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.
Greg Charland | Sep 30, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the update, Charlie.
That’s disappointing, as all the reviews of QB2010 have been positive. I was hoping to see similar speed and usability improvements in QBES, and get 10 in production early in the cycle. (by early I mean November or early December. NOT an early adopter!)
Have you seen any production issues that are not linked to custom fields?
Charlie | Sep 30, 2009 | Reply
Greg, the majority of the reviews that I’ve seen for the product were either based on press releases from Intuit, or based on limited access to the beta test release. The majority of the beta testers, I believe, were using Premier. I wasn’t able to see Enterprise in the beta release. The problem I’m relating here is strictly an issue with Enterprise.
I have not run an extensive set of tests on Enterprise yet, as I just received my copy today. I will admit that I’m pushing the limit on this new feature – trying to max it out – and many people might not run into this issue. Also, it is not easily reproduceable – it happens, it goes away, it comes back.
I generally recommend waiting until R2 or even R3 before implementing each year – especially if there aren’t any features that are compelling that you need. This year’s release doesn’t have a lot that are absolute must-have features, at least to me, so I don’t mind recommending that people wait until the dust settles.
But that is just my opinion. This might not be a big issue. Too early to tell. Just be cautious…
Lynda Artesani | Sep 30, 2009 | Reply
Thank you so much for this imput. I just received my package today and I usually don’t upgrade any of my clients files until I “play” around in it. I usually just use my data file for my business. I will definitely wait to see what releases come out. Thanks for a great blog!
Lynda
Charlie | Sep 30, 2009 | Reply
Lynda, I’m not even going to use this for my own business for awhile yet.
And thank you for all of your answers and participation in the Intuit Community Forums…
Sam Bowden | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the review. I was planning to install Ent. v9 for a client in early October. They are not using features that are being expanded/added in v10. Should I stick with plans to go with v9 or install v10 for them? What upgrade policies will apply if we install v9 & later decide to go with v10?
Eric | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the review.
Can Enterprise 10.0 create a report on invoices which displays the Ship-To address used on the invoice?
I am running Enterprise 9 and all the invoice reports only allow the option of the Bill-To address to be displayed (the option to display the invoice Ship-To addresses is not available.)
Charlie | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Sam: It is difficult for me to answer your question without knowing more information. I don’t know if you already have either v9 or v10, or when you bought them. Without a lot of info, my inclination would be to install V9 now, but get V10 if you can get it for free as an update – hold on to V10 until a bit later. I am not going to install V10 for a client in any place where I have an option not to, but I’ll get V10 to hold for later – since they “sunset” support after three years, having V10 available will help.
Charlie | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Eric: Give me an example of a report that you use, I’ll take a look…
Eric | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Enterprise 9
There are a number of ways to create an Invoice report, for a simple example I will use the “Customer Balance Detail” Report.
“Reports” menu > Customers & Receivables > Customer Balance Detail
Click on the “Modify Report” BUTTON > “Display” TAB – under ‘Columns’ section
The “Bill To” address data can be displayed for the Invoice. But the “Ship To” address data is not available for display.
Thanks
Charlie | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Eric, no change in 2010.
Intuit didn’t provide a detailed list of changes that I’m aware of (even to beta testers), just a list of new features. So we don’t know if any of the bugs or shortcomings of earlier versions were fixed or not, without just fumbling around.
I don’t expect that things of this sort would be changed – the “ship to” address info is handled differently in the database than the “bill to” address, and it is a bit messed up. However, they should be able to get that into this particular report. They just don’t.
You probably can generate the report you want if you use the ODBC driver and a reporting tool like Crystal Reports. I also have a low cost ($75) program that probably can be used to create the report you want, although I’d need to talk to you about the details. I have the bill and ship address available in my reporting program, but the steps it takes to create a report template for this aren’t obvious in our documentation (the program wasn’t set up to be used for this kind of report, it is set up to print individual invoice forms). You can contact me directly if you want to explore that idea.
Rich Walker, Intuit | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Charlie,
Thanks for your feedback on QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10.0 when you “maxed out” the number of custom fields.
I spoke with our QA team, who spent quite a bit of time testing the product with “use cases” that exceeded the maximum recommended number of custom fields. To help us recreate your issue, I will put one of the engineers in touch with you shortly. We want to make sure that we completely understand your issue so that our teams can address the problem.
We certainly appreciate the feedback and help that accounting professionals and power users provide at all times, but particularly right after the launch of a new version!
Regards,
Rich Walker, CPA
Intuit Inc.
John Magno | Oct 9, 2009 | Reply
We just had a user reporting an issue where the the QBSDK simply hangs when attempting to write to a line item based custom field on an invoice template.
The user renamed a couple of item defined custom fields and then added 2 new ones.
Timothy Goodwin | Oct 23, 2009 | Reply
Has anyone looked at the Online Banking feature in v10.0 yet? We’re a company that has literally hundreds of credit card charges on each of three credit cards every single day. We installed 9.0 and were so thoroughly upset with the changes to online banking that we pulled it out and went back to 7.0. Now we understand they’ll quit supporting 7.0 next spring so we’re faced with an either-or: either they fixed the online banking and we can upgrade, or they didn’t and we have to change payroll companies.
We have a very complicated situation where a dozen offices around the state are all connected via several servers, each dedicated to particular programs, and having the IT people put it in just to discover we have to take it back out is time consuming and expensive. Hearing from a real user (as opposed to reading a press release) about the online banking module would be extremely helpful to us.
Charlie | Oct 23, 2009 | Reply
Timothy: I don’t use online banking myself, so this isn’t a great answer for you. However, the most recent 2009 release, and the 2010 release, restored the option of using the “old” method in addition to the “new” method.
Tom | Nov 8, 2009 | Reply
I have several Enterprise clients that need multi-company( or more) consolidated financial statements. Inter-company transactions are frequent. Do you know of a Financial Statement product that will help? Is there something like FRx for Enterprise available? Thanks.
Charlie | Nov 9, 2009 | Reply
Tom, one place to look, for starters, is http://www.q2q.us/combineroverview.htm
John Magno | Nov 10, 2009 | Reply
Hi Charlie – Does Intuit ever plan on fixing these issues with Enterprise 10? I see Rich Walker at Intuit hasn’t circled back since his post on Oct 1st.
Charlie | Nov 10, 2009 | Reply
John, I’ve gotten no direct feedback from Intuit on any of the issues I raised about custom fields and QBES 10. Note that Rich Walker’s comment referred to my poorly documented crash of the system when maxing out the number of fields, which has only shown up rarely. He wasn’t addressing the other concerns that I had. But, no, I haven’t gotten anything back from them.
John Magno | Dec 22, 2009 | Reply
Hi Charlie – any updates on this issue that you are aware of? Thanks.
Charlie | Dec 22, 2009 | Reply
John, I’ve not had any feedback from Intuit on any of this…
Sandy Graves | Feb 25, 2010 | Reply
We updated to 2010 Enterprise and the problem started at that point. We have several price levels for customers. When using PRO 4 for importing into QB from the website, all import fine except one price level. All the price levels are a list, with this one being a %. It imports the prices as at our cost price for all customers on that price level. What a mess – didn’t discover this after the conversion for a few days. We were using Pro2 and purchased the upgrade to Pro4 and still having problems. Any suggestions? Thank you.
Charlie | Feb 26, 2010 | Reply
Sandy, I’m not familiar with “Pro 4″, so I can’t say much. If there are import issues, I’d talk to that vendor. I have a utility that does price list imports and it works just fine with Enterprise 10, with no added modifications necessary