This newsgroup has long had many posts from those who say Intuit does not listen to you. We can all now clearly see some of the outstanding results from Intuit's very aggressive search for customer feedback at Better Because of You:
formatting link
You will see a link to this page each time you finish with Help, Send Feedback Online from QuickBooks. You also should soon see links to the Intuit Customer Feedback Center. You can already use an accountant version of it at
formatting link
It lets you vote on suggestions made by others and see what others think of your suggestions. If you go there please vote for my latest suggestion on a global search and replace to quickly & easily correct errors, like the one Quicken has had for years. It is not yet there because I added it right before writing here, but may be by the time you read this.
I was an elected Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood Port Commissioner and helped lead successful Florida tax limit petition drives. I twice won the #1 Top Tester prize for Quickbooks beta tests and served as a charter member of Intuit's Customer Advisory Council. All this involved big sacrifices, but I am most proud of the way my January 2003 How Should Intuit Change page quickly helped you and Intuit with this.
formatting link
The best is yet to come!
Mike Block - QuickBooks Tax Cut C.P.A. Intuit paid me to make QuickBooks better!
I'm glad to see evidence of Intuit's willingness to make changes based on customer input. However this only seems to happen for Windows versions. Have you done anything to try to get Intuit to fix the Mac version (the last
2 would be good for starters)?
Transfers from Mac > Windows > Mac causes file corruption. They may read okay but they become corrupted and printing of checks becomes impossible. That's just one of the main bugs I have reported over & over during the last year or two and the releases that supposedly fix the bug doesn't fix it.
I've sent several feedback forms from my Mac version(s) mostly with proof of bugs/problems and very few requests but I've seen only one thing addressed and that was the matching of menus to that of the Windows version. The Mac version costs the same but is a sorely crippled replica of the Windows version and its time Intuit stepped up to do something about it.
You rarely see significant Intuit changes unless you wait patiently. It may take 2 - 3 years to get enough support for a feature change. However, if you can replicate bugs you can get much faster action, especially if they result in data loss.
I do not have a MAC. However, Intuit should increasingly support MACs and Linux once Microsoft releases its QB competitor. Top Intuit Tech Support and programming people may get involved if you give me both a clean and a corrupted version of the same file. Of course, they may be less interested if data corruption results from converting files with errors.
Mike Block - QuickBooks Tax Cut C.P.A. Intuit paid me to make QuickBooks better!
Mike, I'm not talking about feature changes but fixing known problems in the program. Things that cause crashes, data loss, hanging screens, etc. I understand that feature changes are secondary but there are some that are more necessary than others. Intuit still hasn't figured out how to make their Mac version handle its own payroll, its still outsourced. That kind of feature change should happen sooner than later IMO. The fixing of known bugs should happen immediately if a software vendor wants to write a program and accept big bucks for it.
No offense to you as I know you're not Intuit but I find that view to be alarming. Intuit should 100%, if not 150%, support Macs *now* because they have been writing & selling QB for Mac for years. There should be no "should increasingly support Macs" about it.
I'm sure I could easily create yet another corrupted file and maybe you could get someone involved, I know that I got either clueless folks on the other end of a phone call or email or people who basically shruggged and said they were sorry for my troubles.
They may be but that hasn't been the case with my files. I've checked and quadruple-checked files before transfer to Windows, after restore from Windows (suddenly corrupt most times), after transfer back to Mac. Since I created the file myself, in a Mac version, and all works dandy unless & until I move the file to a Windows version, do something with it (like record a cc transaction) then move it back I'd bet my hard-earned money that the problem isn't a pre-existing one with the file.
I am interested in what you say but wish I weren't as skeptical as I am.
You paint a very impressive picture of Intuit's commitment to providing what the customer wants and needs. "The key is a long-term almost maniacal search for your input", to quote your website. This is hardly my experience or apparently that of numerous others who have posted contrary experiences on this and other QB user groups.
If QB were so committed to customer input, I would expect to see far more results from customer input, not to mention a meaningful response to constructive suggestions. A website listing all suggestions and QB's response might be a solution.
I have looked at the list of the recent changes made in QB. What struck me was how few of the changes were issues raised in this and other user groups and how few of the issues raised time and again in the user groups have been attended to.
