If your QuickBooks ain’t broke, don’t fix it

I got a call last week from someone running accounting software on her Apple IIe computer.

If you don’t know the Apple IIe, it is *not* the latest Mac product. It was, in fact, Apple’s state-of-the-art computer in 1982.

The lady has been using her old accounting software (not QuickBooks) on her old computer for almost 30 years. Without any problems. This week, the original floppy program disks finally wore out and gave up.

Which raises the question: When should you upgrade your accounting software? My (not original) philosophy: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it’s broke, fix it.

One caveat: If the newer version has new capabilities that you are pretty sure will save you a lot of time, money, or hassle, do the upgrade. QuickBooks 2010 has new capabilities that may well fit that description for you.

But I talk to QuickBooks users sometimes that wish they could go back to an earlier, ’simpler’ version. I heard a lot of that when the QB 2006 version came out. What an outcry! I heard special pining for the old QB 99 version. I guess 1999 was a very good year for QuickBooks.

If you use QuickBooks payroll services and your version gets so old that Intuit doesn’t support it anymore — it’s broke. Fix it. Intuit only supports releases going back three versions.

If you are trying to use an old version of QB on your spankin’ new Win 7 machine, it won’t work. Fix it.

Otherwise, if what you are using now does 90-95% of what you want, I say be happy with what you’ve got.

What do you say?