I’m using QB’s for the first time, and I’ve been using QB’s for 6 years. I took a number of classes as a newby, so I think I know what I am doing.

    I set-up online banking and the checking account do not go into the correct account. (I did set it up correctly and made sure I had the right checking account matched to the right account from the bank). I called customer support and got a gal in India that I could not understand. I’m a California native so I’m very used to speaking with people that English is their 2nd language. The CS gal did not understand my issue, after I repeated it 3 times, she kept putting me on hold so she could read her training manual because it became immediately obvious that she was not qualified to offer expertise – she had no clue what to do.

    I can’t even find on the menu where to disconnect the online connection….

    If I can figure where to disconnect the online banking – I’m going to use it without online banking.

  • Robert Turner

    After upgrading to 2009 Pro, My online banking freezes everything, everytime. The program feeezes at least twice a day. All of my computers are less than 1 year old so I do not beleive it is equipment issues. I wish I could go back to 2006. More people need to speak out about the India or ? phone reps. I too could not undestand anything. If you ask for someone who speaks clearer english they simply hang up on you after a long hold time. My last experience it took three calls to get someone I could understand. They have little product knowledge as the previous post said, you are put on hold after every question.

  • Kevin

    Intuit is brutal…
    I had Quickbooks 2007, when getting a new machine, I could not find the original disks, I figured it was probably time to upgrade the software anyway. So I went out and got 2009. My gosh what a mistake. The online banking is brutal.

    I have downloaded the supposed ‘fix’ but it doesn’t seem much better.

    The autofill grabs the wrong name 90% of the time.

  • http://www.hvacshop.net Robert Turner

    I upgraded to 2009 and the online banking was horrible, then quit working at all. At that point I was forced to pay for a service plan! I spoke with them after paying the $79.00. It was definitely a software issue, but they still insisted on collecting. They are simply thieves. I am looking into Peachtree and some others now. Their India phone support is the worst I have encountered. I could not understand a thing, when I asked to speak to someone with better English they simply hung up. As you imply they will make their own bed and at some point have to sleep in it.

  • Mark

    From what I am learning, this 3rd party OLB update and improvement took place from software designers in the country of India. Beta testers did not communicate with U.S. support lines during beta testing, they posted their concerns online, and if India felt the need, they would call back the tester and discuss. Many testers complained that they were not called back, nor were they listened to this time, all was different. Doesnt surprise me!!!!!

  • Paul Richards

    I was forced into upgrading to 2009 because my accountant didn’t have 2006 ( a version I was quite happy using thank you very much ) and also because it was coming up on end of life time anyway.

    After “updgrading” I’ve been unable to get a clear idea what exactly wtf is going on with my company finances which is PISSING ME OFF!!!

    It seems like there are very real disconnects between going from Bank Of America land and QuickBooks Pro land.

    Every time I download the QuickBooks file from BOA, for example, I have to delete everything from 2008 up until the date I actually need data from EVERY TIME.

    So totally lame I’m looking to move away from this product asap before I grow my company later this year (hopefully).

  • Jeana Ball

    I was using QBP 2007 and loved it. I purchased QBP 2008 at the beginning of 2008, but was too busy to upgrade. Finally, I upgraded to 2008 and have been sorry since. First there was a problem getting it to even open. I spent 7 hours on it just to get it to upload, convert 2007 information to the 2008 format, then to open. Finally, that problem was solved. Now there’s some weird problem with online banking. My bank, Regions, has online banking. I’ve had my checking account with them for 6 years. I use to logon with Regions Web Connect. Recently, I added several savings accounts for my kids and wanted them linked as well. I called Regions tech support for QBP and he told me to set it up under Regions Direct Connect so that I wouldn’t have to go outside of QBP to logon. Okay. That worked fine. Then I decided to change my checking account to Regions Direct Connect as well so I could download everything at the same time. There is a huge glich because now, when I pull up my checking account in the chart of accounts to edit it, it shows that it has online capabilities, but it has the button darkened to deactivate (without me checking it). If I uncheck the deactivate option and click to activate, it asks me what my ID is. When I give my online id, it says I need to use a EIN format. (?) I have plugged numbers in to see what it would do, click save, but it takes me to an error messaage that closes QBP. If I try to mark the account as inactive, I get the same problem. If I click activate, then deactivate and save, the same problem. I went online to see if anything would download in this situation and it did under Regions Web Connect, but now when it downloads and the transactions pop up to be matched, the bank register at the top has no entries in it (no current or historical information). It isn’t pulling up my checking account register that has information from 2005 to present. What has happened to this software? Does anybody have any suggestions? I thought about buying QBP 2009 to see if that would fix the problem, but from what I read above, that doesn’t seem to be a good solution.

