"The 5 user limit has been enforced since 2007" great....

[Kessler]

I just went from 2006 to 2009 premium on the advice of Sage. Got a good deal, I thought...

Well, after a week of employees playing with 2009 we made the final switch 2 days ago. Today we discovered the 'hard limit' of 5 simultaneous users. During payroll (it's a staffing company) we have 7 users maximum, usually 6.

I called sage and they said, "sorry, nothing we can do, someone should have told you, give us an extra $2700 and we'll upgrade you to quantum."

We could live with 6 simultaneous users.. but not 5, this is an absolute disaster. Is there ANY way to get around this? We can't even go back to 2006 now because we have 2 days of work on the new database. I am FURIOUS!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[rick Prindivill]

You have a complete and accurate understanding of the End User License Agreement (EULA).

[Kessler]

You have a complete and accurate understanding of the End User License Agreement (EULA).

I just feel like I really got screwed. I described our requirements and the sales guy said that we would get the extra features, pervasive would be faster than the old version etc. I guess he assumed we never had more than 5 simultaneous users, not realizing that 2006 wasn't enforcing that limit. Now I'm cornered into spending $3k that I don't have for features that I don't need.

[rick Prindivill]

Check with a Peachtree Certified Consultant and request a price quote for Quantum. You are almost assured of finding a better price than any that Peachtree Sales will offer you.

[Kessler]

Could you forward me an upgrade quote? They've offered to refund me for 2009 premium. (gee.. thanks)

[rick Prindivill]

I would ask that you send an e-mail off line as the rules of this forum is not to solicit or imply the solicitation of business.

[sherrynM]

try peachtreebuyers.com

[Kessler]

try peachtreebuyers.com

On my searching I did exactly that. I spoke with Sage about the 'deal' they were offering me ($3525) and they agreed to match peachtreebuyers.com

[peachtreejack]

I ran into the same issue with our number of users. About once a month we need 6 or 7 people in Peachtree simultaneously. I asked about buying another copy of Peachtree to get another license. I also asked about buying another 5 user package. No good. You can't add on to the user limit. I was just about ready to spring for Quantum when I checked the computer requirements. Turns out, we were going to have to upgrade three of our six computers as well. We decided to make due with 5 users. It's inconvenient and frustrating, but that's what I have come to expect from software companies. So check to make sure your computers will run Quantum before buying it.

[sherrynM]

I am quoting the following from a thread from the Peachtree Community forum,

"I am not sure about a separate company, but We purchased the 5-user Complete 2006 version and had 10-users concurrently. We ran like this for nearly 3 years. Near the end of the htird year we actually had 11 users. This was a big deal for Peachtree so they stopped it with 2007. So we skipped 2007 and bought Quantum. I now wish we could go back to 2006. Just too many bugs. Don't get me wrong Quantum is great but has some issues."

Regarding Complete 2006, is it possible?

Appreciate if rick could reply.

[rick Prindivill]

Peachtree 2006 End User License Agreement (EULA) clearly stated that the multiuser license was limited to 5 concurrent users. This licensing agreement was enforced only to the extent that most hardware / software configurations would cause multi-user error messages when you exceeded 5 users. Messages such as "Journal is open for update by another". Others experienced problems with Invoice Numbering being duplicated if two users attempted to print Invoices at the same time. Peachtree 2006 used a Btreive database engine which provided database locking from the workstation and as such was simply too slow to allow higher volume of concurrent users under stress conditions. Peachtree 2007 and newer has used Pervasive's PSQL database engine which provides database locking on the Host or Server, thereby reducing the chances of these multi-user problems.

Along with the change in database engines, came the abilty to limit the number of concurrent users and additionally the number of Named Users. There is no doubt that Peachtree opted for the stricter licensing enforcement to improve performance and sales revenue.

On the subject of bugs in 2009, the Peachtree program & the newer Pervasive Database engine are both less tolerant of the Windows / Network environment in which it must work than was the less complicated Peachtree 2006 & Btreive database engine combination. Today, we all are using Anti-Virus Software and Firewalls (most users did not know what a Firewall was much less used third party programs) where three and four years ago, we were not having to deal with the confilicts that those programs bring to the table. It is agreed that the Pervasive Software database engine has been the source of some Peachtree problems but this change has also allowed for the substantially larger databases that older Peachtree users have created over the years, without experiencing the data corruption problems that we experienced using the older Btreive database engine.

In summary, Peachtree 2009 is not bug ridden as suggested, any more than virtually any other high volume program including Word, Excel, QB etc. The few bugs that remain as open issues are limited to a small spectrum of users and have been docummented. As such, Peachtree is addressing these issues.

[CATCHCLAW]

Before you upgrade to quantum, look at your computers and try running the free demo from the cd. I tried to run quantum on a laptop that met all of the requirements except a slightly slower processor and it kept locking up.

Glad I read this thread! I just assumed that if I ever needed more than 5 licenses I could purchase an additional one.

Don't they have a free money back guarantee for 30 days?

[rick Prindivill]

Peachtree does provide a money back agreement, but you must keep in mind that once your data has been converted to the likes of Quantum you can not migrate it back to a lessor or older version. You would have to restore the data backup created before the upgrade and then to rekey all of your data.

You could install the newer version in parallel to the original and then restore a current data backup made from the original program, indicating that you want to restore the data as a new company, including the restoring of any custom forms. Then you could run the two programs individually before making a final decision.