They’re one step from just using excel because it won’t change on them.
Are your accounting people quite young? Excel moves and changes stuff, though not on quite such an aggressive timeline. Modern Office is not like 1990s Office where you buy it and then it doesn't change unless you decide to change it.
This is fine, the universe's one constant is change, if we fight it we'll lose, but it's worth calling out that there will be change, just some of these outfits are taking the piss.
That may be one part.
But another part is companies that need to demonstrate to their uses that a version change is a big change.
Microsoft is (im)famous for this: as far as I can tell, there has been little need for the constant UI churn in windows aside from convincing users that a new version is big enough to warrant that appellation (as opposed to a service pack/patch).
So I don't know where this conspiracy theory comes from, but it's entirely unfounded unless you're talking about a designer like Jony Ive with the power to go through multiple obstacles with ease, in which case the change isn't happening to prove he's needed but because he has a different vision.
Definitely not the case everywhere.
I had used excel 2003 until I was forced to use win 10 at which point it barely functioned anymore (i.e., it worked great in win 7)
I still miss excel 2003, it has been downhill from there
As for accounting software, they all mostly stink though serve a purpose in larger companies where you need some degree of separation of duties to reduce (at least in appearance as much internal control is theatre) error/theft risk...
In all fairness, back them I also had to use MS Office for certain other tasks, but luckily I don't need that anymore.
Now there is Confluence instead however to mangle our docs and waste our time.
And I don't hate the ribbon interface, I think it's totally fine--but also, in Excel specifically, I almost never click a button on it.
QuickBooks's online version, on the other hand, has terrible discoverability and doesn't have standard keyboard controls.
The Excel data format has changed once, significantly, in the past 2 decades (which was forced on MS and even though MS has tried to sabotage the openness of the new formats they were required to create, its still much better than the predecessors).
It’s hard to think of any other change that wasn’t just an addition (new formulas, higher column/row limits).
But, importantly, that data format change didn't mean you were forced to stop using the old format.
Excel UI interface changes but it won't change your spreadsheet content, which is the core functionality Excel users care about.
I've been using 15 year old .xlsx files with no issues across Excel 2007, to 2021, and Excel online.
I've seen companies using files with an absurd amount of worksheets within the file, or with an absurd number of rows (up to the limit), and those haven't been broken.
And I don't remember transitioning from xls to xlsx to be that painful, but this might be untrue for people using some very specific features.
The problem with all of these enterprise web applications is that they all suck. I worked for a big government agency that transitioned from a mostly homegrown, mainframe 3270 based accounting system to PeopleSoft. The staff revolted.
We joked about the “Revenge of the Beancounters”, but looking at it, they were right. It took them 4-6 months to train a new person with the old system, but they were hyper-productive. With the new system, they actually needed to grow the staff because you couldn’t build out workflows that the business needed.
They did get some benefits, like improved payments and invoice tracking. (Which drove the business case) But the general financial operations suffered.
(for those who don't know/understand, the "joke" in the industry about SAP is that it's a perfect fit for you, so long as you are willing to change all your processes and workflows to fit SAP. And no, it's not really a joke)
> Outside of fundamentally better workflow improvements, most professional fields don't randomly change their tools. If you gave a professional artist a new pencil that had to be gripped differently for no reason, they'd throw it in the trash.
>
> But in software, we tolerate buggy tools that change all the time for no discernible reason. We tolerate software that simultaneously targets professionals and casual users, serving both segments poorly. We tolerate software that can't be customized or adapted for specific workflows. It's tough to put into words, but if you watch a musician or a painter interact with their tools, there's a very clear difference that emerges, and over time you start to realize how much better all of their stuff is.
>
> In most professional artistic settings, workflow changes only happen because they have a clear benefit -- drawing from your shoulder instead of your wrist, changing your embouchure if you play an instrument. And even in those fields, it's generally accepted that over time people will end up with very specialized setups that are very consistent and refined and that remain constant for years and years.
>
> Only in the software industry would someone tell me that my professional tools should change because change is inherently good. Only in commercial software would an elegant, consistent interface like Markdown that allowed me to build up decades of muscle memory until my computer was an extension of my fingers and I didn't need to think about the way I typed -- only in software would that be considered a bad thing.
I was working at a software company years back that was doing this significant interface change. I suggested we have an 'end goal' interface and breakdown changes into multiple releases over time, organised it so each version change is easier to adapt to and educates somewhat in the changes as they occur, but this approach got no traction. I still wonder if its the correct approach or its better to get it over with in one go and then try to be stable.
The other ends up feeling like death by a thousand cuts.
I once offered to fix the tab order on an input form, so the cursor started in the right box. The manager of that team got very excited and asked me not to change anything, the team had got used to the keystrokes!
My control key is hard to reach, so I hold spacebar instead,
and I configured Emacs to interpret a rapid temperature rise
as "Control."
Users can slowly adapt, but most businesses larger than a sole proprietorship need multiuser capability.
