I posted many times on the New QuickBooks Hosting, The Worst Intuit Mistake, at the http://www.QuickBooks-Blog.com/. I have a long history with Our Intuit Friends. Intuit CEO Brad Smith and Former CEO Steve Bennet wrote this about me, “You’re fantastic Mike. Absolutely fantastic!" and "Keep raising hell when Intuit does something wrong!"
I have been using, and teaching Intuit products almost since Intuit began, 27 years ago. The last 13 years were very exciting, due to many ways in which top Intuit execs let me help Intuit revolutionize our lives. Only twice, in 27 years, did an Intuit mistake make me keep fighting until there was change. I only do this if the Intuit mistake is so serious that it badly hurts users and Intuit, which makes Intuit less likely to keep helping us in the future. Unfortunately, our Intuit friends are now making their worst Intuit mistake ever, with the new QuickBooks hosting program. This Intuit mistake is especially tragic, as there is an easy solution to the underlying reason for this new QuickBooks hosting problem. The details of this and the full details of the many Intuit mistakes are at the http://www.QuickBooks-Blog.com/. Here are a few such mistakes.
I only use QuickBooks 2010. However, QuickBooks Sunset Policies probably make more QuickBooks users unhappy than anything else. About 1.5 million of the 5 million QuickBooks users probably use QuickBooks 2006 or earlier. QuickBooks Sunset Policies mean they cannot get Intuit support, updates, tax tables, online banking, and more. These functions stop working each year in April, for versions released about 3.5 years earlier. Buy QuickBooks late in the year and you only get 2.5 years of full use. Many would accept new QuickBooks costs, but do not want new computers (for increasingly bigger QuickBooks programs) or learning new software. For them, terminal server and Citrix are ideal. They let old computers run the latest software. Instead, Intuit is going way beyond not providing support or turning off functions. Intuit is now dictating that the new QuickBooks Commercial Hosting companies not host old versions of QuickBooks. My South Florida QuickBooks Meetup is the largest such group. About two-thirds of those at a recent meeting said we still occasionally use QuickBooks 2006 and earlier versions. A major QuickBooks hosting company rep said that around 30% of their customers were using these old QuickBooks versions. Therefore, it is a very big Intuit mistake to prohibit them for new QuickBooks hosting. Unless this changes quickly, it should soon be a major focus of monopoly sanctions.
It is an Intuit mistake to rent QuickBooks only to new QuickBooks hosting companies, so QuickBooks may soon be a rent-only product, with a three-year life or less. It is very big Intuit mistake to discriminate against both QuickBooks users and new QuickBooks hosting self-hosting companies this way. Intuit has large numbers of QuickBooks Online end users paying monthly so there is no reason why it does not let Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors, Intuit Solution Provider and QuickBooks desktop users rent like QuickBooks Online users. This disparity should soon lead to monopoly sanctions.
It was an Intuit mistake to have many top execs actively encourage expansion of the unlicensed QuickBooks hosting industry. I was one of the key people involved in the early encouragement, so I can testify about it. I also can testify about my repeated publicity, with the full knowledge and consent of top Intuit execs. The result was a massive expansion of the unlicensed QuickBooks hosting industry. Thinking that Intuit later had the ability, or even a legal right, to suppress this key information was a serious new QuickBooks hosting mistake.
It is a devastating Intuit mistake to have it act to criminalize the entire QuickBooks hosting industry. Many top Intuit execs knowingly acted to help rapidly expand this industry. They are now effectively treating all its participants as unlicensed criminal copyright violators. This means that, whether or not Intuit prosecutes participants in this industry, they each face potential large-scale criminal prosecution for past acts.
The Intuit Commericial Hosting suggests that Intuit wants QuickBooks hosting companies to have the type of secure systems that the Internal Revenue Service wants for an exception, to foreign outsourcing. There is an official government estimated cost, of the value of the time to complete the application to show you have such a system, including related audits. That estimate is $150,000! This is not the cost of the data center, but the outrageous cost of extra paperwork. How will end users feel when they realize these arbitrary requirements vastly increase their costs? How will they feel when the requirements suggest that Intuit may be moving towards prescribing specific programs, procedures, and systems that desktop users must follow?
It is a big Intuit mistake to charge Intuit Commercial Hosting Program companies $18,000 initially, $5,000 a year, and $5 per customer per month, especially without agreeing these are fixed fees. With the detailed information required, Intuit can decide exactly how much to squeeze these companies at any time. At best, these costs will make Intuit Commercial Hosting companies unable to compete with self-hosting companies, as discussed below. They also will not be able to compete with many who quickly, easily, and legally ignore the new QuickBooks hosting. I will soon show how this applies.
Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors and Intuit Solution Providers can self-host clients with minimal Intuit fees. Does anyone else see the related funny Intuit mistakes? Intuit clearly intends to use the word Certified in connection with ProAdvisors and the new QuickBooks hosting. Yet it still runs a giant diploma mill, so 45,000 or so untested and largely untrained people can call themselves QuickBooks ProAdvisors. The untested so-called QuickBooks ProAdvisors do nothing to show any QuickBooks knowledge at all. They simply pay Intuit $449 per year. Intuit needs educational programs, like the QuickBooks ProAdvisor program, to support those wanting to learn QuickBooks for a QuickBooks consulting practice. However, despite the best efforts of many, this big Intuit mistake does not limit sales to those wanting to have or improve a QuickBooks consulting practice. Repeat Intuit surveys show that these untested clerks use this grossly misleading term to charge far more than similarly untested self-designated QuickBooks Consultants. This may mean that Intuit wastes $1 billion a year for QuickBooks users. It also severely damages Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors, as there are only about a third as many of us as there are untested QuickBooks ProAdvisors. That is why I now sell a $1 eBook, or give it away, so you can get a one-user $849 QuickBooks Enterprise 10 for $449. You also get free copies of QuickBooks Premier Accountant and QuickBooks Online Plus, with the best Intuit U.S.-based tech support (better than regular Enterprise support) and free or highly discounted extras. Use any of these $449 one-user copies of Enterprise with each other, or with a five-user multiple copy of Enterprise. Do not thank me. Thank Intuit for cheapening the Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program we need.
The funniest Intuit mistake is that the top Intuit execs, who encouraged QuickBooks hosting criminals, are legally criminal co-conspirators! They are more criminally liable than the well-meaning individuals that they encouraged to commit these countless criminal copyright violations. The only way they MAY avoid criminal liability is to make the QuickBooks Software License Agreement allow the unlicensed QuickBooks hosting they encouraged. This entrapment or criminal conspiracy should give every accused QuickBooks hosting criminal an absolute defense, while it kills the new QuickBooks hosting program.
Source: http://www.prlog.org/10609603-new-quickbooks-hosting-the-worst-intuit-mistake.html
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