Anyone starting up their own business needs Accounting software of some sort of another. Recently here in the UK, Microsoft discontinued their Office Accounting package which was a nice, easy to use package that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. It has recently been handed over to Mamut consulting who charge an annual fee, which isn’t so nice if you have the package doing what you need it do to (sure software assurance is nice, but that’s why you have the software upgrade option too). What does this leave you with then? Hopefully hosted Dynamics soon, but for now, not in the UK, so you’ve got Intuit QuickBooks and they have various versions from a “Quick Start” at £90 to a Premier at £450. However, for the new startups, they’ve got SimpleStart which is a FREE (yep, free) version of Quick Books. It’s limitations:
- 20 customers & suppliers
- Minimised functionality
Still, not too bad if you’re just starting out, right? They’re website even says:
With QuickBooks, "free" means anything but watered down. The QuickBooks SimpleStart Free Edition has all the great SimpleStart functionality – but it’s built specifically for businesses with fewer than 20 customers and suppliers. Download & use it free – for as long as it fits your business needs
Aah, if only, right. Download the SimpleStart installer and as it unpackages itself, let’s have a look:
Wait, what’s that say? Extracting googledesktopsetup.exe – and interesting enough it says above “…files needed to install SimpleStart Free Starter…”, I didn’t know Google Desktop was needed for this free version to be installed. I thought it was free and not watered down Quicken? Why do you need to package it with extra software? You could at least tell us you’re doing this like Adobe does…Naughty!
Summary: Those of you attempting to use this SimpleStart edition, user beware as if it’s packaged with Google Desktop (which is probably out of date unless they keep repackaging the MSI – opening potential security vulnerabilities), one can only wonder what else is inside the .msi…
Possibly related:
[
#1 by BigBee on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 18:32
Quote
I know that some professionals can set this up for a business or person. It can really help if someone can set it up for you before you begin. The nightmare of trying to figure it out is over.
n.b. edited and link removed.
#2 by Justin on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 21:16
Quote
Hi BigBee,
I’m not saying that the setup is hard, what I’m saying is they could put in the T’s & C’s or somewhere that it’s packaged with Google Desktop, which is why people get angry at software compaines for including “bloatware” or what some might even consider spyware or malware…
One thing that Intuit has done well is simplified the setup, install and config process
Pingback: Customer Experience Improvement Program « 227 Volts