accounting programs

[Tommy]

do any of you use quick books or msft money to keep track of sponsor payments

expenses etc etc

what I am really looking for is to be able to look up a sponsor or look at a list of sponsors and see how much has come in from them over a period of time

see who is producing and who isn't

be able to see total income for a month or a year etc etc
total expenses for a month or a year etc etc

[Greenguy]

MS Money does all that - I've used it for at least 6 years now.

[Cleo]

I just use an Excel spreadsheet that I made. Has a place for both expenses and income broken down by month and with year end totals.

Here is a screen shot of it. You are welcome to a copy of the spread sheet. All you need to run it is Excel.

[Chop Smith]

Don't you just hate accounting and accountants?

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Chop Smith

Don't you just hate accounting and accountants?

It's right up there with going to the dentist.

Here is a copy of that Excel worksheet for whoever wants it.

[carol.prime]

Try Peachtree

[MrYum]

Admittedly, I haven't looked at Peachtree is many many years, but last time I did...it was the most cumbersome pos on the market

I've been using QuickBooks for over 10 years for various businesses. Very easy to pick up and does all the tracking you're talking about Tommy

That said, if all you want is to track sponsor revenue...Cleo is right...spreadsheets are your friend. And looks like she's already given you one too

[carol.prime]

Sounds good for you. So far I have no troubles with Peachtree. And yes I agree that spreadsheet is everybody's friend.

[cd34]

Peachtree is a double-entry ledger system, which, if you don't have an accounting/bookkeeping background will probably be more trouble than it is worth.

Personally, for ease of use, Cleo's spreadsheet would probably be the way to go.

However, if you are doing this for your benefit, you might want to ask your accountant what software he supports. I use quickbooks to do my accounting, all of the checks, etc are cut through quickbooks, bill payments, etc. I have every credit card that is used for the business tracked in there and can generate a number of graphs or reports to see where things are going. At the end of the year, I hand my accountant the quickbooks file, and taxes are much easier for him to prepare.

Two birds with one stone kind of thing.

[GUNNER]

how easy is QuickBooks to setup and use? someone told me it'd be best to have an accountant do the initial setup with it.

[MrYum]

Originally Posted by GUNNER

how easy is QuickBooks to setup and use? someone told me it'd be best to have an accountant do the initial setup with it.

I found it very easy to set up and use ten years ago when I started using it. But, I was in the accounting business at the time, so my background most likely influenced how easy it was for me.

Hopefully, someone with no accounting background will post their experience. Another possible avenue would be to google quickbooks setup and see what kind of info you can find on the ol net

Yea Sparky, I recall PT being double entry. Also, if memory serves...back in the day it was all modular. And each module had to be configured to 'hit' the right other modules in the right places for everything to work correctly...hence my pain in the ass comment. Again, I have no idea how it is today.

I also know of a couple accountants that love having their customers send a QB file in at year end...makes things much easier

[lorsha]

I use a program called "Mark". He's cheap to!

[Tommy]

OK I got Microsoft money

how do i enter business expenses

especially misalanious items like office supplies, software etc etc etc

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Tommy

OK I got Microsoft money

how do i enter business expenses

especially misalanious items like office supplies, software etc etc etc

I have categories like office, software, hardware, hosting, travel, entertainment, utilities, dues/subscriptions, etc. 99% of the stuff you spend money on will fit into these & the existing categories.

[softhaus]

Unless you have MS Money for Home and Business you're not going to be able to do that (expenses yes, customer & vendor tracking no). I use Quicken for Home and Business and it works very well.

The H&B versions allow you to set up customers (sponsors) that you receive money from. You can also setup vendors (people you pay).

Setup customers (sponsors) under their name, like Topbucks, when you receive a check or payment from them you need to create a invoice for them for the amount you received. Once you've done that you can receive the payment apply it to the invoice you created previously and you're done. Now you have history for p&l, etc.

For business expenses you can create a catch all account such as advertising, rent, telephone, postage, etc. You can also create sub-accounts under the main account for more tracking.

So if you spend $150 at Office Depot and buy staples, paper clips, notepads, a desk, and a office chair. The first three items would go into you office supplies category and the last two would be in an asset account under say office furniture.

If you're buying software, hardware, furniture, etc. for the business that's not an expense, it's an asset that needs to be depreciated, since it has a life.

Best practice is to consult a good CPA or Tax Professional so you don't screw up. He or she will be able to advise you what the current rules are.

At the end of the year you print a p&l give it to your tax pro (recommended) and you're all set. Most tax pros support ms money, quickbooks, quicken so you can actually give them a backup of your files and they'll make the adjustments, merge it into their tax program and you save money since they don't have to input the info by hand.

Hope that helps.

[Tommy]

I got the home & buisness one
where do you create the categories ??

[Greenguy]

My version is from 2001 & when you enter an expense, it asks you what category it goes into - you can use an existing category, split the total into different categories or add your own.

[Tommy]

I dont wanna get to fancy with this

i just wanna be able to look at my sponsors at the end of the month and see who needs work and who needs to be droped

also I wanna keep track of all the little stuff i buy like software, keyboards, office supplies, batteries

I just put all that junk on my personal credit cards or pay cash for it and by years end its all long forgotten

i bet over a year it turns out to be a decent sum of money

[juggernaut]

Tom I don't know much about MS. I bought it last year and returned it as I needed to pay for the online service. I use QB 2005 now and it allows me to connect to my credit card accounts and bank accounts (both personnal and business accounts are seperated) over the internet, DL any changes daily and cheap track of spending, payments etc. Having touched both I would have to say QB seems easier. I would think with MS you should have some wizard interfaces to make life easy

[JohnWebcams.com]

Just use excel, it's probably the easiest.. if you don't have excel, google has a free spreadsheet at spreadsheets.google.com that is pretty useful and can be checked anywhere. Just learn how to do formulas to add up the details. Just do something like:

Sponsor | Date Range | Earnings | or something easy like that