Each year Intuit institutes a ‘sunset policy’ impacting a version of QuickBooks Desktop, and for 2020 that’s all versions of QuickBooks 2017. This year’s sunset on May 31, 2020 applies to the following products:
- QuickBooks Pro 2017
- QuickBooks Premier 2017
- QuickBooks Desktop Accountant 2017
- QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions V17
While non-subscription based versions of these products will continue to work, you will not be able to subscribe or make use of live technical support or any of the other Intuit services that you could previously make use of with your QuickBooks 2017 desktop software prior to the sunset date of May 31, 2019 including (but not limited to) Desktop Payroll (Basic, Standard, Enhanced or Assisted) services, QuickBooks Workforce (aka: ‘ViewMyPaycheck’), QuickBooks Merchant Services, eInvoicing, Intuit Check Solutions, Bill Pay, Recurring Payments, Online Banking, Multicurrency Exchange Rates, Accountant’s Copy File Transfer, Online Backup, Contributed Reports, QuickBooks Email, 1099 and W-2 form updates, and others.
Intuit
Furthermore, any service associated with an Intuit server including license verification will not be functional for the QuickBooks 2017 product-line and there will be no further program updates (maintenance releases) to these programs. Intuit will not guarantee that you can register products or retrieve product-license-codes or product-id-codes for these products, nor will they provide replacement product (program) CDs, although you can typically download older products from their official product download website.
In order to prevent problems associated with the loss of service from the sunset of these products or their associated service discontinuations you should consider either upgrade to a supported version of QuickBooks Desktop for which you have already acquired a license, secure licensing for the most current version of QuickBooks Desktop, or possibly migrate from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.
Of course, you also have the potential option to switch to a solution from another vendor other than Intuit if you choose that route. Our job is not to advise you as to the best course of action for you to take, only you can decide that based upon your business requirements and budget, but we want to make you aware of this ‘news’ and also of your options.
If other news impacting the sunset time-frame or options arise prior to May 31, 2020 Insightful Accountant will keep you informed.