It could be because it's indeed so easy that it's boring, or could be that anyone with the necessary knowledge of accounting standards makes way more money doing other stuff than coding for free.
If you want to change either your bookkeeper or your accountant, your new bookkeeper and accountant know how to use it.
Every time I have to open up QB, I cringe. Painful!
Agree with the points above about updates and $$$ increases. The worse!
I recently attempted to help a non profit setup Gnucash. It turned out to be cheaper to get commercial software (Xero) as they were spending too much time on upskilling in Gnucash.
They took a week to onboard to the new system and are amazing at how quickly they can do everything they need to do.
Is that you, Arlene?
Seriously, everything you list (and more) are things my accountant complains about. You're not alone in being a QuickBooks insider who hates QuickBooks and would love to move their clients onto something else.
Historically, a huge strength of Intuit was the huge population of bookkeepers and accountants who would recommend QuickBooks to clients, but I don't see how anyone would recommend it at this point.
Ugh.
Many people don’t see software engineering as creative but it certainly can be!
Not the vocation for me but it's very interesting to talk with her about her experiences, because they're so remote from mine...
Accountants are extremely limited by rigid tools they use and laws they have to adgere to. Then comes given company's 'way we do things here' limit.
Take any modern programming language, you start with unique big problem/task, have to crack hundreds little and big problems, often with use of stackoverflow and other webs, but ie hard alghoritmic problems I solve mostly on my own since nobody faced those in exact mix of technologies, data and other constraints. There are sone further limits but my alghoritms are my solid creations, nobody ever questioned them nor made me refactor them for any reason.
To outsiders it may look exactly same weird nerd stuff of course. To me, accounting has very little room for creativity, its there but almost microscopic. And the joy you describe is also present, thats there in many jobs that actually create stuff, digital or not
There is some creativity in defining where to stash this or that number so that everything works out in the best way for the business. As others said, it's a bit like solving puzzles, and it's harder than it looks - it requires a significant level of preparation, and keeping up with constantly changing regulations.
What a lot of them also get pride from is formatting their reports "just so" - so that they're readable and enjoyable by businesspeople, while still being exact, comprehensive, and meeting formal standards. To me, that sort of thing is kinda boring and trivial, but for them it can be career-defining, life-or-death stuff. In a way, it's a hyper-specialized branch of graphic design.
I am an accountant, I never do any bookkeeping.
Last week a few things I did were
1) worked on a way to get sales rebates to correctly reflect in the product cost. This is half accounting knowledge and half ERP.
2) presented accounts at a meeting where I was trying to use the numbers to make the business take a different strategic direction.
3) reviewed and questioned the commercial sense in other people's plans
4) worked out how to run a new process through the ERP so the accounts flowed through correctly
In other weeks I may be forecasting cash needs, doing an investment appraisal, building business plans, getting funding, writing sql to get data, building a BI system...
I like the creativity and the amazing variety of what I get to do in accounts.
Digital feudalism is a real thing.
Edit: intuit and quickbooks
That’s what I think this is all about
It's not about looks, it's about locking people to the platform and milking them in a subscription model
In contrast, QB Online has a REST API.
i've not found any local solutions that i like, at a cost (perpetual license is a requirement) that i like. so i moved to xero. it's slow and annoying in lots of ways, but it's very usable. some things are less abstract than QB, ie the method of entry for those is closer to just doing a journal entry, i guess this is good or bad depending on the user.
I guess that, behind the scenes, Quickbooks might run each client on its own code base or some limited multi-tenancy on a shared code base. So if your clients span those code bases, they could easily be on different versions. And the heuristics for when a code base is upgraded may depend on factors that you can’t see.
This is just a hypothetical, but that’s where my money is.
I'm curious what the secret sauce is that Intuit/QB has provided advisors, like yourself, to stay on their platform for the past 20 years. What would it take for another accounting software company to get you, and others in your same situation, to commit to their platform for the next 20 years?
What? I work in accounting and I was reading your post with curiosity until this. How do you support yourself—being a QB Pro advisor or as an accountant?
1) Forcing all their customers to migrate to the online version of their program. Many of the clients I've spoken to were happy with and preferred the Desktop version. The Desktop version is faster and can do more than the online version.
2) Throwing major updates at the online version that hides or moves functionality. I work with multiple clients and based on the client their version of QuickBooks can be very different from another's. Even the same client that has multiple businesses and has to use multiple subscriptions could have a different look. I don't know what drives this at Intuit but it's confusing for me and I'm supposed to be the expert.
3) Relentlessly raise prices. Intuit has been annually raising their prices in what appears to be an attempt to eventually price everyone out of their product. Some clients have to pay 200.00 a month for the advanced version for one feature they need to have for their business! The attitude from Intuit feels like "So where else are you going to go?"
For most of my adult life I've worked as an accountant that works mainly with QuickBooks but I'm worried that I'm going to have to try to find a new way of supporting myself because Intuit appears to be demonstrating by their recent decisions that they don't need to show loyalty to customers or even keep customers. If they can have a few stay on to pay ridiculous subscription fees that's all they need.