Software for small business book keeping

[schurchill39]

For those of you who run a small business (without employees) or are self employed, what software do you use for bookkeeping? We've been recommended Sage 50 pro (formerly Simply Accounting), Sage One, and Inuit Quickbooks. I wanted to get beyond's first hand experience if there was any for ease of use, and support.

[thinmyster]

I used wave accounting. But have gone back to just using excel

[ExtraSlow]

I use excel. I actually would set it up in google sheets next time, better collaboration options.

[Zhariak]

I've been using Quickbooks for 11.5 years for my company.

I think when it comes to all the small business accounting packages, it all comes down to preference. They all do the same thing (although they can do it differently). I notice my small biz customers either use Sage or Quickbooks usually depending on their accountants, or the owners preference.

When it comes to year end, just copy or backup the datafile, ship it off to the account. Althought you could do that with Excel too... lol


Software vs Excel, it all depends on if you're going to be issuing invoices regularly, your bill volume, as well if you have regular sales/service items.

In my case, I need software because of the volume of invoices I spit out, the amount of bills I pay monthly, and the service items, and products I sell (I have them all inside of my inventory list as sales items). Also, it's nice and clean to use it to keep track of how you pay bills (CC expenses vs EFTs), and track how customers pay your bills. Once you get crafty with it, you can generate some awesome reports for insights you might need (such as how much you're paying on merchant CC processing fees, margins, etc..). Again, you can do some of this with Excel, but if depends on how easy you want it to be...

I also have numerous accounts in my chart of accounts for different things. I could see this being a pain in the butt with Excel.

[ExtraSlow]

Yeah if you are doing a larger volume of invoices maybe. I actually use doodle docs (not sheets) for the invoicing. Lol.

[HiTempguy1]

I used wave accounting. But have gone back to just using excel

I use Wave, really like it. I like having access on the go.

[syscal]

We use QuickBooks, but I always tell people to look at any other software and sites they use and what accounting systems they integrate with.

[AndyL]

Freshbooks

/Thread ;)

[CompletelyNumb]

Xero, ReceiptBank and Hubdoc for all my accounting, invoicing and document saving. Account can do all my major bookkeeping and returns from there.

[schurchill39]

Those of you using excel, did you build your own spreadsheets out of experience knowing what is required for book keeping or did you get a template off the interwebs?