QuickBooks 2009 Pricing
Over the past few years Intuit has gotten a lot of heat for not giving a discount to existing users who wanted to upgrade. This year they have brought that policy back. Hooray, discounts for existing users! However, that may not be as great as you think. Let’s look at what it costs to get QuickBooks 2009. I’ll focus on prices for the US edition of Premier 2009 as an example.
Standard Pricing
If you go to the QuickBooks web site and select Premier you will see the following:
This lets you download your program immediately. For an extra $9.95 you can have a CD mailed to you. It’s easy to burn your own CD – and I highly recommend that you save your download to a CD (too many people don’t, and then find themselves in trouble if they have to reinstall later). You will get a registration code – make sure you write all of that on the CD backup copy you make.
Internet Pricing
You can go to Amazon and find the following;
In addition to this you may be able to find copies on eBay, but I don’t recommend shopping there. You don’t always know what you are getting – if it is an opened copy that has been registered you may not be able to transfer the license to your company. It can be very risky.
Upgrade Pricing
Look at the Intuit screen shot at the top of this article – see the Upgrade tab? That is new this year, we haven’t seen “upgrade” pricing for a couple of years. If you have an older copy of QuickBooks and have a license number, you can get a discount!
You will be asked for your registration number, a 15 digit code you can find in your current product under Help and then About QuickBooks. Apparently you are not limited to being able to upgrade from just the 2008 version – this should work with the 2005 through 2008 versions. And if you have an older version, they give you a phone number to call because the older versions don’t have that 15 digit code.
Getting the BEST Price
Even though QuickBooks is giving “upgrade” pricing, you can still do better. Here are a couple of options.
You can go to a discount vendor such as Sam’s Club. Looking online at their site (I don’t know what the in-store price is at this time) we see the following:
This is not a download copy, it will be shipped to you, and shipping charges may apply.
Another alternative is the CCRSoftware QuickBooks Products web site. For the sake of openness and honesty, this is my web site and I do get a commission from sales if you click here. However, you get one of the best prices around, and it is a downloadable copy (so you get it faster). If you choose a product from that web site, you are taken to the Intuit web site and you order directly from Intuit. However, as you can see below, the price is discounted (the discount varies by product):
I do note that if you take this last approach, the “upgrade” tab doesn’t give you a better discount.
Category: General Tips
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He’s been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70′s, focusing on inventory and accounting software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Look for Charlie’s articles in the QuickBooks and Beyond blog, as well as his California Wildflower Hikes blog.
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Nice info to know thanks. When will we see a comparative analysis of the features that have been improved and un-improved? And most importantly the features that have been dropped or distinctly changed.
Jim
Thanks, Jim. Getting a comprehensive list of additions/changes is difficult, as I haven’t seen such a list from Intuit. They typically don’t go into that kind of detail. Every time I look at their web site or some document they send, I spot another change. Rather than making that kind of list I’ll probably focus on highlighting specific features.
And for un-improved? That would be a huge list. Lots of things they could have done but didn’t. If there is a particular feature or area of interest, let me know.
And for everyone else, take a look at Rustler’s QuickBook Tips blog at http://rustler.freeblogit.com/, another source of information from an experienced user with a sometimes unique viewpoint.
Hi Jim,
Great articles! I am running into a problem I don’t know how to solve. We are a transactional business and have been running QB for 5 years. We deliver dog & cat food to the door. We do about 600 deliveries a month, so lots of invoices. Our file size in QB 2008 Pro is currently 371,000 k. I am being told that I need to upgrade to the Enterprise system, however, this seems over-kill to me. If I open up a new company file, we use the memorized transaction list like our bible. We put all customers notes ie. put delivery in milkbox, or special delivery instruction there. We bring up the current memorized transaction and create a new invoice from there. It is fast and simple. I am concerned if I try and open a new company file I will have to continually open & close the old file to get this information. What are your thoughts please? I am stuck.
Debbie, thank you for the compliment, if you mean to direct it to me (as the author…)
There are several reasons for having to update to Enterprise, but you don’t always need to . It is hard for me to give you specific advice in a blog like this without knowing a lot more about your situation. There are several ways of creating a new company file, or clearing out an old one – but note that you cannot move “memorized” transactions from one company file to another, so that could be a problem in your situation.