QuickBooks is an accounting software package marketed and developed by Intuit. QuickBooks products are geared primarily toward medium and modest -sized companies and offer on- premises bookkeeping applications along with cloud based versions that take company payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.
Intuit was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx in Mountain View, California, USA. After the success of Quicken for individual fiscal management, the firm developed a similar solution for small business owners.
Initial release
The initial Quicken applications didn’t function as a “double entry” accounting program. On September 27, 1994 Intuit bought the right to make use of the double entry bookkeeping application called MoneyCounts, manufactured by Bob Parsons’ firm Parsons Technology. This new integration of the software was then named QuickBooks. The software was not unpopular among small business owners who had no formal accounting training. As such, the software soon promised up to 85 percent of the small business accounting software market. It continues to command the vast majority of this market. Professional accountants, however, weren’t pleased with early versions of the system, citing poor security controls, including no audit trail, in addition to non-conformity with conventional accounting standards.
Subsequent releases
Intuit sought to bridge the gap with these bookkeeping professionals, eventually supplying complete audit trail capabilities, double entry accounting functions and increased functions. By 2000, Intuit had developed Basic and Pro versions of the application and, in 2003, started offering sector-specific versions, with workflow procedures and reports designed for every one of these business types linked to the trades, as well as language.
Options now contain variations for wholesalers, producers, professional service firms, contractors, non profit entities and retailers, in addition to one especially designed for professional accounting firms who service multiple small business clients. In May 2002 Intuit started QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for medium-sized businesses.
In September 2005, QuickBooks had 74% of the marketplace in the usa. Additionally, it says that more than 50,000 accountants, CPAs and independent business consultants are members of the QuickBooks ProAdvisor software. Though Intuit sales and quadrupled gains had nearly tripled in eight years, by then Brad Smith was the new CEO.
Intuit announced the release of QuickBooks 2015 with the features that users have been requesting in the previous variations. Improved income tracker, immobilized notes, enhanced enrollment process and insights on homepage are some of the general changes for many versions of QuickBooks 2015 (Pro, Premier, Business solution and Accountant variant).
In September 2015, Intuit released QuickBooks 2016 that includes several improvements to the present ones and new features such as batch transaction, constant feed label printer support, invoice tracking, batch delete/void transactions etc.
International variants
Variants of the merchandise are available in a number of different marketplaces. Intuit’s Canadian and United Kingdom offices offer variants of QuickBooks that support the exceptional tax calculation needs of each region, including European VAT for the United Kingdom version and Canada’s GST, HST or PST sales tax. The QuickBooks UK version makes available support for South African VAT and Irish.
The Mac (OSX) version can be acquired exclusively in America.
Characteristics
Intuit has incorporated several web-based attributes into QuickBooks, including remote access capabilities, remote payroll support and outsourcing, electronic payment functions, online banking and reconciliation, mapping attributes through integration with Google Maps, promotion options through Google, and enhanced e-mail functionality through Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. For the 2008 variation, the firm in addition has added import from Excel spreadsheets, additional employee time tracking choices, pre-authorization of funds that were electronic and new Help functions.
QuickBooks Online
Intuit offers a cloud alternative called QuickBooks Online (QBO). The user gets the applications exclusively through a secure logon via a Web browser and pays a monthly subscription fee rather than an upfront fee. Patches are provided by Intuit, and consistently updates the applications automatically.
As of May 2014, QuickBooks Online had the most subscribers for an online accounting platform, . subscribers with 624,000 Compared to Xero, which reported 284,000 customers as of July, . 2014
The cloud variant has many characteristics that operate otherwise than they do in desktop versions, and is a distinct merchandise from the desktop version of QuickBooks.
In 2013, Intuit announced that it had rebuilt QuickBooks Online “from the bottom up” with a platform that allows third parties to make small business programs and gives customers the capability to customize the online version of QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Online is supported on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 10, Safari 6.1, and also accessible via Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS 7. Internet Explorer. One may also get QuickBooks Online via an iPhone, a BlackBerry, and an Android internet app.
In 2011, Intuit introduced a UK-specific version of QuickBooks Online to address tax system that was European and the specific VAT. There are also variants customized for the Canadian, Indian, and Australian markets, in addition to a worldwide version that may be customized by an individual.
QuickBooks Point of Sale is software that replaces a retailer’s cash register, monitors client advice, sales, and its inventory, and provides reports for handling its business and serving its customers.
Add-on programs
Through the Solutions Market, Intuit supported third party software developers to produce programs that fill niche areas for specific businesses and integrate with QuickBooks. The Intuit Developer Network provides advertising and technical resources, including software development kits (SDKs) for EDI.
Intuit’s Lacerte and ProLine tax preparation software for professional accountants who prepare tax returns for a living integrates with QuickBooks in this way. Microsoft Office additionally integrates with QuickBooks.
Compared to other versions of QuickBooks, fewer third-party addons integrate with QuickBooks Online Edition. Seamless QuickBooks some of sellers only offers integration although recently.
Further, the QuickBooks Commercial Hosting Program allows the commercial providers to offer rental licensing for the Guru and Premier QuickBooks versions. Hosting allows companies to make use of all features of the desktop version of QuickBooks, but to run it as an Internet -obtained option with anytime, anywhere complete security and capacity and management.
Usage
QuickBooks is definitely the leading accounting software provider among American businesses, with an incredible number of users and estimates of around 85-90% of the company accounting market.
Criticisms
The 1999 version of QuickBooks forced users to pay yet another fee for payroll table upgrades. The 2000 version of QuickBooks attempted to compel users to pay yet another fee for payroll tax updates for each business file. Following a boycott, this fee was shifted to a cost per copy of QuickBooks.
In April 2006, Intuit handicapped functionality of add on services in the areas of Bill Pay, Bank Card Download for QuickBooks 2003, Do-It-Yourself Payroll, Employee Coordinator, Merchant Service, Online Banking, Online Billing, and Support Strategies and Services. Since that time, Intuit has disabled same functions for many QuickBooks variations approximately 30 months after it has stopped selling them.
December 2007, the company released a version of its automatic updater for OS X with a critical program error. The firm fixed the updater on 17 December, but by then it’d caused significant data loss for several users.
QuickBooks Online suffered an extended outage on February 2, 2009, and as a result of power failures on June 16 –17, 2010. Many customers threatened to depart the service for a challenger such as Sage, and complained on the forum of the company’s. Brad Smith, the CEO of Intuit, apologized for the series of outages, totaling around 60 hours, which influenced most Intuit on-line products and tech support. A later July 14 outage resulted in a second Intuit CEO apology, which referred to Intuit’s “new online products”, “designed for 24/7 availability”, and to “vigorously migrating” to two new data centers.
A QuickBooks 2009 online banking module had significant problems, which resulted in countless opinions in a number of threads on the Intuit Community discussion forum. The QuickBooks product manager used these as an official thread to discuss problems, which were solved in March 2009.
As of November 2014, compatibility problems have been reported by users of QuickBooks for OSX .
No Comments Found