Goodbye to QuickBooks 2007 Support

It’s that time of year – Intuit’s annual “Sunset” of older versions of QuickBooks. If you are using QuickBooks 2007 then you won’t be able to use certain services after May 31^st. I 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
• QuickBooks Merchant Service
• Online Banking services
• Online Billing services
• Intuit based Bill Pay services
• QuickBooks Payroll support
• Support Plans and Services (some may extend beyond the May 31^st date depending on your contract type and date)
• Employee Organizer services

If you want a bit more detail about what services are dropped and how this may impact you, see this QuickBooks Tips and Trips article by Ruth Perryman. My thanks to Ruth for pointing out that we need to get the word out about this issue so that people have a chance to look for a good price on an updated program.

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.

What can you do? Your options are to continue using what you have, but without those services, or to upgrade to the newest version of QuickBooks. Many bulk retailers run specials on Pro periodically, so keep an eye out for those.

If You Decide To Upgrade

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).
• There are a number of new features that you could find beneficial

In general, I usually recommend upgrading to a supported version. Be careful if you do upgrade – please consider the following points:

1. Make a backup copy of your company file using your current version of QuickBooks before installing a new version.
2. You may want to consider using the “rebuild” function in the File/Utilities menu of your older version, to clean up the database a bit.
3. Print current financial statements.
4. 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.
5. When you open your company file with the new program it will convert it to the 2010 format. You cannot change this back to 2007 (or any version older than 2010), which is why I recommend a backup copy before converting.
6. Use the Automatic Update feature to update to the most current revision – a very important step.
7. 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.