Running Quickbooks is like....
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@scottalanmiller said:
It keeps getting asked and I think it has been stated over and over but just in case it was missed, here it is again:
Quickbooks is bad because it lacks upsides while bringing huge caveats both financial and technical.
We can dive into the details of these, but that is definitely higher up in the thread. But the high level is that QB is a problem because it hurts businesses by wasting money, increasing support cost, being inefficient and putting the business at risk. It is all negatives, all caveats. In what way can you implement QB to the benefit of a business?
Well, to do what it is used to do. You need to make invoices, and to track payments, and other financial things which QB does. There's the upside. I understand the point that you are trying to make, but you're marginalizing any appearance of being reasonable or sane to make the point that bad decisions about foundational pieces of a business are important. Yeah, I get that. But no matter how you spin it, the bottom line is that businesses exist and function daily and can make a profit and continue to exist, despite the fact that they may have made a poor choice to go with QB. There's a ton of gray shades on this issue; it's not QB=death.
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@art_of_shred said:
Well, to do what it is used to do. You need to make invoices, and to track payments, and other financial things which QB does. There's the upside. I understand the point that you are trying to make, but you're marginalizing any appearance of being reasonable or sane to make the point that bad decisions about foundational pieces of a business are important. Yeah, I get that. But no matter how you spin it, the bottom line is that businesses exist and function daily and can make a profit and continue to exist, despite the fact that they may have made a poor choice to go with QB. There's a ton of gray shades on this issue; it's not QB=death.
And, we can defend businesses doing that all that we want, but at the end of the day we have only a single job: to do this better than a business could do without us (hopefully by a margin large enough to justify our cost.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
And, we can defend businesses doing that all that we want, but at the end of the day we have only a single job: to do this better than a business could do without us (hopefully by a margin large enough to justify our cost.)
It's not about defending the poor decisions that businesses make. I'm very much not in their defense. Most people who start a small business (I would assume 90% of QB's market) are good at what they do... or at least the 10% of anything/anyone that are actually good at what they do. Those who are good at whatever it is that they do, and venture off on their own enterprise, probably have a hard time delegating the responsibility for something as critical/foundational as the tool to be used to handle their business finances. if they have an "IT dept.", that person(s) probably doesn't have much say in the decision. In most cases, they may be able to have an opinion, and in that case, they would be wise to advise against QB in favor of one of the other mentioned options. If, God-forbid, the owner elects to use QB, it's a bad decision. They probably aren't informed enough to make a good decision, and QB is a well-marketed name. I'm not saying that it excuses them, but most people aren't that diligent in every detail. It doesn't make them bad people or inept business owners. It makes them normal human beings. If their business eventually fails, it is highly likely that the single decision to use QB was not the stake through the heart of the venture.
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@scottalanmiller said:
at the end of the day we have only a single job: to do this better than a business could do without us (hopefully by a margin large enough to justify our cost.)This is easy to agree with, but then I think that we're using a poor example to prop this up. If IT's job is to save the business money and make things run more efficiently, why not talk about actual IT concerns, like servers, switches, virtualization, VDI, etc.? Why QuickBooks? Should the decision of what accounting program to use be an IT-based decision? It might be, but I doubt many business owners would see it that way.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
at the end of the day we have only a single job: to do this better than a business could do without us (hopefully by a margin large enough to justify our cost.)This is easy to agree with, but then I think that we're using a poor example to prop this up. If IT's job is to save the business money and make things run more efficiently, why not talk about actual IT concerns, like servers, switches, virtualization, VDI, etc.? Why QuickBooks? Should the decision of what accounting program to use be an IT-based decision? It might be, but I doubt many business owners would see it that way.
Oh absolutely! This is incredibly core to IT functionality. Why would one set of IT items like hardware be considered IT but not the most important part, the software?
Any application matters... if it is important enough to be running it, it is important enough to know how to run it reliably and protect it. What good would IT be if we were just there to do the trivial stuff and all of the important technology decisions were made by others? If the important decisions aren't with IT, why would you keep IT around?
