The Truth about Quickbooks Online
Quickbooks is a scam
I know what you’re thinking, if I switched from Quickbooks Desktop to Quickbooks online it would make our lives so much simpler. WRONG. You are about to learn why switching from Quickbooks Desktop to Quickbooks online will be one of the biggest mistakes you will ever make in your IT career. Let’s start with the basics. Quickbooks Desktop and Quickbooks online are 2 different companies. I didn’t know this before we migrated to Quickbooks online. Quickbooks Desktop did not tell us this upfront. The reason why our company decided to switch from Quickbooks Desktop to Quickbooks online (QBO) is because of the ridiculous number of problems we kept incurring from software updates, firewall configuration changes, Windows Defender issues, and so on. We were spending a fortune on troubleshooting and repairing our QuickBooks desktop users monthly. This is the reason why we decided to make the transition to Quickbooks online. Multiuser environment issues went away IMMEDIATELY. However, the new problems we encountered were far worse than we could have ever imagined.
Like I said before, Quickbooks Desktop and Quickbooks online are 2 DIFFERENT companies. A fact the company doesn’t seem to want to tell people up front and there is probably a real good reason for that which I will explain in this document.I was an IT Manager for a multimillion-dollar septic company. The company, like most small businesses, used QuickBooks desktop to manage their customer and accounting information. The problem with Quickbooks Desktop is that it is not a CRM. Our users were trying to use it like a CRM. At least once or twice a month, QuickBooks Desktop would crash or one of the users could not access the server. This downtime was VERY costly for the company. Scheduling for this septic company was handled via Excel. For 20 years they used Excel to manage their scheduling. I saw this was not scalable and told the owner it was time to switch to a CRM. We found a CRM that would bolt onto our QuickBooks and allow us the freedom to leave the CRM if it did not work out. Sounds good, right? Wrong.I made the decision to switch to QuickBooks online so it would eliminate the myriad of issues stemming from the multiuser environment and the security updates that were constantly being applied on the desktop computers. What we didn’t know and what QuickBooks Desktop DID NOT TELL US, is that we would lose some information migrating from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. How much information would we lose? All our attachments did not transfer to our new QuickBooks online account. Many phone numbers and email addresses did not transfer either. Our QuickBooks account has over 8000 customers in it spanning 20+ years. This migration broke our company’s back.We didn’t notice this right away. It took a few weeks. We started noticing missing phone numbers and email addresses for some of our customers. So, I contacted the support line of our CRM to inquire about this. This representative told me the information isn’t in our QuickBooks Online account. So, I went to our QuickBooks online account and did some investigating. Sure enough, there it was, the data was missing in the customer field. This told me that we lost information in the migration. I IMMEDIATELY called QuickBooks to ask them why a lot of our information did not transfer. The first representative I spoke to told me it was because there was a glitch in the system. That was why the information did not transfer. A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM!!!!!!!! Are you f-ing kidding me? For the amount of my money we have paid you to perform this work and you blame a glitch on our lost data!!!!!!! I spoke to another representative and asked her why some of our data did not transfer. She gave me the same BS excuse only this time she gave me a chart of all the data that will not transfer when you migrate to QuickBooks online. Guess what, phone numbers and email addresses are SUPPOSED to transfer to the new QuickBooks online account. They still did not transfer.I have spent over 24 hours of my life on the phone dealing with these QuickBooks issues. For weeks after our migration, we were using our old QuickBooks Desktop account to retrieve phone numbers and email addresses of our customers so we could keep our business going. Little did we know, QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online are 2 different companies. So once we stopped paying for QuickBooks Desktop and started paying for QuickBooks Online, the clock started ticking. QuickBooks would start sending us little reminders to renew our subscription. We ignored those messages because we though it wasn’t a big deal since we were paying for QBO. Welp, after 30 days, QuickBooks Desktop locked us out of our desktop company file. That’s right, we could no longer access the software we paid for 20+ years ago. All those phone numbers, emails and customer information were inaccessible.If you are looking for accounting software to manage your small business, there are plenty of options to choose from. STEER CLEAR OF QUICKBOOKS. I am saving you precious hours of your life. If you want to leave Quickbooks and choose another accounting software, do your research, and make sure the new company can bring ALL your data over to the new platform. Make sure that it is in writing, and they have some sort of guarantee. Your QuickBooks data can be exported. QuickBooks is by far one of the absolute worst companies in the entire world to manage your customers or accounting information. If you are considering QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks online, I highly encourage you to call the National Mental Health Hotline and consider an evaluation of your mental health. I can assure you only pain and suffering are in store for your company should you choose to switch from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks online.This article was written by 1 pissed off IT manager looking to save other companies the pain and frustration in dealing with a company that has beyond terrible customer service and support.