you might use to bill a customer or client. You fill in the invoice window’s blanks by recording invoice information, such as the name of the client or customer, invoice amount, and date by which you want to be paid.
Here’s the neat thing about these check and invoice windows: When you record business transactions by filling in the blanks shown onscreen, you collect the information that QuickBooks needs to prepare the reports that summarize your profits or losses and your financial situation.
If you record two invoices (for $10,000 each) to show amounts that you billed your customers, and then you record three checks (for $4,000 each) to record your advertising, rent, and supplies expenses, QuickBooks can (with two or three mouse clicks by you) prepare a report that shows your profit, as shown in Table 1-1.
TABLE 1-1 A Profit and Loss Report
Your accounting with QuickBooks can be just as simple as I describe in the previous paragraphs. In other words, if you record just a handful of business transactions by using the correct QuickBooks windows, you can begin to prepare reports like the one shown in Table 1-1. Such reports can be used to calculate profits or (ugh) losses for last week, last month, or last year. Such reports can also be used to calculate profits and losses for particular customers and products.
I know I’m kind of harsh in the first part of this chapter – bringing up that stuff about the IRS and business failure – but this accounting stuff is neat! (For the record, that’s the only exclamation point I use in this chapter.) Good accounting gives you a way to manage your business for profitability. And obviously, all sorts of good and wonderful things stem from operating your business profitably: a materially comfortable life for you and your employees; financial cushioning to get you through the tough patches; and profits that can be reinvested in your business, in other businesses, and in community charities.
Let me mention a couple other darn handy things that QuickBooks (and other accounting systems, too) do for you, the overworked business owner or bookkeeper:
❯❯ Forms: QuickBooks produces, or prints, forms such as checks or invoices by using the information you enter in those check windows and invoice windows that I mention earlier. So that’s neat, and a true time saver. (See Chapter 4.)
❯❯ Electronic banking and billing: QuickBooks transmits and retrieves some financial transaction information electronically. It can email your invoices to customers and clients, for example. (That can save you both time and money.) And QuickBooks can share bank accounting information with most major banks, making it easy to make payments and transfer funds electronically. (See Chapter 13.)
Now for an awkward question: Should you be using the desktop version of QuickBooks, or do you need to get with the program and use the online version of QuickBooks? Good question.
My suggestion is that you work with the desktop version of QuickBooks – the subject of this book. I base this suggestion on two factors:
❯❯ The desktop version is probably significantly more economical over the years you use QuickBooks. I’ve blogged about this (not in a bitter, grumpy-old-man way, I hope) at our CPA firm’s website, www.evergreensmallbusiness.com. The problem with these subscription-type pricing models is that you pay – over time – way, way more for an item. And I believe that this is true with QuickBooks.
❯❯ At least currently, the desktop version of QuickBooks provides more functionality and a richer feature set. I’m not going to individually list what is included in the desktop version and missing in the online version, but I see holes. (I’m happy to stipulate that, yes, at some point Intuit will surely plug these holes. But in the meantime, hey, why pay more for less?)
Can I point out one scenario in which the online version does make sense in spite of its greater cost and lesser functionality? If you need to have people at different locations (across town, across the country, around the globe, and so on) share QuickBooks, the online version of QuickBooks rocks. It really rocks.
Note: If your CPA can support your use of QuickBooks simply because you’re using the online version, that may justify the extra cost and lighter feature set.
What Explains QuickBooks’ Popularity?
No question about it – you need a good accounting system if you’re in business. But you know what? That fact doesn’t explain why QuickBooks is so popular or why you should use QuickBooks. (I ignore for one moment the fact that you’ve probably already purchased QuickBooks.) Therefore, let me suggest to you three reasons why QuickBooks is an excellent choice to use as the foundation of your accounting system:
❯❯ Ease of use: QuickBooks historically has been the easiest or one of the easiest accounting software programs to use. Why? The whole just-enter-transaction-information-into-windows-that-resemble-forms thing (which I talk about earlier) makes data entry a breeze. Most businesspeople already know how to fill in the blanks in these forms. That means that most people – probably including you – know almost everything they need to know to collect the information that they need to do their books with QuickBooks. Over time, other software programs have tended to become more QuickBooks-like in their ease of use. The folks at Intuit have truly figured out how to make and keep accounting easy.
❯❯ Expense: QuickBooks, especially compared with the hard-core accounting packages that accountants love, is pretty darn inexpensive. Different versions have different prices, but for a ballpark figure, you can get an excellent accounting software solution for a few hundred bucks. Not to go all grandfatherly on you or anything, but when I was a young CPA, inexpensive accounting software packages often cost several thousand dollars. And it was almost easy to spend tens of thousands of dollars.
❯❯ Ubiquity: The ubiquity issue relates to the ease of use of QuickBooks and the cheap price that Intuit charges for QuickBooks. Oddly enough, the ubiquity of QuickBooks becomes its own benefit, too. You’ll find it very easy to find a bookkeeper who knows QuickBooks, for example. And if you can’t, you can hire someone who doesn’t know QuickBooks and then send that individual to a QuickBooks class at the local community college (because that class will be easy to find). You’ll also find it very easy to find a CPA who knows QuickBooks. Now, you might choose to use some other, very good piece of accounting software. Almost assuredly, however, what you’ll discover is that it’s tougher to find people who know the software, tougher to find classes for the software, tougher to find CPAs who know the software, and even tougher to find books about the software.
What’s Next, Dude?
At this point, presumably, you know why you need accounting software and why QuickBooks is probably a reasonable and maybe even an excellent choice. In other words, you swallowed my line about QuickBooks hook, line, and sinker. That decision on your part leaves the question of what you should do next. Let me say this. In a nutshell, before you can begin working with QuickBooks, you need to do the following:
1. Install the QuickBooks software, as I describe in Appendix A.
2.