Intuit recently announced that it would be discontinuing two of its products, QuickBooks Time Tracker and QuickBooks Time & Billing. There was no explanation why these services would be canceled, only that they would no longer be available after December 1, 2011.
Frustration to Small Business Users
Small business customers expressed their frustration on Intuit’s forum. Apparently, Intuit had earlier announced its intent to discontinue Time Tracker, so many users migrated to Time & Billing as a replacement. Now without either option available, customers are understandably unhappy.
To its credit, Intuit has allowed customers to vent their frustration on its own forum. We don’t know why Intuit made its decision to discontinue these apps, but it probably did not make the decision lightly. Typically such discontinuations are due to not having a large enough customer base to justify supporting the product any longer.
Opportunities for Other Vendors
The Intuit page is encouraging users to try eBillity’s Time Tracker & Billing Manager as a similar product to replace the QuickBooks products. On Twitter, similar services are vying for the attention of the irate QuickBooks customers.
Will this action by Intuit give smaller players in the time tracking and billing space a chance for some of the pie? It certainly looks like an opening. If your company has a time tracking product, this is the time to step up your marketing and speak to frustrated Intuit customers. Your company can be the hero.
What to Expect if You Use Time Tracker or Time & Billing:
If you use these QuickBooks time-tracking products currently:
- Now is the time to download all the data from your account.
- You will not be charged for services from October 1 until December 1.
- You can still use each service until its closeout date on December 1.
- This announcement is limited solely to the Time Tracker and the Time & Billing products. It does not affect other Intuit or QuickBooks products.
We will soon launch a quickbooks module that will integrate with our time tracking app, Paymo. If anyone is interested in this please drop me a line via our website.
I’m curious how this couldn’t be making enough to justify itself. The development costs were incurred long ago and maintenance can’t be that intensive. Seems like a great way to lose customers *cough* Netflix *cough*.
Hi Robert, Who’s to say how much expense is involved? Having spent many years in the corporate world, I know that companies have to make decisions based on the cost of providing future customer support, integration with other products (and if those other products change, then it requires additional development to ensure continued integration), and so on.
And sometimes it’s a strategic decision. The company leadership decides to take its core products in a different direction.
It’s never fun when your vendor decides to retire a product. But sometimes those tough decisions have to be made.
I do commend Intuit for allowing people to vent on the Intuit forum and say their piece — not every vendor allows that. And I also commend them for recommending a third party app. They could have said “hey you’re on your own” but at least offered up an alternative.
– Anita
My thoughts were maybe they were straying a bit too far from their core QuickBooks accounting products. Who knows? None of us like change. Fortunately I didn’t use it (Basecamp has a nice time tracking feature, as do basic spreadsheets!!).
I’ve been using Intuit’s Billing Manager couple of years ago before I switched to Curdbee for my invoicing needs. I can say Curdbee could be really handy as its free and like gmail for emails – simple, fast and reliable.
Recently they introduced their own time tracking plugin and it costs $5 per month. Though I am not using it for my business (i don’t log hours), I took part in their pre-launch beta and it was looking elegant with a sleek interface.