Keep Track Of Your Home And Business Finances With Quicken
August 25th, 2008
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by BobTheTeacher · Filed Under: Bob The Teacher Training · Financial Resources
How do you know that your business is going in the right direction?
You have to keep score. And one of the best ways to do that is to use financial software.
If you are a spreadsheet fanatic like my bean-counting mom (she’s a CPA and bankruptcy analyst), you may like to just use Excel or Open Office. But they have severe limitations for out of the box usability for business finances.
Instead we both recommend you go with Intuit’s Quicken Home and Business Financial Software, or Quickbooks.
I personally use Quicken Home And Business (they’ve just come out with the 2009 version) because I don’t have employees and I find Quicken to be easier to use than Quickbooks. It’s basically a virtual checkbook with pre-set tax line items which makes April 15 deadlines less scary.
Why should you use Quicken Home & Business?
Well, for starters, the reporting features help you to see where your money is coming and going. And with the business features in QH&B, you can make a lot clearer decisions with that information.
Also, if you are in the beginning stages of your business, you may not have made all the formal arrangements to separate your business bank accounts from your personal accounts. This is something you should do sooner rather than later.
But in the meantime, and even afterwards, using Quicken keeps track for you – as long as you’ve set up your categories of transactions correctly.
I’m also a big fan of Intuit’s TurboTax, which takes all the information from Quicken in one quick import. Set your tax line-items correctly when setting up your categories, and your taxes take a lot less time.
Even if you hire an accountant to do your taxes (something I also recommend), they’ll appreciate your organization and will likely charge you less.
Finally, I encourage you to use Quicken if you aren’t already because of the online features that are included. Your banks, credit cards and even Paypal’s transactions are typically a one-click import – saving you hours of typing time. Just connect the transaction to a category once, and it remembers your choice for future records.
As an owner of the software, I get to share up to a 36% discount on Quicken Software 2009 (with free shipping). Now’s a great time to get Quicken, as you have plenty of time to record 2008 payments and receipts in time for the taxes in the spring!
or Get QuickBooks if you have invoices for vendors, employees, and a more developed business.
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| Bob Jenkins is an internet business marketing teacher, with ten years experience teaching teenagers and teachers. He is the creator of several online training courses that teach you how to get better customers and increase your profits. Specializing in social networking strategies for business and creating information products from teleseminars, Bob can help you use internet marketing tools and strategies to promote your business online. |
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We’re certified public accountants, and we usually recommend QuickBooks to our clients. It’s really good at helping companies deal with multiple accounts.
I recently purchased a copy of Quicken Premier 2009 for my personal finances, and was impressed with it’s functionality (there’s a new Savings Plan feature which I look forward to working with). However, it’s not exactly intuitive.
I used Quicken 2002 once upon a time when I had my own business, and it was really easy to figure out how to do everything without looking at a manual. With the new version, it took me several minutes to figure out where the ledger entry was. I got pretty frustrated before I found it.
When it comes to the new Quicken, with great power comes great confusability.