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QuickBooks is an
accounting software Accounting software is a computer program that maintains accounting, account books on computers, including recording Financial transaction, transactions and Balance (accounting), account balances. It may depend on virtual thinking. Depending on ...
package developed and marketed by
Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparati ...
. First introduced in 1992, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward
small and medium-sized businesses Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by many national agencies and international organizat ...
and offer
on-premises On-premises software (abbreviated to on-prem, and often written as "on-premise") is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm or cloud ...
accounting applications as well as cloud-based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.


History

Intuit was founded in 1983 by
Scott Cook Scott David Cook (born 1952) is an American billionaire businessman who co-founded Intuit. Cook is also a director of eBay and Procter & Gamble. Early life Cook holds a bachelor's degree in economics and mathematics from the University of So ...
and
Tom Proulx Thomas Proulx is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was a co-founder and first programmer of Intuit and a pioneer of usability testing in the 1980s.Suzanne E. Taylor and Kathy Schroeder, Inside Intuit: how the makers of Quicken ...
in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...
,
USA The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...
. After the success of its
Quicken Quicken is a personal finance management application originally developed and offered by Intuit, Inc. Intuit sold Quicken to H.I.G. Capital in 2016, and H.I.G. sold Quicken to Aquiline Capital Partners in 2021. Quicken runs on Windows and M ...
product for individual financial management, the company developed similar services for
small business Small businesses are types of corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships which have a small number of employees and/or less annual revenue than a regular-sized business or corporation. Businesses are defined as "small" in terms of being ...
owners.


Initial release

The initial Quicken software did not function as a "
double-entry Double-entry bookkeeping, also known as double-entry accounting, is a method of bookkeeping that relies on a two-sided accounting entry to maintain financial information. Every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a ...
" accounting package. The initial release of QuickBooks was the
DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
version that was based on the Quicken codebase. The Windows and Mac versions shared a different
codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code system files; thu ...
that was based on In-House Accountant, which Intuit had acquired. The software was popular among small business owners who had no formal accounting training. As such, the software soon claimed up to 85 percent of the US small business accounting software market. It continued to command the vast majority of this market as of 2013. Professional
accountant An accountant is a practitioner of accounting or accountancy. Accountants who have demonstrated competency through their professional associations' certification exams are certified to use titles such as Chartered Accountant, Chartered Certif ...
s, however, were not satisfied with early versions of the system, citing poor security controls, such as no
audit trail An audit trail (also called audit log) is a security-relevant chronological record, set of records, and/or destination and source of records that provide documentary evidence of the sequence of activities that have affected at any time a specific ...
, as well as non-conformity with traditional accounting standards.


Subsequent releases

Intuit sought to bridge the gap with these accounting professionals, eventually providing full audit trail capabilities, double-entry accounting functions and increased functions. By 2000, Intuit had developed Basic and Pro versions of the software and, in 2003, started offering industry-specific versions, with workflow processes and reports designed for each of these business types along with terminology associated with the trades. Options now include versions for manufacturers,
wholesaler Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...
s, professional service firms, contractors, non-profit entities and retailers, in addition to one specifically designed for professional accounting firms who service multiple small business clients. In May 2002, Intuit launched QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for medium-sized businesses. In September 2005, QuickBooks had 74% of the market in the US. A June 19, 2008 Intuit Press Release said that as of March 2008, QuickBooks' share of retail units in the business accounting category reached 94.2 percent, according to NPD Group. It also says that more than 50,000 accountants, CPAs and independent business consultants are members of the QuickBooks ProAdvisor program. By then Brad Smith was the new CEO, though former CEO Steve Bennett had nearly tripled Intuit revenue and quadrupled earnings in eight years. On September 22, 2014, Intuit announced the release of QuickBooks 2015 with features that users have been requesting from the past versions. The release includes improved income tracker, pinned notes, improved registration process and insights on homepage. In September 2015, Intuit released QuickBooks 2016 that contains several improvements to the existing ones and new features such as batch transaction, bill tracking, continuous feed label printer support, batch delete/void transactions etc. In September 2016, Intuit released QuickBooks 2017 with several improvements like automated reports, smart search and improved viewing of report filters among other things. In 2017, Intuit released QuickBooks 2018, adding features such as mobile inventory
barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...
scanning, multi-monitor support, search in the chart of accounts, etc. On September 17, 2018, Intuit announced the release of QuickBooks 2019 with some unique features requested by its users, including a history tracker for customer invoices, the ability to transfer credits between other jobs of the same customer, payroll adjustment feature, and more. On September 16, 2019, QuickBooks 2020 was launched with the aim to improve the reliability and experience of using the software. All the desktop versions - Pro, Premier, Accountant, and Enterprise - include new features like the ability to add customer PO numbers in email subject lines, send batch invoices to customers, automatic payment reminders, collapse and expand columns, easy QuickBooks version update etc. On September 4, 2020, Intuit rolled out QuickBooks 2021 with improved payment process and automated features. All the desktop editions in this version have streamlined bank feeds, automated receipt management, rule-based customer groups, payment reminders, customized payment receipts, data level permissions, and batch delete sales orders.


