Intuit makes some pretty cool products for small business owners. As someone who has been there, bookkeeping is a nightmare by itself. Quickbooks is the kind of product that helps make that job a lot easier. It’s something that I’d think any small business would want to make use of, especially since the company also offers services like credit card processing.

I wouldn’t recommend it for that if you’re in the firearm industry in any way, shape, or form, though– not according to what was recently reported over at The Truth About Guns.

 A couple of months ago Gunsite decided to make a change to a new credit card processor, QuickBooks. It seemed to be a wise business choice at the time and may have been, had Intuit not chosen to go the way they did.

About ten days ago the Gunsite bookkeeper found herself on the receiving end of a phonecall from QuickBooks. The company  felt there was “trouble” because they had realized Gunsite sold knives and guns on their website. This, the QuickBooks rep said, meant sales weren’t face-to-face and “kids could buy them.”

Gunsite took the time to patiently, politely educate the rep on how FFLs work and explain the laws and processes of firearm sales. Once the process and regulations were laid out, the rep backpedaled, saying now that they understood the procedure, it was alright after all and business could continue.

Then, a week ago – May 11^th, 2018 – Gunsite got another phone call from QuickBooks. This time it didn’t go as well. The software company informed Gunsite that they were immediately ceasing all business with them. Why? Because they sell and promote firearms.

At first blush this was frustrating news, but Gunsite figured it could be handled. Then the other shoe dropped: in addition to cutting business ties with Gunsite, QuickBooks/Intuit refused to release the money from credit card charges currently in process from sales that had already made.

Folks, this is tens of thousands of dollars worth of training and merchandise that was charged and processed in good faith. Gunsite did nothing wrong, but Intuit is reversing these charges, meaning they’re basically giving everyone a refund out of someone else’s pocket. The reason? Because it finds that company’s business icky.

The way Kat at TTAG phrased it was kind of perfect.  She wrote, “That means revenue for everything from pens to five-day level 250 pistol courses had just became door prizes, provided free to people who had the benefit of the training and took home products, all courtesy of the Intuit’s largesse.”

Pretty much my thoughts.

Now, Gunsite is trying to process this stuff through another company, so I hope they can recover most, if not all, of the money, but I also hope they take Intuit to court over these shenanigans. This isn’t right on any level. At all.

More than that, though, this is the kick of thing that needs to be punished. Intuit needs to be fought on this stuff each and every time it tries this if at all possible. It needs to be forced to figure this into its decision-making matrix before it pulls this with other companies.

The irony? If it wants people to be safer with guns, places like Gunsite are the kind of places it should support. It should want people to go there, train there, learn there, then bring it home to share that knowledge with their fellow gun owners. The reason is that Gunsite is known for being a very safe training academy, something everyone should want to support.

But no. They sell guns, so they must be punished, apparently.

Let that be a lesson to anyone else who has a gun-related business. Now you know who not to do business with.