The weaknesses in QB can be conveniently categorised into two categories:
Small irritations that could no doubt be fixed with a minimum of cost and would save almost every user a lot of wasted time, effort and irritation - eg the absence of the ability to set a default option under most menus, or better still an intuitive default choice based on one's usage (QB is about two generations behind state-of-the-art programming in this respect and numerous users have posted messages bemoaning the absence of so basic a facility in QB); the inability to alter the format of default reports, notably the various QuickReports, so that one has to reformat them every time one opens them; the failure to name QuickReports meaningfully so that the account reported on stands out on the report and appears on every page of the report and in the navigation bar; the failure to populate various fields, eg the name of the payee of cheques in bank reconciliations, etc, etc;
More serious programming issues - eg the inconsistent use of positive and negative numbers throughout QB, reaching its nadir is the horribly misnamed and confusing Retained Earnings account; the failure to have an automatic save feature at selected intervals making QB unsafe, eg, to use it for time-recording (there isn't even an option to save manually without also selecting Close or New); the quite inadequate General Journal Entry facility; the limited ability to redesign templates, eg to reflect the Customer:Job rather than the current inane wording of the Subject line of the e-mail template. This reached its nadir when the ability to reformat the e-mail template - if one knew how without any help from the online Help - was actually removed. The Statement templates are another example of an ugly and inflexible template; the absence of the ability generate combined invoices/statements (probably the missing feature most often bemoaned by users in the QB user groups); a macro writing utility to automate repetitive functions; etc, etc.
While it is natural for QB to react to the number of requests/suggestions/complaints it receives, most of these issues I have pointed out are such that Intuit should say immediately they are pointed out "Oh yes, of course we should have done that" and then do it. But pointing them out to Intuit as suggestions for improvement has no effect, even after years have passed by, and even where the cost of putting them right would be minimal. It shouldn't be necessary for hordes of users to clamour for such obvious changes that can be made for minimal cost. And even when issues have been repeatedly raised on this and other QB user groups over several years, they have still received no attention.
I have said before and I say again: It must be much more fun if one is a programmer to write fancy bells and whistles, impressing one's colleagues with one's brilliance, than to go back and fix the boring old problems in the basic functioning of the program (even though these boring old problems are precisely the ones that waste endless time of just about every user of QB). No matter that only a handful of users has any use for the bells and whistles. "Programmers syndrome", I like to call it.
It also sells products because reviewers of software are notorious for merely counting bells and whistles, and they only seem to read one another's reviews, thus reinforcing one another in their misperceptions. If they were just to go and look at the messages posted on real live user groups like this one they would find out the real satisfaction level with the software. (A case in point is OmniPage: The users group became moribund when numerous users posted messages that they could not get OmniPage to work but no solution was ever found. The reviewers however continued rating OmniPage as the top scanning software. A vist to the OmniPage and Abbyy FineReader users groups would have told them a different story, but apparently they saw no reason to make such a visit.)
In fact, if one is considering buying new software it is, I suggest, essential to go to the user groups to find out for oneself. By all means read the professional reviews because they have their value, but look beyond them because of their limitations.
QB seems to me to play to this audience - the professional software reviewers - in the first instance, not its users' comments on what they really want and need. This is a dangerous policy indeed with Microsoft having released the beta version of its small business accounting package. Microsoft's great success is in no small measure due to its willingness to listen to what users want and need: the "nimble behemoth", I like to call it. Intuit ignores its users at its peril. Even if it is merely users' perception that they are being ignored, the damage is done.
That's some the worst vomit-inducing drivel ever posted on a Usenet forum in support of a piece of trash of a program that cannot even sort correctly because the glue-sniffers that develop it are not capable of writing a working sorting algorithm.
More of this trash on his website for the delusional. As I've said before, these are all discarded notes from Intuit PR meetings where they get together to discuss how to manipulate their unknowing customers rather than try to offer a decent program with decent bookkeeping features.
I don't have much respect for Microsoft but I'm pretty sure what they're developing is eons more advanced in terms of usability and integration with other office or database related applications.
Throw this Block trash away because only a trash can is where it can fulfill its purpose.
Although I don't know Mike Block at all, I have seen that he is a respected member - I think a highly respected member - of the QB community, and I have personally made use of the free materials on his website. So, while I question the correctness his core message on this occasion, I do so with respect and even deference because I'm no more than a fairly knowledgeable small user of QB.
I don't care about Block, it's a free country and he can do whatever he wants. If he chooses to suck up to some Intuit paper pusher so he can take part in their unending display of ineptness that's his problem.
