Upand$tarting

Laying a good financial foundation is critical to seamless growth down the road. Sure, you can use a spreadsheet, checkbook, and shoe box. I’ve stepped in to this situation 6 months later and it is an absolute mess to clean up and that much harder to incorporate a true accounting package.

With the widespread availability of robust (and inexpensive) packages in the market today – why not give yourself a good start.

You may think that your options start and stop with Quickbooks, they don’t.

In many cases Quickbooks may be your first and best choice for an accounting system. It is hands down the easiest one to procure, available at every big box electronics and office supply store.

There are other options as well. Today’s post will introduce you to a few options that will get you started and may satisfy your requirements forever. I’m planning a more detailed review of each down the road.

But first, you need to answer a few questions.

1. Are you comfortable with keeping your data in the cloud?

There are a number of SaaS (software as a service) products. They allow you to access anywhere, but your data doesn’t live on your machine – it lives on theirs. Also, you will need to pay a subscription fee, not a onetime purchase.

2. Do you want to do the basics or are you interested in running payroll, manufacturing, and/or retail sales through your product?

A couple of these products have different versions tailored to different business models; Quickbooks even has a version that allows you to manage point of sale transactions.

3. What is the cost of expansion?

Let’s face it; we all want our business to grow. It is important that the application can grow with us, both in supporting multiple users and an expanding level of transactions.

With your answers to the above questions in mind, let’s take a look at what’s available.

Quickbooks

For the past 8 years or so, Quickbooks has dominated the small business / start-up accounting market. It is a very robust package with multiple options presented during the set-up process to provide you with a “customized” general ledger based on your business type.

It has the capacity to run your business from no revenue to $10 million or more and to handle multiple users. There is a fixed asset module, a payroll module, the ability to sync your bank accounts, hold your budget and a nice set of presentation quality reports.

In order to get the most out of the package, it really requires a high level of customization, though it will work fine right out of the box.

Quickbooks Online

How do you feel about putting your finances out in the cloud? Even though I believe in SaaS computing, the last time I worked with this product it was most definitely a v. 1.0 product. Along with Intacct, this product doesn’t work for everyone. If the subscription model & cloud storage of your data aren’t major issues, this product may work for you.

Peachtree

Peachtree by Sage Software was one of the first products I used, way back in the early 90’s. With a feature set similar to Quickbooks, it is a solid option for a general accounting package. There is also a SaaS version of the product available.

Microsoft Dynamics / Great Plains

Microsoft’s financial offerings don’t end with the personal financial package, Money. They offer a robust small business package and extensive financial management system that has a strong supply chain management component.

One of the products strengths is its ability to grow and expand with your business.

Intacct

Intacct is a relatively new kid on the block with a very interesting SaaS product that integrates very tightly with Salesforce.com. It is may be more expensive than a shrink-wrapped package like Quickbooks and it may not make sense if Salesforce.com is not in your future, but it is a very exciting product that manages certain accounting issues much better than the competition.

In addition to the standard general ledger package Intacct does an excellent job at handling Deferred Revenue, a particularly sticky accounting issue surrounding contract & software sales and revenue recognition.

I’m sure there are other packages out there and I will attempt to bring news of these to you as I find them. I’ll be providing more detailed summaries and reviews of each product in the near future.