Customer Reviews
CANNOT DOWNLOAD SALES INFORMATION! 
2008-01-16
Look out! Do not be fooled. I bought this software and discovered, to my dismay, that it will NOT import sales data from web shopping cart applications. You may download customer data, and vendor data, but NOT sales. In other words, it is a book keeping program which does NOT keep books, unless you enjoy manually re-entering data from your web sales. LUCKILY (ha!), they allow you to "unlock" the program instantly (!) for another $160. Just buy Quick Books Pro to begin with - then you'll actually be able to keep books!
Not useful for upgrade 2007-12-10
It IS buried in the small print on the Amazon site, but you can't upgrade your old Quickbooks to this version, so it was just a waste of money. Intuit claims to have a money back guarantee, but we'll see if they honor Amazon's email as a proper receipt.
QuickBooks Simple Start 
2007-11-21
Quickbooks Simple Start is not so simple to use unless you go through all of the tutorials and I wonder if even then it is simple to use. It is not direct in its icons. I use Quicken 6.0 for my personal recordkeepinig. What a nice program. Very clear. You know where to find your accounts. You know where to find your categories. Not with Quickbooks Simple Start. That stuff is buried somewhere and there is no way to change the icons to let you get easily to various sections of the program. The reconcile feature is buried in the pull down menus under "For your Accountant". That's dumb for a small business. A small business owner does most everything when it comes to accounting. I even do my own taxes. It's difficult to figure out how to pay your sales tax with the program. All of the various bank and credit card accounts are lumped together with your categories for income, expense, etc. If I had known it was like this I certainly would not have purchased it. I think I would have been better off using the free Microsoft money account than paying $100.00 for this fluff. It does keep the records but there is some puzzlement as to how to set them up.
Its FREE! 
2007-10-29
Simple Start was earlier priced at $99, and is now FREE (via Intuit download)! Given QuickBooks' famed ease-of-use, that puts it into the no-brainer category. Its targeted towards small businesses who are just getting started keeping their books using software. I can imagine every Accountant and CPA recommending this to their clients so they make tax time less burdensome.
Moreover, once you create your books using QuickBooks Simple Start, you can migrate with a single click into the more powerful QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise [that is what Intuit hopes you do long-term!].
This version also enables Excel imports/exports, and has the same list length as Pro.
This version doesn't load previous quickbook files 2007-10-19
This version doesn't load previous versions of QuickBooks so it is fairly useless for anyone using a previous version.
This version can also be downloaded free of charge at the Intuit web-site so I can't see any particular reason to buy it.
Product limitations weren't obvious to me in the product description on Amazon.
Wrong Editon for me, but still a great product!! 
2008-06-01
I've never questioned the quality of the QuickBooks product, only the price. So when I purchased this version I was looking for a deal. Because this version does not allow you to track time I had to upgrade to pro for an additional $180 dollars or so. Intuit made the process easy, allowed for me to download the software right then, and sent me the disks later.
QuickBooks Simple Start was not the option for me, but the product arrived in a timely fashion.
If you do need to track time, stick with Pro. If this product suits your needs then I have to say that the new interface is fabulous and the tutorial that comes with it is also infomative.
Simple Start really IS simple; Pro is better 
2008-05-12
I'm a freelance writer and only need Quickbooks (QB) to track expenses, income, and customize the invoice for the type of work I perform. I got an initial trial of QB Pro 2006 and worked on my records on that. I got Simple Start (SS) '08 and tried to import my files but SIMPLE START IS NOT RETROACTIVE. Then I had the pleasure of going to the Intuit site and found that they were offering SS for free for a limited time. (The offer is now over.) SS can be used by someone who is using it FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME (as in never touched QB before) to track expenses and income and to generate STANDARD invoices only. If you plan on customizing invoices, using credit cards and checks, and doing more advanced work, I'd encourage a buyer to choose Pro 2008. Since I wasn't satisfied with SS after opening it, I returned it to Intuit based on their 60-day money back guarantee. Within 4 weeks, I received a full refund for my purchase even though I bought the product from Amazon. I hope Intuit allows SS to be retroactive for 2009. I've since purchased Pro 2008 and while it's a great product, I paid more money for a program that has a ton of advanced features I may never use. But should business expand, Pro will more than pay for itself.
Great for freelancers 2008-05-02
I hate the thought of doing accounting, I barely understand it. My strength is on the creative side. Doing your invoices manually in a spreadsheet or wordprocessor or graphics program may seem like the easy way out, but it's actually foolish when you could use a product like QB Simple Start. Think about it, do those other methods keep track of when you billed someone and remind you if payment is late? Do they make it easy to see what you earned for tax purposes? Do they contain a database of your products and services and the corresponding prices? Do they store all your customer addresses so you can enter that info from a drop-down? And finally, do they tell you that so-and-so has owed you $600.00 for six months so you can do something about it?
Take it from a hater of accounting: you can handle this program. Amazon sells it cheap, and you can write off the cost. But for the price, you can't beat the freedom it gives you.
Too many rules and it ties up your computer. U will never be able to sell it to anyone 2008-02-26
This Intuit software is like all intuits. You are the sole owner. YOu have to register. You have to update. You have to allow intuit to monitor your business by the internet. You have to check in often. If you miss any one of these your computer will no longer be able to use any Quickbooks again. You will not be able to sell it to anyone. You will have to buy more software or another computer just to go back and use quickbooks once again. I lost $79 and many long hours on the phone to fix my case. All calls go to Pakistan. I was not allowed to talk to anyone in resistration or licenseing. This is not an American company.
Great for the micro small business. 2008-01-17
I am a CPA who has advised clients with small businesses to use this product to organize income and expenses. This is a very stripped down version of the Quickbooks line, but it is built to get those micro businesses out of the shoebox and rag-tag spreadsheets, and into a structured, logical format.
I would highly recommend Simple Start for the following:
--Small Schedule C, owner-operated businesses with no employees;
--Small services businesses, and;
--Those who may have an apartment building or two.
Michael J. Dunton
Aurora, IL
