QuickBooks Pro 2005

...to upgrade to QuickBooks Pro 2005 after reading the reviews here on Amazon. Having received an e-mail from Intuit saying that they were `sunsetting QuickBooks pro 2002 from April and I would no longer have access to email for invoices etc... I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade. The purchase I received a discount for upgrading my single user version and used the internet to activate the product. It went smoothly. The installation CD arrived promptly in the mail, well packaged. I also decided to buy the 5 user edition for work since I network qbooks That arrived promptly [actually the two came together]. The installation I decided to TEST at HOME first on backup data and to do a clean install and an upgrade. OK. The clean install was flawless. The internet activation as painless and I was up and running! GOOD. Next came the 5 user edition; I did an upgrade on the second computer and that went flawless. Next the internet was used to activate the product. No problems! So far so good; Now to WORK and test it on REAL data! I did this on a day I took off, just in case the horror stories came true! First the server upgrade. Problems...program stuck installing some dot NET program.. took forever [an hour actually]. Hmm. Rebooted, no go. Hmm Shut down and restarted,,..where is the manual? ...AH.I see..!. the ANTIVIRUS software! .. Turned OFF Norton antivirus! Now flawless installation!...[heh heh REAL men dont read manuals]. The activation Now to product activation... call a number. No problem answered promptly and was directed by prompts to activation, now a REAL live person Mike yeah, he had an accent but I guess I had an accent to him as well! He was real pleasant. I explained that I had purchased a 5 user edition, used one activation on my computer at home via the internet and needed to install at least 2 others at work . No problem. He checked my registration, gave me a code..yeah,,but would I have to call back to activate the other computers? No..the code would work for the others..He waited on line while I entered the code. Presto ! Instant activation. No problems. The program installed flawlessly on the other computer and the network worked instantly. The whole process took about 5 minutes! Painless. The program The GOOD: It is significantly faster than QuickBooks pro 2002. There is scheduled backup and the backup process is a lot faster. Passwords are case sensitive; if you forget the caps lock key then problems...this happened to me once. Joy of JOYS...refunds, write offs and under and over payments are now easy as one click. Issuing refund checks is easy as pie. In the previous 2002 version, to issue a refund or writing off bad debts required several complicated maneuvers that ended up confusing the accountant and me! The screens are friendlier and better laid out. Easier search for invoices etc. If you have used QB before you will have no problems. I have not seen any intrusive ads or banners advertising products. The check reminder popped up and I set it to the number that I wanted. It hasnt bothered me since. Yes, I use Intuit checks and they are lovely! Highly recommended. My accountant loves the program and Invoices estimates etc can be emailed as pdf attachments. The BAD No manual payroll. I would have thought that certain editions for businesses would allow the truly small business owner to manually enter payroll say for up to 10 employees. More that that would require subscription to the payroll service. Invoices when paid should automatically enter the payment method on them. I mean you have already entered the payment by cash, check or credit card to pay the invoice. When printed it should say $ 800 pd by check QQQ 15562 or VISA **** 1025 or cash. This has to be done manually or one has to use a sales receipt. I do not issue sales receipts in my business. No multiple currency support. Yes, we generally use one currency but for truly international sales or customers, they may pay in a different currency and QB should be able to set up foreign currency accounts and automatically convert it to your base currency. As it stands now I have to set up a bank account in the foreign currency and manually convert to base currency in a sub account. Tedious , flawed and unnecessary. Importation of AIF file impossible. My account made some changes and I tried to import the file. The program said that it needed to be the same file with no changes made to the original. In other words, I can do no business until the accountant is finished if I want to import his changes. Ridiculous!! Overall. 4 stars. It is very good but there is enough room for improvement for the small business owner. No need to be afraid. Purchase with confidence!

I have no idea how this program works, because it will not load on Windows 7. Further research shows it may work on Windows 7 Pro, but that is not what I have. My previous version of Quickbook was great, and exactly what I need.

