I use QuickBooks for the Mac 2007 and have used QuickBooks since 1997 for my tiny 2-person business.

I also use Little Snitch. I use Little Snitch to prevent QB from every updating. QB launches and always tells me that it can not connect. That confirms that LS is doing its job.

I never update QuickBooks until much later after the release comes out as Intuit is unfortunately known for releasing broken code.

This instance is NOT the first time.

My motto is: better late than sorry.

Absolutely right. Intuit is notorious for crappy, and overpriced, updates. What they fail to realize is that bookkeeping software is the lifeblood of small businesses. We can’t afford to have these numerous problems. Almost everyone I know would rather have stable updates than frequent ones. I have had major installation problems with the last two updates for QB Pro 2007. So now I just ignore the automatic update notice. I also won’t upgrade until several more revs from now.

Writing Intuit has had almost no effect. And technical support is entirely Indian, with no knowledge of the program, so the advice is usually re-install. Great. Takes an hour to get thru, and the best step is re-install? I don’t think they really care, especially on the Mac side. Good god, I’ve used QB since version 1.5 in the early 90’s and I had to wait until a year or so ago to get printed deposit slips. It wasn’t that it was hard to do; they just don’t care.

Unfortunately, the alternatives are poor or weird (Account Edge, etc.).

I have been using using qb for approximately 12 yrs and your right.  Support is Horrible !  I cant understand the people i’m talking to. Transferring data from windows to mac (using their 2009 software) doesn’t work.  their is a bug in their 2009 utilities to convert the windows files to mac. The dude from India tells me that after two hours of attempts!  If intuit doesn’t change, somebody will come out with better software.

Alohatwo,
Yes I found out that about QB because we are migrating to Macs.  I did not call support after trying their convert.  The data file was large I thing 29mb but when I would try to convert to mac it would be 1kb.  After a few frustrating moments I tried the next one below for online web and voila I could read the QB file on the Mac side.  So use the one below the Mac convert or output that will work.

Ciao,
Lou Cioccio

LouCioccio,
Can you explain this process to me in detail.  We lost alot of our data in our windows to mac conversion attempts.  if I can get the data in the 2009 software to convert to Mac, it will save me several days of having to manually re-enter the info!  As a small business owner, losing two days will hurt.

Thanks much!
Ed Fore

Hi, I am Ian Vacin the Offering Leader of QuickBooks for Mac.  In the R4 patch of QuickBooks 2009 for Mac, the memorized transactions are indeed not firing correctly as Dave mentioned.  We are actively working on a fix and plan to release a patch soon. For the meantime, a workaround exists and more details can be found at: http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/cxlshySe0r3zZQacfAtdLo.  I sincerely apologize for the error and I am personally looking into how we can stop issues like this from happening in the future. Improving our product quality is a top priority.  We are listening, so please continue to let us know how we can do better and again I apologize.

Mr. Vacin,
A couple of days ago, after an update loaded on the qb 2009 windows version, i was able to transfer my data, but an odd thing happened.  My data file on the windows side was 45 MB after the conversion, it was 20 MB.  I assumed it cleaned my files before the conversion.  I’m in the process of examining my books to see if I lost any data.  So far I don’t think I did. 

Also, on another issue, I’m abit upset that the Support people would not talk to me before i paid them for support.  They could have immediately told me about this issue and what i could do.  I should not have had to pay for support for an issue that was the fault of the Software.

How in the world am i suppose to get my money back?

Thanks in for your help and response!
Ed

Ed -

I am sorry you had an issue with our support staff and I would like to know a little more about your file conversion.  Please email me at: QuickBooksMacFeedback@intuit.com with your contact details and I’ll contact you shortly to discuss.

And Dave, i am glad to be a part of the discussion. We are here listening to the feedback and we use it to make the product and experience better.  If you, or your readers, would like to give us feedback, please do so in the product by going to the QuickBooks Menu and select QuickBooks Feedback.  We review this content weekly and use it along with other information to determine what to address in upcoming releases.  You can also post it other places, but it takes longer for us to review.

Thanks!
Ian

I recently “UPGRADED” to 2009 for Mac after using 2007 for mac. I’ve never had trouble with the conversion from mac to windows to mac before 2009.
can anyone give me some insight ? my new bookkeeper has been on line with tech support for hours. they cant open my backup windows file from 2009 mac and now they can’t open the windows file from my former bookkeeper. and she’s backed it up from a PC! i thought that the loss of reconciled bank statement info was a fluke, but i think now it may be caused by the back and forth restorations? if anyone knows a workaround I would be eternally grateful.

thanks.

