It depends on two factors: how much accounting you know and what type of business you need to record the books on.

There is a great online program called Xero that is better than Quickbooks for those who know some basic bookkeeping. Or if you want to try a few programs because you have some idea of how to double-enter records, there are several free programs available at techsupport.com. Excel is better than nothing if you run a day care or very new business, but as you get bigger and better, you need smarter and more complicated.

If you are totally without bookkeeping knowledge, hire a bookkeeper who has extensive training and experience in Quickbooks. Don't hire someone who SAYS they know, hire someone with credentials you can verify. Intuit sells the lowest level of professional labeling without testing for competency. Hire at least a Certified QB expert. Sleeter.com also provides competency testing.

The money spent on a professional will more than pay for itself in tax savings, not to mention the other benefit: you will have the financial information to make savy business decisions.

Do what you do best; outsource the rest. Good luck.

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Check with your business friends in your area, the local chamber of commerce, the Local main street group, ask people ....

Also systems are generally about the same except price

QB is the industry leader due to the market share and most bookkeepers know QB well.

Good luck and Happy New Year

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There are several good software packages out there - a lot of it depends on what you or the person doing your bookkeeping prefers.

Quickbooks is very popular - it is visual, relatively easy to learn, and easy to fix mistakes (of course, that makes it easy to make mistakes too). It is best for service businesses - it's not as strong with products or inventory.

Peachtree is also popular - it's a little different from Quickbooks, and handles some things, such as inventory, much better, but could be overkill for a simple service business.

There are a couple of less popular programs that would be sufficient for a very small business starting out, such as Avenquest's Bookkeeper program (cheap, does the job, but clunky to use), or TurboCash or GnuCash (both free, but have their own quirks, such as TurboCash being a little less US user friendly, and no inventory support in GnuCash).

Ultimately, it depends on how big your business is, and what you need to track. If your business is very small, spreadsheet accounting works very well. We've set up spreadsheets to track a single business checking account, reconcile each month and total up income and expenses. If you're ready for the reports and need the more advanced tracking that a more comprehensive software offers, take a look at one of the above. If you are comfortable working largely on your own and figuring out the software, go with one of the cheaper/free options. If you will need support, go with one of the more expensive but more popular options as it will be easier to find experts to help with them. Specifically, if you're in a service industry, go with Quickbooks, if you're in a product/manufacturing industry, go with Peachtree.

Hope that helps!

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