This is the first of two articles I offer about Quickbooks by Intuit. Many American businesses are familiar with this software — which has been widely used since the late 90s — and manage their finances on it.
Over the past 10 years or so, however, Intuit has worked to get their customers to stop installing Quickbooks on their computers, and instead subscribing to their Quickbooks Online “cloud” offering. That effort reached a crescendo in 2024 when Intuit released the final version of Quickbooks installable software. It will reach end of life three years later, in 2027.
One of the problems for businesses that depend on Quickbooks, is that Intuit has made it all but impossible for them to get their hands on new installable editions of Quickbooks. If you go to the Quickbooks Web site, you’d think it only exists as an online service or in its “Enterprise” form. Businesses that want to install copies of Quickbooks Desktop are unable to do so.
At this point, it’s worth it to stop for a moment and recall that there are three fundamental forms or product lines of Quickbooks:
To be clear: Quickbooks Desktop has effectively been killed by Intuit. The final-ever version of it was the 2024 version. That will no longer be supported, by Intuit, in the middle of 2027. Intuit no longer sells new licenses or subscriptions to it. Quickbooks Online is its successor product and Intuit is relentlessly working to get its users to move to their online edition.
Quickbooks Enterprise exists in kind of a gray area. It’s complex, networked software, and has features not currently found in QBDT or Quickbooks Online. Although Intuit stopped releasing new versions of it as of 2024 (at the same time they stopped releasing new versions of Quickbooks Desktop), because of those features not currently found in Quickbooks Online, it’s expected Intuit will let Quickbooks Enterprise continue working past 2027. And they still sell subscriptions to it.
It might seem that Quickbooks Enterprise is a viable solution for businesses trying to get an installed version of Quickbooks. For some of them, it might be. But it’s brutally expensive by comparison with the Desktop (QBDT) versions, and can no longer be obtained from Intuit through a one-time purchase; it’s subscription software (along the lines of Microsoft 365 Apps or Adobe Creative Cloud apps). It costs over $2,000 a year for its most basic level.
If you go to Intuit’s own Web site and try to buy QBDT, you won’t be able to get it, at all. You’ll be steered either toward Quickbooks Online or Quickbooks Enterprise.
Businesses trying to buy Quickbooks Desktop will quickly be stumped, if they attempt this. What comes naturally in the 21st century is for them, after they’ve tried this, to search the Internet (via Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc.) for it.
And that’s where things go off the rails — very quickly.
As with finding live, over-the-phone Quickbooks tech support (which is likewise all but impossible to do on Intuit’s Web site), this pushes businesses off, far too often, onto crooks and con artists.
Because Intuit has purposely made installable versions of Quickbooks impossible to purchase, businesses have landed in the arms of scammers. Many online crooks offer what they claim are installable versions of Quickbooks on their own Web sites, or other Internet venues.
There are two forms of this scam: Sellers of genuine Quickbooks software who sell it at amped-up prices and include “tech support” that’s totally lacking; and sellers of modified versions of Quickbooks which include additional malicious payloads, and may stop working until the business pays an additional fee to continue using it.
Businesses trying to get their hands on Quickbooks Desktop face an uphill climb, by design of Intuit. As noted, it can’t be purchased from Intuit. It also can’t be purchased from retail outlets (Staples, Office Max, etc.).
It is available from Amazon and other similar ecommerce sites, but only from marketplace sellers, not from the retailers themselves. You can also get it on eBay.
Unfortunately I can’t advise you as to whether any given seller in these venues is providing you a legitimate copy of Quickbooks. The best suggestion I can make is to ensure it comes in the form of a sealed box containing license and product numbers with the software itself being downloadable from Intuit rather than on a CD or DVD in the box.
Your surprise at this point is understandable. Intuit does make downloads of Quickbooks Desktop installers and updaters available from their Web site. If you’d already purchased it, prior to the phase-out in 2024, you can reinstall QBDT fresh, or on a replacement computer, if you want. If you already possess license and product numbers for QBDT, you can install and use it.
As I type this, versions going back to 2010 are available from Intuit, here: https://downloads.quickbooks.com/app/qbdt/products
The problem is not obtaining the software itself. The problem is purchasing it anew, if you should need it. You might have an older version you need to upgrade; you may have established a new business and are starting out with it for the first time; or you already have it, but need to install it on an additional computer. Any of those scenarios boxes you in and leads to one of two options.
If you have a license for a Quickbooks Desktop product and need to upgrade it or obtain an additional installable copy, call Intuit sales support, pay for it, and follow their directions to get and activate it. I can’t guarantee they’ll help you, but already having at least one license and product number ostensibly should allow you to do this.
If you don’t already have legitimate licensing for a QBDT product (even an old version), you are quite frankly out of luck. Your only option is to resort to eBay or marketplace sellers on Amazon, Walmart, etc. I suppose you could call Intuit’s sales department and throw yourself on their mercy, but I’ve never heard of such a call ending with getting a new license or subscription for QBDT.