Goodbye to QuickBooks 2005 Support

It’s that time of year – Intuit’s annual “Sunset” of older versions of QuickBooks. If you are using QuickBooks 2005 then you won’t be able to use certain services after May 31^st. I’m not going to comment on the reasons for this, or whether I agree with this policy or not (lots of comments about that in the user forums already), I’ll just discuss what the impact will be on your business.

What will you lose?

• QuickBooks email services
• Merchant Service
• Online Banking services
• Online Billing services
• Bill Pay services
• Credit Card Download services
• Standard, Enhanced and Assisted Payroll
• Support Plans and Services (some may extend beyond the May 31^st date depending on your contract type and date)
• Employee Organizer services

Your data is still good, you can still use the basic QuickBooks features, you just can’t use any services that depend on an Intuit server or on-line feature.

Remember, this applies only to the 2005 releases. If you have an older version, you’ve already gone through this, if you have a newer version you aren’t affected (yet).

What can you do? About your only option is to upgrade to the newest version of QuickBooks. You can get Pro and Premier at a discount if you order on line.

If you are still using the 2005 product be aware that there are some big differences between your product and the newer versions.

• The user interface has changed quite a bit in some places, so you may have to do some retraining of staff.
• If you are running in a multi-user environment then you will find that there are significant changes in how you set up your network, because the database has been converted to a very different format internally. I’d recommend that you talk to a Certified ProAdvisor (find one who is familiar with setting up multi-user installations).
• You may find that you need to upgrade your network and server hardware.

There is some good news if you do upgrade:

• All of your QuickBooks data will convert easily.
• Any properly written third-party add-on program should continue to work without any changes needed (my CCRSoftware products all do).
• With the 2008 product you can now send your invoices (etc.) via your own Outlook email system, rather than using their email server (I really like this enhancement).
• There are a number of new features that you could find beneficial.

Category: Program Updates