If your small business uses QuickBooks Desktop Pro/Pro-plus or QuickBooks Desktop Premier/Premier-plus, or you're an Advisor to those businesses, you won't want to miss an opportunity to get your 'free copy' of my Pro and Premier Accounting App Comparisons featuring more than forty-eight (48) critical factors by which to evaluate eighteen (18) Accounting Apps that you are most likely to be looking at over the near future.
On February 1, 2024, Intuit used a QuickBooks Blog article titled QuickBooks Desktop to stop selling to new U.S. subscribers to publicly announce it would no longer sell new subscriptions to several QuickBooks Desktop products after July 31, 2024 within the United States.
Those products included both QuickBooks Desktop Pro (Pro-plus) and QuickBooks Desktop Premier (Premier-plus) which represent the majority of the QuickBooks Desktop users.
QuickBooks Desktop is literally used by tens-of-thousands, if not hundreds-of-thousands, of small businesses to maintain their bookkeeping and manage their business affairs.
While Intuit has stated that existing subscribers could renew their subscriptions after July 31, 2024*, many QuickBooks users are concerned by the * (asterisk) that annotates Intuit's Disclaimer about existing customer subscription renewals. The disclaimer under the * (asterisk) specifies, "Availability, terms, conditions, pricing, special features, and service support options subject to change without notice."
At the same time, these QuickBooks Desktop users are continually messaged (in a variety of methods) to 'migrate to QuickBooks Online.'
In light of the formal notification regarding QuickBooks Desktop Pro and Premier, the recent sunset of QuickBooks Desktop 2021and the continuing prompts by Intuit for Desktop users to migrate to an Online version, it has become obvious that users need to have an independent review of the various accounting apps suitable for small businesses currently using QB Desktop Pro/Premier.
Over the last few months I've been evaluating a variety of Apps on the market that I feel are likely to either market to QB Desktop Pro/Premier users, or be recommended by accountants and bookkeepers in lieu of Pro/Premier, or be looked into by Pro/Premier users.
Key among this evaluation process was to identify a variety of features, functions and capabilities offered by QuickBooks Desktop Pro/Premier. I then identified apps that were comparable to each of the desktop products based on my set of features. Then I added to my set of features various functions and capabilities from the alternatives to Pro/Premier.
I prepared an analytical spreadsheet of all of the data and compared and contrasted each of the alternatives with Pro, Premier or both. At that point I was ready to review each of the apps to identify what I liked best 'Pros' and least 'Cons' regarding their functionalities. Lastly I researched how easy, or difficult it was to 'migrate data' from a QuickBooks Desktop file into the various Apps.
Now it's time to present my findings. At next week's Future Forward you have the opportunity to hear and see my results, you also have a chance during CPE polling to answer a question that will trigger the delivery of my App Compare Spreadsheets (one for Pro, and one for Premier) during the related sessions.
The first session on May 21, 2024, at 2:30 PM Central Daylight Time will cover Migrating from QuickBooks Pro/Pro-plus. We will be looking at solutions from a wide group of developers, including Intuit... so yes, I will be evaluating QuickBooks Desktop Pro against QuickBooks Online. We will also be looking at solutions like FreshBooks Lite, Zoho Books Standard, Patriot Basic, Xero Growing and more.
My second session on May 22, 2024, at 2:30 PM Central Daylight Time will cover Migrating from QuickBooks Premier/Premier-plus. Some of the app alternatives will be from the same developers of Apps covered in the Pro/Pro-plus session, but will cover a 'more sophisticated' product, just like Premier was a more sophisticated version of QuickBooks Desktop than Pro. That means we will look at solutions like QuickBooks (Online) Plus, Odoo Standard, Accounting Suite and Sage 50 Quantum to name a few.
Let me say that neither session will look at high-end products that are really intended for specialized applications, or the mid-to-upper market. Very few Premier users would be able to afford such products, and almost none of the Pro users would find solutions like Acumatica, NetSuite or Sage Intacct a viable alternative.
Later this year, we will be looking at alternatives for QuickBooks Enterprise users who may be, or want to begin, looking into migration to something more sophisticated than the eighteen apps we will explore next week. As soon as that data is compiled and a Fall or early Winter Future Forward is scheduled, I will let you know regarding presentation of my findings in the ERP space.
My goal is to give you a 'fact based' evaluation of the alternatives for QuickBooks Desktop Pro and Premier. I can't say that this is all the alternatives but it certainly is those I felt were most viable for the user groups these two long-standing Intuit products have served.
So please join me for one or both of next week's Future Forward sessions on May 21 and 22 covering Migrating from QuickBooks Desktop. For more information or to register visit the official Future Forward Event website.
