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QuickBooks Desktop Premier

QuickBooks Desktop Premier

Overview

What is QuickBooks Desktop Premier?

QuickBooks Desktop Premier is an installed version of QuickBooks for general business, contractors, manufacturing and warehouse accounting, as well as nonprofits, professional services, and retail.

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Recent Reviews

Appalling Fee for Basic Support.

3 out of 10
December 20, 2022
I use QB Desktop Pro 2019. I have been using QB for 20+ years. I suddenly got a warning that my file was corrupted. This happened once …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 44 features
  • Bank reconciliation (57)
    8.0
    80%
  • Standard reports (56)
    7.8
    78%
  • Accounts receivable (59)
    7.0
    70%
  • Accounts payable (58)
    7.0
    70%
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is QuickBooks Desktop Premier?

QuickBooks Desktop Premier is an installed version of QuickBooks for general business, contractors, manufacturing and warehouse accounting, as well as nonprofits, professional services, and retail.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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4 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is QuickBooks Online?

QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.

What is Acumatica?

Acumatica delivers a set of cloud-based business software applications with dashboards, reporting tools, integrated document management, centralized security, and customization tools.

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Features

Payroll Management

Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.

8.9
Avg 7.5

Customization

This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.

1.3
Avg 7.1

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

7.4
Avg 8.0

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

6.8
Avg 7.6

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

Financial management solution, including capabilities for general ledger and configurable accounting

7.1
Avg 7.4

Inventory Management

The ability to track and manage the flow of goods or materials into and out of an inventory.

2.9
Avg 7.0

Order Management

The ability to process orders, and track them from quote to cash.

7
Avg 7.4
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Product Details

What is QuickBooks Desktop Premier?

Quickbooks Desktop Premier is the on-premise version of Quickbooks designed for various industries. It features core accounting capabilities, including general ledger, double-bookkeeping, and reporting. It also includes invoice status tracking, contractor management, and time and inventory tracking. Premier in particular is designed to enable industry-specific tasks for general contractors and organizations in manufacturing and wholesale, nonprofits, service, and retail sectors, as well as servicing general business needs.

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Video

QuickBooks Desktop Pro/Premier Plus

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Competitors

QuickBooks Desktop Premier Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

QuickBooks Desktop Premier is an installed version of QuickBooks for general business, contractors, manufacturing and warehouse accounting, as well as nonprofits, professional services, and retail.

Priority AccountEdge and MIP Fund Accounting are common alternatives for QuickBooks Desktop Premier.

Reviewers rate Benefit plan administration and Role-based user permissions and Pricing highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of QuickBooks Desktop Premier are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(436)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 63)
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John Ferrari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use QuickBooks as a writeup software for our business tax practice as well as for our business management practice.
  • Easy to use
  • Ability to Import Bank and Vendor Information
  • Run Payroll Easily
  • Speed of software opening
  • Pricing Structure/Discounts for accountants should be increased as we refer clients
QuickBooks is pretty well suited for most business, if you add the modules like construction it is very adaptable.
Andrew Newman CPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use it throughout the organization for time keeping billing and invoicing. We sync it with payroll (QuickBooks Mananged Payroll) and with Bill. com which is our portal for payment and client receipts and invoicing. All employees have different levels of access and keep track of their time in the program. We use the program in a shared file server environment.
  • Integrates well with the other software I use
  • Easy to navigate
  • Easy to set up
  • Good support network
  • Reporting is old and inflexible
  • Levels of security are not very flexible
  • Multiuser is cumbersome
What are your needs? How will you be using the program? What is you business? What will your goal be for an accounting software? What kind of computer equipment and network do you have?
December 24, 2015

QuickBooks Premier

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I work for a CPA firm. We use QuickBooks for some of our clients. The program is either used in conjunction with the clients already established QuickBooks data or as a software to create financial statements for clients who do not utilize financial statement software. It is used firm wide.
  • For the accountants version the accountants copy option is great to make changes to a clients file and export the changes for them to upload
  • It has many options for reports
  • It has a bank statement reconciliation feature
  • For some of our clients there seems to be too many steps when recording a cash payment from a customer
  • Small clients do not typically use the accounts payable steps correctly resulting in negative accounts payable balances
  • When trying to correct an error it is sometimes difficult to find the source of the error and fix it
It is well suited for someone who has a basic understanding of accounting.
December 23, 2015

