If you are like me, when you started your home business, you used your current personal financial software, I used Quicken, but both Quicken and Microsoft have business features. Now, you have a  couple of options, replace MS Money with an equivalent copy of another brand of financial software, or upgrade to a full-fledged accounting software package. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself to help make this decision:

1. Does your Accounting Software handle expense/revenue categories the way you want?
2. Is it difficult to enter transactions?
3. Are you able to easily get accurate reports on profit and loss, net income, and margin?
4. Do you need online integration with a web store?
5. Do you need customized invoices/easier email delivery?
6. Do you want to better segregate business and personal activities?
7. Do you need to track inventory?
8. Do you need to support double entry/accrual  accounting?

Some options to consider are (this is by no means a complete list)

Outright — Fee basic online accounting. (Well reviewed)

Quickbooks Online (Both Free and Paid Versions)- A next step from personal financial software. (I use this for my consulting business)

Quickbooks – Also free and paid versions — Also easy to transition to, lots of free templates and wizards

Peachtree – More advanced for a businesses that need full support of double entry/accrual accounting

If you have an accountant,  consult him or her, before you make a decision about acounting software (I’m not an accoutant so they will know better then I.) Also since this is in no way a complete list, so please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comment section.

Time to look for a replacement. Quicken is the obvious choice, but you may also want to look at Mint, a free online personal banking app.

You made a new years resolution to start a business, but you don’t have alot of money. Below is a list of quality, free applications you can use to help run your business. Many of these apps are web based so you may want to read my post Cloud Computing: the good, the bad and the ugly before you dive in.

Free Office Suites

 (Word Processing, Spreadheet, Presentations, and more)

1. OpenOffice.org–Full function office suite similar to Microsoft office
2. Google Documents – Online office suite from google
3. Zoho – Online office applications and more

Free Productivity software

(Calendar, Address Book, Task Manager, Email)

1. Yahoo (Online)
2. Google (Online, tasks are experimental apps in email)

Free Accouting Software

(Full featured basic accounting sofware for the small business)

1. QuickBooks Simple Start
2. Microsoft Office Accounting Express

Free Web Hosting

1. Microsoft Office Live 
2. Google Sites

Free Email Client

1. Thunderbird

Free “Everthing-but-the-kitchen-sink”

1. Google Apps

Starting the business

Instead of paying a company to incorporate my LLC, I got on to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, printed the forms and followed their directions to incorporate my LLC. This saved me about $100 in fees from a registration website. It may be worth your while to get to your states website and see if you can do this yourself. (I think you can only do this yourself if you register your corp. in the state you live in, but I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.)

Internet and hosting

I use ATT DSL (So there’s no money saved there ). I registered my sites with GoDaddy.com‡ They usually have a good deals on website registration. While there are some free web hosting services, I also use GoDaddy‡ for my web hosting. They are very reputable, and since a good deal of my business comes from the web, it worth paying for hosting. GoDaddy has applications that you can install for free on its paid hosted sites, and I use a one of those, a blogging platform called Wordpress  (So I didn’t pay for that at least). In any case I have  2 websites for less than  $120 per year  including annual registrations and monthly hosting fees. (Thats about $10/month !!!.)

Applications

I use both OpenOffice.org (a free MS office like office suite you install on your computer) and Google Docs for my Wordprocessing and Spreadsheet needs. Since both are free is saves hundreds ($250) compared to shelling out the big bucks for MS Office. For email I use Google mail (gmail). It allows me to consolodate my 5 email addressed (blog, consulting, 2 personal addresses, and one address that only my inlaws use) into a single location. Its easy to use and pretty robust for a web based email client

I do pay for my accounting software. I use Quicken Home And Business. But to save money I don’t upgrade it each year, I take about two and a half years between upgrades. I strongly belive that if it works, there’s no reason to upgrade (if you have to pay). I upgraded this last time becase they said that they were shuttng off my online bank access.

I think that, on average I have saved about $400 over the life of my business by making smart technolgy choices. 

I’m thinking of moving entirely to “the cloud” sometime soon so I’ll probably let you know how that goes.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008 is starter version of Microsoft’s new small business accounting program. The purpose of this version of the application is to get you used to the product, upgrade to Microsoft Office Accounting Professional, promote other complementary Microsoft products like Microsoft Office, and advertise Microsoft products and services.

