What is QuickBooks? QuickBooks is a fully integrated accounting software package for small to medium sized businesses.  It is capable of producing full financial statements, bank reconciliations, payroll reports, and virtually anything else you could want or need.  QuickBooks uses double-entry accounting while Quicken, which is tailored more for personal finances, uses single entry accounting. QuickBooks also provides full financial statements which is required for corporations, partnerships, and LLC's (sole proprietorships may not need this feature).

Why should I use QuickBooks?  It's important for any business owner to know exactly where your money is going, and why.  QuickBooks can help organize and track your transactions so you don't have to try to remember everything you've done for the past year.  QuickBooks also contains extensive reports options, making it very customizable to create:

• Balance Sheet

• Income Statement (Profit & Loss)

• Receivables

• Payables

• Job Costing & Loan Draw Reports

• General Ledger

• Many other essential reports.

What's the difference between Quicken and QuickBooks?  Quicken is designed for tracking personal finances, such as your checkbook and investments. Quicken has complete investment tracking, which QuickBooks does not.  QuickBooks, on the other hand, is built to track your business accounts, including assets, liabilities, receivables, payables and equity accounts.  Not sure which you need?  Call us and we can help.

What's the difference between QuickBooks & QuickBooks Pro? Pro offers additional reports and tracking features such as job costing, estimating, detailed payroll, and time tracking.

Where do I get QuickBooks?  You can purchase QuickBooks at almost any computer store, Costco, online stores & many electronics stores.

How much does QuickBooks cost? Usually between $100-$200, depending on whether you choose QuickBooks or QuickBooks Pro and where you shop.

What version should I use?  QuickBooks is updated each year, but if you already have an older version, Kershaw & Associates can use versions 99 through the current release.  Versions 4.0 and 5.0 are not Y2K compliant, although most functions work just fine. 

Why should I back up my QuickBooks file?  Although uncommon, it is possible for your QuickBooks data to become corrupted, or worse accidentally deleted.  Creating backup disks on a regular basis could save you hours of tedious file rebuilding.  We recommend backing your files up at least once a week.

How do I backup and restore my QuickBooks file? We have put together a detailed instruction sheet on how to backup and restore QuickBooks files. You can find it here.