QuickBooks Pro for Mac or buy a PC

MDLarson · #1 August 12th, 2004, 11:10 AM

We need to buy a new accounting program, and QuickBooks is it. We have a Mac that can run QuickBooks Pro 6.0 for Mac, so we can either buy that or a new Dell with QuickBooks Basic (why is there no Mac Basic version?).

I know Intuit has had spotty Mac support, so that, coupled with the fact that we need to share data between PC versions of QuickBooks, makes me want to just buy a cheap PC and keep platforms the same, and relatively trouble-free.

What I'm looking for is answers to any problems that can occur in a cross-platform QuickBooks setup and how to deal with them. Any outstanding bugs with the QuickBooks Pro Mac software? Late Mac updates compared to Windows versions? Will Intuit support the Mac long-term?

For reference, we are currently a 50% Mac and 50% PC small business. Most of the PCs are much newer than the Macs (the newest Mac is a snow iMac 700).

vinnytroia · #2 April 29th, 2005, 10:08 AM

The worst part about my switch to mac was dealing with quickbooks. The Mac version is compariable to quickbooks 2001 for the pc. Quickbooks for the mac still doesn't have credit card support! I ended up getting a copy of virtual PC and run quickbooks 2004 that way. It sucks but what can you do.

MDLarson · #3 April 30th, 2005, 11:25 AM

Well, 6 months later, I can report that we got the PC and a copy of QuickBooks Basic. Then we felt we needed to upgrade to the Pro version due to multi-user needs. I don't deal directly with the program, but I get called over when there are problems. It is a step up from our old Mac OS 9 based accounting program, NetBooks (by far), but it's not the perfect program either.

The thing to do is to whine and complain (politely) to Intuit for nothing less than a fully featured Mac version of QuickBooks.

**mdnky** · #4 April 30th, 2005, 01:03 PM

Or switch to MYOB AccountEdge

solefald · #5 May 6th, 2005, 06:17 PM

Complaining and whining to Intuit is not going to help... I work here, so i know.
I got my first mac on monday, i am soo impressed, but you do not even know
how much of a disappointment it was when i decided to copy my data from Quicken 2005 for Windows to my new shiny mini... I feel very embarassed that in 2005 we have a product that is sooooo far behind, but still, manage to get all kinds of awards for it...

MDLarson · #6 May 6th, 2005, 10:09 PM

Well, if complaining and whining isn't going to improve a product, I don't know what will. Healthy competition maybe? If you could humor me, why exactly do you think that whining and complaining won't help? A company that really cares would pay attention to that, I would think.

Andrew Adamson · #7 May 7th, 2005, 01:17 AM

To guess, the number of companies running Mac only is tiny. Keeping Mac and Windows versions in sync probably wouldn't even register above a rounding error on their annual sales, so why bother. Intuit has a pretty amazing record of weathering the storm when it comes to consumer demands and clearly doesn't care too, too much about customer dissatisfaction, as long as it doesn't threaten its business plan. It took a full-on revolt to get them to abandon software activation for its tax products, which it finally did back in 2003. I personally respect Intuit for sticking to its guns, though I think clearly they could have handled the spin better than they did.