2024 Tax Season Thread

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Ming the Merciless

What happened with them? How long have you been using quick books? What changed?



What are you going with now?


I just started using quickbooks and compared to what I was doing before, it seems amazing and has really changed my life. Just curious what you are going with now and why? And if you think it would be worth it for a fairly normal but serious user (1 personal , 1 business) to consider switching or if I would even notice "the suck" that you're talking about?





I started in Jan of 2023 too. Definitely have times where I run out of steam... but the transactions building up motivate me. Ill ignore it for a few weeks and then sit down and do big chunks. I also did some work right before I turned stuff in to my CPA but even the work that I did was easier because I knew every transaction was already there... I just had to tag it and mark it as whatever class or category or whatnot. And after a while some of them actually start coming in already tagged because the AI 'learns' which categories to assign the different transactions. Its probably simple stuff to cpa's like Buehler but to me I am loving it.

I'm no CPA. I just stayed at a Holiday Inn last night. I'd rather beat my dick with a hammer than make a career out of accounting.

I'm using Quickbooks Desktop 2021. They made a big push to get everyone to online. It has been 5 or 6 years since I used it, but one the clients my accountant gave me to work on switched and it was fire roasted asshole. It was a reeruned number of steps to even get to a balance sheet or income statement.

Quickbooks Desktop was simple, easy, cheap. Excellent for small business. With online they're trying to automate everything and layer in all this dog**** that a vast majority of small business doesn't need. They're trying to position themselves for more advanced businesses, which is fine, but this year they did away with Desktop entirely. Like as of July you will never again be able to buy Desktop. So ultimately they're abandoning small business that just need a bookkeeping system.

MOTHER**** THAT. In our circle of farm entities, there are several really low volume entities that do some business. So they're all on Quickbooks, which is fine with Desktop because you can load as many company files as you want. We put the company files on a shared drive, so it's backed up and we can all access them if need be. Quickbooks online charges per entity. So those low volume entities are priced out.

They used to have a simple intuitive payroll system that was very cost effective. NOPE. They've upped that to a payroll subscription per entity per employee and like quadrupled the price. Because **** you that's why. Since my payroll isn't supported anymore I rolled it to Onpay, which is a 3rd party provider which will do all the same shit as quickbooks, but will prepare and send filings, pay ETFPS and State all for cheaper than Intuit.

Check printing is a function that I use a lot, and they're trying to push everyone to automatic payments and automatic downloads from the bank, which is fine in theory. If you have an A/R and A/P staff to appropriately classify payments and receipts. It's way easier to just print checks when I pay bills, and mail the damn things, rather than **** with automatic downloads which I'll probably blow through and make a bunch of errors.

Then, to top it all off, I call customer support to ask some questions about updating to the newer version of Desktop, this twat on the phone was a total bitch**** to me all the while a ****ing chicken was crowing in the background. Then later some team lead called me back to ask about it, so I told her about the **** and chicken shit, and asked about Desktop. So then he tells me that it's going away in July because **** me, right? And that he's certain I'll LOVE online, if I just take a couple days and go through a training course. I told him I got trained on Desktop in all of 10 ****ing minues. 2 day training course is the crux of the issue.

So Intuit can can feel free to clean my rectum with their tongues.

In the short/intermediate term, we can still download Desktop 21 from the website, but before they shitcan that (because you know they will), I'm going to find a better solution.

For the low volume entities there is a free one called Manager.io that I think looks promising. I just need to get in it and use it to see if it will work.

There is a farm-centric ERP program out there from FBS Systems out there. If not, Xero is supported by OnPay and at a lower price point than online quickbooks. Zar Money has some good reviews out there but I never tried it. Supposedly it is a decent option for a QB clone at a lower cost. Medlin and PC Mars are older much cheaper options that have been around for a long time, and are perfectly fine for most businesses.

For you, Wave is free (owned by HR Block) and I've heard good things about. I'm going to try Manger.io. Freshbooks is pretty cheap and probably has similar functionality to what you're using. Zipbooks is also free, and looks fairly appealing for bank-link classification type stuff.

/rant

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

For you, Wave is free (owned by HR Block) and I've heard good things about. I'm going to try Manger.io. Freshbooks is pretty cheap and probably has similar functionality to what you're using. Zipbooks is also free, and looks fairly appealing for bank-link classification type stuff.

thanks , Ill have to look at those. I have loved quickbooks, and I really like the fact it is online... so I think maybe its just different perspectives and the fact I didn't start out using (or ever even seeing) older versions.


I love that quick books captures every transaction from my checking and credit cards automatically and I can issue invoices. I don't write ANY (well , extremely rarely, and dont need to print them) checks any more, everything out here is automated.. (electronic payments)



So I think that the must have features are being able to capture transactions from multiple sources, the more automation the better. Also needs to do 1099's and track vendors and so forth


I think I pay about $1000 a year for quickbooks (medium sized 'small business' maybe 500k per year in expenses, and also income hopefully more than that LOL) , and that can be written off.. I never really even thought about it being cheap or expensive, just sort of went along with it... (its about 1/500th of my expenses) so it is good to know I have options and I will look into it (intuit?)... sorry couldnt resist..


thanks again.. not looking forward to learning another app but i mean if it is free and can do the same things, **** it

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Ming the Merciless

thanks , Ill have to look at those. I have loved quickbooks, and I really like the fact it is online... so I think maybe its just different perspectives and the fact I didn't start out using (or ever even seeing) older versions.


I love that quick books captures every transaction from my checking and credit cards automatically and I can issue invoices. I don't write ANY (well , extremely rarely, and dont need to print them) checks any more, everything out here is automated.. (electronic payments)



So I think that the must have features are being able to capture transactions from multiple sources, the more automation the better. Also needs to do 1099's and track vendors and so forth


I think I pay about $1000 a year for quickbooks (medium sized 'small business' maybe 500k per year in expenses, and also income hopefully more than that LOL) , and that can be written off.. I never really even thought about it being cheap or expensive, just sort of went along with it... so it is good to know I have options and I will look into it (intuit?)... sorry couldnt resist..


thanks again.. not looking forward to learning another app but i mean if it is free and can do the same things, **** it

Yeah, if you're looking for a QB clone, Xero is probably the best. When I suggested those, it was coming from the perspective of starting with a shoebox. If you're running a business through it, there might be some better options. Without knowing anything about the business it's hard to postulate what would work best.

From what you're describing, I'd probably go in this order:

Xero
Zipbooks
Freshbooks
Wave
Zar Money

EDIT: I'd throw manager.io in there. I didn't realize it could pull in bank statements. It may not get you where you want to be, but I'd look into it.

Since Intuit started engaging in ****ery, there has been considerable resources put into competitive products.

RE: Automated Payments. I don't have a lot of love for automated payments. At least without being able to scale staff to review the entries.

I manage cash pretty tightly. I negotiated some terms with my bank that I gave up automatic sweeps. So everything that comes in, I have to cover. And some of my bills are ...we'll call them "variable". Moreover, almost everything that hits the business I track independently to projects and different allocations so I have to touch every bill anyway. So I pay bills twice a month when I run payroll. Anything that hits automatically (at least on the expense side) is going to cause me problems. So I don't do it.

My personal shit, the only thing that doesn't come out automatically is my mortgage.