I’ve spent the past several days doing a delightfully left-brain activity: getting income tax information ready for the accountant. Yes, I’m late. What else is new?

I’m changing over from MS Money (which I’ve used for years) to QuickBooks Pro 2007.

Through this seemingly “easy” installation and conversion process, I’ve had to install QuickBooks, download two conversion tools (one to convert Money to Quicken, and one to convert Quicken to QuickBooks), download the Google DeskTop (recommended by QuickBooks), download two versions of Quicken (2004 and 2006), search through forums and Knowledge Bases, and finally call Technical Support.

The problem is, the solutions don’t work. Now, QuickBooks Pro crashes every time I try to use it, and the conversion tool to convert Money to Quicken won’t open at all.

Am I happy customer with QuickBooks Pro 2007? Noooooooooooooooooo.

What can software developers learn from this delightful experience?

1. Put clear, easy-to-understand instructions about typical problems like this in user’s manuals, help files, knowledge base areas, etc. In my situation, I dug through all of those places and had to call Technical Support to find the answer. MS Money has come packaged on many computers through the years, and people often continue using it since they’re used to it. There needs to be an easier solution.

2. Have how-to videos that demonstrate how “easy it is” to do certain tasks. For something as complicated as this project has turned out to be, there should be videos, audio clips, whole sections of a manual, etc.

Instead, I found one forum post from Intuit that didn’t even give correct information! How helpful is that?

As a software developer, you need to make sure that whoever is posting to your forums gives out the correct information.

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