Can we get some comment from Intuit that quickbooks desktop is not being phased out.
I was in conversation with another accountant today where it was suggested that QB is no longer a serious option for accountants due to everything being geared towards the cloud (even though accountant access is free).
I just visited the Intuit UK site and see exactly what they mean.
There seems an assumption that if you offer what nobody wants but give no alternatives then they will sign up anyway.
Whats happened to you! You were supposed to be the big challenger to Sage but your throwing it away on an ill conceived cloud strategy.
Even the mightly Microsoft has learnt that if your barking up the wrong tree (Windows 8) to go back to what the paying customer actually wants.
So, can we please have evidenced commitment via the Intuit sales platform of at least equal site allocation to Quickbooks Desktop which is what the customer wants rather than Quickbooks online which is what you seem to want to sell.
Mmm, thats a strategy that always works isn't it!
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Is Fred Intuit still around? This is what he had to say in a thread last November "As a company we are moving our focus to the cloud following feedback from the client base, but of course acknowledge that there are users who will prefer Desktop" and he might as well have added "but if we hide it in the small print at the very bottom of a very long page people will forget we do a desktop version and we can quietly drop the product"
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
There have been a few groans about this on here already. You can still get desktop versions via Amazon, just as you can with Sage, but their own people are saying you can't buy it without going down the monthly route. Mad world.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
For Info - When I was shopping around for software, I looked at Quick books desktop as, an awful lot of self employed bookkeepers use it. I went to the company site and could not find the desktop product - Then a little box popped up - Would I like to chat to an adviser ? - after about 20 questions he finally gave me the url to order the desktop version !! I didn't ...
a lot of people moved to quickbooks in 2012/13 when we had the Intuit roadshow giving us a real alternative to the sage tax. (They also took the roadshow to the ICB clan gatherings).
Desktop solution, unlimited clients at one price, just what people wanted.
Add to that that people were given free copies of QB Premier Accountant edition to ease the move away from Sage and you had a lot of very happy converters and why you find that so many people now use it.
I went to the roadshow and was quite impressed espechially as it was at the height of my anti Sage client tax rants.
Perfect software for bookkeeping practices where people wanted a cost effective solution with a prettier front end than VT, and software that was internationally recognised.
Now looking at Intuits logic its a business. There are more end users than there are bookkeepers so it makes sense to sell every end user a copy of their software as they make more money from it. Plus, by making it pay monthly they have a constant income stream.
They try to appease accountants by giving them free access to clients books but give them software which cannot open more than one screen and they have no control over backups (from another recent post).
They don't get that
a) we have some say in advising what software clients adopt
b) we want desktop solutions... Fine if they want to sell cloud solutions to any end user who wants that, so long as we have a desktop solution that is able to process our clients cloud solutions.
But thats not happening is it. Intuit Desktop solutions cannot process Quickbooks cloud based data which seems a move aimed squarely at phasing out the desktop.
Whilst in the short term I can see end users converting over to the Intuit cloud solution I see it being pushed less by accountants due to lack of integration with software that will be used in practice.
And of course, we'll do the same as we always do and offer incentives for people to drop software that we don't like working with.
This move to force people to the cloud will simply see people on our side of the fence sticking with their existing desktop versions for as long as they can before either returning to Sage (and the client tax) or going to an alternative such as VT.
It seems a real shame that Intuit seem to be underming all of the great work that Alison Ball did both here and in the roadshows in making Quickbooks a real potential contender in the UK.
As for lines such as
1) Intuit telling us that "we are moving our focus to the cloud following feedback from the client base"
2) Sage telling us that their users were demanding higher prices.
I am reminded of a line that my Father used to use :
"Don't piss in my ear and tell me its raining".
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I went to the desktop solutions page yesterday (took quite some finding) and the builk of the page is used up trying to direct you back to signing up for their cloud offering.
If from the desktop page you look at the 'for accountants' link it goes back to online rather than accountants desktop solutions.
There is no desktop pricing without contacting them which is I assume the pit trap that Trevor fell into
Everything about the site is geared towards cloud based solutions only.
