Yes, QuickBooks costs a bit more and dumps you unceremoniously into the Scylla and Charybdis of debits and credits. But if you work with a bookkeeper or accountant, you’ve no doubt heard pleas to switch to Quick-Books (Intuit’s small-business accounting program)-and it’s generally a good idea to listen. If you have a small business and you don’t track inventory or generate standard financial reports, you can get by with Quicken Home & Business. (However, Quicken’s “Income/Expense by Category” report can pass for a profit-and-loss report or income statement.) For example, because Quicken doesn’t include equity accounts, you can’t generate a balance sheet like the ones your accountant is used to. Although Quicken Home & Business ( What’s New in Quicken 2009) offers features like invoices, accounts receivable, and payroll, it doesn’t offer ledgers, true double-entry accounting, a chart of accounts, inventory control, or certain financial reports that accountants and the IRS require.
Quicken isn’t a true bookkeeping or accounting program. From simple reminders to pay credit card bills on time to portfolio reports that show you whether your investments are working as well as they could be, Quicken is bursting with tools to improve your financial situation. Whether you spend cash, rack up credit card debt, or salt away savings from each paycheck, the program’s planning features help you decide what to do with your money in the future. Quicken doesn’t just track what you’ve done with your money in the past. You can also feed tax-related data into programs like Turbo Tax and then import your tax return results into Quicken to plan next year’s tax strategy. Instead, a few quick clicks produce the information you need. Quicken automatically updates your account balances when you record transactions, calculates the remaining funds when you divvy up a paycheck, matches downloaded transactions with recorded ones, and tells you when you’ve successfully reconciled your account.īecause Quicken lets you assign transactions to categories, collecting your tax-related information and building a budget are no longer frantic treasure hunts through shoeboxes of paper. Perhaps the first benefit you’ll come to know and love is that you no longer have to worry about arithmetic. Along the way, you’ll discover features and benefits most Quicken owners never knew existed. It also provides comprehensive discussions and step-by-step tutorials for people who need a bit of handholding. If speed is your thing, this book shows you the fastest ways to perform financial tasks-like shortcut menus and keyboard shortcuts.
It explains the program’s basic features and answers questions you’re likely to have (but Quicken Help doesn’t answer).
#Quicken bookkeeping how to#
This book begins by telling you how to set up Quicken 2009 to fit your needs. Then again, sometimes Quicken seems to raise more questions than it answers: Return of capital from stock-what’s that? What does net worth actually mean-and why do you need to know yours? Luckily, the book you’re holding picks up where Quicken’s help resources leave off. As you learn to do more with Quicken, you’ll expand your knowledge of-and ideas about-money. Yet somehow, owning the program might get you thinking about aspects of your personal finances that you were content to completely ignore in the past.
Your Quicken ambitions may be no bigger than balancing your checkbook. Every minute you spend learning the program is time well spent. Quicken can use that information over and over to calculate things like what you’ve spent, how much you still owe, or even your net worth. Best of all, once you enter a bit of financial information into Quicken-like a check, deposit, credit card transaction, or loan payment-you never have to type it again. Features and techniques that you’re familiar with from other programs (windows, dialog boxes, drop-down menus, keyboard shortcuts, and so on) work the same way in Quicken. Using the program as an electronic checkbook isn’t much different from recording checks and deposits in a paper register. If budgeting’s your downfall, Quicken can help build a budget to achieve your savings goals. If you have trouble remembering to transfer extra cash into higher-interest-rate savings, for example, you can set up Quicken to remind you. The program’s hundreds of features share one purpose: to help manage your personal finances. Quicken 2009 can do all that and more, and this book will show you how. You want Quicken to provide an overview of your financial health, while sparing you the time and tedium of balancing your checkbook and tracking every investment by hand. Like most people who buy Quicken, you’re probably looking for help: with credit card receipts, checking account statements, retirement plans, and on and on the list goes.
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