If that doesn’t work and you enjoy reading, you can try one of Steve’s books, Quicken for Dummies or QuickBooks for Dummies. If you need help getting started with either Quicken or QuickBooks, you can try using the program right out of the box.
Sorry, but you can’t successfully manage a business unless you know when and how you’re making money-and when and how you’re not. If you don’t know whether you made or lost money last month or last quarter, you’re almost certainly in big trouble. However, let us emphasize something that’s really important and related to task 1: It is essential that your accounting system let you accurately measure your profits or losses. Hopefully, that information will let you get started in your decision. What’s more, QuickBooks includes security features that make it possible to have other people (like a bookkeeper) do some of your accounting without having them see every bit of your business’s finances. We should also mention that QuickBooks includes better features for automating common bookkeeping tasks like payroll, customer statements, and finance charge calculations. QuickBooks, for example, includes an inventory feature and a fixed asset tracking system. Also, if you need to use accrual basis accounting to accurately measure your business profits, or you need to keep detailed records of what the business owns and what it owes, you need QuickBooks.įinally, if you need to keep detailed records of anything besides cash, you need QuickBooks. If you need more forms-customer receipts, purchase orders, customer statements that show finance charges, and so on-you need QuickBooks.
But Quicken works really well for service businesses-especially small service businesses. This means that it doesn’t work for businesses that own inventory. When you need to use QuickBooks instead of Quickenįor all practical purposes, Quicken produces only two business forms: checks and invoices. If you think about these tasks and then the requirements of your business, it’s pretty easy to choose the winner in a Quicken vs. Stated most simply, your accounting system should perform (and perform well) three easy-to-understand tasks. In other words, your accounting system should be able to tell you with a mouse click how much money you have in the bank, which customers owe you money, and what inventory you’ve got stocked on the store, warehouse, or shop floor. Your small business accounting system should allow you to keep appropriately detailed records of the assets and liabilities of the business.Your small business accounting system should produce the business forms-checks, invoices, customer statements, and so on-that you need again and again in your business.the bank, your partners or investors, the Internal Revenue Service) accurately measure your financial condition.
Your small business accounting system-whatever it is-should let you and other people (e.g.To start, note the three basic tasks that a small business accounting system does (or is supposed to do): Since Steve, the firm’s founding CPA, is the author of both Quicken for Dummies and Quickbooks for Dummies, we can probably provide some useful information on the Quicken vs. Small business owners frequently ask us, “Can I use Quicken or do I have to use QuickBooks for my business?”
0 kommentar(er)
