QuickBooks Bugs – What is Bugging You?
Any software product is going to have bugs – it is almost a given. Software is complicated, and when you have to work with a wide variety of operating system versions, types of browsers, types of networks or devices, and differing end-user expectations, life for a software developer can be very complicated. I’ve been there! So, let’s talk about bugs in QuickBooks.
I like to make a distinction between different types of “bugs”. Keep in mind that I’ve been involved with software development (both as a programmer, analyst and product manager) for many years (never mind how many…) and I’ve seen many different definitions of what a “bug” is. Here is how I am breaking things down this time around:
- Implementation Bugs: Hey, you said 1 + 1 = 2, but the program was coded incorrectly and the program is trying to tell me that 1 + 1 = 3.4. That is easy to call a bug. Some are big show-stoppers, some are minor irritations.
- Crash and Burn bugs: I try to create a sales order using this template, when I save the sales order I get “unexpected error xyz” and the program terminates. Yup, that is a bug.
- Interpretation Bugs: To me, the phrase “Quantity to Ship” means the amount of the item that I have on hand that I can ship, because I have enough of them here to send out, regardless of how many you asked for. To someone else that may mean how many you would like to ship, the total quantity you asked for, regardless of what I have available. One of us right, the other thinks the program has a bug. It all depends on how you interpret the phrase.
- Oversight Bugs: Well, sure, we said this inventory report will list the total value of your items, but we forgot to include the inactive items that might still have some value. We didn’t realize that those should have been included!
- I really want this to work a different way bugs: You gave me this memo field in an invoice, but I can’t get that to print on the invoice. I really want a memo that I can print on the invoice! Sure, you didn’t plan on it working that way, but it is the way I want it to work!
- Why don’t you do what I want bugs: I need classes in my item records so that when I invoice the item it automatically uses that class in the invoice. Sure, it’s not a “bug” because you didn’t say that it would work that way, but dang it I really need the program to work that way!
- Data Corruption bugs: Programs work better when they have the data that they expect. If something clobbers the data, damages or “corrupts” it, the problem may have been caused by an outside force that isn’t the fault of the program. However, how does the program handle things when it comes across corrupted data? Does it scream and throw up it’s hands and says “unrecoverable error”? Does it ignore the problem and just give you incorrect results that you don’t notice? A good program shouldn’t do either of those, and if it doesn’t then that is a bug. A great program will not only handle these problems gracefully, it will also correct them for you (or at least provide you with the means to correct the problem). A bad program is one that creates the corruption itself…
There are probably a couple of other categories, but hopefully you get the idea. Some things are truly a bug – the program doesn’t do what it says it will do, or the program crashes. Some things are a matter of interpretation or need – the program does what the developer says it will do, but I think it should work a different way, or I have a different need than that, or I need something more than that. If a program just doesn’t go far enough, if it isn’t doing some function that you need in your business, I don’t usually consider that to be a “bug”.
And, given the complexity of modern accounting procedures and the current state of computer technology, I don’t expect any program to be totally bug free. Bugs are going to happen, they are a fact of life. What is important is for your software to have a minimal number of bugs, that the developer has a mechanism for recording bugs, and that the bugs get fixed (and that the fixes you release don’t introduce new bugs).
So what I would like to do is to try to start building up a list of “bugs” in QuickBooks. Let’s focus on the U.S. versions for the Windows Desktop. Let’s try to avoid the “it really should do this but it doesn’t” situation, and focus just on things that are truly broken. And, let’s stick with the 2012 version if possible, since that is the latest and greatest.
Leave a comment on a bug that you know, I’ll try to compile them into a list and we’ll track how well Intuit deals with them.
Kick Start
I was looking around in my computer to see if I had a list of known bugs. When I go to conferences I meet with other ProAdvisors and we always talk about the bugs that everyone knows – but I have found that I don’t write these down so I don’t have a list. So, to get things started, here’s a bug. Not a show-stopper, but it looks to me like the program isn’t doing what it says it will.
Look at this setting in the Send Forms preferences. I’ve selected the “Overdue Invoices” form, and you’ll notice that there is a “Dear <First> <Last>” setting at the top.
I go to the Collections Center and see that there are some customers with overdue invoices. I’ll send an email to them!
However, here is the invoice message in Outlook, with no “Dear” salutation:
There isn’t a salutation here, and if the client does reply to me I don’t know who this came from other than by trying to look up the email address. Now, to me, that is a bug. The preferences say that it will include this information, but the program doesn’t. Not a terrible show-stopping crash of a bug, but if it was fixed it could really save me a lot of time and hassle.
So, tell me, what is bugging you?
Category: QuickBooks Tips/Tricks, Working with QuickBooks
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He's been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70's, and remembers releasing his first commercial accounting software product when you had a one-floppy disk drive system, loading the program from one floppy and then replacing that with the other floppy to hold the data. He has a special interest in inventory and manufacturing software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor with additional certifications for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Enterprise. He also is a Xero Certified Partner. Visit his CCRSoftware web site for information about his QuickBooks add-on products. Charlie can be reached at charlie.russell@sleeter.com He is also the author of the California Wildflower Hikes blog and a regular blog contributor to the Intuit Inner Circle. Connect with Charlie at GoogleSubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
QB Enterprise 12. FYI Rare but possible: Be careful when turning an Item Receipt into a bill, where it has partially received an item on a Purchase Order. If you click the Attach button before you save it – to link a document, it is possible for it to do a quick save of the Bill with an altered line item (from another Item Receipt) and saves the transaction out-of-balance. You won’t have the problem if you complete the conversion to Bill first, saving it manually, then hit Attach and link the document. Already sent up the chain at Intuit.
