The accountant version allows you to run multiple companies, they do rather expect the average bookkeeper/accountant to have more than one client :) Is that what you meant?
Quick disclaimer is I'm an Intuit employee (if the forum name didn't give it away..)
If you're interested in the Cloud version QuickBooks Online, you cant have 1 subscription for multiple companies. However at present, QuickBooks Online has a promotion in place for accountants and bookkeepers where the cloud solution is 4.99 per month for life of the product, this makes having multiple entities a lot more cost effective, you also have unlimited users who you can invite to the company file for no additional cost.
the Pro and Accountant versions of QB are definitely multi company although I cannot confirm whether the maximum number of companies is still 99 (think that it used to be but not sure whether that is still the case with the latest versions).
I believe (and a quick search seems to confirm) that you can have multiple companies in Premier but cannot personally confirm that as I don't possess a copy.
Fred contacted me about his post and we've spoken off line. He has kindly offered to help people on the site with QB technical problems. Although I can't see anyone here wanting to ask about the cloud version.
My point in relation to QB cloud offerings is that they are probably fine for the business end user but no use to us and I wanted to know whether the accountant version of the software could open files created by users of the cloud offering as its only the Pro and Accountant desktop versions that we would be using.
Fred hasn't come back to me with an answer to that but if he does I will post the answer (with credit) here.
I still can't get my head around the mentality of people who are happy to pay every month forever to use cloud offerings where what financial professional actually need are desktop sollutions and possibly cloud backups (for which why would you ever need anything more than dropbox?).
Rather than wasting money on cloud solutions I think that Intuit would be better investing their efforts in getting traiing companies on board with offering QB training and offering course in a box sollutions similar to Sage as the issue that people really have is that they are being trained in Sage so they stick with it even though its the most expensive and (I feel) least user freindly option.
Intuit has at least learnt to offer their software free to new businesses through some banks but its a case that the people that are getting the software don't know how to use it.
I know that the arguement will be that there are plenty of QB books available but almost all of them are written for the US rather than UK market and Intuit need to fix that anomally in order to gain market share here (and maybe make Sage wake up and smell the coffee about their licensing).
__________________
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.
QuickBooks Desktop is a mulitple company system, the official supported maximum is 99 companies, although we've had customers with double or triple that.
With QBDT you pay a monthly subscription (cheapest is currently £22/mth) and can have pretty much as many companies as you like and QBO you pay per company (cheapest is currently £9/mth, assuming you're not associated with a QBO accountant.
Shamus- There is currently no cross-functionality between the Desktop and Online products... that's not to say this might not be possible in the future, but I'm not aware of anything in the pipeline.
Fred, it would appear that Intuit are not that bothered in promoting the desktop version, given that it's only mention on the website is one line at the very bottom of the page. At £80 from Amazon, Desktop Pro works out cheaper than a 1 year cloud offering.
I'm not a big fan of cloud software in general, although I can see the attraction for software vendors. I think the biggest worry for us is what happens if something goes vastly wrong and stuff that's in the cloud gets lost, erased or corrupted. At least with a desktop version you know you can back up everything physically.
As a QB desktop and online 'accountant' user - I'll pick a minor nit Shaun.
QBO is perfectly ok from either end and while those trained in Sage and Iris might find the interface a little toy town don't damn the product for that.
There is a saying along the lines of 'Don't Scare the Horses', users find the product friendly and nonthreatening and at our end there is good tracking, reporting and 90%+ of the bells and whistles most professionals expect to see.
It does a good job at the cheaper end of the market (sorry Fred)
At the moment Intuit are pushing the on-line product, and they have recently merged the support, which used to be specific to product, into a single source - but having had to ring support only last week (multi currency port to cloud) I can confirm that they are pleasant, helpful and knowledgeable - and not afraid to say if they specialise on desk when taking a call for the online product, or visa versa.
Hi Unwize- no problem and thanks for the feedback. I'll pass it on to support and glad you found the experience positive.
111 Bookkeeping- Yes you're correct. 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.
As a QB desktop and online 'accountant' user - I'll pick a minor nit Shaun.
QBO is perfectly ok from either end and while those trained in Sage and Iris might find the interface a little toy town don't damn the product for that. There is a saying along the lines of 'Don't Scare the Horses', users find the product friendly and nonthreatening and at our end there is good tracking, reporting and 90%+ of the bells and whistles most professionals expect to see. It does a good job at the cheaper end of the market (sorry Fred)
At the moment Intuit are pushing the on-line product, and they have recently merged the support, which used to be specific to product, into a single source - but having had to ring support only last week (multi currency port to cloud) I can confirm that they are pleasant, helpful and knowledgeable - and not afraid to say if they specialise on desk when taking a call for the online product, or visa versa.
I'm confused Theresa
I didn't say anything about the QB interface? I'm saying that QB online is a pay per company sollution like Sage where the desktop sollution is multi company so more cost effective for ourselves.
Not damned the product or interface for the desktop sollution at all, but I have damned the lack of training companies that Intuit have got offering courses in QB and that the bulk of the training materials (not all) are US rather than UK based.
For 80% of the time thats not a problem as bookkeeping is bookkeeping no matter what country you are in. But there's an awful lot in that other 20% that needs properly focused training materials.
You might want to reread my post as I think you may have confused my answer being about QB in general rather than only the online version and even that I don't rubbish, I simply emphasise that its not the best sollution for us as we have multiple clients.
One thing that has come out from this though is that at present the Online and desktop versions won't talk to each other so if your clients have the the online version their accountants a bit stuffed so I think thats an oversight that Intuit might want to fix pronto.
__________________
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.
the Pro and Accountant versions of QB are definitely multi company although I cannot confirm whether the maximum number of companies is still 99 (think that it used to be but not sure whether that is still the case with the latest versions).