International versions

Versions of this product are available in many different markets. Intuit's
Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
,
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
n divisions offer versions of QuickBooks that support the unique tax calculation needs of each region, such as Canada's GST, HST or PST sales tax,
VAT A value-added tax (VAT or goods and services tax (GST), general consumption tax (GCT)) is a consumption tax that is levied on the value added at each stage of a product's production and distribution. VAT is similar to, and is often compared wi ...
for the United Kingdom edition and Australia's GST sales tax. The QuickBooks UK edition also includes support for Irish and South African VAT. QuickBooks Enterprise was withdrawn from the UKI market in 2014. QuickBooks Desktop is only available on a rental/subscription basis for users in UK and Ireland, and is to be withdrawn from sale with no desktop software replacement with the final version being the 2021 edition. The
Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...
(
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
) version is available only in the United States. Quickbooks announced that their products and service offerings for accountancy and small business customers will no longer be available in India after 31 January 2023.


Features

Intuit has integrated several web-based features into QuickBooks, including remote access capabilities, remote payroll assistance and outsourcing, electronic payment functions, online banking and reconciliation, mapping features through integration with
Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...
, marketing options through
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, and improved e-mail functionality through
Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...
and
Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows ...
. For the 2008 version, the company has also added import from Excel
spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...
s, additional employee time tracking options, pre-authorization of electronic funds and new Help functions. In June 2007, Intuit announced that QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions would run on
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
servers, whereas previously it required a Windows server to run.


QuickBooks Online

Intuit also offers a cloud service called QuickBooks Online. The user pays a monthly subscription fee rather than an upfront fee and accesses the software exclusively through a secure logon via a Web browser. Intuit provides patches, and regularly upgrades the software automatically, but also includes pop-up ads within the application for additional paid services. , QuickBooks Online had the most subscribers for an online accounting platform, with 624,000 subscribers. compared to Xero, which reported 284,000 customers as of July 2014. The cloud version is a distinct product from the desktop version of QuickBooks, and has many features that work differently than they do in desktop versions. In 2013, Intuit announced that it had rebuilt QuickBooks Online "from the ground up" with a platform that allows third parties to create small business applications and gives customers the ability to customize the online version of QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online is supported on Chrome,
Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
,
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...
10,
Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...
6.1, and also accessible via Chrome on
Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...
and Safari on
iOS 7 iOS 7 is the seventh major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 6. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, 2013, and was released on September 18 ...
. One may also access QuickBooks Online via an
iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...
, a
BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...
, and an Android web app. In 2011, Intuit introduced a UK-specific version of QuickBooks Online to address the specific VAT and European tax system. There are also versions customized for the Canadian, Indian, and Australian markets, as well as a global version that can be customized by the user. Quickbooks Online offers integration with other third-party software and financial services, such as banks, payroll companies, and expense management software. QuickBooks desktop also supports a migration feature where customers can migrate their desktop data from a pro or prem SKU's to Quickbooks Online.


QuickBooks Point of Sale

QuickBooks Point of Sale is software that replaces a retailer's cash register, tracks its inventory, sales, and customer information, and provides reports for managing its business and serving its customers. In early 2023, Intuit announced they would be discontinuing their Point of Sale software on October 3, 2023, including technical support and support of credit card Merchant Services, stating "the platform on which the software is built is unique, requires complex maintenance, and makes introducing new features very difficult". While the software would continue to function for end users after that date, Inuit will no longer provide software updates for security and functionality.


Add-on programs

Through the Solutions Marketplace, Intuit encouraged third-party software developers to create programs that fill niche areas for specific industries and integrate with QuickBooks. Intuit partnered with
Lighter Capital Lighter Capital is a revenue-based financing lender that specializes in providing financial capital to small technology companies. Founded by Andy Sack, a Seattle-area entrepreneur, Lighter Capital was one of the first lenders to use revenue-ba ...
to create a $15 million fund for developers designing apps for Intuit Quickbooks. The Intuit Developer Network provides marketing and technical resources, including
software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...
s (SDKs). Intuit's Lacerte and ProConnect Tax Online
tax preparation Tax preparation is the process of preparing Tax return (United States), tax returns, often income tax returns, often for a person other than the taxpayer, and generally for compensation. Tax preparation may be done by the taxpayer with or without t ...
software for professional accountants who prepare tax returns for a living integrates with QuickBooks in this way.
Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...
also integrates with QuickBooks.


See also

*
Comparison of accounting software The following comparison of accounting software documents the various features and differences between different professional accounting software, personal and small enterprise software, medium-sized and large-sized enterprise software, and oth ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Quickbooks 1992 software Accounting software Intuit software