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This 2008 program is the worst intuit product I have ever used. Sometimes more isn’t better: it is just more. More time, More space, More problems, More aggravation. I have been using Quick Books since 1997, on a verity of computers running different platforms. It is long on ascetic form and short on function. I use it for work so come January 1st, I am going to find another program. This program costs me about two billable hours for each account, and I simply can’t afford to lose that kind of time. If you aren’t using it for business and are essentially a novice and need all of the redundancies it may work for you just fine.

I purchased the 2008 product because we had acquired two new computers using the Vista Protocols, I also work for clients who are still using windows 98, and that is a nightmare, surprisingly one of computers it runs the best on is running the windows 2000me. After about a month of trying to get the 2005 edition to work with the vista and being informed that the 2005 product was no longer going to be supported by updates after the 2008 release we decided to switch.

Here are my problems if anyone has a found a work around I will be all ears, INTUIT, has none, although they are aware of them.

1. The 2008 edition uses a lot of third party software, Google search, spell check, their own automatic update service, etcetera, and if you use it in tandem with the quick books customer manager you also have a whole new can of worms.

2. When opening the program it goes searching and starts all of these other programs but not in an orderly fashion. So it will hit a “program busy switch to” error about every two seconds. This makes the time frame for opening the program about ten minutes long, but it isn’t ten minutes you can go have a cup of coffee and return; it is ten minutes that you have to sit there and click on the server busy switch to button. I had to hit mine 121 times before my largest file loaded. YES I COUNTED EVERY FRICKING FRACKING TIME, and if frustration were a marketable commodity, I would be a rich woman.

3. After you have spent the last ten minutes trying to get this program to open, then you have to put in the password and try to get the file you need to work with open, another five minutes of the same stuff, to get that to open.

4. They have decided to locate the new files in the public area of your my documents folder, four folders deep, create a short cut when you get there and place it on your desktop, you will need it. This is different than the location of the QB 2005 files so it is almost impossible to open and convert the new files, it can’t find them..You will get the 6123-0 error… The work around for this is….AND THIS IS IMPORTANT…REBUILD (Don’t even bother with the verify button) on your tool bar [file-utilities-rebuild] YOUR 2005 FILES and save them to disk….THEN restore them to the 08 edition they will restore and convert in the same process, and they will go to the new location, and by the way the backing up in this program is a real nightmare but I will get to that in a moment.

5. The help screens are all online; make sure you have your ISP open and your account signed on before you hit the help button. While you are trying to open them so they can tell you the above information you get the accursed program busy switch to error, just keep hitting the button, if you hit the cancel button you will have to start the process over. It well may throw you offline or out of the program entirely.

6. after the thirty minutes or so it takes to open this program so that you can do ten minutes of work, it is now time to back it up. AND YOU NEED TO BACK IT UP EVERYTIME, back up files have the file extension of .qbb, these files can be restored and over written. The files you work with and open are .qbw files and these are read only files, they can’t be overwritten or deleted. Now, remember that can’t find the file error for whatever reason about one of every six times you try to open this it is either corrupt or it simply can’t find it, just restore the .qbb file from your back up disk, I use a gigabyte USB jump drive and an SD card. Unless this is a brand new file that you have created in 2008, you will need to REBUILD the file every time before you back it up because you will get the can’t copy headers - file not backed up error on back up about every other time you back it up. This requires two back up locations and another thirty minutes. UNCHECK the verify and back up option and choose the back up without verifying option, UNCHECK the date which installs a separate backup file each time you back up for three separate occasions. Save 1 with the dated file extension once a week and overwrite the rest.

This is a trade off between crash security, and computer space and your time. IF you have done the rebuild more than twice and it still doesn’t back up, and then go to the company files, remember the icon I told you to store on the desktop, find the .qbw file and copy and paste it into your back up drive. THIS IS A VERY LARGE FILE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH ROOM ON YOUR BACK UP DEVICE. When your open file fails and only if you do not have a .qbb file to restore because it would not back up.

First Step: You will have first to go into the company files (remember that desktop shortcut) and rename the corrupt file that is in your company folder as it is a read only file and it can not be over written. I rename mine corrupt file so I don’t make any mistake about which one doesn’t work later.

Second Step: Then go get the back up .qbw file, Edit copy and paste it into your company file folder, you can not use the program restore feature for a qbw file. Make sure you can now open the new company file, and then you can follow the next procedure to delete the old corrupt file.

DELETEING A CORRUPT FILE: From the explore computer screen, in the company file, right click on the renamed corrupt file, go to properties, click on the archive file button, then you will be able to delete this corrupt file.

If you already have purchased this program: things that I found helpful.
1. Open and sign on to your ISP account, go to intuit and create an account in the user community and set it up to notify you for the latest bugs fixes. IF you have Intuit mail read it before you ever open the program, this has saved me several hours.

2. GO to the help menu and shut off the automatic update. I manually update when I finish my work and this helps to speed up the start up process. Go to the google desk top and shut down the RSS Feeds and the other news feeds, the photo slide show and everything but the search line. You will need to open each of these gadgets and exit them. You can turn them back on after you are finished working if you want them.

3. Go to the preferences menu and shut off the centers and the sales pitches, these will get turned back on every time you update but if you shut them down after each update it will take less time to load your file and the sales pitches won’t randomly appear every time you open the file. IF they had spent half as much time on the program as they did on the built in sales pitches it would have been a much better program.

4. Open a register, a report, or write checks screen, that you use all of the time, hit the view on the tool bar then add it to the tool bar, customize the tool bar to whatever you use the most, I use memorized transactions so I have that on my tool bar, you can move the icons up and down so the ones you use the most show, when I click on it, it directly opens the memorized transactions list, I removed the icons I don’t use from the tool bar if you find you use them you can re add them. It would have been nice if that fancy new desktop had programmable buttons, just shut it down in the desktop preferences, unless you have no idea what you are doing and need instructions, the desktop icons open another set of menus which opens another set of menus until you finally get to where you need to go, it is the long way around, but it looks good.

Hope this is helpful.