Basic Accounting Software Recommendations

I am doing enough web business that I need an accurate way to keep track of everything other than Excel.

I am looking for a basic accounting software that I can keep track of assets, equity, revenue, expenses, etc.

I would like to be able to customize the chart of accounts, just enter basic transaction into a general journal, and have the software generate a balance sheet and income statement. Being able in import Excel data would be great.

I really do not want to spend over $100.

Any thoughts?

 

Personally I like Quickbooks.

 

Stick with QuickBooks. It is cheap...easy to use and integrates seamlessly with some financial institutions. Worth it for sure. Check out E-bay for a cheap copy.

 

If any one esle cares. I found a great little very simple program to use. It is called Peak InfoSystems GL III. It is shareware. I think it was about $30 after the 60 day trial period.

 

I would also say Quickbooks, it's worked well for me

 

Well Quickbooks is the best software for small businesses it is hard to find something better.. though it depends on you structure lets say if you have 2 companies maybe PeachTree would be better becouse it support multiple companies in file so lets say when you transfer money or domain names from one company to another you can do a lot easier and faster then when you use software that does not support multiple companies

just my 2 cents

 

i think tally 7.2 is the best software for accounting purpose. There are facilities of all kind of tranjsactions and you do not want to open excel sheet.

 

Hi,
I have an online store running but have this same issue, namely how to handle accounting alongside the webstore. I hope im not over complicating things, but whicle quickbooks works great for service-oriented businesses (ie, my "day job"), it just seems it would be a a bad match for trying to track online transactions through it. such as:

-the number of customers - with my "day job" business, i have 100 or fewer customers whom i keep track of estimates and invoices for. but with the more consumer-oriented online business, it just seems i would junk up the database with thousands of customers who, from an accounting perspective, really dont need to be in there?

-billing/invoicing- since online orders are typically credit card and nearly instantaneous, it seems that the billing services in quickbooks would be better handled in the web software instead.

-inventory tracking- inventory is not a simple issue, with all the varying sku numbers and possible variations of a single product type. trying to keep track of inventory in qb, then also keeping the store up to date, feels like doing double work and a lot of potential to get things out of sync or otherwise messed up.

I guess what Im trying to figure out is a strategy for using qb for core accounting features, and try to keep the more customer-focused web presence as its own entity. I would love to hear what some of you are doing for this and how you have your busienss structured.

Im talking with a new CPA next week to get this all running correctly, but I have a suspicion he wont be much help with this particular area.

Thanks!!

 

I am running into the same problem. Since my original post I did switch over to QB, but I also now have an online store selling a product.

I already spoke with a CPA and he was not much help. You will run into major challenges with QB. Like you mentioned the thousands of customers junk up the database and will eventually overload the processing capability of QB and slow down the program tremendously as the file size grows.

What I am moving toward is something like what you mentioned. Using QB for the core accounting features and the store software for managing orders, tracking customers, etc. I plan on treating the store as a separate entity for accounting purposes. I will have just a few accounts set up in QB such as store inventory with just a dollar balance, store sales, store COGS, and just a general store customer. Once or twice a month I will enter just a few transactions in QB, ie., the total sales, COGS, etc in QB for the past 15 or 30 days or whatever timeframe I decide on.

This way is still double work but you are only taking these balances over 1 or 2 times per month. Note: This way really only works if revenue from the store is going to a different account initially than other revenue. Currently, I am using Paypal for payment processing on the store so all the revenue sources are intermingling. I have to change this for the system to work.

 

We have been using Quickbooks Pro for two years now, I don't know how we survived without it. It is great for a contracting company anyway.