Millions of small businesses use QuickBooks for their accounting. QuickBooks has evolved from only a desktop 
program to choosing their monthly SAAS on-line version along with apps for any device. I used it years ago, but discovered my business really didn’t need that robust of a program. I didn’t enjoy being forced to upgrade every other year either! In this article, I’ll be sharing QuickBooks start-up lessons learned.
There are QB experts aplenty out there and QB has a self-serve customer service on-line that is quite good. There’s a great QuickBooks community where you can search out your particular problem and probably find the answer.
There is free phone support 6 days a week. The desktop support is located in the Philippines and the online support is U.S. based. In my brief experience I found that the wait time for desktop support is much longer than for online. Calling on a Saturday was a short wait time. (No one wants to call then – right!)
QuickBooks Start-up Lessons Learned
1. QuickBooks recommends that you do not attempt to export a QB file from online, convert it and upload to a different online account. (More below.)
2. But if you do decide to export a file from QB online to another online account, it first must be exported to QB Desktop and converted before uploading to the new online account. I believe you only have 10 days to get this file converted after the export and download.
3. You can get the latest QB version on a 30-day free trial – no credit card needed.
4. When you first start-up this QB trial version, you may be presented (as I was), with a blank screen only 1 or 2 options that get you nowhere.
5. If your QB starts to a blank screen, you may need to do a registry fix (details below).
6. If management of a company file needs to change hands, the thing to do is have the current Master Administrator send an email to the new person from within QuickBooks online to do this. The ‘power’ doesn’t transfer over until the new person accepts the Master Admin role by logging in.
QuickBooks Tips
Now, I’ll expand on the points above that need explaining.
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- #1 | It is impossible to import from one on-line QuickBooks account to another. They just don’t make a way to do it for security reasons. People could steal or hijack a company account. (Of course, there are other ways account information can be shared/stolen.)
- #2 | If you want to go from using QuickBooks online to QB desktop, then you’ll choose that when you do your export from online. Then there is a quirky and difficult (I got through several steps and then was stuck), conversion process to go through to get it on the desktop.#4 & 5 – This was a real time-suck trying to get the desktop QuickBooks to work. I had gotten a link for the 30-day free trial from the desktop support guy and, at the time (this was my first call), I didn’t know all the problems I was about to have.
The next day, I opened QB and was going to go through the conversion process when I noticed that QB was open, but I was presented with a blank screen except for a little bar at the top. After about 30” of trying to move that page off (I could see there was something behind it), I did figure out it was some kind of full-page thing that I could grab and pull down to expose – another screen that didn’t have any menu options!!
This is where I started doing online searches and I discovered the QB online support community. I found the answer not on the QB community site, it was on someone’s blog and I’ve gone back to try to find it and can’t, but I can give you what I did.
The blogger said I’d need to use the Windows Run program to remove a line from the Intuit Entitlement Client that was buried deep within C:\Program Data. Here’s what I typed in the run box: C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v8.
Then I needed to remove one of the lines from this folder.
At this point, I would have tried almost anything. I didn’t have any data or company file to destroy, so I removed the line and then QuickBooks opened! This has something to do with licensing, so before you do it, be aware of that. You may want to call support if you have a company file in there.
6. I found that the Master Administrator in QB is the alpha dog. There is only one per company file and they have all admin rights. My goal in this whole story was to simply take over the treasurer duties of a non-profit account from the former treasurer. Unfortunately, neither of us knew that all she had to do was to simply email me from within the QB file and assign me as the new Master Admin.
When she did this and I accepted, then I simply removed her and she didn’t have to worry about the account and she didn’t have access to it anymore. Now I’m the new Master Admin.
Now I can remove QB from my computer and just have the online QB account. Blessings on the Saturday support rep I spoke with. He was the one who clued me in to the ability to change the Master Administrator! I wish the first support rep I’d spoken to had told me that.