Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Quicken for business or Quickbooks

[WickedShark]

does anyone use Quicken for Business? Or would you recommend only Quickbooks Pro?

How do you have your Quicken or Quickbooks setup? What type of accounts do you have setup?

I mean do you setup just an expense account for all expenses or do you make one for office expeneses and then another for advertising expenses and so on?

Looking for some guidance here.

[VertexBilly]

Quicken for business is a joke. It quickly made my books a bigger mess then they were with not system (of course this was a few years ago and it may have improved since then). Quickbooks is the most popular bookkeeping software for a reason.

As far as creating accounts, Quickbooks asks you a whole bunch of simple and easy to use questions when you set it up (takes about 30 mins) and then you are ready to go.

You can always add expense and income accounts down the road too, so it really isn't a big deal to make changes once you start using it.

[WickedShark]

I think I am going to go with Quickbooks Pro. I downloaded quicken to try but it does not seem to have the what i need.

I will buy QuickbooksPro I think and use that.

[demowolf]

I recommend Quickbooks Pro.

You should breakdown your expenses a little more.... have several expense categories. Setting up new expenses in Quickbooks is very easy, and you'll be glad you did when it comes time to prepare your tax returns and generate worthwhile reports.

Regards,

Rob.

[The Stealthy One]

Our business is pretty simple, so QuickBooks SimpleStart does the job quite well. I am not sure whether or not that would be a good option for you, though.

[radrew]

I have been using a basic quickbooks setup for about a month now. So far I love it. I use quicken for my personal finance management and am pretty sure it wouldn't be near powerful enough to manage all the aspects of a business.

[Shaw Networks]

Quicken is absolutely worthless, if you're going to use anything at all use QuickBooks. QuickBooks works a lot better for web hosts with recurring payments and expenses.

[TQ Mark]

I have found that Quickbooks Pro is a good all-around business accounting package. Some parts of it really annoy me, especially how they are always trying to upsell their premium services even in the menus (such as payroll, card processing, etc).

I would recommend meeting with an accountant to get it initially setup for you. I was lost trying to figure out equity accounts, retained earnings, etc.

[WickedShark]

Originally Posted by demowolf

I recommend Quickbooks Pro.

You should breakdown your expenses a little more.... have several expense categories. Setting up new expenses in Quickbooks is very easy, and you'll be glad you did when it comes time to prepare your tax returns and generate worthwhile reports.

Regards,

Rob.

Yes I agree with setting up several expense categories. Do you make a seperate account for each type of expense? I was not able to clearly figure this out in Quicken for Buisness.

I am going to use Quickbooks Pro. Going to pick it up tommorow.

[The Stealthy One]

Originally Posted by TQ Mark

I have found that Quickbooks Pro is a good all-around business accounting package. Some parts of it really annoy me, especially how they are always trying to upsell their premium services even in the menus (such as payroll, card processing, etc).

I would recommend meeting with an accountant to get it initially setup for you. I was lost trying to figure out equity accounts, retained earnings, etc.

This is one of the reasons we chose to go with Simple Start. Though it is very basic, it provides everything we needed. QuickBooks Pro's complexity was just too much for us to handle. We're a smaller company, and it would really have cost more to deploy and train on the Pro software than the ROI itself.

[the_pm]

We use Quickbooks Online Edition, as there are three of us who need access to our financial records from multiple locations. The cost is $19.99/mo. and it is absolutely worth every penny!

QBOE has a 30 day risk-free trial, if you want to take it for a spin - http://oe.quickbooks.com/rr/index.cfm - they have some very nice Flash tutorials that walk you through setting up your business, and every function within the application itself comes with an online wizard. Very nice stuff

[Edit] The only downside to QBOE is that it requires using an ActiveX control, which means it only operates in IE6+. Not a problem if you've kept IE on your computer, but this would be a problem for Mac/xNix users.

[WickedShark]

Ok I bought Quickbooks Pro 2007. I have not set it up yet.

Anyone have any tips on setting it up.

Things you changed after you went through the setup wizard?
Best ways you have learned to track expenses with different accounts
Do you import Paypal and 2CO data

Any other tips would be great.

We will not be using Quickbooks for inviocing customers or client contact information. we will keep using WHMCS for this. We will store vendor contact information inside Quickbooks though.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[WickedShark]

I started a new thread since it is about Quickbooks Pro Tips not the differences or preference.

here is the link.

Hope this is ok mods.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=584783