I've had a look at their American site and whilst there is more emphasis than there was on trying to get you to pay per month, it is still relatively easy to find the desktop solutions that you want so maybe its just Intuit UK that are making a complete balls up of this.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I did specifically ask QuickBooks at Accountex if they were continuing with their desktop products and was assured that they were. They said that the American market was too big to abandon it for cloud only.
"I went to the desktop solutions page yesterday (took quite some finding) and the builk of the page is used up trying to direct you back to signing up for their cloud offering."
I'm sure I commented on this in another thread recently... the website is quite clearly trying to sell people the cloud cuckoo offering, but the desktop version is dead easy to find. And I've just done it again to check..
I went to Intuit.co.uk
The first mention of the desktop version is in the large panel at the top of the page, but hovering the mouse over it reveals it to be a link about "upgrading" to cloud cuckoo land, so ignore that one.
The next link is at the bottom: "Looking for Quickbooks Desktop?" - that seems to be the right one, so I clicked on that.
That page has a lot of mentions of Online, trying to encourage people to switch, but in the large panel at the top there's an orange "Where to buy?" link that takes me to a page linking to the product on the Amazon and Currys websites.
It took me a lot longer to write that than it did to actually find copies of the software that I could buy. (Though I do agree that they are clearly trying to push people onto the cloud cuckoo offering. Which I think I also said in the other thread on the subject.)
However, all of that is besides the point - I questioned whether Trevor asked the online adviser the direct question of where the desktop version was, and if the adviser ignored those questions initially.
-- Edited by VinceH on Monday 10th of August 2015 02:22:28 PM
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
I spoke to someone from QuickBooks last week and we had quite a long discussion on this. I pointed out why I didn't think I liked the Online version and he was being very pushy about it. I asked if they would discontinue the desktop version and he said yes they would down the line. He wouldn't put a timescale on it but he clearly said it would go. I have spent a bit of time on the Online version now and I have to say I find it really really boring. Only having one window open is a real pain. But the pages just don't load up quick enough and it took me 4 hours what I guess would have taken me 2 hours in the desktop version. So not only is my client paying £40 a month or whatever it is, he is also paying me double the number of hours to do the bookkeeping. Madness. I can't see myself enjoying my job any more if I had to move all my clients to the Online version. It's very sad. Perhaps I need to start thinking of a new career for the coming years...
Don't worry Princess. I think that the likes of Intuit are just rushing out to buy tickets on the Titanic.
Accountants in general want desktop sollutions and the companies that don't provide them will struggle.
All in all the scenario is the equivalent of selling the passengers on a bus the benefits to them of stopping at each persons house and indeed selling them new tickets on that basis... but forgetting completely that they need to sell the concept to the bus drivers and owner of the bus companies.
All that Intuit are doing is making sure that accountants drop their product.
Of course, to a certain extent it doesn't matter what our clients use as we can drop the output/reports to excel, play around with it, slot it into our accounts software and we're happy bunnies.
Of course, software not feeding directly into our accounts production slows us down and as you say means that the client will pay much more. But, if the client wants to use software that we don't like we are not going to complain that they are going to need to pay us much more if they want to continue using it... Well, we might if we're too busy and then we just start dropping clients that we don't want to play with and a client using the wrong software would make them a prime contender for that categorisation.
Don't give up just yet Princess but if you can start moving micro clients off onto alternate software. (VT is excellent software for service industries (It consultants, teachers, doctors, etc.)).
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
"I went to the desktop solutions page yesterday (took quite some finding) and the builk of the page is used up trying to direct you back to signing up for their cloud offering."
I'm sure I commented on this in another thread recently... the website is quite clearly trying to sell people the cloud cuckoo offering, but the desktop version is dead easy to find. And I've just done it again to check..
I went to Intuit.co.uk
The first mention of the desktop version is in the large panel at the top of the page, but hovering the mouse over it reveals it to be a link about "upgrading" to cloud cuckoo land, so ignore that one.
And clicking on it extols all the benefits of the online version and how its the best thing since sliced bread. At the bottom there's a comparison between online and desktop, which makes you think online has more features so must be better. That's fine they want to push the online version and I get that, but why no link from that page if you decide you still want the desktop version?
The next link is at the bottom: "Looking for Quickbooks Desktop?" - that seems to be the right one, so I clicked on that.
