As I am anything but organized, I find that my problem is keeping track of all my expenses. For a while, I put receipts in envelopes. Then I tried manila file folders. Yeah, real helpful. And my important statements? Let’s just say finding those involved a lot of swearing.

Someone told me I need to buy Quickbooks financial software. So I listened and ran to the store and picked up a copy of Quickbooks 2007. To date, I have been happy with my decision to purchase Quickbooks and here is why I decided to go with Quickbooks instead of other programs. The Quickbooks review was more favorable than those of others.

Quickbooks, for those of you not familiar with the product, is a financial accounting software program that allows the user to better organize and manage their finances. Quickbooks primary competitors are Quicken and MS Money.

The Quickbooks review I read was favorable towards the product but also highlighted a few problem areas. Here is a synopsis of a review posted by ZDNet.

The good: QuickBooks 2007 provides minor improvements to an already top-notch interface; new Google-specific marketing tools.

The bad: QuickBooks 2007 doesn’t offer many new accounting goodies for QuickBooks 2006 upgraders.

The bottom line: Despite its lean list of improvements, QuickBooks 2007 remains a terrific small-business accounting package. Longtime QuickBooks users who haven’t already upgraded to QuickBooks 2006 should leap to 2007 instead.

From there I decided to find another review of Quickbooks. About.com posted the following Quickbooks review that also proved helpful.

Overall, QuickBooks 2007 remains an easy-to-use software program for small business accounting. This is a must-have upgrade for users with versions from 2004 or earlier (since Intuit does not support software over three years old). Manufacturing, wholesale, and retail businesses will benefit from enhanced features in the 2007 version.

After reading the various reviews of the Quickbooks product I was confident in my decision to purchase Quickbooks 2007. I think that if you need help managing your finances, Quickbooks would be a product you could benefit from. But make sure to do your research to ensure that Quickbooks is the product for you. Aren’t reviews great?

Or should you?

Debt consolidation is nothing new. My guess is you receive countless debt consolidation offers from any number of banks and credit card companies. They throw around low interest rates in hopes of enticing you to apply for their debt consolidation credit card. For some, these low-interest offers can help them pay off their high interest debt and get their finances in order. However for others, such offers only help make things worse.

If you are considering applying for a debt consolidation credit card you should know a few things before doing so and ask yourself a very important question: do I have the financial discipline to pay off the balance and not charge more to the card? Such a question may seem obvious, but many folks do not understand the ramifications of making purchases using their debt consolidation credit card.

You may not be shocked to learn that those zero percent interest rates only apply towards balance transfers and not towards purchases, but did you know that any purchase you make will accrue interest until your balance is paid off? That’s right, if you transfer $3,000 to a debt consolidation credit card at zero percent and then make $1,500 worth of purchases at 15 percent, you will not begin to pay off the $1,500 until the initial transfer is paid off.

However, if you have the financial discipline to ignore your debt consolidation credit card and not make additional purchases with it, then you will be doing yourself an obvious financial favor. After all, it does not take an economist to figure out that carrying a balance at 15 percent versus the same amount at zero percent is not the wisest financial decision a person can make.

Debt consolidation credit cards are an excellent option for those who know what they are getting into. So long as you know that you should not make additional purchases and know that the interest rate that was initially offered will remain, you will be in good shape. However, if you are not sure you have the financial discipline to follow the aforementioned rules, a debt consolidation credit card will wind up being no different than the others in your wallet or purse.

Dedicated vs. Dual-Use: Quicken Home & Business includes a multitude of features for personal finance management along with small business features, which appeals to those who want all financials in one place. QuickBooks Simple Start only has features relevant to small business accounting. Without the distraction of small business finance features, it is easier to learn to use QuickBooks Simple Start.

Look and Feel: Because QuickBooks Simple Start focuses only on helping you do small business accounting activities, it has a cleaner interface than Quicken Home & Business and is easier to navigate.

Account Reconciliation: Account reconciliations in Quicken Home & Business start from within account registers, and adding or changing transactions during the reconciliation process is uncomplicated.

Account reconciliations are handled somewhat differently in QuickBooks Simple Start and while not difficult, the process is not as intuitive as it is in Quicken software.

Downloading Transactions: Quicken Home & Business downloads transactions for bank, credit card and investment accounts. Unfortunately, QuickBooks Home & Business does not currently offer this convenience and all entries must be done manually.

Categories: Quicken Home & Business uses income and expense categories while QuickBooks Start uses expense accounts and income accounts to classify transactions per standard double entry accounting procedures. The income and expense accounts look like categories to those familiar with personal finance software, but double entry accounting is not always as simple as recording a check. For example, if the check is written to purchase new equipment for the small business, an asset account needs to be established for the equipment.

