QuickBooks home page error and updates

<pwhite”>A number of users complained about their “home page” disappearing yesterday and today, in QB 2008 – 2010. Intuit pushed out a “secondary” or “off-cycle” update, which they do not notify us about. It made (for some users) the “home page” disappear. The good news is that there is a fix (but a bit complicated for end-users) and that another “off-cycle” update will fix it, probably Thursday. While digging into this, I learned a bunch of things about an “automatic” update that I did not know. Some of the implications for ProAdvisors worry me. How do we know what “secondary” update version a client is using, and how that differs from other installations? Take a look at my article on this, based on feedback from some people at Intuit that I got today: http://qbblog.ccrsoftware.info/2010/06/quickbooks-updates-and-the-home-page-error/ 

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<pwhite”>Charlie Russell, who wrote the post on which I based this, is an outstanding QuickBooks Expert. Here is a related edited comment by Joe Woodard, who is probably the best QuickBooks teacher: <pwhite”> Charlie, thanks for submitting this. If I understand you correctly, secondary updates install only if you set QuickBooks to auto-update. If you use manual downloads only, secondary updates do not install. Is this correct?

This is my approach with clients who listen. I like a release to be market-tested for a few weeks before my clients install. Auto installing updates also causes problems in multi-user environments, as you know. If the update does not work on one computer then someone cannot connect to the file on the network. Now that I know about secondary updates this makes avoiding auto-updates even better.

I like your comment about notifying clients when they need to update – perhaps with a link to download the manual update. If we tell them to turn off auto-update, we are responsible for getting the message out.

From Mike Block CPA:

Turning off (Help,) Update QuickBooks (, Options, first No) has long been one of the most important ways (out of 100+) to customize and speed up QuickBooks. You also should remove QuickBooks programs from your Windows, All Programs, and Startup folder.

Without this, many inadequately tested updates may badly slow your work or shut it down. Automatic updates also waste significant time every day. They check for updates every time Windows or QuickBooks starts, though QuickBooks normally only has about 12 updates a year.

http://www.quickbooks-blog.com/

http://michaelblockcpa.com/en/contact-us.html