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While the basic data file format is the same for both QuickBooks Pro and Premier, there are a number of features included with Premier that are missing from the less-expensive Pro. The introduction of QuickBooks 2011 further changed the list of differences between Pro and Premier.

For new features introduced with the 2011 version, QuickBooks Pro does not:

allow more than 3 users in a multi-user configuration
track balance sheet by class
allow multiple company files from the same version to be open at the same time

QuickBooks Pro versions prior to 2011 allowed up to 5 users to access a company file in a multi-user configuration. This has been reduced to 3 users for 2011.

The Balance Sheet By Class report is available in QuickBooks Premier 2011 and Enterprise Solutions 11.0. The ability to open multiple company files from the same version is only available in the industry-specific QuickBooks Premier Accountant 2011 or QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 11.0.

In general QuickBooks Pro does not:

record sales orders, which provides for product availability (backorder) tracking
support inventory assemblies
support unit of measure
support price levels by item
support billing rate levels
provide the ability to view unbilled time and expenses on 1 screen
support converting items on an estimate or sales order to a purchase order
provide a list of already recorded general journal entries while recording a new journal entry
identify general journal entries as adjusting
support creating a forecast
support creating a business plan
provide access to previous bank reconciliation reports
include industry-specific reports

All of these features are included in QuickBooks Premier.

Many of these features apply primarily to inventory-based businesses, organizations that want to easily track purchases with Customers:Jobs, or easily track time and reimbursable expenses with Customers:Jobs. For example, the screenshot below of QuickBooks Pro 2012 illustrates that QuickBooks Pro does not have the ability to set the Create invoices from a list of time and expenses preference, which is the first step in setting up easy invoicing for time and reimbursable expenses.

QuickBooks Pro 2012 Time & Expenses Preferences

However, several important general accounting features are missing from Pro and may make the extra cost of Premier a worthwhile investment. One of these features is a list of already recorded general journal entries, shown below.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Make General Journal Entry

Another feature is the ability to view previous reconciliation reports. For the sample company file below, no reconciliations have been completed. But if they had been completed, each prior reconciliation (such as a monthly bank reconciliation) would be available. In Pro, only the most recent reconciliation report is available.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Previous Bank Reconciliation

(+2 rating, 2 votes)

Yes. There are 2 kinds of limits: physical and practical. Let’s consider each in turn.

QuickBooks faces these physical limits:

2 billion transactions
10,000 accounts in the GL chart of accounts
14,500 names (customers, vendors, employees, and other names – combined)
14,500 items (which include inventory items)
10,000 classes
100 price levels

The above list highlights the most important physical limits of QuickBooks; it’s not an all-inclusive list. The physical limits of Enterprise Solutions are considerably higher. For details on all of the physical limits of both QuickBooks and Enterprise Solutions, consult this Intuit knowledge base article.

To find out how your own company file stands relative to these limits, press F2 from within QuickBooks to display the Product Information window. On the right side, you’ll see the List Information. In this example, the company file has 134 (out of 10,000) GL accounts, 217 (out of 14,500) total names, and 106 (out of 14,500) Items.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Product Information List Information

There are important practical considerations as well. According to Intuit, QuickBooks is designed for small businesses with fewer than 20 employees and $2 million in annual revenue. However, those are general guidelines. Bigger firms reliably use QuickBooks. What impacts whether you should use QuickBooks or its more powerful relative, Enterprise Solutions, is the size of your data file today and how that data is expected to grow over the time period for which you want to keep all transaction data in 1 file.

Intuit suggests estimating 2 Kb per transaction and projecting the size of your data file over several years. Keep in mind that a sale paid for with 1 check results in 3 transactions (invoice, payment, and deposit), and each AP transaction results in at least 2 (vendor bill and payment). This estimate does not include the data that list elements themselves (e. g., customers, vendors, or items) will add to overall file size.

In our experience, the performance of QuickBooks can degrade if overall company file size exceeds 100 Mb. Intuit suggests a practical limit of growth of 15 Mb per year (or about 7500 transactions).

As a company grows, QuickBooks includes a utility to remove fully paid and reconciled transactions in a process referred to as “cleaning up.” This process reduces the size of the QuickBooks company file. That’s why it’s important to consider the time period you’ll keep old transaction data in your company file. If you’ll clean up your company file every 18-24 months, the number of transactions you can store without hitting the practical limitations of QuickBooks will be considerably greater.

Some longtime QuickBooks users engage in a process of making a backup copy of a company file and then cleaning it up with a cutoff date. The backup copy preserves history transactions for those rare instances where they may be useful, but the company file for everyday use has been cleaned up and no longer includes stale, fully paid transactions. That results in improved performance.

The guidelines on practical limits we’ve discussed here aren’t unbreakable rules, and the limits are influenced by factors we didn’t mention, most notably the hardware performance of the computer on which you run QuickBooks.

(-1 rating, 1 votes)

price level

Accounting

Developer

Intuit