Accounting Programs for Small Businesses

by William Brautigam

It is a fact of being in business that everyone has to be financially accountable. Just how this is accomplished is up to each business owner’s discretion. I made a good living, for a lot of years, helping people decide how to do just that. Big companies, small companies, partnerships, as well as the independent entrepreneur must face this reality at least once every year when the tax man comes a knocking at their door. This is often perceived as a painful experience that need not be so for the prepared businessman. The time to begin using a new or first time accounting program is at the beginning of the fiscal year, which for most business, coincides with the calendar year. The key to making a decision as to how to account for your businesses activities is to study all options, prepare to implement your choice and lastly to do whatever is necessary to fully support that decision for at least the first 9-12 months. Now is probably the best and last time, if you have not already done so, to consider enhancing how you are accounting for your business activity. We have reviewed the three most popular accounting programs, on the market today, for your consideration if you are thinking of alternatives for how you are doing business today. They are BestWare’s M.Y.O.B., Peachtree Software’s Peachtree Accounting for Windows and Intuit’s QuickBooks.

The average small businessperson gets into business to make money and not make a career of figuring how to count the money he makes. Counting money can be fun, accounting for it may never be fun but at least the programs reviewed this month will make the whole process easier for the average businessperson. The programs are designed to be easily understood, used by businesses that employ fewer than 100 employees have sales of less than $10 million and do not necessarily employ professional accountants. "Look before you leap" and "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" are old adages that are relevant when considering how and what to use to account for your business’ activity.

The programs make setting up your books an easy, relatively simple and emotionally painless task. This assumes the new user has read/previewed all of the suggested material before wading right into the program. For the novice and reading adverse user M.Y.O.B.’s setup excels here as it includes a 30 minute video tape, in addition to the setup aids typically included to a greater or lesser extent, in all accounting programs, to familiarize the user with the programs setup, operation and features. All of the programs offer a vast choice of easily modifiable Chart of Accounts, specialized templates and easily customizable reports. Stepping through assorted setup screens and answering simple questions will have you up and running in less than 15 minutes. Making revisions or massive changes after setup due to lack of a thorough understanding of where you are trying to get to may cause you to "shelve" the program, whereas a little reading before loading the program can eliminate this problem.

Entering data is a straight forward experience in all the programs. QuickBooks is perhaps the most seemingly uncomplicated and non-accounting terminology oriented of the three programs as well as having the most intuitive help system of the three programs being discussed herein. M.Y.O.B. offers almost the same degree of apparent simplicity but uses a flow chart metaphor to take the user through the data entry screen/option selection process, not an unpleasant process for the organized, logical mind. Peachtree continued to retain much of its accounting terminology/nomenclature from its DOS roots days. This is the friendliest face for the bookkeeping oriented businessperson but most threatening and difficult to use for the non-accounting oriented user. Help is always available on-line for the user, in any one of these fine programs, and more so if you purchase a CD-ROM based version.

Depending upon your relationship with and the amount of reliance you place on your accountant or tax preparation service you might want to opt for the software that he/she is most familiar with. Making/booking year end, periodic or tax necessary adjustments will be easier if the originator can make them for you and the savings may be significant. All of these programs offer the ability to import and export data in multiple formats with QuickBooks having an understandable edge in interfacing with an appropriate version of Intuit’s TurboTax. Performing financial analysis is a relatively simple matter in any one of them by simply "drilling down" through reported information to the underlying detail.

I cannot say often enough how important it is to backup your accounting data to separate media for off-site storage. Each Of these programs provide for automatic backup of data. Reading the included manual(s) will explain this relatively simple process that you will rue not having done in case of a computer virus infection or other dreaded hard drive disaster occurrence. To get the most out of whichever program you choose you will best be served by fully reading and then periodically revisiting all the reading material, both on and off-line, provided with any one of these programs.

Conclusions and Recommendations
Peachtree is the closest thing you will find to a networkable accounting program than an accountant/bookkeeper will feel right at home with. It’s electronic features/options are first rate and it can handle almost unlimited growth. It offers a large base of user groups being the oldest program in the trio reviewed here. The help desk gets too busy at tax time but this is not unexpected.

QuickBooks is the most user friendly business accounting program you are likely to ever find that offers powerful accounting solutions without any jargon or accounting knowledge specifically required. It’s weakness, if it has one is the difficulty a user, any user, will find when attempting to make a standard double entry accounting type adjustment. Help is readily available via phone, fax or manual.

M.Y.O.B. (Mind Your Own Business) is not as simple/easy to use at first glance as QuickBooks nor as powerful as Peachtree but it is full featured and its reporting/analysis features cannot be beat for the price and for its ease to use. It is my favorite based on ease of use, degree of control and its help desk is first rate. The included video tape is an added bonus that I wish more software came with. As in some cases a picture, or better yet a tape, is worth a thousand words.

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