I believe (and a quick search seems to confirm) that you can have multiple companies in Premier but cannot personally confirm that as I don't possess a copy.
Fred contacted me about his post and we've spoken off line. He has kindly offered to help people on the site with QB technical problems. Although I can't see anyone here wanting to ask about the cloud version.
My point in relation to QB cloud offerings is that they are probably fine for the business end user but no use to us and I wanted to know whether the accountant version of the software could open files created by users of the cloud offering as its only the Pro and Accountant desktop versions that we would be using.
Fred hasn't come back to me with an answer to that but if he does I will post the answer (with credit) here.
I still can't get my head around the mentality of people who are happy to pay every month forever to use cloud offerings where what financial professional actually need are desktop sollutions and possibly cloud backups (for which why would you ever need anything more than dropbox?).
Rather than wasting money on cloud solutions I think that Intuit would be better investing their efforts in getting traiing companies on board with offering QB training and offering course in a box sollutions similar to Sage as the issue that people really have is that they are being trained in Sage so they stick with it even though its the most expensive and (I feel) least user freindly option.
Intuit has at least learnt to offer their software free to new businesses through some banks but its a case that the people that are getting the software don't know how to use it.
I know that the arguement will be that there are plenty of QB books available but almost all of them are written for the US rather than UK market and Intuit need to fix that anomally in order to gain market share here (and maybe make Sage wake up and smell the coffee about their licensing).
If I have misunderstood I'm sorry! I have underlined a section above which I took to mean you felt the product was of only limited value to a bookkeeper/accountant.
I agree the cloud offering does not match the versatility of the desk offering but they have come on in leaps and bounds over the last year. I'll also agree - loudly! That an interface more like the desktop accountant interface with all the extra reporting, data manipulation etc would be a great addition! As to endless 'pay monthly' products... this may boil down to how each of us see our business. I like cloud solutions where the client does the majority of the data entry (and I do train the people who will be doing that!) and I come in to 'tidy up', answer questions and do the bits that scare them - bank recs and VAT returns - and to convert all those scary numbers into something that makes sense to the client.
Just concentrating on that one line and expanding upon it.
I think that its the accountant in me that looks at the numbers and thinks £108 per year per company or £150 for as any companies as you can throw a stick at and no requirement to upgrade at the end of the year.
Assuming that you need to upgrade your desktop sollution every three years over (say) as twelve year period, ignoring the time value of money and inflation and just quoting at todays prices a desktop solution will cost £600 for as many companies as you can gain in twelve years (which I am sure will be many more than one).
Even only having one company using an online sollution will (at todays prices) cost £1296 for the same period.
Software companies offering cloud based sollutions I feel forget sometimes that they are trying to sell their wares to accountants.
I do not think that likes of Intuit should be trying to sell us online sollutions but they should be enuring that their online sollutions that they sell to end users can at least talk seemlessly with the desktop systems that they sell to financial professionals such as ourselves.
Online sollutions as far as I can see are something that you can sell to end users as, espechially tablet / smartphone users like that sort of thing (and Xero very much seems to be winning that part of the market).
I do find it a little arrogant of some software providers that they create something and expect the market to adopt it rather than creating what the market (or market segment) actually wants.
The reasoning can be easily discerned from the above example figures.
Of course, in relation to whether we wanted the product in the first place there will be the results of focus groups and surveys where the statistics are published that support the vendors stance... but as with all statistics they never publish the underlying questions, data, who was asked, etc.
That is not aimed at any software provider, just simply an accross the board view that marketing people always assume that everyone that they are selling to is stupid.
Intuit provide a good product at the quality end of the spectrum. But my arguement is not about quality of product or interface, its simply that its the wrong product for this segment of the market.
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
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.
One thing that has come out from this though is that at present the Online and desktop versions won't talk to each other so if your clients have the the online version their accountants a bit stuffed so I think thats an oversight that Intuit might want to fix pronto.
To be fair to Quickbooks there is a free accountants online package that will allow you to link up with clients QBO, from what I could glean from the website. I'm going to grab a copy of Desktop Pro once I've got January out of the way, see how things have improved since I last used it in 2008.
I was just going on what Fred from Intuit said about the desktop and the online not chattting with each other.
Fred,
You might want to mention the free accountants software in future posts as that seems like quite an important ommission in convincing accountants that there is any mileage in online software.
Also, as well as free accountants software, how much are you going to pay us to push the online software onto our clients? (i.e. whats in it for us?).
I'm still having difficulty seeing any financial advantage to online over desktop even for a single company but sure that there must be otherwise why on earth would people be buying into it?
__________________
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.
QuickBooks desk top needs to be updated at least every two years as the older versions are not supported. If you use the payroll offering you have to update every year.
So using current prices, buying the download of Pro costs £75.00 with 5 upgrades to cover 12 years in total = £450
Prem as a download is £150 + 5 upgrades comes to £900 and this is the level you would probably want for reporting capabilities.
If you want payroll with that it goes up to £1992 over the 12 years with Pro and approximately £2880 for Premier
As an online partner - free to bookkeepers and accountants - I can get a discounted price for the online subscription, which I can either pass on or keep to myself but the current full price of the 'plus' offering (the equivalent of Premier) inc VAT is £10.44/month.
That equates to £125.28 a year and assuming as above no price rises, £1503.36 for 12 years. It comes with unlimited payroll so no second set of software needed.
So, if you are looking at a simple client, no VAT, no payroll - desktop and Pro or Simple Start is clearly best in terms of value but if you want full reporting, tracking, repeating invoices, budgeting and/or payroll on-line may well work out cheaper.
That's the maths in the case for QuickBooks and assumes each business has it's own copy or access to the software.
If you want to work the 'they don't need access - I do it all' approach then desktop will win hands down.