Quicken Home & Business or QuickBooks Simple Start?

Quicken Home & Business and QuickBooks Simple Start both address small business accounting needs, but QuickBooks Simple Start is true small business accounting software and it will better serve a growing small business.

QuickBooks Simple Start is better at quickly guiding you through small business transactions, where Quicken Home & Business works well for someone who uses Quicken for personal finances and who makes an occasional sale with a handful of customers.

I recommend using QuickBooks Simple Start if you are very serious about your small business and you have a plan in place for growth. When your business grows, QuickBooks Simple Start data will transfer to higher version of QuickBooks with richer small business accounting features. If you use Quicken for managing personal finances and you frequently have small business accounting transactions, your best bet is to use Quicken Deluxe or Premier for personal finances and QuickBooks Simple Start for small business finances. You can try QuickBooks Simple Start Free Edition to experience how it makes small business accounting easier.

Hopefully, this sheds some light on the Quicken versus QuickBooks debate.

Credit Card Processing – One of the important QuickBooks Add Ons if you are planning on making money is credit card processing. QuickBooks can provide you with everything that you need to accept credit and debit cards. There are three ways in which you can accept credit cards with QuickBooks Add Ons. Your business can accept credit cards by phone, fax or mail order. QuickBooks will automatically enter your transactions into your accounting software and is one of the credit card processing functions that is designed exclusively for QuickBooks. There are also QuickBooks Add Ons for Web stores so that you can set up your online store and accept credit cards. This will also help you to track your money more easily than other credit card processing. You can also use QuickBooks to set up terminals at an actual store and accept credit cards. If you already use QuickBooks, then you can also use this software for receiving credit card payments rather than having another system installed to accept credit cards.

Point of Sale – If you own a retail store, it is important to have a system for ringing up you sales and keeping track of your sales. One of the QuickBooks Add Ons you might not think about is the Point of Sale system. You will receive the barcode scanner, printer and all other essential hardware and software that are needed. This is another feature that is very easy to install if you already use QuickBooks. This will help to track your inventory as well as easily ringing up your sales, and all those other tasks that keep you from doing the important stuff. There are certain things that need to be automated so you can keep your attention on the more important things.

There are plenty of other QuickBooks Add Ons that can help cater to the needs of your business. If there is something you wish your QuickBooks program could do, don’t just wish, check to see if there aren’t QuickBooks Add Ons to help you.

After a free QuickBooks tutorial, you will learn how the program can help you set up interviews, manually set up your company, organize and establish item lists, learn invoicing, manage customer accounts, receive payments, entering and pay bills, make adjustments to your check register, and so much more that is necessary to maintaining a efficiently running company. By using this program, you can focus your attention on what really matters, your customers.

Are you feeling skeptical or intimidated? Please do not, because there is no reason for it. All components can be handled in one amazing program, and you can learn about them all with a free QuickBooks tutorial from Video Professor. That’s right! You might know Video Professor from the infomercials on TV. John W. Scherer created Video Professor over 20 years ago, and the lessons have served over 10 million people. The free QuickBooks tutorial comes in two forms that you can choose from. You can either have it delivered to your home as a 3-CD set, or order it online and the take the free QuickBooks tutorial online. It could not be more convenient! The lessons also have Video Professor’s unique “What-You-See-Is-What-You-Do” system that enables you to take the lesson while you are actually working in QuickBooks. The lesson can also be stopped, paused, rewound and fast-forwarded, so you will never be left behind or get bored.

The Video Professor team takes a lot of pride in its free QuickBooks tutorial because they know you are relying on the lesson to teach yourself what you need to know about handling the financial aspects of your small business, and that is not something to be taken lightly! So let Video Professor help make the start-up of your business easier with a reliable and, free QuickBooks tutorial!

Step 1:

Open Quicken, and go to the Online menu to view and pay your bills online. The program will ask for your login name and password in order to protect your privacy. Use the E-bills tab to navigate between bills and statement periods.

Step 2:

Choose Pay bills in Quicken from the Online menu to manually configure various payments. You can set Quicken to pay any company or person by a set date. You’ll also need to tell Quicken which checking account to withdraw the payment from if you have configured the program to look at more than one account.

Step 3:

Consider signing up for automatic bill payment. Quicken can automatically pay all of your bills each month. Be aware that this feature costs a set amount each month.

