Running Quickbooks is like....
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For the majority, they only want enough respect or integrity to get away with what they want. It's not an end in and of itself like it is for you and me.
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We should not have to preface each IT discussion with "assuming we aren't trying to be scammers but actually want to do our jobs." We need to assume that from the outset. If we didn't care about IT or business, we'd just bring in vendors to do all of the "work" and get kick backs on everything and sell the businesses up the river. We don't need to discuss how to do that, everyone knows how to do it and the "average" IT pro already does this and the "average" business owner can't figure out that there is no IT being done and only his wallet getting a siphon attached to it. Clueless, hubris filled business owners being taken advantage of by a completely standard model of IT scamming. But people doing that have no need to discuss IT. Business owners doing that have no need to go to business forums. It doesn't take thought or effort to live in that world. It also doesn't make any money.
But assuming that our starting point is that we want to do good jobs for people who want to succeed... then the majority actions are only relevant as being a warning sign, a red flag, that if the majority do it, it's almost certainly a bad idea.
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Again - succeed at what? Most business people just want to make money. They don't want to have high standards or make the world a better place.
You're preaching to the choir with me, but you're most everyone else doesn't give a shit. Does QB get the job done? Is it what my accountant uses? Good enough. IT guys complains? who gives a shit, I pay his salary.
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@Nic said:
Again - succeed at what? Most business people just want to make money. They don't want to have high standards or make the world a better place.
Success at making money. Using QB does not make them money, it loses them money. Maybe not enough money to go under, but is "not going under" or "not losing too much" a mark of financial success?
We are specifically talking about making money. QB stands in the way of that.
We already know that the majority of SMBs go out of business and the majority use QB just before doing so. So if we go with nothing but "majorities" then using QB is the best way to lose money.
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@Nic said:
Does QB get the job done? Is it what my accountant uses? Good enough. IT guys complains?
Ah, but let's define "gets the job done." Is the job to "siphon my money to the accountants?" Then yes, it does that well.
Is the job to "help me make money" then no, it fails miserably.
What is the "job" that we are saying it does or doesn't do?
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@Nic said:
For the majority, getting rich is the goal. Respect, again, only matters to the rational 1%. The true tragedy of it all is that the rational 1% are smart enough to see that the system is f****d, but not smart enough to come up with a solution.
I don't think the issue is that they're only so smart. The issue is that it's 1% smart trying to battle 99% mixture of greedy, ignorant, and apathetic. You can't reason with them, because they are greedy, ignorant, and apathetic, and you can't overpower them because those with the money/power use their money/power to maintain status quo.
Can't we just turn this thread back to bashing QB for sucking, and not having a whining fit about them being successful despite their sucking?
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So, you are saying for a smallish SOHO who just wants to do simple bookkeeping
- There are MUCH better products than QB
- They should switch accountants.
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There are so many other options out there now. And an accountant can't force you to use anything...
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@scottalanmiller said:
The important thing, IMHO, is making sure that they understand that IT does not approve and that we see it as them not taking their business seriously.You post this particular thing a lot. "not taking their business seriously"
Do you have any non IT functions that we are use as examples of them not taking the business seriously so we can show why we feel this way, and why we are valid our beliefs?
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@Dashrender said:
Do you have any non IT functions that we are use as examples of them not taking the business seriously so we can show why we feel this way, and why we are valid our beliefs?
That's a good question. I alluded to that the other day.
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@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
QB dominates the market because they make the software for the preferences of the accountants, not the sysadmins. If that's what your accountant uses, as an SMB, that's what you use. You have no choice.
Of course you do, you have the choice to use an accountant who also takes what they do seriously. Why would you ever chose an accountant that isn't serious about accounting? That's totally crazy.
Doesn't matter when they have 97% of the accountants locked up.
It still matters to the businesses. In any field only a small percentage are really any good or take what they do seriously. Most are just there to coast, take advantage of others not looking to do a good job, etc. That most accountants are not very good or don't care about their jobs or their customers is not surprising. That businesses don't care about themselves and keep using them isn't surprising either. But none of that means that IT pros should look the other way and just act like one bad decision after another isn't bad. Once we do that, we are acting just like those accountants.
You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.
Why does your accountant need to be local?
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@Dashrender said:
Why does your accountant need to be local?
How else are they going to take anyone to lunch?
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@BRRABill said:
So, you are saying for a smallish SOHO who just wants to do simple bookkeeping
- There are MUCH better products than QB
- They should switch accountants.
Absolutely. If your accountant is not there to support your business, you should switch from them regardless of how you figured that out. Your account is there to support you, not you to support them!!
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What do you typically recommend in this space?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Does QB get the job done? Is it what my accountant uses? Good enough. IT guys complains?
Ah, but let's define "gets the job done." Is the job to "siphon my money to the accountants?" Then yes, it does that well.
Is the job to "help me make money" then no, it fails miserably.
What is the "job" that we are saying it does or doesn't do?
But those business people aren't looking at it like that, nor do they really care to... instead they are considering, is the actual job getting done, can they put invoices in? can they put payroll info in? can they put payables in? yes yes and yes - it does the job. Is the business still afloat - yes... then QB is fine for them.
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@BRRABill said:
What do you typically recommend in this space?
Agreed - you mentioned a free product - what is is called?
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@Dashrender said:
But those business people aren't looking at it like that, nor do they really care to... instead they are considering, is the actual job getting done, can they put invoices in? can they put payroll info in? can they put payables in? yes yes and yes - it does the job. Is the business still afloat - yes... then QB is fine for them.
I would say this is the MAJORITY of what people are looking for in an accounting program.
What are they missing, exactly?
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@Dashrender said:
@BRRABill said:
What do you typically recommend in this space?
Agreed - you mentioned a free product - what is is called?
For SOHOs and the smaller SMBs, Wave is excellent and completely free. Blows QB out of the water. It's fully hosted, fully multi-user, no user limits, no weird desktop installations, fully modern design. It is quite good but not the most featureful. If you get big enough or complex enough it will stop being the best choice. But it scales, for free, dramatically beyond the QB world. QB tops out at a hard limit of around five users, I believe, due to architectural constraints. Wave would handle hundreds of accounting, bookkeeping and other roles no problem.
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It depends on the businesses needs. There is no one size fits all. However pretty close to Onesize is Xero it's "one size" sorta. There are so many add ons to customize it to business needs. I have been happy with it and their support structure so far.
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@Dashrender said:
@BRRABill said:
What do you typically recommend in this space?
Agreed - you mentioned a free product - what is is called?
There's a couple. Wave for a hosted solution. You could use any of the free ERP systems like ERPNext, xTuple, etc. Or something like Gnucash with the data stored locally or on a share.
The nice thing about the ERP systems is if you need anything further along down the road like inventory tracking, BOM, serial numbers, etc you can just enable the module.