  • Larry

    Like everyone else we had to upgrade as QB 2006 tax tables will sunset 06-01-09.
    I absolutely hate QB 2009 Pro a great many functions are much more time consuming to do, if you can at all. QB 2009 Pro is probably the best advertising Peachtree
    and all other bookeeping/accounting software companies could possibly get. I know
    I’m going shopping.

  • Sarah Johnson

    QB 2009 Pro Online Banking Feature – Does anyone else have an issue with online banking capturing several new banking entries and either renaming them together with downloading them into Quick Books a second time where 2 identical entries are accepted into Quick Books. Dreaming of 2008, it was a wonderful life! To check on accuracy of Quick Books I print a register of last 10 entries of credit card & delete the double entries but DELETE doesn’t get rid of all & forever as warned by Quick Books. Always have 2 transactions I actually Delete 2xs before they decide I win the battle!

  • http://www.caregiverpartnership.com Tom Wilson

    Hi… Like most of us here, I was ‘forced’ to make the move to 2009 and yes… I simply could not use the OLB feature. Rather than saving me time versus manual entry, it was taking me more time. In March, I emailed Greg Wright who is (or was) the Director of Product Mangement for Quickbooks. He had a woman call me who is one of the foremost experts at Intuit on Quickbooks and one of the develolpers. She did point out a thing or two and told me what they were working on. I let her view my screen so she could see how I used OLB and she definitely learned some things. The bottom line is — they made a few enahcnements, but its a disaster compared to its pre-improvment state. I’ve been in product development for 30 years. We also have a national direct to consumer company and a website (a good one). We constantly conduct usability studies with customers. I’ve never seen such a debacle. I hope they replace the leadership team on this one. Following is some correspondence from March. Since then, they’ve done nothing to keep us users and customers abreast of what is going on. Terrible. I urge you to write to the CEO of Intuit.

    March 19, 2009

    Hello.
    I wanted to let you know about more improvements we’ve made to the Online Banking feature since the changes in December. We are officially announcing these changes to the broader community on Tuesday, but we wanted to let you know about them early, since you’ve been a valuable contributor of feedback.

    With the most recent QuickBooks update (R7), you will be able to:

    Create transactions and perform other tasks in QuickBooks while you have Online Banking open

    Get faster performance for Online Banking (users with the larger files will see the biggest improvements)

    Below I’m attaching more information about these changes. We appreciate your feedback so we can continue to make QuickBooks better. Feel free to email us at OnlineBanking_QB2009@intuit.com with any additional thoughts.

    Sincerely,

    Jacint Tumacder | QuickBooks Group, Intuit | Product Development

    Greg Wright – Director of Product Management for Quickbooks

  • Cary

    Latest QB2009 update (R8) allows you to go back to the “register mode” of the ’08 version in Online Banking, complete with the “alias” option that was taken away in the 2009. Nice save, Intuit, but I will not be upgrading again anytime soon.

  • Bryan

    I recently updated to QB2010 PRO from 2007 PRO. The file conversion went pretty well, but now online banking doesn’t work. It will not connect to my online banking sites and if I try to download the transactions directly from the sites I get hung up on the “Updating Financial Institution Information” window. Usually this just takes a few seconds but QB cannot get past it now. Guess I’ll phone support and see what they have to say. . . Otherwise, I am very happy with the “Add Multiple” feature. I don’t think 2007 allowed you to do that, and it is saving me time.

  • Neil Andrews

    Hey All

    I have been using the services of http://www.invoicera.com for quite sometime now and they are coming up with the new Invoicera with features like time-tracking, expense tracking, import function, and much more. Check out their blog at http://www.invoicera.com/blog for updates

    Cheers!!!

  • http://www.caregiverpartnership.com Tom Wilson

    They fixed the debacle with going back to the future meaning it works the way it used to and you have the option to use the “improved version” of online banking which is absolutely horrible. I hope they have a new Director of Product Management who will conduct through usabiliy testing before “wipping it out there”.

  • Joshua Steimle

    I just noticed there’s a new “upgrade” button in my version of Quickbooks Pro 2009. Does Intuit really think there’s a chance I’m going to click on that button and upgrade to Quickbooks 2010 anytime in the next six months after what happened last year?