Should You Be Using QuickBooks for Your Small Business
QuickBooks is the market leader in accounting software for small businesses. It's also a never-ending cause of irritation for small business owners and solopreneurs who don't have extensive accounting knowledge.
In this post, we'll deconstruct the beast that is QuickBooks Online, piece by piece, to see if you really need it as a small business owner.
Who Needs QuickBooks?
Any business that deals with clients will require accounting and bookkeeping. If you don't have an accountant to manage these for you, subscribing to a QuickBooks plan may be necessary. However, the complexity of QuickBooks for people with zero accounting knowledge may be a deterrent.
We'll go in-depth about the pros and cons of QuickBooks and decide whether it is the best solution for your business.
Pros and Cons of Using QuickBooks for Various Business Issues
As a small business owner, you'll want your accounting to be easy, stress-free, and efficient. QuickBooks does offer quite a few advantages for keeping track of your finances, but it also has some downsides.
Here are some aspects to know about QuickBooks when handling various business issues:
Efficiently Tracking Your Numbers
Tracking your numbers is essential to any business. You need to know how much you are making and losing as a business to create decision-based business plans. However, if you are only on QuickBooks at most once a month, you may not be able to figure out anything that is clearly helpful either.
People often stay away from the app due to its complex dashboards and setup that is not mobile-friendly. Also, having the numbers on QuickBooks may not necessarily translate to understanding what these numbers mean and how they translate into your business operations.
Prioritizing Your Time
Once you can figure out how to fully make use of QuickBooks, it is a great tool that can help you do the following all in one platform:
Track your expenses
Filing and paying your taxes on time
Ensuring a profitable business
Managing your company's monthly or quarterly budget
The downside is that this learning curve may be so steep that it will require you an accounting degree or bookkeeping certification to use it to its fullest potential.
Handling Front-Office and Back-Office Work
The work done in QuickBooks is mostly back-office work. Back-office work is essential to the health of your business. However, without someone to reliably handle your front office, all the back office work you do amounts to nothing.
Your primary focus as a business owner would be the front office work, such as selling your products or services. You will not have the time to do tedious back-office work trying to balance your accounting.
As not everyone is a QuickBooks expert and QuickBooks can be far from intuitive, you may need a long time trying to figure out what the numbers mean. You may not even know if you have enough money for a particular project after months of looking at your numbers on the screen.
Setting up and Training for QuickBooks
QuickBooks is an essential tool for small businesses that may not be able to afford an accountant. However, all its functionalities may be wasted if you don't understand how to use the platform.
There are QuickBooks bookkeepers you can hire online to help you get your accounting and bookkeeping sorted out. You can also go for one-time QuickBooks setup and training classes online to figure out how to use the program yourself.
Conclusion
If you don't have an expert doing your finances, you'll need a platform like QuickBooks. However, QuickBooks is one of the more robust accounting tools and it may have a steep learning curve, but the results will be worth it.
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