Alternative to Quickbooks for accounting & customer contacts

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3328150

by tommyqh • 15 years ago

3 6 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm looking for an alternative to Quickbooks for my accounting and customer/vendor contact management.

Wanted a more user friendly and better UI/UX for the future. Their QB Pro version is obviously very robust and great for an accountant or book keeper but I don't have really have the time to figure it all out. Plus it's such a boring software to use haha.

thanks

kertz• 15 years ago

invoicemachine.com

jonah• 15 years ago

Quickbooks online?

http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com/

twog• 15 years ago

cant beat http://lessaccounting.com

antoniusego• 15 years ago

Try Indinero

smallegan• 15 years ago

Freshbooks.com

philiphodgen• 15 years ago

This is not the answer you are hoping for, but . . . .

1. If you don't have the time to "figure it all out" (meaining all of the accounting stuff), then you need a bookkeeper. Hire one.

2. If you want to hire a bookkeeper, you'll find dozens who know Quickbooks. Other accounting systems? "Uhh, yeah, I can figure that out. Trust me." Nope. You want to make it easy to hire (and replace) bookkeepers. Use what everyone knows.

3. Conclusion: use Quickbooks. You'll be able to hire a bookkeeper with trivial effort and then move on with making money.

4. Guess who has to deal with the sub-optimal UI/UX? Not you. You sit once a week with your bookkeeper and go over reports and say stuff like "What is this? How come we spent that?"

5. Keep your customer/vendor contact management separate from your accounting systems. I have no opinion or recommendation on this. I use Daylite on a Mac. It is meh.

6. You know that comment about the "don't have the time" for accounting? Your business is a body and money is the oxygen. Make the time to understand the money flow. If not your business will die, or worse yet it will lurch along, barely alive, always feeding you hope and always threatening bankruptcy.

All of this is from painful personal experience. Those of us who run businesses do not want accounting. We want answers. Usually "How much money do I have?" and "Where is it going?"

/Phil

Alternative to Quickbooks for accounting & customer contacts

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