Can I Switch from QuickBooks Online to Premier?

Question: Last year, I called QuickBooks to ask which program I should buy. They told me QuickBooks Online, and switched me from QuickBooks Premier to Online, but it doesn't do what I need it to do. Can I convert back to QuickBooks Premier?

Answer: Yes, but it's not easy. Intuit sells QuickBooks Online as a subscription service, and it is trying to push as many customers to Online as possible. As a subscription service, Intuit receives payment on a monthly basis, which provides Intuit a steadier flow of income. However, QuickBooks Online is not yet a robust enough software for the ad specialty distributor business.

At present for ad specialty distributors, QuickBooks Premier is the best QuickBooks product. It handles the unique and complex details of our business, like customer sales orders, supplier purchase orders, invoices and more. With Premier, you purchase the software once and Intuit supports it for three years. And Premier is less expensive than QuickBooks Online.

The conversion from QuickBooks Pro, Premier or Enterprise (the Desktop products) to QuickBooks Online is very simple. You will be told that, should you not like Online, the conversion back to one of these other products is equally simple. Beware.

I recently worked with one client who wanted to switch back to Premier. She quickly discovered how less useful the Online product was. The conversion back to Premier cost several hundred dollars and involved too many adjustments and fixes. Her summation was, "It was an expensive pain in the ****."

The ad specialty business is complex. There is more to our accounting than simply the size of your businesses or the number of transactions to account for. In our business, every order contains more details than other similar-sized businesses.

QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise can be modified to better serve ad specialty distributors. Harriet Gatter is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, a former accounting professor and a former ad specialty distributor. She advises ad specialty distributors to use QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, often in conjunction with other industry-specific software, to manage the complexities of the ad specialty business, with the results being time saved, errors eliminated and an overall accurate accounting of your business. Contact her at hgatter@accountingsupportllc.com

Please email accounting questions you would like considered for the column to hgatter@accountingsupportllc.com with the subject line of “Ask the Accountant”.