Is there any role where IT is more important than the ERP / accounting systems? Maybe, maybe the core business applications but maybe not even there. The more critical the data, the more important it be protected, backed up, have DR plans, be supported, etc. If someone other than IT is doing those roles, that other department has become more IT than IT is. In a very small business, the accounting software is easily the only IT decision to make. Even before IT would start to do cabling, a first switch, a first firewall for a one person company there is a need for accounting. It is kind of "IT job one."
The issues around QB are two fold: one is that it is neither effective nor fiscally responsible, but those are business decisions which is why I keep pointing out that the business managers need to make good decisions too. But the other is technical. IT needs to support and protect the software and QB specifically presents challenges as it is designed to make your data be at risk because they sell services around protecting you from... them. Kind of like mafia protection money: you actually pay the money to the people putting you at risk.
Talk about QB always centers around data corruption, inability to retrieve backups, loss of functionality, etc. Things that non-IT departments cannot address. QB presents significant technical issues that are hard to believe as no other major, accepted business product has those kinds of fragilities today. In no other normal arena is IT guidance so routinely disregarded, strangely. What is shocking is that the accounting and financial systems are often, in the SMB world, treated as the least important component of the information infrastructure.
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We have customers who use QB, as well as Office 365, etc. The decisions about what the business owner chooses to use is not left to us. It is our job to support all of the above, whether we like it or not, or think it's good to use. Hence, the note that this decision is nearly always not left to the IT department to decide. If we're talking small business start-ups, there probably is no "IT guy" when that decision is made. Again, you are judging the whole process from the perspective of IT, and not the perspective of the owner. I agree with your "ideal" process, but that's just not how it usually works. If the IT department gets to weigh-in, smack down QB. If not, the world doesn't cease to spin. The picture you've been painting, whether you mean to or not, is that it does just that.
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@art_of_shred said:
Again, you are judging the whole process from the perspective of IT, and not the perspective of the owner. I agree with your "ideal" process, but that's just not how it usually works. If the IT department gets to weigh-in, smack down QB. If not, the world doesn't cease to spin. The picture you've been painting, whether you mean to or not, is that it does just that.
Oh no, I'm judging it purely from the perspective of the business. IT is incidental here. It's all about risk and profit/loss that should be driving good business decision making.
There really is no IT without business (e.g. owner) perspective. The two are one and the same.
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If we were to reduce this to a paper process and have nothing but business perspective...
One paper process is costly, requiring a large investment in special paper, pens, binders, etc. coming to hundreds of dollars a year. You have to install cabinets yourself, a copy machine, haul copies off to a storage unit once a week and the paper tends to deteriorate and need to be send to the paper mill for an expert to "recreate" a readable copy.
The other paper process you have someone stop by the office every day for free, they even drop off new paper and binders for you to use that day and they take the paper and handle the backups and stuff for you.
Reduce it to a completely non-IT dilemma and it remains the same.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Reduce it to a completely non-IT dilemma and it remains the same.
I'm not debating the validity of the claim, only the nature of the real-world effect. I'll say it one more time. If a business chooses to use something like QB, without the input of their IT department, it's not a business-ending decision. Period. In some cases, it might be, or be part of a pattern of poor decisions, but it in itself is NOT earth-shattering, the way you make it out to be. That's all. Every point that you re-tread over that it's bad is not nor has ever been contested. It's the "OMG, our hair is on fire!" conclusion that is drawn that I contest. Yeah, if you as an IT person who cares about doing your job well and wishes to influence your company in the direction of efficiency and success, you're a moron if you ever suggest or sit idly by when someone entertains the thought of using QB. Point taken. But, should one decide to use QB, it's not tantamount to the entire organization holding hands and jumping off a cliff. Period.
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@scottalanmiller said:
There really is no IT without business (e.g. owner) perspective. The two are one and the same.
