Hey Accountants – Missing Anything in QuickBooks 2018?

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Typically, when you install QuickBooks Accountant or QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant, there is a new version of QuickBooks File Manager that goes right along with those installations. This year things are a bit different.

While QuickBooks sets up the QuickBooks File Manager 2018 on your desktop during the installation of either accountant version, the feature doesn't work. Well, it does something, but it doesn't work like the file manager we have had in the past.

You see, this year, when you click on the QuickBooks File Manager 2018 icon, you get a warning message like the one shown below.

If you click on the "link" in the Warning message, you'll be taken to a QuickBooks Community Learn & Support page titled, "QuickBooks File Manager 2018 has been disabled pending further improvements."

The knowledge base article outlines a couple of alternatives:

1. Open the company file(s) outside of QuickBooks File Manager – Of course, Intuit always recommends that you Open QuickBooks and then open the Company file you want to use.

2. If you're an accountant with a client's file that has not been upgraded to 2018, you can continue to utilize an earlier version of File Manager (such as 2015, 2016, & 2017). File Manager will not recognize the year of the file, and will prompt you to choose the version of QuickBooks you want to use to open it.

This is where I must somewhat differ from the knowledge based article: 

  • Within QuickBooks File Manager 2016 (for example), I added a QuickBooks file that had already been updated to QuickBooks 2018. As you can see in the illustration below (within the red box), the 2016 version of File Manager clearly identified the file as being a 2018 (actually in this case an Enterprise 18) file.
  • I then selected the option to open the file in QuickBooks and File Manager launched QuickBooks Enterprise 2018 without my having to do anything else.  Nowhere did I have to specify the version of QuickBooks I wanted to open the file with.
  • QuickBooks Enterprise (in this case) was launched normally and displayed the log-in window with the last user ready to have the password entered for the file I had selected. 

So, it appears that prior File Manager versions will work properly (or as they have been working with older file versions) in terms of opening QB files even with 2018 QuickBooks versions and files.

Note: I did not check out any other File Manager features such as batch file upgrade, etc., because I have never trusted File Manager to do that properly anyway.

By the way, I suggest you read the knowledge base article (link above) and click the "Subscribe Now" button within the green box (like the one shown below) near the bottom of that article. Subscribing to this type of article is somewhat like feedback from the help menu. The more people who subscribe in this case, the higher the priority the Intuit development/troubleshooting team gives to any specific issue.

Lastly, at the time of publication, the KBA referenced herein reports that the "next update" of the status of this issue is set for 11/01/2017.