On February 23, 2023, Intuit made an announcement on their QuickBooks blog that they will be phasing out their QuickBooks Desktop Point of Sale. The company will stop selling their POS software effective immediately and by October 3rd of this year Intuit will no longer offer updates, support, or payment and gift card services. In addition, QuickBooks POS discontinued integration with eCommerce management platform Webgility as well.
What is QuickBooks POS?
QuickBooks Desktop has been a highly popular tool for businesses since the early 1980s. QuickBooks Desktop Point of Sale was one of the leading on-site POS solutions prior to the rise of cloud-based solutions. It was designed especially for brick-and-mortar retailers who use QuickBooks Desktop for their accounting services. This QuickBooks software mini-suite offered users a native integration with an industry leading accounting platform.
Intuit released the last QuickBooks Desktop POS update, Version 19, in 2020. However, they cited software maintenance and a difficulty in developing new features as being prohibitively complicated and costly to move forward. In fact, Intuit is discontinuing service for the entirety of their locally-installed “Desktop” service, a suite which includes applications for accounting, accepting payments, sending invoices, tracking taxes, connecting to apps, and paying bills.
What’s Next For Their POS Users?
With QuickBooks POS discontinued, Intuit support is encouraging and instructing customers to take steps to migrate towards QuickBooks Online service. This move comes as part of a much larger industry shift away from legacy on-site point of sale and into an entirely cloud-based software solution.
Technically, it’s still possible to use the Desktop POS as a point of sale interface attached to a separate merchant services account, but this is inadvisable. There will no longer be security patches, leaving too much risk for retail companies to be hacked or attacked. Also, working with any integrations will be much more difficult without fully functioning updates and optimization. And with no customer support, troubleshooting issues will be nearly impossible.
Luckily, modern, cloud-based point of sale systems integrate with QuickBooks current, accounting and inventory management software. These systems cost much less money up front, and hold all data in encrypted, off-site storage.
In addition, some POS providers allow retailers to shop around for the best processing rates available, as opposed to QuickBooks POS which locked in their own processing fees. Unsurprisingly, many of the bigger POS providers are pushing to acquire the current QuickBooks Desktop POS users, while simultaneously optimizing integration with Intuit’s cloud-based accounting programs.
QuickBooks POS Discontinued – Other POS Solutions?
If you’re a current QuickBooks POS user and curious about KORONA POS as an alternative, click below to schedule a product demo. KORONA POS fully integrates with QuickBooks Online, making the transition that much more seamless.
