Using QB for 25 years or more I have never felt like Intuit really fixes problems. Sometimes they create a work around, sometimes they just ignore their customers problems. I love the fact they didn't even plan on IE being discontinued until after it was gone.
I use QB 2015 right now and like many small businesses I don't need all the extra stuff they keep adding. I was disgusted to see they went to the annual subscription at prices that make it a "no deal" for me.
I use QB maybe 3 times a week for half an hour to create and email invoices, receive customer payments, record checks (I write to pay bills) and keep my checking account record up to date and categorize expenses. Every year I print out a profit loss statement. That's about it. So I have only upgraded when I thought my version would stop working. I never have noticed any changes to the parts of the program I use.....which is what a user wants. I realize Intuit wants to sell more product so they add bells and whistles and stop updating the products they sold.
Imagine I sold a customer an air conditioner that they had to "renew" subscription every year or it wouldn't work- well I wouldn't do that to my customers EVER.
I guess the best thing for small businesses is to go to another accounting program. I am looking at "My Bookkeeper 23" which costs $40 and comes with lifetime license.
I just hate that Intuit isn't even providing a QuickBooks Desktop product for many of us who used their software for 20 to 30 years for small service businesses-like handymen, plumbers, HVAC etc. that don't plan to pay a subscription for something that is just a simple database and don't use it for advanced payroll or cloud based services. I am ready to retire and accounting isn't my favorite chore and doesn't provide any income. Bookkeeping just provides a record for doing taxes and billing customers- so people should think about how much time and money they waste on overly updated and complex financial software- bookkeeping should always be a simple database not a three ring circus that you need to hire someone to figure out.
Like much software it never needed a "new version" just like Microsoft Office these upgrades rarely do anything but make applications less familiar and harder to use. Just fix the glitches.
A tip I have used forever is just buy all my supplies on 1 credit card and enter it once a month when I get the visa bill as category: job supplies I don't enter every receipt separately just a monthly total. I even use that Visa for my cell phone bill. It doesn't really matter which job the supplies were for. I don't see any point in figuring out the exact cost and profit on each job. I roughly know in my mind what I am making and I don't get surprised very often. A pencil and paper is the best way to estimate the costs of a job and add a little extra then walk away your done.
