10 Responses to “QuickBooks Pro 2010”

1. Moshe Reuveni says:

   September 5, 2010 at 12:33 pm

   Review by Moshe Reuveni for Software Requirements
   Rating:
   This book faces a lot of competition from other books, which are supposed to tell you how to manage software projects in general, and the requirements gathering process in particular.
   However, what sets this book apart from the vast majority of others is its absolute relevance (as opposed to being an arbitrary textbook). For example, this book recognizes the fact that often enough process improvements are deferred due to political reasons alone. The more you read it, the more you realize it addresses the same problems you have encountered while managing the requirements process.
   But what really sets this book apart is that it actually tells you how to solve these problems, by offering feasible solutions that could be easily implemented, gradually, in real life scenarios. This, basically, means that the book could actually HELP you.
2. Harinath Thummalapalli says:

   September 5, 2010 at 12:01 pm

   Review by Harinath Thummalapalli for Software Requirements
   Rating:
   How do you know if you have good software requirements? Some use the simple technique of checking if the requirements definition is complete, clear, and consistent. Every book on requirements engineering has some variation of this theme and in this book, you are advised to check if the requirements statement is complete, correct, feasible, necessary, prioritized, unambiguous, and verifiable. If you haven’t used techniques like this one before, it is definitely a good idea to pick up a solid book like this one on the best practices in requirements engineering. There are several good books in the market on the topic of software requirements and this is one of the best ones out there. I found three other books that complement this one – Requirements Engineering by Kotonya and Sommerville (used more as a textbook), Managing Software Requirements by Leffingwell and Widrig (part of the Object Technology Series), and Effective Requirements Practices by Ralph R. Young (comes with a CD-ROM). If you are a project manager, business analyst or anyone that has a lot to lose because of bad requirements, you will benefit tremendously from this current book being reviewed. The book is divided into three parts – What and Why, Development, and Management of Software Requirements. The part names are self explanatory. This book is very readable and is full of best practices that stand true to their name! The unique things about this book – in chapter 2, the author outlines the Requirements Bill of Rights for Software Customers and the Requirements Bill of Responsibilities for Software Customers. When I first read this, I felt like every customer has to read this before attempting a software project. Chapter 10 has an excellent description of different diagrams useful in requirements documentation – DFD (data flow diagram), ERD (entity-relationship diagram), STD (state transition diagram), dialog map, and class diagrams. I think all books on software requirements should ideally have some variation of these topics. Important topics like traceability are given an excellent treatment in this book but the only thing lacking is how to manage requirements in software processes involving iterations (the mainstay of the Rational Unified Process and other newer software development methodologies). There are only 13 pages devoted to this topic and even then it is indirect – Chapter 12: Risk Reduction Through Prototyping. Otherwise, I have no complaints about this book and I believe that it is a basic to intermediate in level (definitely not an advanced book). Overall, I believe it indeed captures the best practices in the field of requirements engineering. It is also a good price, so enjoy!
3. David Stengle says:

   September 5, 2010 at 11:30 am

   Review by David Stengle for Software Requirements
   Rating:
   The more time I spend running software projects, the more convinced I become that a strong requirements process is the hardest part.This is an excellent book that covers developing a strong requirements process. Wiegers doesn’t cover underlying philosophy (see Kovitz or Jackson), but he provides a useful reference. The book outlines many good practices – and his point about “good practices” versus “best practices” is well taken, but it is not as well organized as some other toolbox-style books.A big part of establishing effective requirements gathering is selling the management team. This book doesn’t really tackle this challenge.The sample project is helpful, but I wish Wiegers had gone the last mile and attached the project requirements documents as an appendix.Despite this list of gripes about what the book doesn’t do, it has many, many good points and is written in a clear, if not lively, fashion. Recommended.
4. Larry Boldt, larry@tbi.com says:

   September 5, 2010 at 10:35 am

   Review by Larry Boldt, larry@tbi.com for Software Requirements
   Rating:
   If you are looking for a very direct, down-to-earth approach to developing and managing requirements, this is the book for you. If you believe that managing requirements is overhead that you cannot support, you need to read this book. Karl takes a very practical approach to requirements development and management. He explains his approach in a succinct manner and provides very good examples to make his point. This book should be a mandatory read by all software development project managers, whether they come from the business or technical side of the business. Additionally, Karl’s book makes good reading for anyone who is affected by the development of a software system such as business visionaries, end-users, quality assurance, business analysts, technical writers, trainers, and developers.
5. Ellen Gottesdiener says:

   September 5, 2010 at 10:08 am

   Review by Ellen Gottesdiener for Software Requirements
   Rating:
   Karl Wieger’s book is destined to be classic in software requirements. It delivers a large set (over 40) no-nonsense best practices in highly readable, non-nonsense manner. I believe every project manager, IT (Information Technology) and business analyst, and IT account manager should read this book. Further, developers would do well to read it to gain critical insight into the ‘big picture’ of requirements engineering.The book is broken down into three sections: the case for requirements engineering best practices (“What and Why”), the requirements discovery, verification and validation process (“Software Requirements Engineering”), and the essentials of requirements management (“Software Requirements Management”). Throughout, the dual necessities of doing requirements right (verification) and doing the right requirements (validation) is addressed. Wiegers has thoroughly delved into the literature in the software requirements field. The text is liberally spiced with tidbits of data to support the business case for implementing these best practices. I found myself making notes in the inside cover and folding back pages to reference again as I read through the book.Early in the book, Wiegers presents a set of software engineering best practices which are classified into priority (high, medium, low) and difficulty (high, medium, low). Although you may disagree with the specific rankings for your shop, this table is an excellent example of modeling appropriate requirements engineering practices – prioritizing requirements! Other goodies abound. For example, a partial case study flows throughout the book which gives the reader enough of an idea of what a use case, dialog map, text requirement, etc. looks like to get the concept being resented. Each chapter ends with a concise list of suggested next steps, providing the reader with concrete actions to take to implement the practices covered in that chapter. In addition, there are numerous sample templates (e.g. Risk Item Tracking, Software Requirements Specification), several excellent checklists (e.g. Inspection Checklist for Software Requirements Spec, Software Elements Affected by a Proposed Change,), visual models (e.g. Requirements Traceability Links, Change Control Process) and a wonderful “bill of rights” for the software customer which boldly and directly asserts both rights and responsibilities of the customer. A set of example models is provided in the chapter called “A Picture is Worth 1024 Words”. You will need to read other books or take training on the mechanics, notations and semantics of these models for visualized functional requirements. But the author covers the key models and their purpose succinctly. This book is easy to read, cuts to the chase, and provides a bounty of information that will wet our appetite to take action. This book is not a requirements engineering method or methodology, which would prescribe step-by-step protocols of task, roles, and techniques. Rather, like the classic cookbook The Joy of Cooking, you will find well-proven, sensible, and reusable practices. In Software Requirements, you will find the right ingredients and essential practices needed to ‘cook’ tasty requirements.
6. A. Fabbri says:

   September 5, 2010 at 9:40 am

   Review by A. Fabbri for QuickBooks Pro 2010
   Rating:
   * The Install *

   We tested out QB Pro 2010 by upgrading our 2009 Pro install and loading our company file.

   The install took about 15 minutes and retained many of our settings from QB 2009. The installer did hang at the end hand had to be killed with task manager (Win XP).

   * First Run *

   After installing, we ran QB 2010 and it needed to download an update. This process took about 10 minutes, and then it needed to convert our company file to the new format. Not a big deal, but don’t try to load a file from QB 2010 on previous versions–backwards compatibility is lost.

   Actually running the program, we find some minor updates, as well as many familiar old annoyances. The toolbar is again littered with icons for Intuit products we’re not interested in (we had cleaned this up when we installed 2009). The Intuit Community pops up, but you can disable it in preferences.

   The interface is littered with Intuit products they want you to buy. For example, there is an item “Email Marketing” in three separate menus, Company, Customer, and Online Services. We tried this menu option and it complained that IE was not our default browser. (Duh, it’s called security.)

   * Summary *

   QuickBooks Pro 2010 is a minor update (the new company snapshot is nice, the new products they’re trying to sell you are not) feature-wise. The software works well enough to tolerate and everybody uses it. Accountants know it. This is why we use it. We wish there was another option for us as Intuit is not a customer-friendly company in our opinion. They try to hard to get you to pay for minor features that should be included. They should spend more focus on the customer experience and let the revenue streams follow, not vice versa.
7. Driscoll Photoghraphy says:

   September 5, 2010 at 9:26 am

   Review by Driscoll Photoghraphy for QuickBooks Pro 2010
   Rating:
   The only reason I purchased the 2010 Quick Books upgrade is because you are FORCED to upgrade every two years if you want to use any Turbo tax programs with Quick Books . Also after the two year period you are no longer able to use the email invoice option, Quick Books being the customer friendly group they are makes sure that it is no longer a working part of the program. The best part is Quick Books is constantly trying to sell you on all their unnecessary add on junk from credit card processing to marketing services while you are working on the program. The “do not show again ” boxes do not work when checked ……….. they constantly continue to pop up even after being selected to not show again.

   If you are able, and I was not able to find, any other program that works as a decent book keeping program I would buy it.
8. R. Pink Floyd says:

   September 5, 2010 at 8:55 am

   Review by R. Pink Floyd for QuickBooks Pro 2010
   Rating:
   2 stars, let me give a more thoughtful review than before.

   Quickbooks is a nice program in many ways. Its easy to use, clean, produces quality documents. The reports are useful and very adaptable. The new feature where you can cut and paste from Excel docs directly into customer and vendor lists was a good idea. Having a brief experience with Peachtree, I can say that Quickbooks is probably a superior program overall, the biggest advantage being the fine way you can double-click just about anything in QB and drill down for more info. The ease of use and quality of the very basics are what makes this program decent enough. But I’ll also say again that I was probably just as happy with QB 2001, and the years worth of changes to the program and how much it costs to really use it have probably, on the whole, been for the worse.

