Customers either face update cliff edge or loss of access in licensing shift
Intuit, purveyors of small business accounting software, has infuriated some customers after committing to turning off access to on-prem licensed desktop software or ending support and upgrades by the month’s end.
The $12.7 billion revenue biz says customers who bought a perpetual license for its QuickBooks for Desktop will see support, updates, fixes and online features end from June 30. Those using the same product under a subscription licence will be denied access to the product after the deadline, and only be able to view and export data using an AWS tool.
In both cases, the vendor recommends users switch to QuickBooks Online, a different product with not all the features of the earlier version included.
One user, who asked not to be named, told The Register: « The whole thing seems very heavy-handed. We moved to their cloud product a couple of years ago. However, we still have historical data on-premises and at the end of this month the desktop product will cease to work.
« There is a tool that allows reports from the old data to be exported, but not as far as I can tell a dump of all the transactions. This is extra work for us, but also worrying that we may not be able to get everything that we need in the future. »
Another user who contacted El Reg said they had bought QuickBooks Desktop 2016 on a perpetual license and had been told by the vendor that it was « not just discontinuing support for the desktop version, but were crippling it so you would not even be able to open a company file.
