I am a sole prop that may incorporate at some point- if my accountant says it makes sense. I am a 1099 so I have only been using Quicken to account for business income and expenses on an operating account, a line of credit and a credit card.

For our Personal accounts (where my wife's w-2 income goes) I have been using a simple Excel spreadsheet for 20+ years to project cash flow and maintain a record of some sort.

SCENARIO: My company (that I contract for) is no longer providing quicken support so I need to decide if I want to keep using Quicken and excel- basically I run reports at the end of the year to give to my accountant for expenses.

Any thoughts? I was just planning to buy Quicken and stash it on a PC or Mac that I also have to buy....

2 options, windows money and gnucash.

I have been using gnucash for checking accounts.

for someone who knows what they are doing has more to offer.

Bill

do they provide support for another accounting software or are they just ending all support to contractors for accounting services.

Quick Books is a great business based accounting program, easy to use, plenty of user group forums for help, you can do all the accounting functions you'll need and them some.

Quicken is for home users.

I would suggest you move to Quick Books for your business accounting. If you have an outside accounting person they will probably be able to take the quicken accounting file.

HRK- Long story and I am fine with it and the why behind it- data security, cost controls, whatnot- but NO other accounting platform will be made available through the company or be available for use on their system (as it is, most of us lease their equipment cheaply in exchange for them letting us do some personal stuff and their tech support.)

I think it was quicken because they wanted us to use it to track the one account we have to have where we deposit customer payments- and they just didn't turn off our ability to use it for other accounts (although no web/background updating was allowed.)

So now I can use whatever I want and am just looking to get something that I can keep- one day I'll have more money and investments to track and my wife does own 2 small businesses as well. It would be cool to move to something that could be used to track debt and other assets as well as simple cash flow.

I tried Mint one time several years ago but the extra security questions most banks layer in now made third party access a pain.

Would you still maybe recommend Quick books? I wouldn't mind if there was mobile support or cool hip techy stuff too- whatever that may be.

I have been running mine on QB for well over 10 years, it's quite easy to run a basic company, and if needed you can do some pretty complicated corporate accounting. So it has a range, sounds like you are going to need a basic system for now.

It also links automatically with Turbo Tax so if you use that to do your taxes it will automatically populate the fields it can making your life a bit easier.

You can do a small business in Quicken, but QB is the business side application.

Thank you for the idea! I may see if anyone has tried any of the online services before I make a purchase but at least with QB, I assume I won't have to learn too much new- I am seeing that the interface is pretty similar to Quicken.

Im still a Peachtree fan

been using them since around 1990

I did just go on a forum of other guys that do what I do with my company and many are already using QB.

RAE- I completely forgot about PT. I had to deal with some clients that used them when I was a banker.... I need to look back into them as due diligence at least.

quote:

Quick Books is a great business based accounting program, easy to use, plenty of user group forums for help, you can do all the accounting functions you'll need and them some.

Quicken is for home users.

I would suggest you move to Quick Books for your business accounting. If you have an outside accounting person they will probably be able to take the quicken accounting file.

This is all the advice you need, especially if already familiar with Intuit products. I've seen small weekend business run on this, as well as my last employer who was over $100MM.

Another user and fan of QuickBooks.
We run the GB Pro version due to my business needs but you can't beat the system. One of the biggest advantages for us is the constant upgrading of payroll information that spews out of DC that they automatically incorporate into their software to keep us from making errors in payroll and 1099's.

I used to use Peachtree many years ago but found QB to be more intuitive.

Awesome Georgeair.

Second level- QB online or is there a package to buy and download, etc?

how many transactions? If a small amount of transactions why not save some money and use a spreadsheet?

BigNC --

BigDeal's suggestion, QuickBooks, has some pros and cons.

Pros: It is probably the most commonly used bookkeeping system for small businesses. It pretty much leads you by the hand, it minimizes the requirement for any real knowledge of bookkeeping / accounting, and many (most?) accountants are set up to accept the file that QuickBooks can produce.

Cons: It ain't cheap. You have to deal with Intuit (I really, really, hate that company). Intuit "sunsets" each version after a three year life, so if you need to interface with other stuff, you're screwed unless you pay Intuit for a newer version.

---

You said in a post above that you were a banker in a previous life. If you have a basic knowledge of accounting / bookkeeping, you can save a bundle of $$$ by using Medlin Accounting. Not as "fancy" as QuickBooks in terms of user interface, but it's a straightforward package from a company that's been around for a while, and gives outstanding value.

Medlin's customer support is excellent. The cost of the software is a fraction of Intuit's outrageous price. Example: I use their payroll package for my small business. With Medlin, for one reasonable price (way less than QuickBooks), the payroll module supports as many companies as you like, with as many employees as you like in each company. Seventy bucks / year for all of that. QuickBooks Payroll is much, much, more costly, $273 for the year PLUS two bucks / month for EACH employee. Medlin Payroll can run as stand-alone, or can integrate with Medlin Accounting (General Ledger), which sells for $75 (compare this to QuickBooks pricing). QuickBooks payroll REQUIRES QuickBooks "accounting." Medlin does not have a sunset policy for their software, but you do need to buy the payroll package each year, as tax laws, tax tables, all that stuff needs to be updated. Same is true of QuickBooks, PeachTree, etc., but Medlin beats the crap out of the others, price wise.

I have been using Medlin Payroll for years. Happy customer here!

Medlin also is much less demanding on system resources than QuickBooks. No fancy GUI, it looks almost DOS-like in terms of the user interface. Simple, clean, will run with really antique versions of Windows, whereas QuickBooks requires a fairly recent Windows version.

All of the Medlin packages: Accounting (General Ledger), Receivables, and Payroll, can be run stand-alone if that particular package is all that you need, but Receivables and Payroll will integrate with Accounting if you wish.

All of the packages have free trials, just download them and go, no credit card or anything else required, simple to uninstall if you don't like them.

Can't hurt to D/L and look over gnucash which is a free program that might very well satisfy your needs. If not, then pursue some of the other suggestions.

https://www.gnucash.org/

Awesome feedback guys! I scrolled back to the top and realized I missed some other options earlier.
I guess I need to consider including payroll- I use a company who currently charges me just under $50/ payroll run- even right now when I only have 3 employees. They do provide help with SS taxes, etc and run w-2 for my team every year- and help with required reporting posters and stuff. Still seems pricey.
I do have a CPA I use for income taxes every year that I like being able to get help from year round. We have a rental, my business, my wife's income from w-2, a 1099 she gets from another company and a few investments and he charges me around $500 for the year- but he is very old school so I can't ask his opinion.

May be that this is a good thing. I spend a lot of time each week tracking and fooling with all this.....

rusbro.

You killed me with that. I'm sitting at my desk and customers in the lobby spitting coffee on my keyboard.

A lot of my IT clients use QuickBooks in various versions.
For the rest with greater needs use something from Sage that has something for just about any size company from med/small to huge Enterprise.

quote:

Originally posted by BigNC:
w-2 for my team every year

Medlin Payroll, which I lauded above, includes the ability to print W-2 and W-3 forms. It will print them on plain paper. Or, you can order blank forms FREE from the irs.gov website, and Medlin will print on those forms. All for less than seventy bucks a year, including the ability to print paychecks for your employees, etc.

Thanks all! I need to try some of these out and decide. I appreciate the advice!