I have routinely upgraded, every three years, and most lately use Quicken 2014 Home and Business.

Nelson 11 Comments Small business owners frequently ask us, Can I use Quicken or do I have to use QuickBooks for my business.

In other words, your accounting system should be able to tell you with a mouse click how much money you have in the bank, which customers owe you money, and what inventory youve got stocked on the store, warehouse, or shop floor.

Stated most simply, your accounting system should perform (and perform well) three easy-to-understand tasks.

This means that it doesnt work for businesses that own inventory.

But Quicken works really well for service businessesespecially small service businesses.

Also, if you need to use accrual basis accounting to accurately measure your business profits, or you need to keep detailed records of what the business owns and what it owes, you need QuickBooks.

QuickBooks, for example, includes an inventory feature and a fixed asset tracking system.

Whats more, QuickBooks includes security features that make it possible to have other people (like a bookkeeper) do some of your accounting without having them see every bit of your businesss finances.

However, let us emphasize something thats really important and related to task 1: It is essential that your accounting system let you accurately measure your profits or losses.

Sorry, but you cant successfully manage a business unless you know when and how youre making moneyand when and how youre not.

If that doesnt work and you enjoy reading, you can try one of Steves books, Quicken for Dummies or QuickBooks for Dummies.

Quicken Vs Quickbooks How To Use Quicken

If you want more help than that, you can contact our office and arrange to schedule an hour or two of personalized training that will teach you how to use Quicken or QuickBooks in your specific situation.

Nelson Stephen L.

Nelson is the author of more than two dozen best-selling books, including Quicken for Dummies and QuickBooks for Dummies.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Magna Cum Laude, from Central Washington University and a Masters in Business Administration in Finance from the University of Washington (where, curiously, he was the youngest ever person to graduate from the program).

My next step is to find and purchase your book on Quickbooks.

I will need to generate reports showing each property with related expenses.

I do not need to interface with a DDA account, nor track income.

If Quickbooks will suit my needs more, I may as well bite the bullet and learn Qb now.

It is definitely sufficient in its design to do that you use tags for each property you want to track seperately.

Where Quicken fails dramatically is in its unstable database design and bugs and having so many payees, different tags, and tracking so many things seems to bring Quicken to its knees.

Quicken Vs Quickbooks Software Program That

I am looking to change to Quickbooks just to have a stable accounting software program that doesnt crash almost daily.

Needless to say I have tracked banking transactions, and matched my totals to bank and credit card statements for decades.

Quicken For Mac Vs Quickbooks