Accountant

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
QuickBooks is used across my organization and with my clients for their business financial software. It's a bit cost prohibitive but still competitive compared to other products, such as Sage 50.
  • Ease of use
  • Easy reports
  • Home page provides a roadmap for users
  • Widely available
  • Cost is a bit high
  • Inventory value has a tendency to change even after a closing date is entered
  • Accountant version has some difficulty with applying customer credits and zeroing out balances (the apply credits)
QuickBooks Premier is most useful for companies that have a lot of items and/or need a high number of concurrent users.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

We use QuickBooks for most of our offsite client accounting. When a client wants to process in house, we recommend the QuickBooks Premier program. In house, we use QuickBooks Premier for our own company data. Monthly accounting in house for clients are done on Intuit EasyAcct for multiple general ledger and payroll processing.

The ease of use and understanding by all firm personnel make QuickBooks a preferred choice for clients.

  • Ease of use and understanding. Drop down tabs for various functions. Reports tab, Employee tab for payroll processing, Banking tab for check writing or register, etc.
  • Ability to make changes on the go without much difficulty.
  • Can go back indefinitely for comparison reports, etc.
  • Check voiding from previous periods. Should be able to tell the system what period to void the check in. This is a function available in Peachtree.
  • When making changes to prior periods, a warning should popup to ask Are you sure? This could avoid random changes made by mistake.
  • More explanation to the user as to the cash vs accrual function of the program.
The use of the information and the cost of the program are the main factors for a small business client. I believe that QuickBooks can be used by a non-accounting person with basic understanding of financial statements and a check register. That is what makes it preferred by me for clients.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Used as accounting software to generate account receivable, account payable reports, P&Ls, and documents needed to prepare tax returns. We use it to analyze the business on a monthly basis. Aids with budgeting and planning for the future. Provides and environment whereby we can contact clients and follow up on receivables, etc.
  • It's intuitive if you have an accounting background.
  • The help section typically offers reliable information to answer questions
  • I like the email functionality with sending invoices directly to clients.
  • Adjusting entries
  • Self created communications for emailing clients
  • Journal entry suggestions
I'm unsure how it would work for different types of businesses but for my purposes, it works.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's just being used by the Accounting/Finance Department right now. We have about ten departments, so we make use of their "classes" and memorized transactions. Thinking about moving away from QuickBooks.....weak in budgeting area.
  • The drill down features
  • The Audit trail
  • Automatic close with journal entry
  • Need more robust report writer
  1. What are your budgeting requirements? Do you need to have high flexibility in developing various types of budgets and budget reports? Would you like to have the availability of "what-if" scenario planning?
  2. Do you require high flexibility in developing financial reports? Do you need a powerful report writer?
Kimberly Galland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
QuickBooks Premier is used to manage accounting for multiple companies; provide invoicing, prepare financials and annual accounting for tax returns. All business clients are using QuickBooks Pro or Premier. 10% use QuickBooks Online. It tracks income and expenses and allows clients to process payroll checks and returns. It is user friendly, offers easy file transfer, and many helpful adjustment features for accountants to use for review.
  • Allows accountant's copy or portable file transfer so the accountant can work in the file while the client continues to use it. Files can easily be shared through secure Intuit server, email, or secure file transfer such as Dropbox.
  • Offers relatively easy payroll calculations within the software that clients can manage on their own.
  • Using bank feeds and downloads speeds up the monthly accounting process or entering large amounts of data at once.
  • Inventory feature is very poor and not designed for novice users.
  • Accountants' have the ability to correct multiple transactions relatively easily but regular users do not.
  • It allows inexperienced users to make adjustments or post to accounts that are in error. The accountant must spend time correcting the mistakes at the client's expense.

Do you need the ability to invoice clients or track billable charges? You can easily create invoices and email or allow online payments.

Do you need to track inventory? There are other software that may track detail inventory better.

Do you need to process payroll for employees? Offers cost effective and user friendly options

How many users need accesss to the software?

