This is the second 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.
Let’s face it: At some point, you’re going to have to consult tech support for the software you use. This should be routine and easy, especially for business software, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
This appears to be a particular problem with Quickbooks. There’s a real phenomenon out there of people trying to get help with Quickbooks, only to discover they were taken in by scammers or ended up with malware on their computers — or worse, both!
The reason for this lies entirely with how Intuit operates. By design, Intuit makes it difficult to get support from them, especially live over-the-phone support, the type that most businesses need in order to get things working again quickly. Their tech support phone number is nowhere to be found on their Quickbooks support site (at https//quickbooks.intuit.com/) if you look there for it. (Their sales phone number is right at the top of every page on the site, but not the tech support number. Go figure.)
Anyone needing Quickbooks support, who’s looked on their site and failed to find any tech support number, does what comes naturally in the 21st century: Search the Web for it (using Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.).
As it turns out, this is exactly the wrong thing to do!
It’s too easy for scammers to flood search engines with fake ads pretending to offer “Quickbooks Tech Support” and a phone number. People inevitably click on one of those ads (since they’ll be at the top of the search listing) and end up speaking not to someone at Intuit, but rather in some other fraudulent boiler-room where they’ll be charged hundreds or thousands of dollars for assistance that probably won’t even help.
On the other hand, tech support directly received from Intuit, for currently-supported versions of Quickbooks that you’ve legitmately paid for, is generally free, within certain limits.
Resist the urge to search the Internet for Intuit’s tech support phone number for Quickbooks. I will provide it right here, along with a correct way to find it in the future if you need to.
Intuit’s preferred way of having its customers get technical support for Quickbooks, is by one of two methods.
Most business users will prefer a phone call, but using their chat may actually be helpful, quick, and efficient. There’ll be less of a language barrier and you’ll be able to type things into the chat such as error codes and messages.
But either way, this will get you in touch with someone from Intuit, not a pretender who’s trying to scam you.
Having to have an account with Intuit in order to get support may seem annoying, but it gets you into their system. It’ll allow them to follow up with you on a case, and you can also follow up with them.
At this point, as above, you will now be in touch with genuine Quickbooks support from Intuit.
I do have Intuit’s phone number for Quickbooks tech support! Here it is:
(800) 446-8848
Do not call any other number than this one, for Quickbooks tech support.
Just as you shouldn’t search the Web for the Quickbooks tech support phone number, you also shouldn’t search the Web to download Quickbooks installers, updates, or other tools.
Just don’t do it, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned: Scammers can get ads on the search engines that are all too easy to be tricked into clicking on. You may actually get a copy of Quickbooks, but it’ll also have an added payload you don’t want on your computer.
The one and only place to download anything Quickbooks-related, is:
https://downloads.quickbooks.com/app/qbdt/products
Fill out the online form to find what you’re looking for. A kind of wizard will lead you through a few questions about the type and version of Quickbooks you need, then provide a link to it (in a green “Download” button).
If you already have Quickbooks installed and only need to update it, click the small “Get the latest updates” link:
This will download a smaller updater, which is quicker to run.
If you’re looking for Quickbooks Tool Hub, a kind of catch-all utility that can retrieve and run various tools to fix Quickbooks or its company files, get it from here:
You’ll find a link just a short way into that article that will download it, along with instructions on how to use it.
Installers and updaters for Quickbooks appear to have a flaw which causes them to stall at certain points during the installation or update. It’s due to Windows Defender antivirus.
There’s an easy way to avoid this issue, by temporarily suspending Defender’s file-checking service. To do that:
There’s no word on whether, or if, Intuit plans to fix this flaw in their software installers and updaters. Hopefully they will, but until they do, this is what you may have to do.