This was a major issue for months until we figured out what the problem was. Advanced inventory (multi-warehouse) makes the issue worse. On partial receipts of blanket POs, transactions are left out of balance AND Quickbooks receives the entire PO into the incorrect warehouse. The cleanup is onerous, and a rebuild is required. QB support was not aware of the issue a month ago, even after showing them the telltale error ‘qtyOnPO does not match’ in the log file. The solution is simply to hit the save button before attaching a document, but you have to remember. I hope this is fixed in the next release.
Another design flaw/bug/deficiency.
When an Invoice is created from a Sales Order, all the Sales Order line items are transferred to the Invoice. Even SO line items that have zero backorder, and have been previously invoiced, are transferred to the current invoice.
Example – If there are 50 line items on a Sales Order, and we only want to ship/invoice 1 line item, all 50 Line Items are transferred to the invoice. We have to manually delete 49 line items.
QB should let us choose which line items we want to ship/invoice, and QB should ONLY transfer those line items we want to ship/invoice. Forcing us to delete line items from an invoice makes no sense.
Hi Charlie,
Here is the one we spoke about at SNH:
This is Bug.
Reclassify Transactions via Client Data Review does not respect the set Closing Date.
If you have a closing date set and then use the Reclassify Transactions tool to reclassify transactions from the closed period, it will just let you do it with no warning and no requirement for the closing date password.
Under your classifications, I would say this is an Implementation Bug.
My thanks to everyone who has responded so far. Eventually I’m going to take these and create a table, and we can see how Intuit does each release, as far as fixing things! It might take me awhile to create this, though.
Here’s one I came up with today. “Invoice for Time & Expenses” asks you for a template to use. However, when I create invoices from this window, it does NOT use the template that I requested. Big problem for me!
This one’s been around since the dark ages: If I create an invoice or credit note with an out-of-sequence number QB assigns the next invoice or credit note as that number plus 1. Even if it already exists. Could we not have (and now I’m straying into wish-list territory) some control over this? Maybe multiple invoice number sequences – tied to templates perhaps.
In the UK 2010 version, if I have to amend the VAT amount on a bill (to equal my supplier’s VAT calculation), and then I later make any kind of amendment – even if it wouldn’t affect the VAT – QB reverts to its own VAT calculation. Minor, but so annoying.
I’m sure I’ll think of more. I’ve been using QB for so long, I work round its shortcomings on auto-pilot.
More issues with Enhanced Inventory Receiving:
Client manually closes a Purchase Order. It is marked “Closed” on its face. It no longer shows up on the Open PO’s report. BUT
1. The CLOSED PO still shows as OPEN in the ‘Open Transactions List’ when I go to enter a Bill for that Vendor.
2. This occurs regardless of whether Items have NOT been received at all and the PO manually closed, or have been partially received and the PO manually closed.
3. FYI: Closed PO’s DO NOT show up in the ‘Item Receipts’ process (nor should they).
4. After being CLOSED, PO’s should not show up as being accessible to ANY transactions.
Walked through approximately an hour with Enterprise Tech Support. They said it was ‘designed’ this way. The only way to ‘fix’ the problem is to delete the PO or modify the original PO down to the actual number of Items received (BAD Controls!) + client wishes to maintain record of PO’s generated. Leaving these in the system creates lots of extra ‘closed PO baggage’ in the Bill entry process.
To summarize: if a PO is CLOSED it should no longer appear as OPEN in any part of the data entry process. Seems like a bug to me – At the least, very bad ‘design’.
I have a crash and burn bug that has been bugging me for months now and no matter how many customer care consultants I speak to no-one can seem to help, even questions regarding this problem that have been posted on the Intuit commuinity seem to go unanswered. When I open the collections centre from the customer centre i get a blue screen saying “loading customers” and then get i get “unexpected error” and the program terminates. I have even tried loading the program onto a brand new laptop and transferring my company file to the new computer and it does the same thing. It worked perfectly for three months when quickbooks 2012 was first installed I would love to resolve this issue as the collection centre was a great help.
Samantha, you may have some corrupted data in that file. What happens if you create a brand new file, or if you use one of the “sample company” files?
QB Premier Contractor Edition 2013. I need to use a report, Transaction Detail By Account on a daily basis and in my report I use “Item Description” (which comes from a field called “Materials” and that is a construction income/service field). This field usually shows on the screen but won’t always print. After printing the document you can press the refresh button and the information will return to your screen. The work around is to email a pdf of the report to yourself and then print the information from there. You cannot export information to Excel and have it work. I have called Intuit support and they said it is a bug and they plan to release an update by the end of October 2012.
Also, I wish the color schemes would return. I have been using this version for a couple of weeks and have eye strain everyday. The font is terrible hard to read!!