QuickBooks Enterprise 10.0 – Not Ready for Prime Time?
Just a quick note – I’m playing with the production release (R1P) of QuickBooks Enterprise 10.0 this morning, trying some of the new features relating to custom fields (more on this later), and there are problems. I can’t say how extensive this is, or how it might affect you, as I haven’t yet pinned down all of the parameters. HOWEVER, at least as far as custom fields in invoices, there are a lot of problems. If you have recieved Enterprise 10, and you use custom fields, you might want to wait awhile before using this release.
One of the traditional hassles in QuickBooks has been the limit to the number of custom fields that are available. With the 2010 release of Enterprise (10.0) I was interested to see that there are a number of improvements here. I’ll be writing about this in more detail very soon.
Two changes – an increase in the number of custom fields, and the ability to set a “type” of field (numeric, date, etc.).
I’ve run into problems with this feature. I hadn’t seen it in the beta test, as I was testing the Premier version, not Enterprise. When I create an item and a customer with the maximum number of custom fields, and modify a template to use the maximum number of fields, QuickBooks Enterprise does not behave well. I’m losing data, having problems with the fields displaying properly, and more. The problems are not consistant they don’t happen all the time, but I’m a bit concerned.
KEEP IN MIND that this is an Enterprise issue that won’t show in Pro or Premier. Also keep in mind that I’m pushing the limits of the program by maxing things out.
But, if you are using an earlier version of Enterprise, I would wait awhile before jumping into version 10.0. At the very least, install it in parallel with your current version for testing, while still using your older version for production use.
Every year I recommend that people wait to use the new release – there always are problems that show up right away. This year is no different…
Update October 6, 2009: I have been working to try to document and reproduce the problem that I ran into with my first Enterprise test. At this time I have not been able to duplicate the problem. It is possible that it had something to do with my particular installation (I have Premier and Enterprise both installed, 2008 through 2010), or some other issue that I can’t determine. Subsequent tests have not shown problems here.
Note that if you are using the additional custom fields AND you are using a third party product that works with these custom fields, you should check to make sure that third party program can handle these extra fields.
Update October 9, 2009: There are a number of potentially odd things happening with “custom fields” in QuickBooks 2010. The full extent of this isn’t clear at this time. If you use a third-party program that works with “custom fields” you should be careful before committing to QuickBooks 2010 at this time. We have definately seen some problems. However, it is not clear if these problems occur just in the “sample company” files, or if they extend to “real” company files. Intuit has changed how custom fields are handled internally, but they did NOT provide any updates to third party developers (which could be a problem).
Update October 12, 2009: Another third party software developer and I have been uncovering more and more problems with QuickBooks 2010 and “custom fields”, problems that are new to QuickBooks 2010. Again, I’ll caution people, if you use third party software that integrates with QuickBooks, be cautious about switching to QuickBooks 2010 at this time.
Category: Program Updates, QB 2010
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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Thank you Charlie.
I appreciate your advice and I will hightail it over to the Intuit Community Forum. It was QuickBooks help who suggested I upgrade to Enterprise and I thought it a bit much for what I am trying to accomplish.
Pretty bad experience with Enterprise 10.00 We have lot of problems with the software. I will not recommend the upgrade to any one. We use quickbooks since 2000. Upgrading from 8.0 to 10.00 was a huge mistake. The software keeps crashing every day. Code error 27454 10467. We have talk to Quickbools over 15 times. All they tell us that we need to wait until the patch is released. They did not told me that before I spent $5,000 dlls in the upgrade.
I do not recommend 10.00
Joaquin Galan
President
Galypso Internationa
Since I have loaded QB Enterprise 9.0, I cannot print my payroll checks in class order like I use to with previous versions. Can anyone help me with this. The help line has been no help at all.
I have 2 small companies that we are considering converting to Enterprise 11 have you tried the newest version of Enterpise to see if it has corrected the problems that occurred in 10. Also I like the EDI portion of the software, but have not heard much about it. The maximum users that we would need for this would be 3 users.
Unfortunately they only sell the 5 user. I was just wondering if we are too small to move to the more complicated version. We use QB 11 presently. I would like to access my accounting from home. I would also like the idea of having the sales and shipping information incorporated together also. Any opinions?
Denise, you can see my other articles on QuickBooks 2011 (Enterprise 11), both in this blog and in the one that I’ve moved over to and that has all my new articles, at http://www.sleeter.com/blog/
Enterprise 11 (and Premier 2011) are as solid as any QuickBooks product is. The issues I raise in THIS article have been resolved.
Not sure what you are referring to as the “EDI portion of the software”?
I can’t say if you need Enterprise instead of Premier, I would need to know a lot more about your business. It is a big step, most people only need that if you need more users or a larger capacity for number of customers, etc.
You can access your accounting from home by many different ways – that isn’t a Premier vs Enterprise issue. Simplest is to use a product like LogMeIn. Enterprise does allow you to use Microsoft RDS, but that is expensive to set up in the office. Or you can move to a hosting company and have it all online.