Should I Use Quickbooks?

[GWestphal]

I started a small freelance consulting company and currently I just use excel to track expenses and make invoices in word.

I saw quickbooks is on sale today for 40% off. Will quickbooks make my life easier or is it horrible bloatware made by the devil? What are your opinions on accounting and accounting software for small businesses?

 

[Clinkster]

It's sufficient for small businesses. It's not incredibly robust, but I've managed to make things work the way I want through some tinkering.

I don't know how it measures up against equivalent software though, QB is the only one I've worked with of its kind.

 

[highland145]

I guess small depends on how small and do you want to pay QB for updates? How many I9s/W-2s?

I'm cheap. Running the daycare with 1 excel for income/expenses using a macro to print checks. 1 excel for payroll, calculating gross, net, fica...I do have to log into the fed/state to pay the tax monthly but it's 10 min. The daycare does have a separate program to track kids, allergies, immunizations, personal info...

And I'm too lazy to learn a new software unless I have to.

 

[dougp]

There is a free version of quickbooks for small businesses ...

 

[boomerang]

Stay with the way you're doing it. When you grow big enough to need QB you will know. At that time you can decide if you want to do your bookkeeping yourself or farm it out to a CPA.

When I had my business, I had no choice but to "farm out" QB tasks to my bride as I could not put in 10 to 14 hour days and do QB too. Big mistake. She is not a "detail person" and while it was not a mess (per our CPA) I never explained to him what I had to go through to get a file that I was not embarrassed to send to him. With no accounting background whatsoever, I found QB to be pretty much overwhelming.

Anyway, couldn't resist throwing in the personal story, but the first paragraph sums up my contribution.

 

[Fern]

First, it would be quite helpful if you would explain what you hope to accomplish by switching to an accounting software program like quickbooks. What do you want it to do that you presently don't have?

I'm a CPA. I started accounting before PC/software was available. We did it on manual spreadsheets. I'm a little biased against these programs unless they're necessary and the non-accountant has at least some training.

IMO, if your business can be comfortable done on an excel spreadsheet - just stick with that until your business grows to the point where software is actually helpful.

IMO (or experience) the most important aspects of accounting for a small business are (1) doing the accounting timely (don't let huge piles of bills/invoices/payments etc build up before sitting down to put the data in the spreadsheet/acct app) and (2) maintaining a good filing system for your records that you are required to keep.

A few things:

1. Like most software, accounting programs can be 'powerful tools'. I.e., it's easy to do a bunch of 'good stuff' quickly, also easy to screw things up royally quickly.

2. If you don't have some type of accounting training yet (e.g., which accounts belong on a Profit Statement versus which ones belong on a Balance Sheet) you may need to take a class or otherwise become familiar with these things.

3. If you're good with #2 above you may still wish to take a QB class at your local community college. Knowing accounting and knowing the QB program are not the same exact thing.

4. I'm pretty sure you can try QB for a free trial period. If so, you can check it out at no cost and see what you think.

Fern

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

I hate QB. Use Freshbooks instead. Integrates with a lot of other stuff and everything resides on the cloud and it also has a phone app for checking invoices, sending them, etc. Also takes credit card payments.

 

[adlep]

i love workingpoint.com
it does everything I need, simple and online.

 

[Humpy]

I have some accounting training and used quickbooks for my small business. At the time there was a free version called Simple Start that I used only to track expenses and revenues, keep a customer list and generate invoices.

Intuit being Intuit would fuck with the software every year. I didn't expect much for free but they would randomly make files incompatible, change or remove features, anything to get money from me until they got rid of the free version completely. I would have been OK I think if I never allowed any updates. I imagine the pay versions are also a yearly subscription or cloud BS type thing now, I don't know.

In the end it was nothing but a big hassle and I would have been better served using excel until the need for specific software became obvious.

 

[lxskllr]

You could try GnuCash. I don't have personal experience, and consensus seems to think it's not as good as QuickBooks, but at least they don't play games with forced obsolescence. I wouldn't use QuickBooks for that reason alone. I'd use a pencil and paper before I gave a company like that my money.

http://www.gnucash.org/

 

[ringtail]

also take a look around the MANY free alternatives.

Tried Gnucash but it seemed too danged complicated for a non-accounting person who just wants to get 'er done.

We use Quickbooks but in parallel are experimentally also using this free web-based on out of Canada, so far so good. It's R E A L L Y easy once you get the hang of it: WAVE

Also see if your website host provides a free accounting package as part of your overall service.

If you end up using Quickbooks that's good too, and it will probably dovetail nicely with your banks.

 

[Charlie98]

I use QB right now, primarily for invoicing, and being able to email invoices right from the software... it is very, very good for that. I do NOT use QB for my bookkeeping... I use Excel spreadsheets for that. I tried to use it in QB, it became the tail wagging the dog.

I will admit I hate (understanding that 'hate' is a very powerful word...) HATE QB. About every 3 years they cut support to that older version and then take away things like... emailing invoices through QB. It would be like Microsoft disabling IE after 3 years unless you upgrade to W15 (or whatever,) and you know QB ain't cheap.

I have investigated GnuCash, but it seems more like accounting software, which I don't need. I have looked at WAVE, too, but couldn't make heads or tails out of it... unable to decide if it can do what I want it to do.

I kick out about 100 invoices a month and manage about 800-900 separate parts and services, it does it very well... but I'm almost 2 years into QB'12, I'll have to come up with something before the Evil Empire comes around again to extort more money from me.