Boy, do I feel dumb!

[Pixie]

Finally decided to get quickbooks on line to help with the whole mess of record keeping. It's a 30 day free trial, thought it wouldn't hurt to at least try it.

Well for you out there who find it easy to use, my hats off to ya! I think it will be easier on me and the family if I just stay the old dinosaur that I am and keep recording my records on paper.

I just can't get it figured out!

I don't even think a cave man could do it!!!! LOL

[PuppyFluffer]

You got company, sweetie. I fouled up my hubbys accounts so badly with QB that it cost him (us) a couple of grand to have someone who knew what they were doing fix it!

[odette]

Even my accountant thinks it's hard, so don't feel dumb.

[Chuck]

It' s alot of work

Dear Pixie,

I agree with you Quick Books is a lot of work and you should get a Quick Books Pro to tailor it to your particular business. I actually use Quicken as my check register because it is a lot easier. We do use Quick Books for invoicing for the business. I would actually need a full time accounting major to use all of the features for my manufacturing business.

Quick Books comes with "all" the bells and whistles that any business can use and needs to be dumbed down to your particular needs. Excuse the pun. Consult a Quick Books Pro to see what it is you exactly need from it and how much they will charge you to "set you up" and teach you just what you need to do and nothing more for your business.

Chuck

[caninecrazy]

OMG Pixie, I just signed on last night! Got my retail inventory for shop and thought I would start out everything right. What a freakin joke. I had to email them twice already. I get the client part but retail as well with state tax? URGHHH, @^%$&^(**&)*(&(&^%^@#!!!!!!
Hope I can figure out, will have to come in shop on sunday and spend the day figuring it out. At least its not taking up space on my laptop....
Good luck to you.

[Admin]

As I have said before, most people that think there books are in order have errors. Big errors. The income coming in is usually fine, but that is not enough. It's the liabilities that blow the numbers.

It's the balance sheet. It is impossible to setup Qbooks or any other software correctly WITHOUT a balance sheet provided by an accountant. Every minute of the day as you do business the balance sheet actually changes, so the accountant gives you a simple balance sheet for a business opening day one, or a more complex one for an existing business going onto Qbooks.

Don't feel bad. How could you really set it up correctly without the balance sheet as of a specific date and time prepared by an accountant? You can't. I've setup hundreds of businesses manual or computerized and without the right numbers for a balance sheet, yes the groomer can figure how much they sold and spent, but is the balance correct. 99.9% of the time no, it's very wrong unless the setup was done by an expert and before you post your first sale, you run a balance sheet from Qbooks and it must to the penny match the balance sheet provided by the accountant.

Plus every year there are year end entries for any business. Maybe on 2 or 3, but they are manual and Qbooks or any other software for accounting is not artificial intelligence. Those are manual entries always developed to match the tax returns by the accountant.

So it's a great project, but you need professional assistance. It's just the way it is. It's funny you bring this up today because I am consulting with 3 groomers buying businesses. WOW you should see Quickbooks provided to them by the sellers. ERRORS galore, especially the balance sheet, once again. So I send these groomers to an accountant and voila, the accountant says the same exact thing to them...these figures don't make sense...etc...once again, yes the sales is fine, and even the expenses, but it's those details like inventory valuation, amortization, liabilities, capital stock etc, not done by an accounting pro consultant and it blows a sale of a business, or, reduces that selling price.

There is a chapter in From Problems to Profits that says as a business owner, not a groomer, we simply need professional working relationships to be a businessperson that groomers, and when it comes to your bookkeeping isn't that true if you want truly correct books that match tax returns as required. You are experiencing a great lesson that we don't need an accountant all the time, but we certainly do when setting up Qbooks, and the key will be the "balance sheet."

My accountant by the way creates the balance sheet for a Qbooks setup, and then he has a clerical employee that setups Qbooks for his clients. Thereby his clients pay the much lower hourly rate of the clerk, and not the accountant's higher fees. Check it out if you are determined to go ahead.

It's great you are trying.

[cgriff]

I, too, completely fouled up my quickbooks for 2 years and then got audited. Take my advice... hire a bookkeeper and let him/her take care of it. It will totally pay off in the long run. I wish I would have hired her from the beginning!

[Pixie]

I canceled it just before I came back on here.

Had hubby try to figure it out too. He didn't like the idea of having my clients names and other info out on the internet.

So I guess I'll just keep doing it myself the old dinosaur way.

Glad I'm not the only one that had trouble with it.

[scrubapup]

Personally I prefer the old dinosaur way

[4Sibes]

I too subscribe to the dino-books. Gets a little messy scratching those numbers in the dust w/ some old mammal femur...and when it rains, OMG, the mud! But it beats killing the brain cells you prolly exploded trying to go high tech.

So Pixie..... I gather Quick Books was neither?

[mylady]

I use the quick books simple start. It is a VERY basic program and I simply use it to record everything so I can burn a disc to hand over to my accountant. I don't do anything online with it. I enter in all my bank account info (well I should be, but I alwasy wait until the end of the year to do it and then wish the computer could just read through my check book register and enter everything on it's own!) and i use it to put all of my clients receipts in so I know how much I have to pay in quarterly tax. I don't have retail to track, don't use the payroll function, etc. My accountant told me specifically to get quick books and NOT quicken because they don't deal with quicken I guess. I don't remember exactly why now, but THOSE features on the basic program are easy to use. It stores my clients info so when I have to put in a new receipt I just click on the name and don't have to put all the info in everytime, even remembers what tax to charge, since I'm mobile. Then I print out the quarterly report to find how much sales tax I have to pay and the rest goes to the accountant at the end of the year. The bank info it has me delegate what is income, what is van expenses, office expenses etc.
THAT I can handle. My old boss now has the super spiffy QB to do everything and uses it to track stuff and do reports and all this fancy stuff. When I fill in from time to time I now stay away since she didn't have the computer there when I was there and knowing me, I'd break something. I was banned from using the fax/copier at the vets because everytime I used it the next person who would try would find something was wrong with it LOL