Business software

[Smeggy]

Do any of you have any recommendations for small business software. I've been looking at Quicken, Quickbooks, Turbotax etc. I've never used any of them and don't know exactly what I need. They need to be reasonably easy to use and learn as ell as not being excessively expensive. Life is a big hectic mess right now and I need something to simplify at least some of it.

[Aura]

Quickbooks is relatively simple. I spent about a week learning the basics of it in my auditing class a few years back.

[Duggeh]

I was recently sent a link to:

http://www.paloalto.co.uk

Have not yet checked it out.

Interested in thread.

[jvlgato]

I've used Quicken Deluxe for personal finance and very basic business tracking for 16 years now. There was some setup invloved, but it was not hard to learn. It's been indispensible for me to track income/expenses, pay bills, monitor investments. My business is healthcare, so I have separate software for billing, filing insurance claims, and tracking payments. I do track bank deposits with Quicken and categorize types of payments, and that's worked well for me. I have no employees, so have no need for payroll. I have no products (i guess I AM the product), so have no need for invoicing or tracking materials.

If you have needs for some tracking of income/expense, and such for a small business , plus a need for personal finance, then Quicken Home and Business is still pretty inexpensive. I probably would have gotten that, but it didn't exist when I started my practice.

If you need invoices, payroll, and complex tracking of income/expense, then something in the Quickbooks series is probably needed, but it gets a lot more expensive. I've never used it, but wouldn't hesitate to try it, if I needed it.

My only warning is that with Quicken, at least, they get you in a cycle of having to get new software every 3 years or so, if you want to use their online services, like downloading transactions or such, Also, the bill paying connection between Quicken and my bank wasn't consistent. So I pay bills online on my bank's website, then download the transactions into Quicken. Ideally, you'd enter payments directly in Quicken. Could be a quirk with my bank.

In any case, yes, i've found Quicken to be very useful and worthwhile. Just go to their website to see what features you'd need.

Good luck!

[Smeggy]

Mkay, well it looks like it'll prolly be quick-something then.

Cheers all