QuickBooks 2010 – New “App Center”

So what is this Intuit Workplace App Center?

Well the Intuit Workplace App Center is where you can buy or try for free, 3rd party software that lives on the web rather than on your computer. Otherwise known as “hosted” or SaaS (Software as a Service) programs that you don’t own, but rather pay a monthly fee to use this software and all the data is stored on servers owned by Intuit.

Anything that you can currently try for free, will most likely incur a monthly fee for continued use at some point and unless you are connected to the internet you cannot access anything that you have stored in them.

The App Center is accessed via the Icon Bar at the top of QuickBooks

When you click on the App Center icon, a browser window opens directly within QuickBooks that takes you to the home page of the Intuit Workplace App Center where you can browse through about 25 different programs in 4 categories:

• Apps that help you run your business
• Apps that help you to manage your work
• Apps that help you to grow and manage your customers
• Apps that help you to reduce your costs

For those of you who like to own your own software and have that data live on your computers, the Intuit Marketplace still exists with hundreds of beefy applications that really extend the power of QuickBooks – visit https://marketplace.intuit.com to see a complete listing of 3rd party programs that perform a wide range of functions that you cannot obtain directly from within QuickBooks.

Of course, once you arrive at the Marketplace you’ll see the same apps featured there as on the App Center – not to worry, there really are other programs available – use the “Search” feature in the upper right corner and type in some key words.

In my opinion it’s a real shame that Intuit seems to have forgotten their long-time developers (many who have been around since 2002).