Jorgo,
Check out this site: http://community.intuit.com/categories/contents/249?content_view_type=ALL&page=4&sort=0

it is the intuit community forum.  They are very helpful!  Check this before calling qb support.  Once you get logged in, you ask the question and you will get a quick response.  My user name is eddd.  See if you can get Debi Calvet.  She seems to know the ins and outs of Quick Books.  My user name is eddd.  If you sort by ‘Date’, you will see the questions in early February.

Hope this helps!

I too spoke with Intuit support about this issue - and the support rep swore up and down to me this was not a problem caused by the software, but one that “could happen at any time”. That was funny to me because both my partner and I run different businesses, on different macs using QB 2009 and we both “lost” our memorized transactions automatic entry. His solution was for me to delete the 400+ memorized transactions and re-enter them all.

I also went on the QB support site, found nothing about this issue (after about 30 minutes of searching many different phrases related to memorized transactions), and luckily googled and stumbled across this site - where there is indeed a work-around. Ian, I’m not sure how long you guys have known of the work around, but it’s quite surprising and frustrating that your own support people would: 1. Deny that it was an issue caused by an upgrade and 2. Be completely unaware of any solutions or work-around that would be easier than deleting and rememorizing the whole list.

This was posted by a intuit employee, which seems to indicate just exactly the opposite of the workaround posted above. Has anyone had any success fixing this?

Answer on 12/2/08 8:13 PM
Apologies to those of you who may have tried the solutions in a link provided for Data Damage issues. This is not a data-related bug.

We’ve uncovered an issue where Memorized Transactions that include any value in the field “Number Remaining” will not fire automatically. An update including the fix for this will be released shortly.

In the meantime, if you want to temporarily remove any values in the “Number remaining” field (located in the memorized transactions list) those transactions that have not yet been entered will be recorded on your next launch. You can re-enter those values after the R4 update is released. OR: simply manually record those memorized transactions for a little while. Sorry.

Dear QuickBooks for Mac users -

I would like to eliminate the confusion in regards to memorized transactions. We fixed a problem with them and introduced a new problem in R4.  We are fixing the introduced problem in R5 which will be out very soon. To get them to work, you need to use the work around described here: http://community.intuit.com/post/detail/cxlshySe0r3zZQacfAtdLo.  Essentially:

1. Open your memorized transaction. (Choose List > Memorized Transactions then double-click the transaction name.)
2. Enter a number for Number Remaining. Be sure to enter a high number, such as 999.
3. Click OK.

This will ensure that the memorized transactions will ‘fire’. This is a temporary workaround until the R5 patch is released.  I apologized for the inconvenience.

There was also a question around knowledge of the issue.  We hear about issues directly from our forums, support and in-product suggestions/bugs/crashes (I encourage you to use the in-product suggestions/bugs since my engineering team reviews each and every one of these).  When something becomes systematic (more than one or two issues), our engineering team will request files from the field to duplicate and determine a workaround and solution.  The workaround is immediately created in our Knowledge Base found from our support site on www.quickbooks.com.  In addition, we will post information to the QuickBooks Community site to inform users there.  We don’t typically issue information out on other sites, but we have been trying to engage with folks across multiple online venues (such as this).  In regards to the support person, he/she was incorrect.  We DID introduce a problem, he/she was wrong in steering you in the wrong direction and he/she did not use all the information they were given.  Our coaches in support are working to correct this problem and I sincerely apologize for the issue it created.  You did not have the proper support experience and we will continue to work on improving that.

I hope this clarifies things. Feel free to post back to let me know if more info is needed or what we can do to be better at serving our customers.

Regards,
Ian

Hi Ian,

Thanks for following up here and being so candid. There is hope yet!

I appreciate you tracking this thread, as well as providing clarification, and indicating that you will be using the feedback to actually improve service.

Good luck!

Katrina

All -

I wanted to send a quick note that the R5 patch was made available last Wednesday (March 18th). In the patch, the issue with memorized transactions has been fixed (as well as some other issues). All QuickBooks 2009 for Mac users will get the R5 update via the in-product auto-update mechanism. You can also manually update the product by going to the QuickBooks menu and selecting “Check for QuickBooks Updates…”. Thanks again for everyone’s patience. If you used the above workaround, please be sure to remove the “Number Remaining” in the memorized transactions to get the memorized transaction to fire on an ongoing basis.

Thanks!
Ian