Step 4:

Reread the Quicken User Agreement, and make sure you understand your responsibilities for using the program to pay your bills. There are times when the program may be at fault for certain errors, but you also have to live up to certain expectations. For example, you can’t tell Quicken to pay a bill that is due today and blame the program’s creators for a late payment.

Step 5:

View your bills online even if Quicken is installed on another computer. You can use your customer ID and PIN number to log onto the Quicken Bill Pay web site.

Few things can provide you financial convenience the way that online banking and Quicken can once you learn how to use Quicken. You will then be able to access your Quicken account and financial information whenever you have Internet access.

There are other ways that you can learn how to use Quicken more thoroughly. If you want to know the program in and out, not just the online banking aspect, Video Professor has a comprehensive tutorial that will cover the entire program. You can work in Quicken as you watch the tutorial to give you a better learning experience and learn how to use Quicken faster. If you want to focus on the online banking aspects, you can pause, fast-forward and rewind the tutorial at any given time in order to really learn these aspects thoroughly. 

Accounting is the art of recording, summarizing, reporting and analyzing financial transactions. An accounting system can be a simple, utilitarian check register, or, as with Microsoft® Office Accounting, it can be a complete record of all the activities of a business, providing details of every aspect of the business, allowing the analysis of business trends, and providing insight into future prospects.

Bookkeeping is the practice of recording transactions. Bookkeepers tend to focus on the details, recording transactions in an efficient and organized manner, and they may or may not see the overall picture.

Accountants use the work done by bookkeepers to produce and analyze financial reports. Although accounting follows the same principles and rules as bookkeeping, an accountant can design a system that will capture all of the details necessary to satisfy the needs of the business — managerial, financial reporting, projection, analysis, and tax reporting. A good accountant will create a system of financial reporting that gives a complete picture of a business.

What is Accounting? It has Many Facets

 Recording, summarizing, reporting and analyzing are all components of accounting. Recording transactions includes documenting revenues (by invoices or sales receipts), and entering purchases (in the account payable account) and expenditures (in the check register). Calculating and summarizing transactions in a traditional accounting system is a tedious process. Software programs are available that can be helpful by freeing you from the repetitive tasks by calculating and summarizing hundreds or thousands of individual transactions and generating reports to satisfy managerial, governmental, investing, or banking needs. Based on a generally accepted standard, these reports are powerful tools to help the business owner, accountant, banker, or investor analyze the results of their operations.

 Double-Entry Accounting

People have been asking “What is Accounting?” since the fifteenth century when Luca Pacioli first wrote about the practice. The term “accounting” has referred to double-entry accounting. Double-entry accounting uses a system of accounts to categorize transactions. Each transaction that is entered consists of one or more debits and credits, and the total debits must equal the total credits.  If you’re not a bookkeeper or an accountant, the whole system of debiting certain accounts and crediting others can seem reversed. This is because banking transactions have traditionally been described from the bank’s perspective. A credit from the bank will increase your checking account balance on the bank’s books. Bank accounts are assets on your books, so you will record a debit to your checking account while the bank records a credit to its liability account.

Let’s go through a run down of some accounting terms that can help you feel like less of an outsider in the accounting and investing world. We’ll start at the beginning of the alphabet of accounting terms.

Account - Formal record that represents, in words, money or other unit of measurement, certain resources, claims to such resources, transactions or other events that result in changes to those resources and claims.

Account Payable - Amount owed to a creditor for delivered goods or completed services.

Account Receivable - Claim against a debtor for an uncollected amount, generally from a completed transaction of sales or services rendered.

Abatement - complete removal of an amount due, (usually referring to a tax abatement a penalty abatement or an interest abatement within a governing agency.)

Accrual Basis - Method of accounting that recognizes revenue when earned, rather than when collected. Expenses are recognized when incurred rather than when paid.

Accumulated Depreciation - Total depreciation pertaining to an asset or group of assets from the time the assets were placed in services until the date of the financial statement or tax return. This total is the contra account to the related asset account.

Adjusted Gross Income - Gross income reduced by business and other specified expenses of individual taxpayers. The amount of adjusted gross income affects the extent to which medical expenses, non-business casualty and theft losses and charitable contributions may be deductible. It is also an important figure in the basis of many other individual planning issues as well as a key line item on the IRS form 1040 and required state forms.

Asset - An economic resource that is expected to be of benefit in the future. Probable future economic benefits obtained as a result of past transactions or events. Anything of value to which the firm has a legal claim. Any owned tangible or intangible object having economic value useful to the owner.

Now for some accounting terms beginning with a B.

Bankruptcy - Legal process, governed by federal statute, whereby the debts of an insolvent person are liquidated after being satisfied to the greatest extent possible by the debtor’s assets. During bankruptcy, the debtor’s assets are held and managed by a court appointed trustee.

