Friday, February 15, 2013

Criticisms: Bad Design in Quickbooks, example 1

There are probably more general patterns and themes that could be drawn, and would serve to be more useful, but that would take a long time, and is perhaps something to do after posting item by item, and surveying it all later. Today we'll explain and discuss the prohibition in the program upon having the same name or entity as both a vendor and customer. Here is what I mean (click picture to enlarge and see the message):

This name is already in use in the Customer:Job List. You cannot use a name in more than one list. Append a letter or number to this name to differentiate it from the existing name. Note: the name in the Payment Settings :

That's right, even if an entity is both a vendor and customer, the program is so simplistic that you cannot enter them like that. I guess it has a database too simple, old, outdated, or badly implemented, and the company so cheap, that they just can't won't fix this sort of thing: and this sort of thing crops-up in this program all the time. In fact, there are a lot of complaints by customers that are years-old that, I'm finding, crop-up all the time. : (

I hate to be "negative" and "critical" in a time that these things are non gratae in modern society, but I'll probably have to be, quite frequently, as I review Quickbooks. Note that corrections and suggestions are welcome. Also, responses like "[long-winded and technical workaround], or setting [that should probably have been chosen by default]" are not what is welcome, but opinions that a complaint, if a complaint is made, is merely uninformed, are welcome.

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