We've killed Quickbooks!

[oldhasbeen]

Hi Miranda - that's great, thanks for the information. I don't think we're looking at bespoke just yet (maybe after we've made our first million !!).

We could possibly squeeze another year or so out of QB if only we could get the stock numbers to import into a new company file. They export fine into an excel sheet - and they are just numbers, not formulas!

But if you get rid of all your "inactive" items, thus freeing up lots of space, then try to import into a new company file, it zeros the whole lot out.

Not worried about starting the customer and vendor list from scratch, cos you can always refer back to your old company file if you need to look up histories etc.

Don't suppose there are any excel gurus who care to comment on this? It could give us (and plenty of others no doubt) some hope.

Thanks all - Helen

[Miranda Stamp]

I have a feeling that my bookkeeper knows the answer to this. She's not about tonight but I'll try to speak to her tomorrow and keep you posted.

[oldhasbeen]

Hi Miranda

That would be fantastic - even if we were told "you can't do this because...." it would put our minds at rest that we'd tried everything!

This has been one of the most frustrating aspects of this problem - being told you can't and it won't, but never any reasons or explanations why you can't or it won't. I need to know these things so I can have closure !

I don't know whether it's something to do with the audit trail why it wipes out the stock quantities on import, and I could understand it somewhat if it were down to the fact that these cells contain formulas, but they are just straight numbers which appear unrelated to anything else, so why does it zero them?

Again, could understand somewhat if QB were doing this "accidentally on purpose" to get you to upgrade to a more powerful offering, but there isn't anything - seems like major imcompentence all round by QB by not only losing potential sales, but also losing customers to the opposition!

If there's anybody who can offer advice on this, or even offer a potential fix or plug in, I'm sure there's money to be made as obviously more and more businesses will eventually hit these limits and like us may not really want to switch camps unless absolutely necessary.

Thinking caps on guys and gals

Thanks all - regards - Helen

[chris ashdown]

I dont own QB, so may be talking out of my ***. But do you have multi company facility with QB,

If so a simple solution would be to close one companies accounts at the year end and open another company, transfering the year end opening balances to the new company file

You could also possibly import your customer and product lists to the new account

[oldhasbeen]

Hi Chris

You can open a new company file, so far as I know as many times as you like (unless QB has set an arbitrary limit on this too!).

You can then export your "lists", strip them out and import them into the new company file, create new opening balances etc. Our year end isn't until October and we've hit the limit on number of stock items now, so we can't eek it out that long - it'll be a bit messy to do it mid year, but if you've no choice then you've no choice. The other poor lady can't even do this though as she uses payroll.

The problem is, the stock control (or item list in QB) zero's out all your stock quantities when you import, which would mean that yes you can free up space by purging your inactive items, but then face the labourious task of manually entering all the current stock figures back in on the new company file.

We're still playing around with this to see if there's any particular order to import the lists, open balances etc that will stop the stock quantities from zero'ing out before we resort to the manual route or jump ship.

But if somebody with a brain the size of a planet could come up with a programme that could automate this export, purge, import process that doesn't lose any data I could see a nice little earner there!

Some businesses might want to close out, purge and start a new company file every year to keep the QB file smaller and running quicker, some might want to do it every couple of years, some might (like us!) hit the brick wall and need the fix quickly!!

Ultimately however, QB should take some responsibility here and either explain the reasons behind their arbitrary limits, or remove them completely (or offer an upgradeable product - we only upgraded to QB accountant end of last year!). Even if you keep purging, under the current situation unless you're happy to limit the stock your business holds to a maximum of 14,500 "active" products, you'll still come to the end of the line eventually.

Unfortunately QB are uncontactable to comment - UK sales don't know, don't care - India, well, less said the better. Which is where I'm hoping that Actinic may have some more influential contacts since they've developed their link programme to work with QB - still waiting to hear back from them at the moment.

Hopefully there's a solution - we tweak with baited breath!

Regards - Helen

[Miranda Stamp]

Well my bookkeeper says that's what happens! And added that as our stock was always so way out from the year end stock take it was easiest just to run through and pop the stock back in - only 2500 products here though. Am sure someone could write something, I do actually know someone who could but I also know he's very busy, but I'll ask.

[Mike Hughes]

I think you can correct your inventory quantities using an inventory adjustment IIF file. There is a tool to help with these kind of imports that seems very reasonable at $39 with a free trial.

See: http://www.bigredconsulting.com/aboutlistimport.htm

I've also posted this in the QB (fishbowl) thread in the V7 forum.

Mike