It is probably safe to say that every CPA firm in the USA has at least one version of QuickBooks. QuickBooks can be an administrative nightmare as clients may not have the same version as the CPA Firm which creates compatibility issues. Essentially, forcing the CPA firm to keep numerous versions of QuickBooks around to support existing clientele. In fact two days ago Intuit QuickBooks 2009 R9 was released and when you install it (12-1 Auto-Update) you’re going to lose some backwards compatibility (Intuit Proadvisor Newsletter 11/18/2009). So, how do we overcome this today? Generally, most firms I talk to have a PC in a closet somewhere running some old version of the software. The older versions of QB have compatibility issues of there own for example 2004 and IE7 don’t place nice together. Ugh… So, now you have to have a PC that has IE6 somewhere in your office…

There are a couple of ways virtualization can help us overcome some of this challenge. One is creating a Virtual Machine just to run that old version of QuickBooks. Using a VM gives us the benefit of application isolation and we don’t have to waste the hardware. But then what about the account on the go who needs to have QuickBooks 2004 because that is what his client has onsite? If he has IE7 on his laptop forget loading it up on the machine and to run the VM he needs the VM Software and a laptop powerful enough to run the VM. Normally this isn’t an issue and its a great solution but just imagine if you could you could give him a Flash Drive with QuickBooks 2004 on it and it worked from any PC anywhere-anytime! Now stop imagining!

You can do this using application virtualization products such as MS App-V or VMWare’s Thinapp. Application virtualization is the process of encapsulating everything the application needs into one container including OS, dll’s, IE6, and any other decencies it requires to run. In the video below I show you the basic steps to create a USB Flash drive with QB 2009 on it (couldn’t find my 04 CD I hope to find one soon). . I used ThinApp in this video but in the next I will use App-V.

Enjoy!