QuickBooks Desktop Products - QuickBooks Desktop Manager

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Intuit recently released the 2021 QuickBooks Desktop Product line-up. Insightful Accountant has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for months and has spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn about the new products. This article is one in a series of individual product features intended to provide additional content to that within our QuickBooks Desktop 2021 product synopsis.

QuickBooks Desktop Manager

QuickBooks Desktop Manager addresses the most common user concerns associated with product upgrades. Many users have reported that they simply don’t know what product they should select for installation when it comes time to upgrade as a result of the large number of product SKUs being released every year. Other users fear losing their company data if they attempt self-installation of a new version, and still others have indicated that they don’t know where to find the correct license and product version numbers when asked for this information during installation.

QuickBooks Desktop Manager is designed to simplify and streamline these QuickBooks installation and set-up issues for users who aren’t confident in selecting either the correct product for product upgrades or in performing the actual product conversion.

Accessing QuickBooks Desktop Manager

QuickBooks Desktop Manager is actually an Intuit Official website that helps you find and install your QuickBooks Desktop products. In prior supported year versions of the QuickBooks you can typically gain access to this website directly from within those versions of QuickBooks if you have purchased a newer non-subscription version of QuickBooks software even though you have not installed it. In these cases you will find a prompt from the QuickBooks Help Menu to Upgrade to Latest QuickBooks.

Note that this path works only when the software license number is already linked to a purchased version of the software. In other words, if your license is already 'upgrade eligible.' If it is not, then the link will take you to a marketing page.

You can also access QuickBooks Desktop Manager at this Intuit official website.

Using QuickBooks Desktop Manager

You begin the process by agreeing to the QuickBooks License Agreement when you click 'Let's get started'.

Desktop Manager displays a page asking if you wish to search for your products using the registered email of your business or the current license number of your QuickBooks software.  Unless you wrote it down from the QuickBooks software you just closed you are probably going to use your business email.

It's too bad QuickBooks can't 'read' your software license number if you launch this application directly from the software and proceed accordingly.

After entering either your Business email or License number, click 'Search'.

Either way, odds are, Intuit will identify your 'account' and rather than require the typical account log-in they will transmit a one-time password to the registered email.

Which is then entered on the next window Desktop Manager displays.

After entering the one-time password you were sent, press 'Submit'.

Finally you have reached the list of products you have been waiting for, your QuickBooks licenses available for download and installation.

Now all you need do is 'select the desired product' and click the Install button next to it. QuickBooks Desktop Manager will do the rest, download the product to your computer, install it, register it, and even convert your files.

Editor's Opinion

Personally this is another tool that I just don't like because it once again infringes upon the role of QuickBooks ProAdvisors. If QuickBooks customers are uncomfortable with product upgrades, or product installations then let them 'Find a ProAdvisor' to help them with those issues. The fast majority of those customers couldn't determine which product(s) would be the correct 'one' to select if they were confronted with a list as complicated as the one above. True, few of them would be, but still some bigger businesses might be.

Many of these QuickBooks users also have multiple computers and need multi-user configurations installed, the installation process is flawed in these cases and users still end up calling technical support or using the 'Find a ProAdvisor' website. 

The QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program, and the Find a ProAdvisor website, was designed for this kind of support to QuickBooks users. So why not just direct them to the 'Find a ProAdvisor' website in the first place? Those are still the kinds of QuickBooks Users that thousands of 'Desktop ProAdvisors' are still supporting day-in, day-out, or would like to be. (And that's my opinion... Murph)

Feature Availability:  This feature is available only within the United States. QuickBooks Desktop Manager supports non-subscription QuickBooks Desktop products 2010 though the latest version. QuickBooks Desktop Manager will only locate and install 'supported versions' of subscription QuickBooks products. Desktop Manager does not support licenses for QuickBooks Point-of-Sale or QuickBooks-for-Mac software.

You will find Insightful Accountant's summary of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise for 2021 along with other related features in the 'Related Links' at the bottom of this feature.

Editor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to my good friend Laura Madeira who allowed me to cross-check my articles with advance copies of her features to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding the 2021 release. Laura, and her co-author Karen Siewert, have written three separate articles this year covering different aspects of the QuickBooks 2021 release, please be certain to check them out at Intuit's Firm of the Future blog:

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication in providing information, numerous briefings, and responding to my questions, as well as in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Sowmya Murthy, Madhumita Tayade, Muthuraj Thangavel, Tulasi Vijay Kumar Thulluru, and Raman Verma. I also want to say thanks to Michelle Berg, Mindy King, and Shawn Sturgeon from Intuit for additional product briefings and information along with the various members of Intuit's Alpha & Beta Product Testing Teams for QuickBooks 2021.

Of course, there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel behind all of these people that make the magic happen and we so often forget to say, thank you, to them, so to all involved, “Thank You for Another Great Product."

 Note: Some images used in this feature are displayed directly as provided by Intuit, others may have been modified from the source material Intuit provided.