|
North of London | Use Quicken and just checked to be sure and it shows I have used it since Jan 1st 1992.
I ran a dummy for about 6 months before that to get the feel for it and used the old paper ledger book.
My first setup was not good as i tried to get too complicated with 'categories' and 'classes'.
Threw that away and reset the 'categories' to match the categories that accountant uses in income tax filing.
This allows me to print a nice neat report for the accountant that matches his needs.
I then break the categories out with subcategories to allow me to use it for my purposes.
Sub categories for year or field if you wish etc.
For instance SEED category is broken out with type (crop) and year at least but you can add more to suit your needs.
As others have indicated Quick Books might be better if you have payroll or many invoices to be sent.
Quicken has worked for me and was affordable when I started, other programs dedicated to farming at that time were unaffordable for a smaller operation in the early '90ies.
More are available at this time and might be better priced.
I do use online banking as much as possible and it downloads the account info to make it very easy to reconcile the cheque 'book'.
My cheque 'book' is Quicken. All income and expenses have to go through the chequing account and be recorded in the farm books on Quicken.
I therefore have my books 'up to date' at all times within a day or so.
Cheques are produced from the Quicken program unless absolutely necessary to hand write one while away from home. Info still has to be entered, so easier to enter and have it print the cheque.
I do like the program but am sure there are others out there that will do the job too.
Unfortunately if you have an Apple like I do you will have to put a program on your Apple to run Windows with it's faults to run Quicken as Quicken has so far not written a program for Apple computers operating system.
That is the biggest drawback I have with Quicken.
I am still running a 2002 version so there are likely changes since my version.
I tried doing cash flow budgeting with Quicken some years ago but ended up going back to just transferring the info over to my old spreadsheet which was developed years before I got Quicken.
I have an accountant that specializes in tax preparation.
I print a report in late fall that he uses to give me suggestions on tax positioning and then a final report after year end (December 31st) which he uses for filing taxes.
I know which categories he needs broken down (for farm programs not income tax) and so produce about 5-6 pages in total.
If he has questions a telephone call with me in front of computer usually answers all questions with an occasional printout emailed to him.
You will get the best value from any books by keeping them up to date.
I do have a payment to farm supplier in July that still sits in my program waiting for me to break it down. Payment has gone through my bank and back in a download and just waits for me to take the time to categorize it.
Will have to enter it in several categories and I did not mention our value added tax known as HST that has to be recorded and then filed with government for rebate (or remitting tax collected if you sell enough taxable goods and services). Quicken makes that very easy too and leaves a good track record if ever audited. | |
|
bookkeeping question