I'm just pointing out that his drivel is garbage fit for the garbage can where it came from. By any measure of decency, it is unacceptable that a self-labeled QB consultant would refuse to publicly point out the severe shortcomings of a bookkeeping program that still can be accurately described as a ton of horrid patches on top of an archaic database structure that would put a failing dope-head freshman college student to shame.
Because of market manipulation and mainly because the vast majority of their customers are computer illiterate.
They hit a jackpot by using the checkbook metaphor in a computer program for small business bookkeeping and since then Quickbooks at least (I'm no discussing Quicken here) has remained at the bottom of the barrel in terms of product quality; and their customers cannot tell the difference with what a $500 program should be able to do in
2005.
Who's talking about perfect? Quickbooks is not even adequate. It's garbage unworthy of even a failing grade in any introductory course in computer programming.
After 15 years on the market the morons still show checks having an open balance. Very few of their customers can tell the difference and all of their supporters have to be either at the same level of incompetence or garden variety idiots.
Sez you, Mr. Hiding-Behind-A-Monitor. Name a superior product since you know so much. Admit it, you are a troll with an agenda that you will not reveal, bleating about problems which you can neither define nor solve. Market manipulation? How did Intuit do that?
Intuit's customers are incompetent or garden variety idiots? Please, oh wise(ass) one, show us a superior product at an equivalent price. Checks with open balances? I've never seen one and I've been using QuickBooks since DOS (and IT was a bad program then).
Reveal you identity, tell us what your motives are. Why do you preach here when you hate the product but offer no salvation? What are your qualifications? Once again, what product of yours has won awards because of its wonderful features and bulletproof examples of computer art and programming?
Bring it forth so all of us incompetent garden variety idiots may bow down at your feet and kiss your ... ring.
Yes, turn the conv around against me. How trollish of you. The issue here is the inadequacy of Quickbooks and its inability to offer a decent set of features for small business bookkeeping.
They are intentionally refusing to fix the sewer that is their data structure, something they marginally corrected with their Enterprise version where a 185 MB QB 2004 file converts to 80MB in Enterprise Edition 5 for the Pay-Up-Sucker-Fee of $3,500! - proving that Quickbooks Basic, Pro and Premium versions are a sack of trash that take an excessive amount more resources than necessary (for doing nothing of great value). That's what I meant when I said it's not even worth a failing grade in introductory programming.
They are intentionally refusing to use a decent relational database as the basis of Quickbooks that can be accessed from common office applications. All the third party software that address that issue are also limited in their operation because of the horrid trash that Quickbooks' flat file database is.
They are intentionally refusing to allow a QB data file to be accessed, read and edited by more then one version at a time.
They are intentionally refusing to ensure that the User Interface *at least* is functional and efficient and that they do not dump its design and development to ignorant uneducated pc-farm slaves who have never seen a vendor bill in their lives and have no idea how to enter an Invoice.
No, I said the vast majority of Quickbooks users are computer illiterate (I don't blame them of course, small business owners are not supposed to be computer literate too) and Quickbooks' supporters who refuse to acknowledge its severe shortcomings are either equally incompetent with the Quickbooks un-developers or garden variety idiots.
Start with a P/L report, expand it, double-click in any expense account to show a list of expenses and customize the report to show a column for Open Balance. Bills with open balances will show an amount in the Open Balance column and so will any Checks applied to the same expense account. If you can't see that this is the work of idiots then see my previous paragraph.
My identity is irrelevant. I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about the poor quality of Quickbooks. What is more surprising often though is the vast amount of ignorance of self-proclaimed consultants who can't see such blatant show of ineptness.
That's what the self-proclaimed consultants are really good at - bowing down to anything and anyone with a Corporate title. My point here is that Quickbooks is garbage.
Here's a new one for you (and for me, I just realized this today!):
In Premium 2004 User A logs in from one workstation. While logged in User A goes and logs in from a different workstation at the same time. The two workstations are in a simple peer to peer network and the data file is on a shared network storage drive. Why is the same user allowed to log in to the same data file from two different computers? Because Quickbooks is garbage.
No, sirrah, YOU are the troll. You badmouth Intuit, QuickBooks, and its users, yet offer no alternative to the program. All thunder and no lightening.
I'll ask again, but in the Southern idiom, where's your dog in this hunt? And don't pretend altruism. Without a solution, you're just as hollow as the drum you're beating.
