QuickBooks Registration: More Hassle Than it Should Be?

In poking around various message boards and following some Twitter posts, it seems like there is some building frustration with Intuit (the makers of QuickBooks) for making the registration process more hassle than necessary.

I'm not certain of this, but I have noticed a pattern to the registration process when taking care of it for my clients - the first copy that is registered is forced to go through the phone registration process, while registrations for additional users can normally be done via the online method - the online method wins hands down! So if you are in a multi-user QuickBooks environment, you don't have this pain for each user, but if you have just one copy of QuickBooks, it is quite likely you will be on the phone.

In fact, I dread getting the "please call 800-Big-Pain to get your validation code" message. I know that I am then going to be directed to an overseas call center and get the pitch about other QuickBooks products and services, especially payroll and merchant services. In some cases, the pitch can be pretty annoying, depending upon the call center rep who is delivering the pitch.

TIP: As soon as you are asked during QuickBooks phone registration about how many employees your business has, simply tell the rep you have no interest in any other QuickBooks products and services at that time. It does speed things up a bit, as you should be spared the sales pitch, but it doesn't reduce the overall hassle factor of having to register by phone.

Naturally, from Intuit's perspective, forcing a business to speak to a sales rep when registering QuickBooks is a great way to cross-sell other products and services.However, QuickBooks already has enough other pop up windows that appear while using the software promoting their other products and services that we shouldn't have to endure them just to get the software registered.

BONUS TIP: Click Edit > Preferences > General > Turn off pop-up messages for products and services to minimize the pop-up intrustions while working in QuickBooks. I can't say that this completely eliminates them, but it does reduce them.

Maybe QuickBooks 2010 will bring a more streamlined approach to product registration to it. We can certainly hope so!