On the glamour list, Intuit is far below companies such as Apple or Google, but the impact that QuickBooks is having on the US economy is enormous.

The technology to interface your QuickBooks file with your bank has been around for over twenty years. Most banks offer the service in various packages, but they stopped promoting it a long time ago. You need to be proactive in deciding whether you truly need it and which technology to use.

If you want your bookkeeper to get remote access to your QuickBooks file, tools like LogMeIn or GoToMyPC are often on the table, but be careful: they have some serious drawbacks.

If you are a Mac user, QuickBooks for Mac is a robust product and a rational solution, but you need to be aware of its limitations. It has fewer features than its Windows sibbling and makes collaboration with 3rd party providers more difficult.

Over the years, QuickBooks has matured and the rate of innovation in the product itself has been decreasing significantly. The real innovation is now in the breadth of third party services and applications that interface with QuickBooks.

QuickBooks files tend to be very large. If you need to send a copy of your QuickBooks file to someone such as your CPA, attaching the file to an email is typically a bad idea because the email service provider on the recipient’s side will often block such a large attachment. Even if it goes through, email has a nasty tendency of corrupting QuickBooks files. There are better approaches and they are free.

Five different ways to access QuickBooks through your iPad… and one technique that doesn’t work, even though you think it should.

Whether you are looking to backup just your QuickBooks file, all your documents or your whole computer, options are many, but online backup solutions need to be in your repertoire. Online backup services are now mainstream, proven and undeniably useful.

Between March 22, 2011 and March 25, many of Intuit’s online services, including QuickBooks Online, some payment services and payroll systems were down for pretty much 3 business days, paralyzing a large number of small businesses. What can we learn from this?