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Accounting Software Woes
A few years ago (2016, I think) I had a business mini-crisis when my installation of Peachtree 2010 (full name: Peachtree by Sage Complete Accounting 2010) stopped working when I installed it on a new workstation. Leaving Peachtree for dead, I signed up for Wave, a web-based accounting solution that had gotten some good reviews. But the Wave interface was unfamiliar, and the idea of moving all my accounting data over was kind of overwhelming, so I doubled back to Peachtree and found a way to revive it by making a couple of registry entries by hand.
Peachtree had been working well until yesterday, when for no discernible reason it decided to stop allowing new client and job entries. I tried a few simple tricks to get it going again, but they didn’t work. Rather than go to heroic efforts to keep a 9-year-old application limping along, I decided to look once again at alternatives. The move to web-based accounting for small business appears to have accelerated, and Wave is still highly rated — at least by PC Magazine — so I reactivated my account and began the tedious and at times confusing task of setting up my business there. Since we’re only at the beginning of February I didn’t have too awful many items to enter for the year to date, but I’m still not fully comfortable with the way Wave handles things like depreciation. I suspect it’s just the unfamiliar user interface that’s troubling me at the moment, and I’m hopeful that I’ll get used to it soon.
My accounting needs are pretty simple, especially since I no longer have any employees, so I think I’ll be fine, but making a major platform shift for a business-critical function is not something I ever look forward to.
Farewell, Peachtree, you served me well.
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24 Replies
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I am very happy with Quick Books on-line.
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I am very happy with Quick Books on-line.
Me too…
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I used Peachtree for a number of years and liked it. Like you described, it just sat down, sputtered and quit in about 2012 after a good long run.
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I keep a cash ledger and keep up with my invoices in files folders “Due” & “PAID” and everything else goes into a box until it is time to load TurboTax Home and Office and enter the totals.
I used DacEasyLite accounting and was very happy with it until the millennium bug ended its use.
They are still somewhere, just have not tracked it down exactly.
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I am very happy with Quick Books on-line.
QuickBooks is also highly-rated, but it comes with a monthly cost. Given the choice of two highly-rate web-based accounting applications, I chose the one that’s free. (Wave does offer advanced versions that require a monthly payment, but I don’t need the advanced functionality.)
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I am very happy with Quick Books on-line.
QuickBooks is also highly-rated, but it comes with a monthly cost. Given the choice of two highly-rate web-based accounting applications, I chose the one that’s free. (Wave does offer advanced versions that require a monthly payment, but I don’t need the advanced functionality.)
Cheapskate. 😉
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Cheapskate.
I’d resent that, if the evidence in favor weren’t so overwhelming.
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I found the Quickbooks on-line a little to simple for what we needed as we were moving off of the Quickbooks Enterprise platform because it went subscription. No change is fun, but, we changed to Quickbook Premier and it is solid and we usually run at least two stations at a time on it. Sage is also fairly full featured and my guess is that QB on-line will not do everything that you want. Premier can be had reasonably without subscription. My 2?
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We’ve used medlin.com software for 30 years. Cheap and works perfect.
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button pushers ????
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Why not just use Quickbooks and let your CPA fix what??s not right for your company? I??ve never understood why professionals that are constantly under scrutiny and the general public that ??believes? they can do our job better chooses to do another professionals work to save money.
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It looks like those guys spent more time fixing the car and getting it unstuck than they did surveying.
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I??ve never understood why professionals that are constantly under scrutiny and the general public that ??believes? they can do our job better chooses to do another professionals work to save money.
Um, because it saves money?
To quote Bob Dylan, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Expanding on the “doing another professional’s work” concept: a carpenter doesn’t need to hire a surveyor to level his house foundation forms; all he needs is a reliable level and the modest ability to use it. Similarly, I don’t need to hire a CPA to keep the books for my very simple business, I only need functional software and the ability to navigate the user interface. For 25 years Peachtree was that software, but now it’s time for me to climb the learning curve on another application.
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Word, brother Jim, word.
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Cheapskate – I think not. Everyone needs to know the history of ‘Quicken’ and QuickPay and QuickBooks. Used to be you could put the annual tax constants in for Federal and State taxes but when the originator of Quicken sold to a group of investors, they unbundled payroll and now charge you close to $400 annually to change a few constants. Not to mention ‘forcing’ you to provide them your credit card information so they can automatically bill you the next year for updates.
Intuit borders on unfair practices for what they have done with the software.
I have been waiting for years for someone to come up with a program that competes with QuickBooks.
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@jim-frame you might try creating a “new” company in Peachtree, bring your balances forward for 01-Jan-2019 and see if it works. We use an old beyond EOL copy of MyMoney for the personal side and had to do that because I think the files got too big. Seems to work fine still, it just quit working one day with the old files.
SHG
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@hpalmer yes Intuit seems to be “market leader”, and may technically work with the numbers OK, BUT what a kludge piece of software that doesn’t even conform to Windows standards. We have looked, alas there doesn’t seem to be much to replace it for small businesses or personal users.
SHG
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I’ve been on Quickbooks Pro for almost 20 years. You can get a desktop version so you don’t need the online if you don’t want that. Its $220 or so but I usually go 2 or 3 years between upgrades. For me its worth it just to be able to download bank accounts etc. You can also scan in receipts if you want to. I’m fairly basic, it will probably do a lot more than I’ve used ( i do have three different simple business but all under me as owner, finally got rid of all the LLC’s and such). I don’t do any payroll so that makes things simpler.
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I have been using Medlin. com software for many years. My Brother, who ran a bookkeeping service got me started. Up until now I have used an accountant for my tax return. The accountant accepts Medlin. IRS accepts Medlin. I use payroll and accounting. I do not use accounts receivable, because I do not track accounts receivable. You can try Medlin without paying, unless you like it. It it saleable, just buy the part you want.
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I’ve been using Quickbooks Premier for 20 years now and would love to find something else. The problem is that they seem to have a monopoly on the market. My accountant has the same feeling, he once mentioned that every time he finds a better software, Intuit buys them out and kills it.
I use it for everything from cost estimates to invoicing. My main problem with them is the database access. First, when I had a gaggle of employees, some of whom needed access to various part of the program, everyone had to have Premier to access the database. And don’t get me started about the lack of support for our one Mac user. Next, the customized reporting is terrible. Try getting a report an invoices paid in given year sorted by state. I understand that the Enterprise version be better at it but I’m not going to pay as much for my accounting software annually as I do for my C3D.
As @hpalmer pointed out, the price for payroll is out of control. I found another online solution, ’esmartpaycheck’ which works great and e-files tax for about $50 buck a year.
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