August 19, 2015

QuickBooks 101

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use QuickBooks for general accounting for the partnership. We also use it for client monthly accounting and payroll.
  • Easy to use.
  • Financial statements are easy to prepare and read.
  • Bank account reconciliation's are more efficient.
  • Need to have controls in place so that users can't make changes in prior months or years once a monthly closeout is performed.
QuickBooks Premier is good for companies with simple accounting processes.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Managed all financial transactions, except payroll, but including inventory, for a small manufacturer with multiple, global distribution channels. We used QuickBooks Premier Manufacturing edition from 2007 through November 2013, before upgrading to the Enterprise edition.
  • Although there are reporting limitations, producing basic reports from QuickBooks is very simple and fast.
  • Fairly easy to use and to learn for entering basic transactions.
  • Integrates with many software offerings (CRM, Bill.com, etc.).
  • File stability suffers with increased size and complexity of data file. Best for very small companies with limited inventory.
  • Add-ons (such as payroll or credit card processing) would be convenient, but are over-priced compared to outside offerings.
  • Limitation: Works well only as an accounting system. Does not work well as a CRM, ERP, asset manager, supply chain manager, etc.
QuickBooks Premier Manufacturing Edition is suited to a small company with a few, non-complex products. It is not appropriate for a manufacturer with BOMS containing more than 100 items or multi-nested assemblies. It is probably not the best choice for a company with more than 500 transactions per month.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The vast majority of our small business clients use QuickBooks. We helped clients set up QuickBooks and provided ongoing support. We used it in our CPA firm for our own bookkeeping as well as to facilitate bookkeeping for in house clients. We also used it to run payroll for a number of clients.
  • It's user friendly; can train non-accountants to use rather easily.
  • Good reporting built-in. Especially useful once there are multiple years for comparative analysis.
  • The accountant's copy feature is very useful so that the outside accountant can be making adjustments to be merged [record] later while the client still has full use of the program.
  • The file size gets large (and therefore slower to load and refresh) rather quickly. There are ways to archive old transactions, but then you don't have the history at your fingertips.
  • It has limited use for larger clients who want someone to review and approve transactions and another employee to actually post.
  • Some fields are not available for customizing reports. For example, the memo line of check coding is not available on all reports.
How many users need to access the file simultaneously? If more than a handful, then you need to consider QuickBooks Enterprise as well. How concerned are you over security and internal control processes?
Cristine Delos Santos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This software is used by the entire organization and it helps us a lot in the overall bookkeeping process for our clients. It makes financial generation easy and quick which make work more efficient.
  • Remote Access Capability- This feature of QB is essential for us since we target the markets of Hawaii and Australia and our Operations Team is in the Philippines.
  • Easier reconciliation of bank type accounts - The interface provides us, bookkeepers, with a list of transactions which we can modify (if recorded wrong) on the spot. It also makes it easier to track unrecorded bank transactions for the given period.
  • Import of IIF and Excel files - It makes recording numerous transactions faster and more accurate than recording each entry one at a time. It improves our effectiveness and efficiency as bookkeepers.
  • Recognition of duplicate vendor and customer name.
Quickbooks is well suited for small business owners like our clients from Hawaii. The balance sheet, profit & loss and other reports we submit are more understandable and preferred by end-users. I guess Quickbooks is less appropriate for large businesses with highly complex accounting procedures because this requires a more sophisticated accounting system to achieve desired results.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As an accounting firm, we use QuickBooks Premier for our own in-house accounting, and for our clients' accounting and payroll.
  • QuickBooks Premier is easy to use, yet flexible and powerful enough to handle some complicated accounting scenarios.
  • QuickBooks Premier offers a wide array of canned reports. Custom reports can be easily created.
  • QuickBooks Premier with Enhanced Payroll gives us the tools to handle complex payrolls with multiple variables.
  • Support for older versions of QuickBooks ends after three years, then users must purchase the newest version at full price. Renewals should be deeply discounted for existing users.
  • I would like to see better in-product inventory tracking, so we can choose LIFO or FIFO rather than the ambiguous "average cost" method.
  • I would like to be able to assign payroll taxes to jobs for better job costing.
QuickBooks Premier is not well suited to manufacturing industries, as it cannot handle the complicated inventory requirements of raw materials, work in process, and finished goods. Retailers and Wholesalers can use QuickBooks Premier as long as they have an add-on inventory tracking program or Point of Sale system that integrates with QuickBooks. Likewise, restaurants would need specialized restaurant software that integrates with QuickBooks Premier. Non-profits can use QuickBooks Premier non-profit edition, but if they use fund accounting, it will require some complicated work-arounds. QuickBooks Premier is well-suited to most construction trades, personal and professional services providers, small retailers, and rental property owners.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use it for our internal bookkeeping and for bookkeeping for an exempt organization.
  • I personally don't use QuickBooks daily, because we don't have a lot of daily transactions to record. The ease of use is one strengths that I would rate as the highest.
  • The ability to customize, prepare and track invoices is very useful.
  • The ability to print multiple type of reports and exporting them is very easy to do.
  • We currently don't link QuickBooks to our tax software (Intuit Tax Online), because we haven't figured how or whether it is possible. This is one feature that I would be interested in exploring.
  • The ability to integrate timesheet and billing.
  • The ability to mark items as missing and track it so we can come back to it after we have the data.
QuickBooks is simple to use for most small businesses, making it a good start for most startup businesses.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
QuickBooks Premier is our most recomended product to our clients. It can handle just about anything you need to do for a small business except advanced inventory and combined reports. The look and performance is amoung the best in the industry, which our clients love, along with the affordability of it.
  • Financial reports are easy to run and detailed enough to make business decisions for your company. The ability to memorize frequently run reports with customization is just an added bonus.
  • Include supporting documents as attachments to transactions to easily reference details
  • For companies with mulitple employees accessing QuickBooks, the customer user roles and audit trail are a great feature to be able to see and know who is doing what within your QuickBooks file.
  • I would like the ability to rearrange the chart of accounts or edit items in multi-user mode. Having to switch to single user mode to make a simple edit disrupts work flow.
  • The sync tool speed could be improved.
  • The ability to fix a previous reconciliation without undo-ing all reconciliations after it.
QuickBooks premier would not be recommended if a client needs advanced inventory tracking, has multiple locations or has multiple business units that would need combined reporting. Otherwise Quickbooks Premier is an ideal fit for most companies.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
All of our staff use QuickBooks to assist our clients with their bookkeeping needs. Several of our clients are working in a hosted environment which allows us 24/7 access of their accounting data. The hosted environment allows us to assist our clients on a daily basis. We also utilize Bill.com to create a virtual accounting department for our clients.
  • The program is easy to learn and use. We can train our clients' personnel how to use the program with out difficulty.
  • It is easy for clients to generate bills and manage accounts receivable.
  • It is easy to manage accounts payable and allows clients to pay their bills electronically.
  • Transactions can be imported electronically for credit card and banking transactions.
  • It is easy to reconcile bank and credit card accounts.
  • We can import data generated by QuickBooks into our tax and accounting software.
  • Reporting - it would be nice to have an option to remove subaccounts when certain reports are generated.
  • The program could be more flexible in the reporting area. For instance, accumulated depreciation is sometimes presented before the fixed asset accounts on the balance sheet. It would be nice if rows and columns could be manipulated more to get a better looking report.
QuickBooks is not the best solution for inventory.
May 06, 2015

