We sometimes forget that not all of us have been working on QuickBooks for years and years. In this edition, we wish to look at QuickBooks from a new user’s point of view.

SA Version
I have stopped counting the times where clients downloaded, by accident, the wrong version of QuickBooks thinking it’s the ‘South African’ version i.e. Downloading the QuickBooks Canadian or QuickBooks American desktop version opposed to the UK desktop version.

The QuickBooks UK desktop version is 100% identical to our version. Localisation for VAT is ‘activated’ when selecting country ‘South Africa’ during Setup Company’ express / advance interview.

QuickBooks features such as (i) Online VAT filing, (ii) In-product Payroll and (iii) Automatic Bank feeds are all stark reminders that our version of QuickBooks is in fact ‘native’ (as these features cannot be utilised locally). It’s for this reason clients have been successfully deploying the likes of Quick Payroll and eZ Bank Import over the years.

Ever since the introduction of QuickBooks 2010, users could extrapolate their VAT figures using a VAT201 Summary report which contributed greatly towards a more ‘local’ experience, despite the aforementioned ‘native’ features.

3rd Party Apps
There are countless 3rd Party Apps that integrate to QuickBooks desktop.

However there have been quite a few instances where third party’s app’s were purchased that were not compatible with QB UK desktop. Please pay careful attention to UK compatibility when browsing or downloading prospective third parties.

For more information on QuickBooks desktop 3rd Party Apps, visit the Intuit Marketplace

SDK 13.0
Because country versions are similar in architecture, the need for different SDK ‘flavours’ has been eradicated since Intuit started harmonising it’s products.

For more information on SDK and related topics visit the Intuit developer forum for desktop

Products
We established earlier on that the South African QuickBooks version is identical to the UK QuickBooks desktop edition. Products that do not fall in the Intuit UK line-up will not fall into ours – EasyBiz (Pty) Ltd.

QuickBooks for Mac, Quicken & QuickBooks POS for example is only available in the Intuit US product line-up.

A question we often get asked is whether you can open a company file across different country versions i.e: Open UK company file in QB Canadian or QB American desktop version. Technically speaking, there should be no reason not to. However you can’t – we believe this was built into QB code to protect and uphold set agreements amongst different Intuit franchises. Clients finding themselves in the position of having to “jump” from one country version to another would inevitably end up creating a new company file where lists can be imported and take-on balances entered by means of journal entry.

Then there’s also the issue of different features that each country offers. For example, QuickBooks Premier 2015 UK desktop would not be identical in feature to QuickBooks Premier 2015 US desktop.
The latter offers ‘Archive & Condense data’ whereas the UK products don’t. US products would also integrate with Salesforce which is not possible in the UK desktop range.

For our new users, enjoy your QuickBooks journey.