QuickBooks service discontinuation policy and upgrade information: Calendar Year 2015 Discontinuation Policy (QuickBooks 2012 Products)

In with the new, out with the old. If you happen to be still using QuickBooks 2012, (both the Mac and Windows version) then come May 31, 2015 certain features will go kaput.

Before we delve in, you can see further details and documentation from Intuit here.

So, what does that mean for QuickBooks 2012:

Any “add-on service” that you use by Intuit (be it payroll, online banking, etc.) won’t be available until you upgrade to a new product.

Intuit will seize live support.

Intuit won’t guarantee the registration of products or retrieval of keycodes.

Intuit stop providing manuals or replacement CD’s (although you can download them here).

These changes apply to the following products:

QuickBooks Pro 2012
QuickBooks Premier 2012
QuickBooks Accountant 2012
QuickBooks for Mac 2012
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions V12

Remember, you can avoid these inconveniences by upgrading to a more current version of the product.

Services Discontinued for QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise and Mac 2012

After May 31, 2015 you won’t be able to utilize the following services if you are using the 2012 versions:

Basic, Standard, Enhanced or Assisted Payroll: After the cutoff, QuickBooks 2012 will seize to automatically calculate the correct payroll taxes, provide you with updated forms, or send payroll data.

You will no longer have access to the Employee Organizer.

The 1099 Wizard will retire.

QuickBooks Merchant Service will not process any credit card transactions with QuickBooks 2012 (you can still process outside of QB). If you’re a terminal customer your credit card transactions will still go through, you just won’t be able to download them to QuickBooks 2012.

Automatic Credit Card Billing will be RIP.

Check Solution will no longer process transactions in QuickBooks 2012.

Bill Pay will be no more.

Billing Solution is retiring for good. Although, if you upgrade to a newer version of QuickBooks you can convert to the new QuickBooks Payments product (which has a different set of features).

Intuit PaymentNetwork won’t process or download online payment transactions with QuickBooks 2012.

Can’t use Accountant’s Copy File Transfer (ACFT).

Online Banking will no longer work.

You must upgrade to use Enterprise Solutions Full Service Plan (FSP)

Live Technical Support will be no longer.

No more Online Backup function.

Third party add-on apps and products shouldn’t be affected, but you should check with that vendor to make sure.

Above is an excerpt from an article by Charlie Russell on QuickBooks and Beyond. To see the article in it's entirety, click here.

Allowance Method To Write-off Bad Debt

Allowance Method

The allowance method records an expense to bad debt using an estimate of accounts that are unlikely to be collected before specific customer accounts are identified as being uncollectible. 

The estimate is determined by management and is based on a percentage of accounts receivable or sales.

The percentage rate may be based on historical trends, economic trends or some other form of measurement. 

The method uses a contra-asset account to accounts receivable ... allowance for doubtful accounts, to maintain the estimate of accounts that will become bad debt. 

The account is adjusted as accounts are written off.

Recognition Entry

The first step in the allowance method is to pass an adjusting entry at the end of an accounting period to recognize estimated bad debts expense. 

Unlike direct write-off method, we do not credit accounts receivable at this stage because it is actually a control account of many individual debtor accounts and we do not yet not know which particular debtor will make a default. 

We only know the estimated amount of receivables which are likely to end up uncollected. 

Therefore a provision account called allowance for doubtful accounts is credited in the adjusting entry.

Thus:

Bad Debts Expense  600

Allowance for Doubtful Accounts 600