Goodbye to QuickBooks 2006 Support
It’s that time of year – Intuit’s annual “Sunset” of older versions of QuickBooks. If you are using QuickBooks 2006 then you won’t be able to use certain services after May 31st. I’m won’t editorialize on why this is done or if it is a good practice or not, 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
- Intuit based Bill Pay services
- Credit Card Download services (depending on how you do it)
- QuickBooks Payroll
- Support Plans and Services (some may extend beyond the May 31st 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 Intuit based services that depend on an Intuit server or on-line feature.
This applies only to the 2006 releases of any QuickBooks product, including Pro, Premier, Enterprise, POS and the Invoice Manager. 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.
There is some good news if you do upgrade:
- All of your QuickBooks data should convert easily (but make backup copies first).
- Any properly written third-party add-on program should continue to work without any changes needed (my CCRSoftware products all do).
- With the 2009 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
There are some issues, though. The primary drawback (at the time this is being written) is that they have rewritten the online banking feature, and quite a few people are not happy with this. If you use online banking to download a significant number of transactions into QuickBooks you might not be happy with the new release. There are workaround, but these usually involve purchasing a third party add-on. You may want to review my article on How to Deal With QuickBooks 2009 Online Banking.
In general, I usually recommend upgrading to a supported version. Be careful if you do upgrade – please consider the following points:
- Make a backup copy of your company file using your current version of QuickBooks before installing a new version.
- You may want to consider using the “rebuild” function in the File/Utilities menu, to clean up the database a bit.
- Print current financial statements.
- Install the new program in a separate folder than your older copy – so you still have the old copy available along with the new copy.
- When you open your company file with the new program it will convert it to the 2009 format. You cannot change this back to 2006 (or any version older than 2009), which is why I recommend a backup copy before converting.
- Use the Automatic Update feature to update to the most current revision – a very important step.
- Examine the company file with the new version to see that all features are working. You may find that you have to changes some settings relating to emailing of invoices (etc). Also, print another set of financial statements and compare them with the ones you printed before converting.
If you find any problems you still have your older installation, you can restore the backup copy and continue to work with that until you determine what the problems were with conversion.
PLEASE NOTE that I am a very cautious person – most people won’t have problems. But a few do, and you don’t want to be stuck in a corner if you don’t take proper precautions.
Category: Program Updates
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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Last year I upgraded from Pro 2006 to 2008 because I was informed that the sunset took place for the older version on May of 2008. Did I misread or was I misinformed?
Intuit “sunsets” the products after three years. So you wouldn’t have to upgrade from 2006 until this year, as they have just announced.
So nice that they let you know right on the box that the program (if you actually use the features they advertize on the box) is only good for 3 years. I can understand progress but I feel cheated and decieved now that I have to buy it again. Upgrades should be to bring new features to market not to force existing customers to find a new way of doing things or pay up again.
We have been getting the notices about the QB 2006 end of support, but continued procrastinating on purchasing. We use QB merchant services, so we knew we would need to finally.
And then they started pushing the deadline out. So we waited.
And then they started offering discounts. So we waited.
And today, we received email that Intuit is giving the upgrade to merchant services customers for free. Some times procrastination does pay off..
I wonder if they will give refunds to anybody that paid for the upgrade already?
Chris, sometimes you see that with Payroll customers too (but not always). It isn’t a guaranteed thing (and I’ll guess that they won’t issue refunds, but you might be able to work out a return if it has been less than 30 days).
I am the king of procrastination when it comes to spending $300+ for upgrades that are manditory to continue features of existing versions. All I will gain is the email service, which has been cancelled on my QB2006 premium version as of yesterday.
So Im thinking there is a simple workaround for this problem. I think there may be a way to redirect the pdf converter to mail via outlook but Im not savy enough to figure it out.
Anybody have a fix?
Thanks,
fixpack
Another problem with all the “unsupported” versions is if you [we] have to re-install then QB will not “activate” the program nor can you get the updates for these older versions. That is why it is important not only to back up the company file to an external hard drive, flash drive or online but to have a hard drive image that can be restored if your [our] hard drive fails.
Thanks, Charlie for you site/blog
Will
I have premier 2006. a glitch seems to have happened to my administrator password and it wont let me in and of course bcause I cant get support from QB I cant make acct copy or anything like that. I suppose I wouldnt be able to update the program even if I could afford to unless I can fix the password. I tried the reset thing they offer on line and it didnt work. Any ideas?
Roni, there are several “password crackers” that you can purchase – but you have to be careful, some that are around are scams. Unfortunately, I don’t have a recommendation for one of these.
You might start off by talking to the people at qbornotqb.com – they may be able to help you.