I can't agree with you more. I personally liked him more when he was Timmy the " Tax Klug Man", but I guess he broke down and subscribed to the tax tables so he had to change his name out of shame.
I think we all tend to subconsciously react to vehemence in presentation of arguments with the instinctive knowledge that vehemence tends to be in inverse proportion to cogency. Good points argue their own case.
You seem to have real points but they are somewhat lost in the deluge of of spleen.
May I suggest that you will, believe it or not, make a bigger impact if you start again and present your case in a collected and reasoned manner.
I for one agree that there are shortcomings in QB that Intuit would be well-advised to correct before the new Microsoft small busness accounting package really gets underway. MS has an enviable success record and Intuit should study its methods before the damage is done.
Responsiveness to users' needs and wishes is the key. For example, when MS wanted to make sure that it collared as much of the lawyers' market as possible for Word it co-operated with the legal profession to establish a high-powered joint body to receive comments from the profession, and it then implemented what it learnt the profession wanted.
I don't think that MS will do as much damage to QB as it did to, say, Netscape because the MS package will not be free. But if Intuit institutes some sensible damage control by listening carefully to what users want and giving it to them, it will do itself and all of us a favour.
Competition is good for users and I would not like to see QB damaged seriously; I would much rather that it rises to the challenge and gives us what we want and thus beats off the worst of the challenge.
There you go! I visited the MS site that details its upcoming Small Business Accounting package. It appears at first blush to be a $100 or so cheaper than QB Pro, but there's a problem. In order for it to have full functionality, the full Office Professional package must be present. That includes Access as well as Excel to do the spreadsheet stuff, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. So instead of a $400 accounting (QB Pro w/o rebate or upgrade discount) package that will work with just about any Excel and Word from 2000 up, the MS accounting package (2006) will require Office Professional 2006 (or no later than 2003).
I'm all for the competition and advancing technology. Look what it has done for PCs. My first real IBM PC compatible cost $2,000 with an 80 meg hd, 2 floppy drives 32 megs of memory running at 32 MHz and a 14" CRT, no printer. Since I had a scanner, two printers, and a 17" LCD flat panel screen, the computer I now have cost me $425 after rebates. It has an AMD 3200 chip (2+ GHz), 512 megs of memory, 1 floppy drive, 9 card readers, multiple USB and firewire ports, and a 160 gig hd.
With all of the extras on and under the desk, I have less than $2k invested in the current setup. Ain't competition wonderful!
Let MS compete with Intuit. We, the consumers, win in the long run. The winning product will have more features, a better interface, and will be cheaper to buy and upgrade.
Well, sorry. I know we're in an Oprah-fied society where anyone and everyone lives their lives in a constant defensive state in order to avoid hurting their "feelings". This is irrelevant in evaluating performance and feasibility in a product with such a wide customer base.
If an incompetent programmer or developer gets defensive when someone points out his/her incompetence then in addition to the incompetence we have a load of stupidity to deal with.
So what? I'm not a consultant here. I'm pointing out Quickbooks' shortcomings. There are some sheep around here that refuse to admit even the simplest truths.
I've tried this in the proper channels years ago. But at the low level of product quality that Quickbooks is, it was expected that any and all reasonable suggestions had to be ignored. There is no other way about it. Noone even minimally interested in quality dumps development on people with no idea about what they're doing.
Intuit *has* studied MS' methdos mainly on market manipulation and how to package useless bloat and sell it as a feature. Intuit has it easier on this respect due to the general computer illiteracy of their customers. About 95% of them are unaware of how bad Quickbooks is.
Unlikely. There must be a definite lack of competence that has let a program like this being unable to sort. This is not version 2.0. They've been on the market for 10 years or so. Why can't they make Quickbooks sort correctly? Because they don't want to. Because 95% of their development time is wasted on trying to find ways to manipulate and milk their customers with secondary trivial services.
Blah blah blah blah, and some more blah blah blah. Too many meetings this month maybe?
Who's gonna replace the idiot that has made Quickbooks recalculate a report if a user changes its header? Nobody because they intentionally put quality at priority zero. Therefore Quickbooks is garbage.
What an idiot you are. I was here when Tim was posting you moron and I had said repeatedly that the cost of the tax tables, even though blatant exploitation, should be considered as a necessary business expense.
BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.