Hello Quickbooks,
As QB will be quitting business in India, we can see that there are no easy, organised and timesaving ways we can export data from Quickbooks as we have close to 10 years of data including massive attachments uploaded for various transactions in QB Online.
No built-up restore or backup function:
Without this function, businesses don’t have protection against mistakes or disasters, whether large (deleting an entire account, importing 200 transactions into the wrong account, etc.) or small (entering data into the wrong account, deleting a transaction, etc.). There is also no protection against having your data deleted by a hacker or a server problem. The only functions that resemble data backup are the ability to export one account at a time to a .xls file (but it is useless as a backup because it will omit all split detail and cannot be restored in its entirety).
Not supporting the CSV file format completely
CSV (comma-separated values) format is supported by the QBO’s built-in Import function. However, the function recognizes only three fields – Date, Description, and Amount. If the transactions you want to import already include categories, memos, check numbers, and any split information, that information will be ignored. The only way to add that information is to edit each imported transaction manually after importing CSV files. If you have years of past accounting and bookkeeping data to import, it’s almost impossible to do that manually.You have to export manually each time you need a report. It’s suitable if you only need a few reports, but for weekly or monthly,yearly reporting on different things. Then it becomes overwhelming.
You’re limited to export QuickBooks to Excel and PDF files (for the more detailed reports). If you’re more accustomed to, e.g., Google products, you’ll have to import each file into a spreadsheet and hope it formats as expected.
Most reports show only the basic data. For example, the report we generated for our sample employees contained only the four basic data fields. If you need to fetch, for example, their hire data or hourly wage, you’ll have to resort to other methods.
Again coming to attachment, we can not download the same in BULK for a specified period or for a specified voucher / transaction type etc. We also have 100MB limits per instance also.
Lack of industry-specific features:
When it comes to inventory management, businesses operating in different industries have different requirements. Industry-specific features are there to help them quickly perform tasks unique to their industry. QuickBooks Desktop is more robust and supports several industries (Retail, Professional Services, Nonprofit, Manufacturing & Wholesale, and General Contractor), but QuickBooks Online doesn’t. For example, general contractors can create a Job by Vendor report to organize job costs by the vendor and see which vendors need to be paid. QuickBooks Online doesn’t offer these features, and there’s no support for inventory management. It is general accounting software, which explains the lack of such features.
Inability to revert to a previous version:
QuickBooks Online users are not able to restore to a previous version of their books. For example, you won’t be able to go back to a point where the last transaction data is available unless you’re on the highest pricing plan. QuickBooks’ cloud storage and management updates and saves data but doesn’t create any restoration points (which prevents users from going back to modified or deleted transactions). To recreate the data, you need to pay for the advanced plan that creates backups for you or enter data manually. Many other applications that operate in the cloud can generate restoration points within basic plans, so QBO’s lack of support for such an essential functionality can create further issues for accountants who want it without having to pay for a pricey upgrade.
All these have made Data Export from QB to other accounting software a massive challenge itself. Our business is not getting any support from the QB Support team as they failed to give any solutions here and left us in this mess created by QB itself. There is MASSIVE Data loss for us and all other businesses. The data / attachments are a must for audit and compliance related issues at a later date and these serve as a crucial reference point /evidence for business.
We also requested to shift our India Entity data completely to another country where Quickbooks has operations which is again not possible as per QB Support Team. No roads are left now for us as a business. All hopes are lost and we are feeling helpless believing in an American Company for our accounting needs is what seems to have been a very wrong decision in the beginning itself.
To conclude, the limitations of QuickBooks Online are potentially more costly over time and now Indian businesses are paying a very heavy price for this.