How many people will know that the link is at the very bottom of the page, past all the bumph about the online version, then know to look for a small hyperlink at the very bottom of the page? It took me an age when I first looked last year, and Shaun had trouble finding it when he first looked.
That page has a lot of mentions of Online, trying to encourage people to switch, but in the large panel at the top there's an orange "Where to buy?" link that takes me to a page linking to the product on the Amazon and Currys websites.
Yes, once you've found that link at the bottom there's no problem in linking to the two sites that sell the software.
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
Vince - They needed to assess my requirements and I answered the questions and after he confirmed with a colleague - He advised that I needed the desktop version of Quickbooks 2015 Pro - so I guess they got there in the end and gave me the url (after all said they had selected and advised the best product for my requirements LMAO).
-- Edited by TrevorD on Monday 10th of August 2015 07:56:44 PM
-- Edited by TrevorD on Monday 10th of August 2015 07:57:22 PM
Oh Trevor are they like the PPI people who think that you dont know your own mind.....like when I tell them Ive never had a loan and they say are you sure!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable ( now Im sounding like Mr Meldrew!)
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
[I commented that the first link on Intuit's site mentioning the desktop version of Quickbooks is to a page about upgrading from the desktop version to the cloud cuckoo land version]
"And clicking on it extols all the benefits of the online version and how its the best thing since sliced bread."
Given that it's a link...
that says "I use QuickBooks Desktop" (implying that it's a link of interest to existing users)
where the anchor tag has the title "Learn about switching to QuickBooks Online" (which appears if you hover the mouse pointer over it).
Leads to www.intuit.co.uk/quickbooks-accounting-software/move-my-data.jsp (should appear in your browser's status bar when you hover the mouse pointer over the link)
Then, I'm not surprised - and that's why when I mentioned that link I said to ignore it. I didn't click on it because I guessed that's what it would be about.
[I then mentioned the actual link for people looking for the desktop version is at the bottom of the page]
"How many people will know that the link is at the very bottom of the page, past all the bumph about the online version, then know to look for a small hyperlink at the very bottom of the page? It took me an age when I first looked last year, and Shaun had trouble finding it when he first looked."
I found it without any trouble - both this time, and when I commented along similar lines in another thread. That time (the first time I looked) I didn't know where it was; all I knew was that previous comments in that thread (just like this) said it was hard to find.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Joanne: I was discussing just that nonsense with my brother when he stopped by earlier.
The reason it came up is that I helped him reclaim his PPI on a loan and a card a few years ago - but he's now being pestered by a company saying he has PPI to claim. (And interestingly, they provided the last four digits of the card in question - his current card, on which he didn't take out PPI - but the interesting part is where did they get the last four digits from? Although only the last four digits aren't much use, I'm sure that's a level of info that shouldn't be included when people buy and sell our data!)
I suggested he check the company out - make sure they aren't something a little phishy - and if they are a legit company doing PPI stuff for a ludicrous percentage of the reclaim, fill in their forms and let them try. There's no PPI to reclaim, so they'll just end up wasting their time for no return.
Similarly, I've always been well aware of what I'm signing up for, and have never signed up for PPI - but I still get the odd call or letter from people telling me I have PPI to reclaim. So I've decided I'll take the same approach; I'll let them waste their time on nothing.
I had a call from one company a few weeks back (i.e. long before I made this decision) and the bloke on the phone said he was calling in response to my reply to their text message about PPI. I hadn't received their text message to reply to it, and said so. The bloke then said it was his mistake, and it was actually in response to a survey I'd filled out. I hadn't filled out a survey, and said so - and at that point I suggested the guy was telling porkies, and asked for his company's name and address so I could lodge a formal complaint about them. He then started asking me why I was so annoyed with them when all they're trying to do is help people, and I replied that whether you're helping people or not is irrelevant, the bottom line is that you cold called me under false pretences... at which point he hung up.
Bah.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
The problem I have is that I don't use accounts software, I do mainly bookkeeping and use Taxcalc to do sole trader tax returns. I don't produce accounts as such. I really enjoy using QuickBooks desktop and would lose the will to live if I had to use an online package. So if the desktop version does go I have to hope I've built up my business enough by then to have other people doing the work for me! I can then go and sit on the beach instead.
