ChronoBooks to Become a QBO-Advanced Exclusive

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This past November (2019) Insightful Accountant was among the first to tell you that Intuit had acquired ChronoBooks, one of our favorite online backup and restore solutions which we had been touting since they were first in development.  Also in November we told you that one of the reasons Intuit acquired the product was so that they could begin delivering a highly requested feature to their QuickBooks Online Advanced customers. Intuit's intention was to make this user controlled online backup of QuickBooks data available to all their QBO Advanced customers at no additional cost.

Now, Intuit has decided that ChronoBooks will become an exclusive feature of QuickBooks Online Advanced and starting February 25th (2020) it will no longer be supported for subscribers of QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials or Plus.  Intuit is formally sending notices today (1/16/2020) to both the small business customers of ChronoBooks and also to QuickBooks ProAdvisors of this change. 

After February 25th, QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials or Plus subscribers who were also users of ChronoBooks will need to make a choice of one of these alternatives:

  • they can elect to either use an alternative online backup App if they wish to continue having a 'user controlled' backup and restore solution available to them,
  • rely solely upon the standard Intuit backup of all QBO data1, or
  • upgrade their QBO subscription to QuickBooks Online Advanced.

With respect to Subscription Upgraders, Intuit confirmed in an email to Insightful Accountant that, at the time of publication (of this article), they were offering new subscribers (on Direct Billing) to QuickBooks Online Advanced (including anyone who migrated from a prior subscription) a 50% discount off the regular subscription price for 3-months. Also available at the time of publication (of this article) QuickBooks ProAdvisors or Accountants offering 'Wholesale Billing' to their Customers could make QuickBooks Online Advanced available to these customers who migrated at 30% off the retail price for 'the life of their subscription'.

Tomorrow, 1/17/2020, Insightful Accountant will publish a companion article to this feature in which we provide a review of the three (3) currently available User Controlled Backup & Restore Apps for QuickBooks Online appearing within the Intuit QuickBooks App Center. Be sure to tune in for that follow-up article in Friday's edition.

Footnotes & Disclosure:

1 - For more information about the standard backup of all QBO data read the Intuit QuickBooks Help Article: Do I need to backup my data with QuickBooks Online?

Information published is as of the date of publication, Insightful Accountant can not be held responsible for changes occurring after the date of publication with respect to information published herein as it relates to offerings or pricing information otherwise referred to at the time of publication.