QuickBooks, developed by Intuit, is the dominant accounting software for non-accountants. It is a fairly intuitive flowchart-style interface. Most reviewers, including expert reviewers, agree that it is the best accounting program for small business owners.
If your business is anything but the most basic, small, home-based business, you should probably move up from Quicken Home and Business to QuickBooks Accounting Pro Edition.
If you have a business that sells products, however, this edition of QuickBooks is not for you. It does not track inventory or give you the ability to create purchase orders.
A nice feature is the Company Snapshot, which is a single screen overview of your business’ vital statistics.
Quicken Pro does offer online banking; though Intuit says that only a very small percentage of users actually use this feature. That’s hard for me to believe given the number of people who actually bank online. There are some glitches with the online banking setup and no real support from Intuit. The support is from Live Community where other users answer your questions. Intuit should be more helpful, particularly with set-up issues for the online banking feature.
All in all, QuickBooks Accounting Pro Edition 2009 is a nice upgrade and the only real software that is intuitive enough and reliable for non-financial small business owners who sell services rather than products. I think it's worth the money for the small business owner, though you may want to move up to a more advanced QuickBooks product at a later date.
Friday, December 4, 2009
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