Which Accounting Software Should You Choose?

If you have a new small business or an existing business you may be considering which accounting software to use to keep track of your income and expenses. There are several options to consider depending on the size of your business and your accounting experience and background. The most common selection for small and some medium businesses is Quickbooks. Quickbooks is a versatile software system that allows you to keep track of your banking, accounts payable, accounts receivables, and inventory. There are a couple options depending on the size of the organizations either pro, premier, or enterprise. Pro allows any business to set up in minutes and begin recording transactions. There are a few limitations to the Pro and Premier systems such as a limitation on the number of inventory items that you can add. Using both Pro or Premier you have the option of adding up to 14,500 items and up to 10,000 vendors or customers. I've had some businesses that ran out of space quickly, but for most these numbers are may never be reached. If on the other hand you do come to that crossroads then you can switch to Enterprise that opens up the option of having 100,000 items and assembly builds with up to 500 items. Enterprise still has limitations on the number of vendors and customers similar to Pro and Premier, but other than that Enterprise is a great system for the larger expanding business.

If you would prefer to have a system that does not impose limitations on you then you may want to consider going with Peachtree or Sage Accounting Systems. Peachtree is a competitor to Quickbooks and has been around nearly as long, but has not taken off quite as well as Quickbooks. Some of the reasons why it has been less widely accepted is that early versions were a lot less user friendly and you had to be fairly familiar with accounting principles to understand how it worked. Peachtree has worked out those issues though and its latest versions are quite good. One of the biggest benefits that Peachtree has over Quickbooks is that it does not limit the number of inventory items, customers, vendors, or anything for that matter. The problem though that users will find from Peachtree is that as your data grows larger the performance of the software will reduce and processes will take longer and longer. This concern can be alleviated by increasing memory on your system.