Bond - One type of long-term promissory note, frequently issued to the public as a security regulated under federal securities laws or state Blue Sky Laws. Bonds can either be registered in the owner’s name or are issued as bearer instruments.

Blue Sky Laws - State laws that regulate the issuance of securities. These laws are coordinated with federal acts.

These are just some basic accounting terms from the beginning of the alphabet. For a very comprehensive list of accounting terms, go to http://www.nysscpa.org/prof_library/guide.htm.

Factors to Consider Before Investing in a Franchise: The Cost

Understand that in exchange for obtaining the right to use the franchisor’s name (like McDonalds or CiCis Pizza) you may pay some or all of the following fees. (Know that these are factors to consider before investing in a franchise.)

Initial Franchise Fee and Other Expenses: You will pay an initial franchise fee. This fee may or may not be refundable and range from several thousand to several hundred thousand dollars. Other costs include operating licenses and insurance, rent, inventory and equipment. Some franchisors require you to pay a “grand opening.”

Continuing Royalty Payments: You often must pay royalties even if your outlet has not earned significant income during that time. Know whether or not you have to pay based on a percentage of your weekly or monthly gross income.

Advertising Fees. You may have to pay into an advertising fund. Some portion of the advertising fees may go for national advertising on television, radio, magazines, etc.

Factors to Consider Before Investing in a Franchise: Demand

Ask yourself, “Is there a demand for these products or services in my community?” For example, garden care or swimming pool maintenance is profitable, but only in the spring or summer. Know whether or not there is a continuing demand for the products or services a year from now, think ahead. Ask yourself, “Does the product or service generate repeat business?” If you can answer some of these questions then your franchise might be worth investing in.

Factors to Consider Before Investing in a Franchise: Terminations and Renewal

Did you know that you can lose the right to your franchise if you breach the franchise contract? And, the franchise contract is for a limited time; there is no guarantee that you will be able to renew it. These are some factors to consider before investing in a franchise based on terminations and renewal of contracts.

Franchise Terminations: A franchisor can end your franchise agreement for the following reasons:

1)      If you fail to pay royalties or abide by performance standards and sales restrictions.

2)      If your franchise is terminated, you may lose your investment.

Renewal: Franchise agreements usually run 15 to 20 years. After that said amount of time, the franchisor may decline to renew your contract, for whatever reason they want. Renewals may or may not abide by the original terms and conditions. Royalty payments could be raised.

While getting into a franchise can be very profitable, these are many factors to consider before investing in a franchise because it does require a lot of overhead. Investing in a franchise is like investing in stocks, it will be a gamble, but if you do your research and understand the factors to consider before investing a franchise, you could very well come out on top!

A QuickBooks tutorial is available in many forms from CD tutorials to Internet tutorials to manuals. Video Professor offers CD and online QuickBooks tutorials so you can use what is most convenient for you. In the effort to streamline your financial concerns, you can learn how to use QuickBooks more quickly than teaching yourself by using a QuickBooks tutorial. Learn about the many features of QuickBooks that can benefit your business.

Make Everyday Tasks as Easy as Possible

A QuickBooks tutorial will be able to ensure that your everyday tasks stay that way. Don’t let your simple chores become a problem, and streamline your tasks so you can accomplish more. Print checks, pay your bills and track your expenses with extreme ease, and centralize all these items in one, easily accessible place.

You will also learn how to create estimates and invoices with a QuickBooks tutorial so you are on top of all your important information and have it properly organized. You can also learn how to download bank transactions and credit card statements directly to QuickBooks. A QuickBooks tutorial can also show you how to integrate with other programs. You can send estimates, invoices and reports directly from QuickBooks through the use of Microsoft OutlookÒ. Your time is valuable so take all the measures you can to save time.

Organization is Key to Your Business

A QuickBooks tutorial will show you all the tools it has to keep your information and money organized. You can utilize customer, vendor and employee centers so that your information is centralized and more accessible. You can easily track sales, sales tax, customer payments, employee time and expenses so you can bill clients. A QuickBooks tutorial can also give you some pointers for making tax time a lot easier. There are some simple steps that you can take to enter or export information into TurboTax and send directly to your accountant or tax service.

A big part of running your own business is staying on top of the money coming in and going out at any given time. A QuickBooks tutorial will show you how to create many different types of reports so you can easily interpret what is going on with your business. Sales reports, profit and loss reports and so many more can be created much easier than you think. Always know the overall health of your business with the help of QuickBooks.