Best program or website for simple small business bookkeeping

October 22, 2005 1:48 PM

Best ideas for small business bookkeepingI run a home business where I usually have one part time employee, and sometimes a second. I need to do something better than I’m doing on bookkeeping. Quickbooks Pro seems a bit of overkill, in that I don’t do invoices, or many of the other things it purports to do. And I’ve never even used plain Quickbooks. I need some advice on the best, simplest bookkeeping system that would really do only a few things – (1) allow me to put in the rates, hours, etc. of my employees and translate this into my I.R.S. quarterly reports, etc., (2) Work with my business charge card account on line to categorize charges for Schedule C purposes, (3) Do the same with my business checking account. I have Mac OS X. I’d appreciate any thoughts on what program or online service I should use to get this done. Thanks
posted by rabbus to computers & internet (5 comments total)

I used Quickbooks Pro with basically no training and found that it was not too difficult to do everything you wanted without having to worry about the other features. If you have a chance to try it, I found it to be quite intuitive (har har) and quite elegent for a situation similar to yours.
posted by allen.spaulding at 1:52 PM on October 22, 2005

QuickBooks "NUE" (New User Editiion?) came free with my Mac and seems to do everything I need so far (+ Paycycle for payroll and taxes) for a small business. You have to call the Quickbooks company and register your serial when you want to start using it, but it's free and I haven't gotten any spam (paper or otherwise) from it.
posted by neustile at 2:03 PM on October 22, 2005

For what it's worth, my small business uses QuickBooks and we hate it. I've heard complaints from other users, too. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of competition. Would Quicken work? Are there other Mac alternatives? I'd explore non-QuickBooks options if I were you. Don't buy it just because it's the most well-known name...
posted by jdroth at 3:56 PM on October 22, 2005

Try MYOB FirstEdge. Many Mac users prefer it, and it's what I'm about to begin using for my consulting business.
posted by lambchop1 at 5:22 PM on October 22, 2005

I use Excel. My accountant gave me a bit of advice and a sample expenses sheet and off I went. Most online banks will download a .csv file. Any spreadsheet -- e.g. AppleWorks -- will do and it's a handy skill to develop for budgeting, forecasting & so on.

[The best advice I can give regarding doing your own books is to update them as regularly as possible. Especially the expenses! I'm in the process of getting everything together for my end of year return and everything has been nicely kept up to date except for a wad of receipts I'm going to be working on this fine Sunday. Meh.]
posted by i_cola at 2:18 AM on October 23, 2005