   But my biggest problem with it is that the entire program just seems highly focused on sucking money out of the customer. Things that should be basic features require pricey subscriptions, the most notable being payroll. A 3-star accounting program might let you process payroll, do the tax and deduction calcs for you on paychecks, all simple stuff. A 5-star program might in addition actually automatically download the tax tables onto your computer every year, a nice feature. But Intuit charges the user to use these and other features, where even the Basic payroll subscription – required for processing paychecks yourself – costs close to as much as the program itself over the course of a single year.

   This year, before I got the program I was impressed when reading about the feature that allows you to attach documents to a customer or vendor……just a useful idea. But then I get the program and I find that they CHARGE you to store docs. You can’t just host it locally and link to it, they want your money to use this simple feature. That’s it in a nutshell. First thing I do when I get it these days is go around turning off all the ads and links to their other subscription features…..but you just can’t get all of them, some are stuck.

   So its OK, should and could be better but I think the creators have the wrong motivations.
9. EmbeddedFlyer says:

   September 5, 2010 at 8:41 am

   Review by EmbeddedFlyer for QuickBooks Pro 2010
   Rating:
   As another review mentions, the bulk of the 29 reviews currently posted are by Vines members who received the product for free and beta testers who are coddled by Intuit. There are precious few independent reviews here. Why is that?

   I’ve been a Quickbooks user since 1999. Up until QB 2005, it was a solid, nearly bug free and user friendly product. Unfortunately, Intuit “sunsets” their products and makes it increasingly impossible to use an older version after a few years. So I was forced to upgrade beyond 2005. The short version of a very long sad saga is each version after 2005 has been worse than the one before it with 2009 being the biggest mess yet.

   2010 is *marginally* better than 2009 in some ways. Intuit has made the online banking actually function again (they completely broke it in 2009) and cleaned up a few other annoying 2009 issues. But, sadly, the “nag screens” have gotten even worse and there are even more things that are now expensive upgrades. It’s completely insulting to be forced into buying new versions of Quickbooks only to have it increasingly function like “trial ware” or some “light” or limited functionality version until you spend even more money with Intuit.

   Not only is it annoying, but all the nagging literally makes the product harder and slower to use. When you’re just trying to get things done, another offer is in your face to spend more money with Intuit. It’s not good for one’s blood pressure or productivity.

   Quickbooks behaves almost like malware. Their online update system runs all the time even when you don’t have Quickbooks open. And not only does it get updates for the software itself, it also seems to feed yet more “special offers” to your PC to spend more money with Intuit. I’ve used ad-supported freeware that’s less invasive and annoying than Quickbooks is. If you have a PC firewall set to alert you when software attempts to connect to the outside world, you’ll be shocked how often Quickbooks contacts the Intuit Mothership for who knows what?

   Many of the new features in 2010 have a revenue stream for Intuit tied to them–including attaching documents. I agree with the other review that Intuit seems to focus nearly all their considerable resources on ways to extract more money from customers, and further hype their buggy bloated products, rather than making them easier to use. They also seem to have taken to actively managing online reviews such as the ones here.

   I encourage others who have issues with Intuit products to post their experiences here and elsewhere. Intuit has a near monopoly with Quickbooks. I think only if the problems are voiced loudly enough (such as with the online banking debacle in 2009) will Intuit have any desire to change their ways and actually focus on what customers want rather than ways to milk ever more money out of them.
   
10. cander says:

    September 5, 2010 at 7:57 am

    Review by cander for QuickBooks Pro 2010
    Rating:
    I could not agree more with some of the customers’ reviews here on Amazon: QB Pro on Windows 7 64-bit cannot be used for your business.

    Our company upgraded our computers to Windows 7 64-bit along with Quickbooks 2010 to try it out, but have not transitioned the whole company over to QB 2010 because it just has so many things that don’t work.

    The most important issue that the fact that printing just doesn’t work consistently, neither for pdf’s (sending estimates, POs, reconciliation) nor simply printing invoices and receipts. If you try to follow suggestions posted on QB support discussion forums, the fix lasts about a day or so. After rebooting your computer or even QB again, the issue begins again. It’s impossible to run a business with Quickbooks 2010 if one cannot print. For non-QB programs, printing works perfectly. So this is clearly a QB problem.

    Due to the above, we’ve resorted to running the business with Quickbooks 2006 with off our older computers that have Windows XP 32-bit. Completely frustrating.

    I’m not a person who likes to criticize products. I’m providing this review to simply warn users who have Windows 7 64-bit to really stay away from Quickbooks from 2010 until Intuit resolves the issue. It’s really unfair that QB is asking us to pay for customer support when the issue is clearly because the product does not work.