QuickBooks review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We prepare financial statements for clients on it, and also get information from clients who keep their own QuickBooks records for us to use in preparing their tax returns.
  • User friendly - do not need much training to be able to use it
  • Reports are very flexible
  • Reports can be exported into Excel
  • Would like to see the password stored on your computer once you've opened the file. Because we work with so many different clients there are many passwords.
It's great for companies that need both accrual and cash basis statements as you can produce both within the program with the proper setup. It also works very well for companies that need their income statements allocated between various departments, properties, etc. If a client's tax accountant has QuickBooks available, it is very good to be able to provide the QuickBooks file to the accountants so they may easily access the information and pull what they need rather than having to ask the client for more information.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
QuickBooks Premier is being used general corporate bookkeeping.
  • Bank account reconciliations can be automated
  • Accounts payable is simplified
  • Accounts receivable & invoicing is easy
  • Reports
  • Chart of accounts
  • Foreign exchange
QuickBooks Premier is suitable for small entrepreneurial businesses. It's not as popular for more complex, sophisticated organizations.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a small nonprofit we use QuickBooks to manage our bookkeeping and financial reporting, grant administration and donation collection. It also allows us to track functional expense allocations through the use of classes and grant expenditures through customer jobs.
  • Customer / job invoicing and tracking is simple and straightforward. Easy to manage accounts/grants receivable through the program.
  • Customizable templates to add our logo, identifying information and messages to invoices and receipts allow us to produce more professional, non-cookie-cutter statements.
  • Payroll modules integrate seemlessly with reporting structure, which avoids having to make entries separate from payroll reporting.
  • QuickBooks reporting templates need some work to allow more customization, especially with the heading labels, subtotal breaks and terminology for nonprofit statements to match industry standards.
  • QuickBooks premier industry versions do not have the same journal entry view as the Accountant's version, which shows a list of previous entries at the bottom half of the screen.
QuickBooks Premier is well suited for small nonprofits who need more than just straight bookkeeping.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
QuickBooks is being used for bookkeeping and payroll for my business as well as clients' businesses.
  • Easy to use, but also easy for clients to mess up.
  • Prints financial statements with ease.
  • Easy setup.
  • Continuously requires the purchase of updated versions to run payroll. Instead of updating entire software package, a payroll update should be available.
QuickBooks Premier is not a good software for inventory tracking.
May 05, 2015

