I've been happily using QB5 without the payroll and timekeeping addons for nearly 8 years now. However, my accountant is urging me to upgrade as he is no longer keeping the old version on his system. Having browsed this forum, there are many different views as to whether one can make a smooth transition to a more recent version. Can any one give me some definitive advise as to which version to go for (if still available) where there are no glitches in the upgrade and transition of data.
My wife's business purchased QuickBooks 2006 PRO in December. She had been using QuickBooks 5.0 The time seemed right. It was $150 at Sam's Club and there was a $50 rebate for registered users of any version of QuickBooks Basic (which was being discontinued) if the purchase was made by 12/31/05.
The upgrade went very smoothly. It probably took about 10 minutes to update the Company File. It seemed to restart several times. I suspect that it separately updates the file through each of the versions between 5.0 and 2006, but there were no errors detected. She is very happy with the new version. She like the Customer, Vendor, and Employee Centers. FYI, because of the nature of her business, she has never used the inventory features. Obviously, her experience doesn't guarantee that another user's company files won't have issues.
Her copy of QuickBooks 2006 PRO is currently patched to R3. Since it was working great, we did not install the R5 patch because of some reported problems. We know the R6 path is out, but we are holding off since there are some update issues reported in one of the QuickBooks Community forums. There is one report that the R6 patch changed which expenses got reported in the user's P&L. One user of the Contractor version, reported that QuickBooks would not open after update. There are also 3 reports of an error that prevented updating, although one of them indicated that the problem may well be in his workstation, since he was able to update other workstations and the server without problem.
Hi Bob. After suffering a screwed database in QB 6.0 for years I eventually decided to go to the QB 2004 version I bought back in 2004 !
:¬)
Didn't expect the database to convert which it didn't although it would have done if the database was not full of errors (aparently)
Anyway. Exported all lists and product codes, accounts etc in the ILF (?) export/import utility.
Very pleased with the 2004 version. Even now it still gets updates to sort out problems, so personally I won't be going to 2006 version for at least another 12 months or more.
I would expect you might be able to pick up an older version very cheaply off e-bay (nearly sold mine un-registered a year ago!)
E-mailing invoices etc are a superb feature as is the improved VAT reporting (UK VAT 100 report) and much much more.
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