January 14, 2013 | By Charlie Russell
It’s that time of year again, Intuit’s annual “Sunset” of older versions of QuickBooks. If you are using QuickBooks 2010 then you won’t be able to use certain services and features after May 31, 2013. I won’t editorialize (much) on why this is done of if it is a good practice, I’ll just discuss what the impact will be on your business.
For details beyond what I provide here see this Intuit support document.
What this means is that for the 2010 products (listed below):
Any “service” that you are using from Intuit (payroll, online banking, etc.) will no longer be available unless you upgrade to a newer product.
Live technical support will no longer be available from Intuit.
Intuit will not guarantee that you can register products or retrieve keycodes.
Intuit will not provide replacement CD’s or manuals, although you can download older products.
This applies to the following products:
QuickBooks Pro 2010
QuickBooks Premier 2010
QuickBooks Premier Accountant 2010
QuickBooks Simple Start 2010
QuickBooks for Mac 2010
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10
QuickBooks Point of Sale 8
QuickBooks Point of Sale 9
Intuit Credit Card Processing Kit 2010
Intuit Invoice Manager 2010
Note that for MOST of these products you can upgrade to a more current version to continue getting support. QuickBooks Simple Start users have to move up to QuickBooks Pro or higher, Invoice Manager is being discontinued altogether (move to QuickBooks Pro or Intuit PaymentNetwork).
Services Discontinued for QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise and Simple Start 2010
After May 31, 2013 you will no longer be able to use these services:
Basic, Standard, Enhanced or Assisted Payroll
QuickBooks Merchant Service (you can still process outside of QB)
Check Solution (you can still process outside of QB)
Bill Pay
Billing Solution
Accountant’s Copy File Transfer (ACFT)
Online Banking (downloading transactions, sending online payments or transfers)
QuickBooks email (the internal QuickBooks mail service for emailing invoices)
Enterprise Solutions Full Service Plan (FSP)
Live Technical Support
Online Backup
Third party add-on products are not directly affected by this – but you should check with your vendor to see what their policy is.
Services Discontinued for QuickBooks for Mac 2010
After May 31, 2013 you will no longer be able to use these services:
Online Banking (downloading transactions, sending online payments or transfers)
Automatic Credit Card Billing
Live Technical Support
Services Discontinued for QuickBooks Point of Sale 8.0 and 9.0
After May 31, 2013 you will no longer be able to use these services:
Intuit Service Store Exchange Method
Live Technical Support
What Should YOU Do?
If you are using QuickBooks, the standard answer is “now is the time to upgrade”. Many Sleeter Group Certified QuickBooks Consultants will be happy to provide you with an upgrade – often at a discount if you are using Pro or Premier. For QuickBooks Pro you often can find the best deal from a mass marketer like Costco. Discounts are also available through The Sleeter Group’s Online Store.
Upgrading of your QuickBooks data should be relatively painless going from QB 2010 to 2013, although there can sometimes be problems. Before you install the upgrade, make sure you have a good backup of your company file. We recommend that you work with a knowledgeable consultant in performing your upgrade so that you don’t lose any time in working out the details. A bigger issue is the change in the user interface, which surprised many users when they moved up to 2013 from older versions. See my article on what to expect in QuickBooks 2013 for more information.
HOWEVER – keep in mind that your basic QuickBooks 2010 product will continue to work for your basic business needs (other than the credit card processing kit), as long as you aren’t relying on the services I listed.
If you are a QuickBooks consultant, you need to check with your clients so that they understand what will be changing in May. Don’t let them be surprised when things stop working – evaluate their needs and see if they will lose anything crucial to their operation. Keep in mind that sometimes upgrading to a new release takes a bit of time and effort. You want to make plans so that this can be done in an orderly fashion, rather than as a last minute scramble when they find that things aren’t working right.