Quickbooks: More than just PO's
As a small business (1 man doing upholstery from my house) I've been using Quickbooks for about 7 years (during the last couple of years my wife has learned to help me with the bookkeeping). Quickbooks is more than just bookkeeping, it is more like the central knowlege base of what is going on in the business. As an example of what I mean, I use a number of different QB reports, that I've created, that show us what is going on in our business. Some of the Reports we use are:

• Work Flow Chart (Jobs in progress: a report that automatically shows any work orders (invoices) that have an open balance. As soon as the job is finished and paid, it drops off the list.
• Fabrics or supplies that need ordered (this report reads Work Orders and shows all the orderable items.)
• What's been ordered (for this I use both the "Open PO's" report, and the above report)
• Bills that need to be paid. (Since we enter all the bills as they come in, and enter the due dates, they all show up on the "pay bills" window by date. It shows us what is due when, making it easy to keep all the bills paid on time.)
• How much (and what) we've bought from each supplier How much we are spending for each type of supplies, utilities, etc. Most of the estimates for the business are created directly in Quickbooks. When a client decides to proceed, the estimates are converted into QB invoice/Work Order. (I've created specific invoice templates for each type of job I do. (for example, we have a specific template for upholstery, slip covers, RV cushions, etc.) I use purchase orders to order fabrics and supplies. When the shipments come in, we "check them in", creating a bill (with correct due dates) in the process. Whenever we get bills in the mail (electricity, water, etc.) We create Bills in QB, complete with the due dates. I see the arguments about "not wasting time doing all that bookwork". As an encouragement to emphasize the importance of bookwork, I want to tell you about my dad. He was one of the hardest workers that I knew. He could work harder and faster than many men. However, he wasn't big on paperwork. As a result, as I was growing up, at least several times we were running and hiding from creditors, because the records weren't kept up and the bills didn't get paid, etc. When I got married, neither I nor my wife had any financial training. After going through some years of financial struggles ourselves, we got a computer and starting using Quickbooks. It took at least a year or two to learn how to use it (and we are still learning), but it has been well worth it. Durint the last 7 years that we've been using QB, we've had a complete turn around in our financial areas. Althought we still don't make a lot of money, our bills are paid on time, we keep our business much more on track and organized. QB, and our appointment calendar (Microsoft Outlook) helps to keep us on track. I just want to finish by saying this. I've both seen and experience what it's like to work hard, but still have everything come crashing down. I'm throughly convinced of the need, and desirability, of "doing that "nit-picky" paperwork. Taking the time up front to work out the details saves so much time, and peace of mind, in the long run. Stephen