Compatibility for CPAs and accountants

Greydog9928

I am using the Quicken Mac Business & Personal for both business and personal use. I am receiving a complaint from my accountant because they are having a difficult time importing my data from the software into their professional software and are recommending QB Online to make it easier for them. I have tried it and dislike it immensely. Is there any way that there can be better support in a format for our CPAs? Feeling pressure to switch for my CPA but strongly prefer not to.

jacobs

Quicken inherently is personal finance software. The business features, whether the more advanced ones in Quicien windows or the early-in-development limited ones in Quicken Mac, are intended for users with small businesses, such as consulting work or rental properties. It's never going to have full-fledged business features, like inventory or payroll or depreciation (although users can find ways to manually tackle those business issues Quicken). And Quicken isn't printed towards outputting data for CPAs. Among other things, different CPAs use different software, so it would likely be a daunting task for Quicken to export for multiple professional CPA platforms. And if it were to happen, it's probably years down the line in terms of Quicken development priorities.

That all said, what data does your CPA need beyond your account registers? Those can be exported, individually or all together, as a CSV file, which can opened in any spreadsheet program and cleaned up/formatted into some format your CPA might want.

QuickBooks is a quantum leap above Quicken in complexity as well as cost. Chances are if you can manage your personal and business finances well enough in Quicken Mac, then Quickbooks would be overkill.

I'd go back to your CPA and say Quickbooks won't work for you, but ask exactly what data they need and in what format. Accountants want what they use and know, but they should be able to tell you what it is they need without dictating that you use one specific software platform. If it's reporting by income and expense category, you can export reports from Quicken. If it's examining all your transactions you can export your transactions from Quicken.

Greydog9928

My reports are pretty meticulous. I'm not sending out invoices or anything but my CPA is saying they want to accurately track balance sheets and income statements together so we can both access and update….

Chris_QPW

 so we can both access and update….

I might be wrong about this, the to me that is like saying "You have to run the same software as I do.".

I doubt there is any software out there that allows one to access and update another company's accounting system.

jacobs

I doubt there is any software out there that allows one to access and update another company's accounting system.

Sure, Quickbooks Online would allow two different people to log in to the same data file.

But yes, if they want to be able to log in to both access and update data, then they are pretty well dictating you must use the software they use. (And that could be possible with Quicken's web interface, but it doesn't have all the features of desktop Quicken; for instance, it doesn't support asset and liability accounts and can't be used to create reports. I don't know what business-specific features the web interface supports, but I suspect not many. But this is all moot, because the accountant doesn't want to learn how to use Quicken to work with this client.)