Others say...

"Excruciatingly Slow! A downgrade from previous versions."
I have been a Peachtree customer for over 17 years. I had not upgraded for a few years and felt this would be the time to do so. Some of the new features looked quite attractive. The first thing I noticed after insalling the multi-user version on my network is that they had changed the datbase from the Novell btrieve format to Pervasive SQL. I thought this would be good as I have usually noticed SQL databases run faster. Boy was I mistaken. The program ran so slow it was unusable. Different windows might take 30 seconds to pop up and another screen would take 20 seconds to save. The confusing thing was the behavior was not consistent it would run fast for a few transactions then revert to running slow. Peachtree technical support told me my server was not fast enough to handle the new version even though all my other software programs ran fine on the network. I should have been suspicious because Peachtree ran this slow even when I was the only one using the network. Nevertheless, I bought a new $3,600 Server and much to my dismay Peachtree ran just as slow. Then Peachtree Technical support claimed it was my network switch so I bought a newer one for $650. No improvement. I could see what was coming next. They claimed it was my workstations. I was about to upgrade the 3 bookkeeping computers anyway so I spent $1,950 each to buy very fast systems for the 3 of them. Still no change. I have searched around the Internet and found that I am not the only one to have these problems. It seems that the newest versions of Peachtree with the Pervasive SQL database where only designed to be run in Single user mode and not on a network. They built the network functions on later. I am very upset with Peachtree technical support for lying to me. If they would have told me the truth that there where some problems with the network abilities in the new version of Peachtree and that they were working on them, I would have saved thousands of dollars in new hardware that they claimed I needed. The last thing they told me was that I just needed to upgrade to Peachtree Quantum Accounting because it ran much faster. That would cost me thousands more. They must be kidding. I will never trust them again. My old version ran fine but they tell me there is now way to downgrade my data files. I am looking around for another brand of software now. If it can painlessly convert my Peachtree data I will switch.

"So Much promise, so frustrating"
I've used Peachtree and Quickbooks between different jobs going back 17 years and always loved Peachtree software. It was always great value for the price.

The Good: Added some very useful reporting parameters, most reports can be by any date instead of by just periods, you can easily customize your reports in any and all manners, most of the stuff you always needed an ad-on to do you can now do within Peachtree. All the functionality and changes made were well thought out and very useful(Maintaining Vendors and customers is better laid out etc...). It IS Vista compatible, the first version that is fully Vista Compatible.

The Bad: It runs so slow you want to scream. It is mind boggling how they could screw this up. The previous versions run relatively speedy on common workstations. I have a new computer that was bought in March and was a $3000 computer: fast in all aspects and it still runs slow. You call up a vendor or save one and you get the little "I'm busy" circle for a few seconds. They sell a much more expensive version with a different style database that is suppose to run extra fast, for large files especially, I'm not sure if this is there way of getting people to spend a couple thousand dollars on that or what BUT even file size does not matter. I have companies with 2-3MB and companies with large data files and the ALL of them run slow.

Recomendation: Unless you have to have fill Vista compatibility stay with 2007 and hope with 2009 they fix the speed issue because the functionality is the best yet and the program can do more for the money than any software out there. They really dropped the ball on what should have been a great upgrade.