Stay far, far away from QuickBooks. The literally every year forever charge for tax table updates is completely unethical - based on very simple numerical updates available in IRS Circular E, Intuit charges you (currently, and increasing every year) $ 214 per year for these updates - which happen about once every few months. Problem is, if you discontinue your tax table update service, ALL tax tables are removed from your program and your are essentially unable to do payroll based on the free tax table data which you can enter yourself. There is no internal, empty tax table into which you can plug the percentages/calculations. It is inexcusable that Intuit does not provide the facility for manually entering the very simple tax table data yourself and continuing to process payroll - especially for small businesses with less than 10 employees. Note that you can continue to manually calculate each of the deductions and enter them yourself on each paycheck screen - and thus trod through payroll. A site such as [...] The above site will calculate an entire paycheck and all deductions, all you need is W-4 (withholding allowance) info for each employee Intuit is engaged in extortion - declaring themselves a non-government institution levying a tax on all businesses. Once you buy (and keep using QuickBooks), you MUST subsidize Intuit every month - FOREVER! In addition to their famed unreachable and unusable support, this company, which was once a fantastic provider of wonderful software and essential business tools has taken the downturn into corporate greed and unethical business practices. Expect to see many class action lawsuits coming soon towards Intuit for the way they are holding their customers hostage and disabling the ability to REALLY do Do-It-Yourself payroll, organized calls for FTC and Justice Department intervention, organized boycotts, major magazine articles, action by CPA groups, state constitutional amendment petitions and legislative action. Intuit, according to their published data, controls 85% of the market (which is more than Microsoft in its market) and has a profit margin in excess of 75%. They make tons of money off their software and ancillary services. [...]

Purchased this software because I got a deal with a special price break. I have a very small business, so a purchase of several hundred dollars needs to pay back quickly. The set up took a lot longer than I had anticipated. The customer service was no help - couldnt answer my questions. I ended up spending 6 hours to get everything right - another day wasted. Ive got myself stuck with this now and will use for a few months since Ive spent the money, but Im going to look for alternatives in the meantime. If this is Quick Books, I need to find Lightning Fast Books somewhere.

After I installed and converted my file to the 2005 format I was informed that the E-File and E-Pay features were removed in version 2005. The support folk in India could not tell me if this was temporary or permanent. The only option to continue E-File and E-Pay was to remove version 2005 and reinstall version 2004. What a way to treat customers! How about some up front disclosure Intuit? Ive been using Quickbooks for 7 years. This may be my last upgrade!

Having used QuickBooks in my retail business for 7 years, I was gung-ho to upgrade to QB 2005. After doing so (easily), I used the product for one week when it stopped responding. It turns out that my data files had been corrupted. The 2005 format is not compatible with previous versions, so I had to recreate a weeks worth of checks, payments, payroll, and desposits - a task that took the better part of a day. I pity a larger business that could easily spend much more time than I. After waiting on hold for 2 HOURS, I was instructed to e-mail some files to QB so that they could fix the errors and mail them back to me in a usuable format.. guess what - its been 2 months and no one has responded to that, or several subsequent, e-mails... Im glad I rolled back to 2004 on my own... now, if I can get someone on the phone to get a refund...

This has really helped my company in increasing effeciency. It is pretty easy to use.

I just purchased QuickBooksPro and I realized that I also need the Customer Manager software, unfortunately this is not included in the PRO and it must be purchased separately. With Customer Manager I can easily manage all my clients and quotes that we get into our online store [...]

I recently got Quick Books 2005. The previous version I had was 2002. They have made so many chages in the program to make things easier. I love the newer version. I am not even an accountant, but the software makes it easy. :)

Quick Books Pro is a good value for its cost. It is far superior to Quick Books especially its cost accounting ability. Unfortunately many users dont take full advantage of its features. Not only does the cost accounting provide valuable information, in service oriented business the use of the time card and allocation of employees time to various jobs gives a truer cost of a project than estimates. I really recommend this package if you are a small business.