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My relationship with Intuit is definitely a weird one.  It’s been on and off for years now, and while I can’t deny I’m not entirely satisfied with the treatment they gave Mac users in general, I still find myself falling back to their products. At least Quicken, with all its known faults, is one product I like.

I know there are other options, I just don’t feel interested in trying them out. Even though I think Intuit continuously drops the ball for us with some buggy features, delayed updates of applications, and Windows-based solutions as a priority, I can’t avoid feeling excited when I hear some new feature is out for the Mac community. That’s exactly what I’m bringing you today—a new service from Intuit, deployed for iPhone users, which I don’t completely like, but I’m glad it exists. It seems this relationship will continue the same for a while longer.

First, let’s review the good news. If you happen to be a satisfied user of QuickBooks, aand you’re also an iPhone user, this could be great news for you and your business. Intuit has released a new online service for QuickBooks users which they claim to be perfect for business owners on the go.

This new service will allow you to view read-only versions of:

• Balance Sheet and Profit/Loss reports
• Bank account and credit card balances
• Vendor, customer, and employee lists
• Accounts receivable and payable
• QuickBooks Online contact information, which works with your iPhone to make calls, create emails, and even look up addresses using Google Maps

It’s nice to have some iPhone application integration, and it could be really useful for mobile executives to have updated information of their business; after all, we know how important information is in the decision-making process these days.

Even when I could look the other way with the fact that you can’t actually edit your information and just appreciate that they’ve put these nice features for me to use, it’s really impossible for me to do that. Not only because they haven’t implemented them yet, but because, according to Intuit, they’re not even planning on doing it.

If you want to add another detail to the release of the online service, for now, QuickBooks Online requires a Windows-based computer running Internet Explorer to work properly. If you own a Mac, you’ll have to go to Boot Camp or a virtualization solution to run it.

So, it comes again; that familiar feeling that Intuit takes a good initiative and turns it into something to bother me. Not because I use QuickBooks (which I don’t) and I have an iPhone (which I also don’t), but because they like to show us what it could be, what they can do, and then not do it.

QuickBooks Online costs $9.95 per month. If you’re already an online user, you won’t have to pay anything extra. If you’re not, but you’re interested in testing this service, Intuit allows you to try it for free for 30 days.

As it has happened before, I hope Mac users get the word out and start demanding better options for this service, which I’d personally like to see extended to Quicken sometime. At least that I can run on my Mac.

And finally, after writing this article, I went to the Intuit website and signed up to be a beta tester of their new Quicken Financial Life for Mac! I’m so excited to start feeling disappointed again. They’ve promised me that it won’t be the case this time, and I can’t help myself in believing them, as usual. You’ll know my thoughts about it very soon.

Product [QuickBooks Online for iPhone]

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