Quick Books Pro Desktop

[suesinfl]

I work for a small nonprofit and our auditor recommended Quick Books Pro Desktop for our accounting needs. I have never worked with this software and am looking for some feedback. I currently use Excel spreadsheets, but it would be nice to have everything in one place.

We cannot use the online version because we are located in a federal building and are not allowed to have our own internet access or phone lines (I work off of their network). 

[TheOtherMe]

I have used Quick Books, all different versions.  I found it very intuitive if you understand accounting. 

At the church, we used Quick Books for non-profits.  It spit out the letters that had to be sent at year end.

[TheOtherMe]

Does my answer help you at all, Sue?

Because I worked at CPA firms and made entries in QB for all kinds of clients, I found it easy to learn. 

QB for non-profits was so much better than what the church had been doing.  They had used an Excel spreadsheet for contributions and that was a disaster.  Church treasurer worked for a CPA firm and got a license for QB non-profit.  Being an accountant, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  I could give them P & L states, balance sheets, etc. which I couldn't do until we got QB. 

I probably spent 1/4 of the time on the contribution letters at year end as I did when they were on the huge Excel spreadsheet.  I started in August and was told the statements were always wrong at year end.  The entries were not in alphabetical order and they had a column for each service.  Of course, it was wrong by year end. 

My life got so much easier when we got QB.

[msventoux]

QuickBooks is very, very easy to use. It's also easy to screw up. 😄 And relatively easy to fix again.

Do you have a small business development center there? Our local one offers half day and longer QuickBooks classes at a reasonable price, and sometime they're free. If you've never used the software before it might be worth your while to attend a class.

The program isn't difficult, but newbies have a tendency to duplicate transactions, misdated them, delete cleared transactions, rely on the auto fill feature and not pay close attention to what they're posting, etc. Most of the problems I see are from people not really paying a lot of attention to what they're doing or not really understanding the inputs.

And be glad you don't have access to the online version. It's pure evil and needs to be burned at the stake. It's convenient to access, but not so easy to navigate around in and fix certain mistakes.

[suesinfl]

Yes, TOM it does. We don't have donors so to speak, but depend on "grants" from the state, that we then pay the grant money to qualified agriculture producers. They have to improve their farms and we reimburse them thru the "grant" money as long as they meet the qualifications. 

It would just be a matter of tracking the money received and the money paid out. So Excel works fine, but the auditor thinks that it would be easier to track all the funds received, plus our admin fees and the 1099 contractor.

We also sponsor education contests for our county's students and the admin fees pay for the prizes.

[suesinfl]

Aug 22, 2017 21:25:37 GMT -5 msventoux said:

QuickBooks is very, very easy to use. It's also easy to screw up. 😄 And relatively easy to fix again.

Do you have a small business development center there? Our local one offers half day and longer QuickBooks classes at a reasonable price, and sometime they're free. If you've never used the software before it might be worth your while to attend a class.

The program isn't difficult, but newbies have a tendency to duplicate transactions, misdated them, delete cleared transactions, rely on the auto fill feature and not pay close attention to what they're posting, etc. Most of the problems I see are from people not really paying a lot of attention to what they're doing or not really understanding the inputs.

And be glad you don't have access to the online version. It's pure evil and needs to be burned at the stake. It's convenient to access, but not so easy to navigate around in and fix certain mistakes.

Thank you for the information. If we go with QB, I will be going to training, plus our auditor said that he will come in and set it up and train me. He also said that he does NOT recommend the online version. It would cause more problems than it help.

[TheOtherMe]

There is a box to check for 1099 clients in QBs.  Then it spits out the reports at year end and you can complete the 1099s.  I always included a copy of the report with the 1099 so there should not have been any questions.

[suesinfl]

I noticed that and was excited about the option. I deal with $500,000-$700,000 in 1099 clients, so that would help so much. Now if I can just talk this older board to go for it. Some of them still want to see things on the old accounting ledgers. 

[TheOtherMe]

No accounting ledgers.  Just no!

[TheOtherMe]

Aug 24, 2017 18:36:14 GMT -5 suesinfl said:

I noticed that and was excited about the option. I deal with $500,000-$700,000 in 1099 clients, so that would help so much. Now if I can just talk this older board to go for it. Some of them still want to see things on the old accounting ledgers. 

While I checked the box, at any CPA where I worked and at the church, we didn't put the EIN or SSN in the software.  Just in case it got hacked. 

[jkapp]

Very easy to use - you can do pretty much whatever you want (of course, that can be both a good and bad thing about it).

If you don't understand accounting, the software helps you through some things, but you'll still end up having issues. The most common issues I see when companies use this software is that they will post an expense to a fixed asset - for instance, they post fuel reimbursement expense to "Automobile" but it ends up being the Automobile Fixed Asset account and not the Automobile Expense account. The software doesn't seem to warn them about this, so they end up capitalizing fuel expenses.

The reports out of Quickbooks also suck really bad.  The indenting of sub-accounts gets really annoying and sometimes the sub account names will not show up very well. 

Also, if you don't have very powerful computers, the software runs like molasses...especially once you start getting a lot of historical data in the system.

[suesinfl]

Aug 25, 2017 20:50:45 GMT -5 jkapp said:

Very easy to use - you can do pretty much whatever you want (of course, that can be both a good and bad thing about it).

If you don't understand accounting, the software helps you through some things, but you'll still end up having issues. The most common issues I see when companies use this software is that they will post an expense to a fixed asset - for instance, they post fuel reimbursement expense to "Automobile" but it ends up being the Automobile Fixed Asset account and not the Automobile Expense account. The software doesn't seem to warn them about this, so they end up capitalizing fuel expenses.

The reports out of Quickbooks also suck really bad.  The indenting of sub-accounts gets really annoying and sometimes the sub account names will not show up very well. 

Also, if you don't have very powerful computers, the software runs like molasses...especially once you start getting a lot of historical data in the system.

Thank you for the information. I've had 4 semesters of different basic accounting classes with my degree, so I have some understanding. Plus our auditor will set up the accounts and will help me learn how to use them. Excel has worked ok, but now that we are dealing with more money (started off with just 50,000 and now is up to $700,000), accounts, and transactions, I'm hoping that this will help.