President

Andrea Campbell, CPA,CITP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use QuickBooks to run most aspects of my business, billing, payroll, general ledger. It lets me run my business quickly and efficiently from one platform. As a sole practitioner, I don't have a lot of time to waste on the back office. I appreciate the efficiency I get from QuickBooks.
  • Invoicing. Items can be pre-loaded with text to make creating an invoice fast and efficient.
  • Memorized Transactions. All types of transactions can be recorded repeatedly by QuickBooks with little effort on my part. This also lets me avoid missing monthly bills or retainer invoices.
  • Writing checks is one of the best tasks. If you can write a physical check, you can write a check in QuickBooks. The auto fill and auto recall make this task exceptionally easy and fast.
  • Payroll needs to be streamlined. There are about 5 steps to creating a payroll check, 2 (the confirmations to create and print the checks) are redundant.
  • Payroll tax payment corrections are too complicated. Adjusting the balances for discounts, etc. are cumbersome.
  • Using the find for an amount could be better. There is no default, you have to choose less than, greater than or equal. The default should be equal. The others should be an option.
If the business will have inventory or costing, I usually use caution in recommending QuickBooks. While it will perform the tasks for inventory and costing, the setup is critical to getting the information you need correctly. Once started, it is difficult to make corrections since changes are applied retroactively to all transactions.
May 01, 2015

Loving Quickbooks

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use QuickBooks for 90% of our clients. It is user friendly, simple to operate, and has lots of bells and whistles that can be very useful if necessary. Having the vast majority of our clients on the same system makes training of staff and clients a simpler process.
  • QuickBooks handles basic business transactions with ease
  • Customizable reports
  • Easy to review and correct errors
  • Would like the ability to add custom columns to reports
  • Wish you could add a memorized report group in accountant's copy
  • Wish there were less restrictions in multi-user mode
QuickBooks is not strong in situations that require splitting of expenses among cost centers. Splits have to be maintained at the transaction level manually. Balance sheet by class is also a bit weak.
April 30, 2015

QuickBooks Rundown

Michael Klein, CPA, CMA, EA, CGMA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
QuickBooks is used by our organization to account for all general and program activities.
  • User friendly
  • Easy-to-understand reporting
  • Simple to use
  • Easy to train
  • Audit trail
  • Budget management reports
  • Greater security on entries
  • More advanced reporting including rolling forecasts
Ask about:

  • Complexity of organization
  • Volume of transactions
  • Reporting needs
April 30, 2015

Owner

Tony May | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use the software for the business and also host several clients using Cloud9. It addresses the client's need for an easy solution to manage the books and records and it allows us to assist the client with various issues. It creates a solution that allows us to provide additional services, such as payroll, bill pay or complete back office functions. Having complete access to the client's books and records facilitates the tax preparation and tax planning processes.
  • QuickBooks Premier is the preferred accounting solution to the majority of small businesses. Most small businesses are familiar with the product and the software is relatively simple to use.
  • The cost of QuickBooks is very attractive to the clients, as well as the various levels of software that the client can choose from. The software also offers programs that are able to handle increased and more complex transactions.
  • There are many "bolt on" products that increase the functionality of the software.
  • They need better methods of locking down the data. The ease of use creates many areas that the data can be compromised.
Generally, QuickBooks has a solution that suits most small business clients coupled with the use of "bolt on" programs. There may be industry specific programs that clients prefer.
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