Quickbooks sucks for many people

Intuit just offered people an option to upgrade to their 2016 version of Quickbooks at a very reasonable price.

Intuit made the upgrade pretty easy but in process, the software now requires users to use a password and change it on a schedule (like every 90 days). The database is also encrypted. That sounds an awful lot like PCI compliance. PCI is the requirement pushed on companies to ensure they protect credit card data. Since many people are not storing credit card data, why do they need this?

My guess is that there is another possibility for database encryption; that being that other software may be able to read the data such as if you are converting from Quickbooks to some other accounting software. Intuit might want to make that process more difficult. I don’t know, but requiring me to enter a new password every 90 days is unacceptable in my case. (Your mileage may differ).

If indeed Intuit wants to solve the problem, they only need to do what other companies and software do.

If you do not enable PCI compliance (password and/or encryption) then certain pages and fields are hidden from use and the fields are blanked out.

A notice such as this can be shown:

The following security feature enables or disables certain features. Please consider carefully whether you need this function. It must be enabled if you plan to link to bank accounts or accept and save credit card information.

If you do not enable this security function, certain items, such as credit card information, will be inaccessible.

This security feature will also require you to enter a password and password recovery phrase. This password must be used at each login to the software. It must be changed every 90 days. If you forget the password and the recovery phrase, your data will no longer be accessible and we have no way of recovering it for you.

That absolves the software company and puts the pressure on the company to secure the data as they see fit.

So after being forced to enter the password, many users have decided it was not in their best interest. Some have no secure data and some are not even on the internet with that computer. They may be using the software just for inventory, for example.

Intuit has no easy option to back out and revert to your older software. They deleted the older version during the upgrade, so you must have your original install disks for software you may have about 5 years ago or more.

Then there is the problem of what to do with your data. Since the database is now in a different format, you cannot just load the old version and access it as is. I suspect you will have to go into the 2016 version, print off all transactions you made recently and after loading the old software, re-key that data.

There is a slim possibility that you can export all your data and try to import it into older copies. That may work as long as there are fields that have not changed in length or been added that did not exist before.

Many customers are hollering in the hopes Intuit will fix the software as I described above. They may be forced to either accept the change, do a manual uninstall and back conversion or find new accounting software.

Having written software for decades, I cannot under stand how Intuit came to this decision to force customers to password their data if there was not a need to. They will paste the password on their computer and how does THAT increase security?