Strongly disagree.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
There really is no IT without business (e.g. owner) perspective. The two are one and the same.
Strongly disagree.
In what way? How does IT do anything without the context of business? I don't even know what that would mean. There is business without IT, of course. But IT is an aspect of business. Outside of a business context, there is nothing like IT.
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In my thinking the scenario is:
You just need paper to write on. You can either use the paper you get at Staples that many other people use and is fine, or the special paper that your paper manufacturer is recommending.
Apparently the "better" paper lasts longer, doesn't tear as easily, but you've been in business for 20 years using regular paper, so you think you'll be OK.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
There really is no IT without business (e.g. owner) perspective. The two are one and the same.
Strongly disagree.
In what way? How does IT do anything without the context of business? I don't even know what that would mean. There is business without IT, of course. But IT is an aspect of business. Outside of a business context, there is nothing like IT.
What you are in essence saying is that IT is as important to the owner as the business is to IT. It may be true on paper, within a certain frame of reference, but I have hardly ever experienced a situation where the owner treated IT as something of influence. To the average business owner, IT is a necessary evil (complete overhead). The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
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@BRRABill said:
Apparently the "better" paper lasts longer, doesn't tear as easily, but you've been in business for 20 years using regular paper, so you think you'll be OK.
That's fine, I agree. I'm not saying that there aren't reasons why businesses make bad decisions. They don't know any better, they don't take the time to reconsider buying decisions even at the time of buying, they lack the advisement, they don't have a good understanding of risk, they feel that they are too busy to address decision making, accident, etc.
But it is super critical that we understand the difference between knowing when a bad or potentially bad decision is made and when we are excusing bad decision making and when we are excusing bad decisions. No matter how much it makes sense that someone makes a bad decision does not mean that the decision is good, only that there is excuse for it (good or bad.)
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@art_of_shred said:
What you are in essence saying is that IT is as important to the owner as the business is to IT.
Not at all, I'm saying that IT is an artefact of business and there is no IT without business. There cannot conceptually be an "IT decision that doesn't account for the business needs" - because the one and only context for IT decisions is the business.
The idea of "IT in a vacuum ignoring business needs", I am arguing, isn't IT at all. But rather just some other thing like "computer operations." IT, by definition, is a business function, IMHO. That's one of the reasons why things like Geek Squad are not IT - they have no business context, they work on computers for computers' sake. But in IT we work on computers for the business' sake.
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@art_of_shred said:
The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
What IT perspective am I bringing at all? It's purely a business discussion. It's only because we are talking about an application that the aspect of the business happens to be IT. But the ideas of functionality, risk, cost, profit, efficiency are purely business ones and not IT ones.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
at the end of the day we have only a single job: to do this better than a business could do without us (hopefully by a margin large enough to justify our cost.)This is easy to agree with, but then I think that we're using a poor example to prop this up. If IT's job is to save the business money and make things run more efficiently, why not talk about actual IT concerns, like servers, switches, virtualization, VDI, etc.? Why QuickBooks? Should the decision of what accounting program to use be an IT-based decision? It might be, but I doubt many business owners would see it that way.
My boss certainly does not. I was kept at arm length when it came to our new EHR.
Software, the departments who want new software don't care about IT's thoughts... But the hardware that runs it... They probably care less about that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
What IT perspective am I bringing at all? It's purely a business discussion. It's only because we are talking about an application that the aspect of the business happens to be IT. But the ideas of functionality, risk, cost, profit, efficiency are purely business ones and not IT ones.
But you just got done saying that they are one and the same...
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And I feel as IT we might even be biased.
Sure PRODUCT XYZ sucks. But does it really? It anyone else really looking at it the way we do?
I am sure millions of people have used QB with no data problems, and it's done their invoices, and they are very happy, and it's didn't cost their business. So is it really that bad? I mean, if it electrocuted everyone who used it, and the incidence that was once every week, sure, it's terrible.
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@BRRABill IT??? Biased??? No way!!!
