I have been a user of LinkBooks for a number of years and cannot use QuickBooks without it. I have worked with other products that imported Quickbooks files. I have created IIF files for import to QuickBooks and tried to work with their IIf output files. The only way to go is with LinkBooks.
I have not found it to be full of bugs. I believe that all programs will always have an untested application that cannot be anticipated. There have been a few instances when I would see an error message, but when brought to their attention, they have provided me with a simple replacement DLL file, in many cases within the same day. Linkbooks has never hung or not performed. Again, if there was a message, it was always trapped and presented with an informative error message. And this is not a lot of error messages, perhaps 6 in 3 years, usually as a result of a QuickBooks upgrade.
This message is being added to the forum because of the excellent customer support that I received this past weekend. Even though we are separated by a big pond, I was still getting support on Friday night and Saturday EDT which translates to 5 huors later in England. They were unable to duplicate my problem with Access and QuickBooks Enterprise 2003 because of the extremely large number of QuickBooks records (over 14000 customer records exceeded Intuit's normal QuickBooks record limit) and other complexities in my large Access database. We worked hand in hand to transfer files, SQL statements, etc. When I was finally able to solve transmission problems at my end, and provided them with exact duplicates of my files, they duplicated the problem, identified the cause, and sent me a new DLL within 12 hours of my transmission. Again, this happened on a weekend, like all aother emergencies that start on Friday afternoons.
This support has been typical of their past support. Using LinkBooks with Access has allowed me to do all the things in Access that QuckBpoks cannot do. We have scores of exception reports identifying errors that QuickBooks allows to occur, like Jobs with Customers. About duplicate Job Nubmers assigned to different Customers. Although it may be read only at this time, it is no big deal to use an Access query to create an Access table that can be written to. A periodic refresh can keep the Access table very current with the QuickBooks file.
With Linkbooks, I use Symantec Q&A database program as the master database for Customers and Jobs. All records are added and maintained in Q&A. Periodically they are exported to and imported by Access which has the LinkBook ODBC connection to Quickbooks. Access is used to create IIF files that are imported by Quickbooks. The reverse process is used for Vendors. All vendor records are added and maintained in QuickBooks. Using Linkbooks ODBC connection a vendor file is exported to and imported by Q&A. All of these import/export routines are automated through Access with programs that were developed by me. These routines run at night unattended on a schedule or can be run on demand during the day if more timely information is needed. About twenty audit exception reports are run every night out Access using the Linkbooks ODBC connection.
I highly recommend LinkBooks if you want to use Access as an effective interface. At this point I have only used the read-only version, and am anxious for the release of the Read-Write version.
