Need Basic Accounting Software Advice

[Michael J. Brown]

Over the past 2 weeks I have completed work for three clients. Working on 2 deadlines simultaneously during the final 6 days of those 2-weeks.

 

Because this is a moonlighting operation, I've never experienced that type of workload. well, I have from a single client, but never from (practically) 3 at once.

 

That said, this has brought to light something that I never gave much thought to before because it was always easy to track client billing / payment. There was only one coming in at a time - and those were spread apart by several months. But now I'm facing the possibility of entertaining multiple clients with overlapping schedules. I have even, on one occasion, forgotten what I billed one client (had to go look at a quote I sent out to refresh myself).

 

Do any of you use a software package to keep track of billing/payment/accoutns receivable/etc.? If so, what? I've heard about Quickbooks. Is this one that will let me track these things in a clear and concise way?

 

 

Thanks.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey M

I used quickbooks for a while.. and it has it's advantages in keeping things organized and syncing up with my bank account, but after a while I determined the benefits just weren't worth the time for me. Since I freelance and handle a small number of jobs per year, I save time by just keeping track of accounting myself via excel and filing cabinet.

Edited October 21, 2011 by sancheuz

[Chewbacca]

Have a look at this invoice software, pretty basic, but might do the trick for 99 USD

http://ezyinvoice.com/

[Joel Gray]

Quicken Home and Business works pretty well. It's easier to manage than Quickbooks and it allows you to do many of the same things, such as online banking, invoicing, client payments, quarterly and year end reports for tax purposes. I'm a one-man-operation too and I'm often juggling more than one client at a time, so this has worked well for me over the years.

[Michael J. Brown]

Disco!

 

Thanks for the responces fellas. Quiken Home & Business is sounding like a winner, as I've got some experience using that software already.

[Tommy L]

http://www.ganttproject.biz/

Looks like a strange choice on the face of it. But a gantt file really helps with task management and billing if you are a visual person. You drag out time bars that represent whatever you want them to. You can also drag out dependencies. I am an anexcell klutz so this keeps me organised. I have bars for each project mapping out phases of a project. You can see how busy you're going to be by how many bars overlap each other.

[Michael J. Brown]

That Gantt chart software looks pretty interesting at first glance, Tommy. I'll have to check into it.

 

Thanks.

[Tommy L]

In fact at one point (before I used Gantt) if I had lots of projects and would actually forget about the occasional project until I got a query from a client about progress. That scared me into finding a solution that visualises project time-lines.

It actually works exactly how my old boss organised his team. He would draw bars in a planner crossing from day to day showing which artist was working n which project, so that helped him plan tasks, deadlines, vacations etc in the office. This is just the same.

[MD]

Harvest and Ronin are supposed to be great options.

 

Harvest:

http://www.getharvest.com/

Ronin:

http://www.roninapp.com/

[danb4026]

Have you looked at Freshbooks? It's not full blown accounting software, but an online invoicing and expense tracking option. Has lots of features and easy to use.

 

https://archtagon.freshbooks.com/refer/www

 

PS...I have been using Quickbooks Contractor Edition. Since I am a one man operation it is way overkill and presents too many technical issues to be worth my while. I am writing the $300+ expense of the software off.

Edited October 28, 2011 by danb4026

[Michael J. Brown]

Great feedback, people. Thanks a ton for the references.

 

Dan, I've checked out (and signed up with) FreshBooks. Looks very useful I'm going to give this a test run with my next few jobs and see how things go.

[danb4026]

Great...good luck