I spent a small portion of yesterday fighting with Quickbooks, so I’m curious to know:
What’s your favorite accounting method?
Ok, maybe favorite is too strong a word. What’s your preferred method for accounting and bookkeeping? Or what are you currently using? Paper and pencil? Excel spreadsheet? Quickbooks? Are you happy with your method, or are you looking for something better?
(Note: I’m currently on a bus to New York to check out Accessories the Show and Designers and Agents – I’ll be back on Wednesday with a full report! And don’t forget to ask your trade show questions – to be answered later in the week!)
I’ve heard good things about FreshBooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/), but I’ve never used them myself. I used QuickBooks as Office Manager at an art consulting firm and as frustrated as I was with it sometimes, it made my life so much easier (particularly when it came to paying taxes).
This is incredibly timely because I JUST started using Quick Books (free from intuit) yesterday! I have been keeping detailed track of my etsy sales in a really great Excel spreadsheet (which I am happy with and will continue using), but I’m hoping to also use some free accounting software in order to account (ha ha) for other expenses and such. I’ll be interested to hear what others do/use–and I’m going to check out Fresh Books as well!
QuickBooks chaps my ass because you have to create and invoice to enter a sale amount. If i’m at a craft fair, or if I’m in my shop, I don’t have time to do that. Fresh Books I’ve tried too, and I can’t remember why I hated it. I think I’ve tried them all. I used to run a 3.5 mil bookstore and it’s not like I’m dumb, it’s just that nothing is made for a business like mine.
EXCEPT Outright (http://www.outright.com) ! I can enter things as they come in and the interface is VERY user friendly. They have a helpful blog too! It’s totally free.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I will certainly check out outright and freshbooks!
I use MYOB. Keeping up to date with my bookkeeping not my strong suit, but MYOB is a great program. I believe it is very similar to QuickBooks. When I was ready to buy a program (11 years ago?) QuickBooks stopped amking upgrades for Macs, so I went with MYOB.
I use Quick Books for one of my businesses and a simple excel spreadsheet for the other.
I’ve been using excel, and as my business and inventory has grown, so has the spreadsheet! I’ve just purchase a couple of cheap templates from http://www.accountingspotonline.com/
to help me get those spreadsheets organized – she’s got these neat reports all set up, I’m hoping this is just the tweak I need to get super organized come tax time!
I am a Microsoft junkie. I love Excel. One reason I stick to it is because the formulas are easy, and my experience with it helps me at a day job. They seem to all want Excel experience.
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