QuickBooks vs. MYOB vs. PeachTree

Question

I've been trying to choose between the three accounting software. However, I can't decide which one should I use. In terms of user interface, I would go for PeachTree and QuickBooks. MYOB seems too old IMHO. In terms of using for software development, I would go for QuickBooks because I think there are many developers using it and the SDK can be easily downloaded. Also, do these software support currencies aside from dollar? What SDK is easy to use for .NET development? TIA.

Answer 1

QuickBooks is very mature and much, much more popular than either other system. It's also much easier to find an accountant familiar with QuickBooks than it is to find an accountant familiar with either of the two others.

As far as development goes, QuickBooks has a reasonably strong developer community behind it, and integration/the SDK is pretty flexible. There is an official QuickBooks SDK that's pretty easy to use and is downloadable from Intuit's site. The forums are also a good resource:

• https://idnforums.intuit.com/

Answer 2

I use MYOB as the main accounting package for a law firm employing 10 people. The program integrates with another package we have to use for statutory Trust accounting. Of the two programs, MYOB is noticeably superior. It is easier to use and is extremely robust and reliable. I have not used Peachtree or Quickbooks but rate MYOB as 9/10 and would be reluctant to change.

Answer 3

To answer the question about SDK's (selecting an accounting package for everyday use is beyond the scope of this site), I've used both Quickbooks and Peachtree; I don't know anything about MYOB. Here we go.

Quickbooks:

• A lot of stuff is hidden by the COM interfaces, so you end up having to do tricky type casts that you have to look up in the documentation. And since you'll be doing this every time you unwind a results list, it happens quite frequently.
• It's confusing at first because the framework is actually quite powerful in terms of result filtering. This, coupled with the previous point, makes getting started a little difficult.
• The documentation is not the greatest, but is more or less complete. Some of the examples are convoluted and unhelpful, but most of the time you can get what you need from them.
• Actually connecting to Quickbooks is quite slow. The API lets you aggregate requests (i.e., on one call, you can query customers and items at the same time) which helps out a little bit.
• There are a lot of little quirks in the API
• The API is interface-centric
• There are some features in Quickbooks that are implemented much differently than in other accounting packages. These things show through in the API, which in turn makes it more difficult to write code. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't.

Peachtree:

• Connecting and querying is very fast, but involved queries (such as invoices) are very very slow, even when only a single field is returned.
• Results come back in XML, so it's not as automatic as having things come back in .NET objects, but at least it's easy to process. Some of the XML structures are a bit bonkers (attributes attached to the wrong element), but processing that isn't a huge deal.
• The documentation (a single Word document) is pretty bad, and the developer community is essentially under lock and key (you have to be a partner with Sage, i.e., $$$, to get access to their online forums). Googling "Peachtree SDK"-anything returns zero useful results.
• The API is enum-centric, and the enums aren't documented very well. API classes and interfaces are named poorly (no I-prefixed interfaces) such that name collisions are likely... so you'll have to alias the API namespace in most cases. The enum names themselves are unbelievably long. Sometimes it takes 2 lines to specify a single enum value, which is unbelievably messy and annoying (example, without namespace alias: PeachwIEObjCustomerListFilter.peachwIEObjCustomerListFilter_CustomerName).
• Result filtering isn't as powerful as Quickbooks, and in fact I'm struggling to get it to work at all (with an example lifted directly from the docs) is essentially useless.
• From what I've read, API support is less than stellar (it seems like Sage aren't really developing it any more, and they may possibly be phasing out Peachtree altogether)
• The implementation is less complete than Quickbooks

Both APIs have their strengths and weaknesses... I couldn't really give any kind of recommendation for either without knowing what type of application you're targeting, and how extensive your needs are.