Quickbooks for Mac - should I use Online Banking?

May 15, 2015 7:49 PM

I run a one-person S Corporation in California, and am using Quickbooks 2012 on a Mac. My current bookkeeper (as well as a previous one) suggested I not use Online Banking to automatically import transactions from my bank and credit cards, saying there's a lot of potential for it to mess things up. My main question: should I avoid Quickbooks for Mac's online banking? What if I upgrade to the 2015 Mac version - does it handle such things better?

My bookkeeper comes in every 3-6 months to take care of the books - enter transactions manually, and at the end of the year, reconcile all my accounts. I already use Quickbooks myself to do invoicing, and I plan to start dealing with the rest of the bookkeeping myself this year; I already do the year-end taxes myself.

In addition to using Online Banking to automatically import data, I'm considering using Intuit's payroll service; do they do a good job?

posted by mistersix to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Best answer: Unless there's something specific about it with Macs--my policy has always been to seriously encourage people to either use a VM, a spare Windows box, or more recently QuickBooks online because their Mac desktop version doesn't play nice, but I don't remember hearing about anything specifically about Online Banking. The thing is, though, that the online banking stuff generally is a big failure point because a lot of people are not very fussy about it and just let it stick things wherever. It is harder to deal with a ton of transactions that have been shoved into all sorts of wrong places than it is do to the entry yourself, as an accountant/bookkeeper in that sort of position. On the payroll service side, I think as long as you're getting their full-service option, it's pretty decent. The version where you have to do your own forms, again, a problem if you don't already have a very solid understanding of payroll taxes in your state.

In general, doing the bookkeeping yourself is something that you should do only if you are capable of being very detail-oriented and not cutting corners. Otherwise, with QuickBooks, you can very easily make things such that your end-of-year process will be even worse. If you're actually doing your own taxes--unless everything you do is really simple or you have an accounting background, I'm going to be honest, here: You are probably already doing a bunch of things wrong. They may or may not be things the IRS ever notices--they might for that matter result in you having fewer deductions than you're really entitled to, rather than more.

Accounting is, in essence, a thing that people spend a very long time learning to do well. I don't know what you do, but talking like this is, to me, like if you were a software developer hearing someone talking about building their own web app to take credit card payments. Or an electrician hearing someone talking about wiring their own kitchen. There is nothing fundamentally more dangerous about wiring your kitchen versus wiring somebody else's kitchen, but there's a lot more dangerous about wiring anybody's kitchen when you aren't an electrician. QuickBooks is very powerful, but power tools in the hands of people who don't have a very deep understanding of how they work can be very destructive. If you're a super-fussy individual with a solid understanding of Quickbooks, try backing up your file, running the online banking import, see how it goes, restore if you don't like it. Otherwise, keep things as simple as you can.

(Guess who spent her day reclassifying a boatload of transactions because somebody set something up wrong in QuickBooks. No, really, guess!)
posted by Sequence at 8:49 PM on May 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a recovering accountant/bookkeeper, I loved online transaction import staging, but loathed QuickBooks.

It is a GREAT idea to have up-to-date financial records, the insight and understanding of cash flow that a current set of books can give you into your business is priceless. At my last full time accounting job I managed to get us to daily bank reconciliations, and if you've ever had to shuffle money from one bank account to another to keep a check from bouncing after a polite warning call from your account manager, well, you quickly learn why you want to have reconciled bank balances that you check compulsively.

QuickBooks is a swiss-army knife that comes with a shotgun attachment that has been installed pointing directly at your foot, for convenience of course. Can you do anything with QuickBooks? Sure. Should you do anything that is the slightest bit clever or unusual? NO. Not unless dealing with QuickBooks shenanigans is in your job description. QuickBooks is the only piece of software that has ever refused to work for me because it didn't like what I named a hard drive. It needs to be babysat by an expert.

I assume this is all rooted in you wanting financial reports that are not six months out of date. May I suggest that you bring your bookkeeper in more frequently—perhaps biweekly?—for shorter sessions since they won't be working through a six month backlog of already partially forgotten transactions?

I will also say—with all due respect to your bookkeeper—the accounting industry is not terribly concerned with technological efficiency when good old paper and paper-simulations will do. As you have a very small business (currently!) it might make sense to shop around for a more boutique accounting firm that understands and fully supports new technologies that can result in huge efficiency wins. I won't shill, but there are non-Intuit owned accounting packages that are so much better than QuickBooks in every dimension I literally went home after work and cried one night. (But maybe that says more about me...)
posted by books for weapons at 11:18 PM on May 15, 2015

Intuit Quickbooks is a necessary evil for Mac users.
If you have to, run QB Pro under a virtual Machine like Parallels or VM ware.

Consider alternatives like:
iBank
FreshBooks
posted by Mac-Expert at 6:10 AM on May 16, 2015

Yeah...QuickBooks for Mac really sucks. Intuit knows it. They only barely support it. If you're going to upgrade, get QuickBooks Pro (PC version) - you can either use VMWare, Parallels, or host it on something like NovelASPect or Right Networks.

Depending on your needs, you might be able to use QuickBooks Online. It's a lot more simplistic than the desktop version, but it's solid, and they're improving it with every release.
posted by radioamy at 10:37 AM on May 16, 2015

Response by poster: I'm guessing the possibility of Online Banking just sticking things wherever, and it being a pain to go back and find and fix things, is the problem my bookkeepers were trying to avoid. (In asking this question I was looking for a second or third opinion, which is why I didn't just ask for specific reasons from my current bookkeeper...)

Thanks all. I may switch to Quickbooks Pro under VMWare/Windows, we'll see.
posted by mistersix at 8:13 PM on May 18, 2015

Create extra back-ups on 2 different memory sticks!
You don't want to know how often you will need it...
posted by Mac-Expert at 9:01 AM on May 19, 2015