What it Does

•      Track Expenses and revenue
•      Track multiple bank accounts
•      Comes with charts of accounts for many common businesses that can be modified
•      Prints plain paper quotes, invoices, and statements
•      Prints checks on check stock (that you can buy from Microsoft)
•      Manages Payroll through ADP (for a fee)
•      Accepts Credit Card Payment through Chase or PayPal (for a fee)
•      Uploads Payment Data from PayPal (Manually from a file)
•      Has some easy to customize basic reports like a Profit and Loss, and Customer Sales
•      Downloads transactions from bank accounts
•      Uploads customer and vendor and transaction data from Excel

What it doesn’t do

• Print Po’s and Track Inventory (Available on the Pro version)
• Email Invoices if you don’t have Microsoft Word

My Review

The software comes up all Microsoft. The home page is a Microsoft ‘resource’ link (Changeable in the Pro version) When you star the program you will get prompted to upgrade to the pro version, and there are ads on most of the home pages. Like Quickbooks Simple Start, it has graphical depictions of business processes to make navigating easier, but they are grouped into different categories like customers, vendors, etc. The software also follows a strict accounting process so you can’t delete transactions, only void them. If you have Microsoft Word, you can customize invoices and create create letters. If you have Microsoft Outlook you can integrate with the Outlook address book. I was a bit disappointed that you couldn’t email invoices without a copy of Microsoft Word installed. It uses a lot of computer horsepower, so it was a bit slow, but acceptable, with my 1GB, 1.2Mhz Celeron System.

Recommendation

If you are running Microsoft Office this is a good product and it has a similar look-and-feel.  You will have to spend more time with it, then Quicken Simple Start, to figure out how it works, but if want to download transactions from the bank this may be the choice for you. If your want to work fast, make sure you have a newer more powerful computer system.

Read my review of  QuickBooks Simple Start 2008 for Windows

Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word,  and Microsoft Outlook  Accounting Express are trademarks of Microsoft, Inc.
QuickBooks Simple Start is a trademark of Intuit, Inc.

QuickBooks Simple Start is a limited functionality starter version of the every popular QuickBooks program from Intuit (the makers of Quicken Software). The purpose of this version of the application is to get you used to the product and convince you to upgrade to the more functional and much more expensive ( $199.00) QuickBooks Pro.  

What it Does

•      Track Expenses and revenue
•      Track multiple bank accounts
•      Comes with a basic chart of accounts that can be modified and expanded
•      Prints plain paper Estimates, Invoices,and Sales Receipts
•      Prints checks on check stock (that you can buy from QuickBooks)
•      Connects to the QuickBooks Payroll Service
•      Connects to the QuickBooks Merchant Service (Credit Card Processing)
•      Has some easy to customize basic reports like a Profit and Loss, and Cusomer Sales
•      Uploads customer and vendor data from Excel

What it doesn’t do

•      Convert transactions from other financial software (Available on the Pro version)
•      Print PO’s and Track Inventory (Available on the Pro version)
•      Download transactions from the bank and credit card (Available on the Pro version)

My Review

It has a nice graphical interface that follows the business process, and makes it easy to find basic daily functions without looking through menus. Most of the basic setup is self explanatory,but they do have quite a bit of help available, too. I had two issues with the software, first it was very difficult to find the checkbook reconciliation function (it was hidden under ‘For your Accountant’ on the Company menu). It also took me quite a bit of time to figure out how to setup a second bank account (you do it from the chart of accounts setup).

Recommendation

If your current financial software doesn’t handle  business processes or you don’t have any software, and you run a service based business QuickBooks Simple Start should do the job. Creating invoices, estimates, and sales receipts can make your business look very professional. You won’t be able to create PO’s and you will have to enter you own bank transitions, but the price certainly is right, and it will successfully manage your business finances.

Next Free Accounting Software to be reviewed:  Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008

QuickBooks, QuickBooks Simple Start, QuickBooks Pro and Quicken are trademarks of Intuit, Inc.
Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office Accounting Express are trademarks of Microsoft, Inc.