2013 Review of QuickBooks Premier 2013

QuickBooks Premier 2013
877-683-3280
www.quickbooks.com

From the March 2013 Review of On-Premise Small Business Accounting systems.

Intuit’s QuickBooks is a product most accounting professionals work with at some level, and there are a number of different versions to the product, which is confusing to many users. Major versions of the product include:

• QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, a product aimed at companies who want an on-premises product with industry-specific reporting capabilities which will support up to 30 users, and is typically sold by a reseller who helps with data conversion or custom interfaces.
• QuickBooks Accountant, an on-premises product which is designed for accountants and includes all of the industry-specific reports, as well as tools for preparing financial statements, calculating depreciation on fixed assets, and cleaning up client financial records. (Intuit also makes the QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant Edition, which is the same as QuickBooks Accountant, except it is designed to work with clients who run QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, as well as a version for bookkeepers called QuickBooks Professional Bookkeeper.)
• QuickBooks Premier, the version of the product which is included here. This on-premises product has customizations for a number of industries, and allows up to five simultaneous users. This version of the product is also sold on a monthly subscription and maintenance plan called QuickBooks Premier Plus.
• QuickBooks Pro, the lowest end version of the desktop application. Users of this version of the product can have up to three simultaneous users in a company file. This version of the product is also sold on a monthly subscription and maintenance plan called QuickBooks Pro Plus.
• QuickBooks for Mac.
• QuickBooks Online, the web-based version of the product comes in three different versions depending on the feature set required. (This product is reviewed separately as part of our Small Business SaaS product reviews, in this digital issue.)

This long list of versions is made more complex by the fact that there is a new version of almost every one of these products every single year. Opening a company file in a new version (or a higher-end version) of the product updates the database to the new format, therefore, accounting professionals must be fastidious to avoid accidentally making a client’s data file incompatible with their existing version of the software.

The user interface for QuickBooks 2013 was revised to move the icon bar to the side of the screen, and users can access a context sensitive “ribbon bar” when working on transactions.

Basic System Functions

QuickBooks Premier is available either in a retail box with an installation CD or as a digital download. Both products are typically installed using the included setup application without incident. Users of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions and QuickBooks Premier can customize their installation of the product by selecting customizations for a specific industry. Modified versions of these products are available for:

• Contractors
• Manufacturing, Distribution and Wholesale
• Nonprofits
• Professional Services and Field Services
• Retail

There is also a general industry version of both Premier and Enterprise which does not include any industry specific modifications. This review will focus on the QuickBooks Premier 2013 (we installed Premier Contractor Edition), although many features will be common to all of the desktop versions of QuickBooks.

QuickBooks Premier 2013 is available only on the Windows operating system (XP, Vista, 7, and 8), and is not available for other operating systems. Mobile access to QuickBooks data and limited preparation of estimates and invoices is available on both the Android and iOS mobile platforms via a subscription to QuickBooks Mobile ($9.95/month).