Ask the Accountant…
Question: I was talking to someone at QuickBooks. They told me to try QuickBooks Online, and if I didn’t like it, it is very easy to switch back to QB Premier. Is that true?
Answer: No, that is not true at all. QB is pushing QuickBooks Online (QBO) heavily. Its subscription income is very attractive to QB, but it is not the best choice of QB products for promotional products distributors. QB Premier is the better choice for our complex orders—much better than QBO, which lacks the Sales Order function that is central to our orders.
I have heard from several distributors who made the switch to QBO with the thought that switching back to Premier would be simple. It is not. The two programs were written by different developers in different countries and do not resemble each other at all.
I have recently connected a couple of distributors to a QB expert to have their QBO files converted back to Premier. It has been messy, and involved a number of clean up adjustments even after the conversion. For instance, non-posting transactions, such as supplier purchase orders, do not come over in the conversion, and need to be mapped through another program into Premier. Even after that, the purchase orders are all listed as open, including those that had been closed.
If considering QBO, know that it is a difficult exercise to switch back to QB Premier or Enterprise from QBO, and it is more expensive than Premier.
Please email your questions to Harriet at Ask The Accountant.
QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise can be modified to better serve ad specialty distributors. Harriet Gatter is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, a former accounting professor and a former ad specialty distributor. She advises ad specialty distributors to use QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, often in conjunction with other industry-specific software, to manage the complexities of the ad specialty business, with the results being time saved, errors eliminated and an overall accurate accounting of your business. Contact her at [email protected].
