Using QuickBooks Accounting Software To Run Your Business

I’ve made mention in other postings about QuickBooks software accounting program. Just to recap, QuickBooks is an accounting software program package for small to medium sized businesses. With QuickBooks you will be able to produce full financial statements, bank reconciliations, payroll reports, and anything else you could want or need to run your business. QuickBooks uses double-entry accounting while Quicken, which is tailored more for personal finances, uses single entry accounting. QuickBooks also provides full financial statements which is required for corporations, partnerships, and LLC's. If you are operating as a sole proprietorships may not need this feature.

QuickBooks enable the business owner to be able to chart exactly where your money is being spent and money that is coming into the business. QuickBooks can organize and keep exact records of all business transactions which will put you at ease in trying to remember all your money transactions for the past year. This will be a life saver at tax time. Instead of rummaging through hundreds of receipts and invoices, QuickBooks provides a lightning fast method of organizing all expenditures, expenses and profits associated with your business.

QuickBooks also contains totally complete reports options. With QuickBooks it makes it very easy to create and maintain the following accounting reports:

• Balance Sheet
• Income Statement (Profit & Loss)
• Receivables
• Payables
• Job Costing & Loan Draw Reports
• General Ledger
• Many other essential reports.

Quicken is another accounting program but Quicken is designed for tracking personal finances, such as your checkbook and investments. Quicken does have the ability to accomplish complete investment tracking, which QuickBooks does not. QuickBooks, on the other hand, is built to track your business accounts, including assets, liabilities, receivables, payables and equity accounts. For running a small out of the home business, I would suggest QuickBooks which is geared for running a business rather than handling your personal finances.

QuickBooks Pro accounting software, on the other hand, will offer you bonus reports and tracking features such as job costing, estimating, detailed payroll, and time tracking. QuickBooks Pro is the software chosen most frequently by home based businesses.

Because your accounting is so important to your business, always remember to back up your QuickBooks data in case some unfortunate occurrence such as a nasty virus or worm causes your computer system to become corrupted, or worse accidentally deleted. The simple task of creating backup disks of your accounting files on a regular basis could save you hours of tedious file rebuilding. You should back your files up at least once a week.

You can find out more information about QuickBooks and Quicken here