Peachtree or Quickbooks?

[Cliff Hargrave]

Price, ease of use, etc...

What should I choose?

[JStinson]

I use Quickbook, was not too hard to get set up, but does not do everything I would like to do. Never used Peachtree. I use it primarily for the equipment and tuition and of course bills. Once set up it is pretty easy to use and get reports off of. When it is tax time or I need info for sales tax, a few clicks and I am ready to go.

I have also heard good stuff from Martial Arts Organizer, I think that is the name. It is set up for martial art schools primarily. A buddy of mine said you can download an evaluation copy online, but I have not gotten around to it.

[Eliz]

Quicken 2008. $90.00 (?)

I just purchased another company (a week ago) and I am in data entry HELL. I picked up the program on a recommendation and I love it. In fact I swear by it.

[Cliff Hargrave]

I thought Quicken was just a checkbook program?

[Eliz]

I thought Quicken was just a checkbook program?

Thus far I am only using one small portion of the program - Accounts Receivables. It is actually a pretty extensive little program. We are moving the information from MicroSoft Excel.

Not unlike the MicroSoft spreadsheet, I can arrange (or view) the information in any number of ways. It also flags whatever you want it to flag - accounts that are in arrears, bills that are due to go out, receivables that are 15 days late 30 days late 45 days late, particular investors (and their histories) - whatever I want.

It is very user friendly.

The one drawback that ticked me off beyond words - not one single instruction book came with the program. You can get the instructions online or pay for the books. I just played around with it until I got it - thank goodness for the delete button . As I get into other areas of it, I will just go online for the how to's.

[Eye4NEye]

The one drawback that ticked me off beyond words - not one single instruction book came with the program.

Have you checked the disc itself? Often you can find the manuals on the disc in PDF format.

I'd recommend Quicken or Quickbooks. I have used both and they have never let me down. The only drawback to Quickbooks that I have found is their auto update feature. Sometimes the temp files get corrupt and you will get an error while trying to update. If you look up the error code it gives you the solution says that you have to reinstall the entire program, which is bogus. If you dig a little deeper into the Quickbooks online KB, you will find a simpler solution, which is basically to delete a few corrupt files and then update again.

[dao]

I've used Quicken for my home accounts since 1996 (or thereabouts) and I don't know how I'd survive without it. I'm currently using the '06 Version. Much more than a checkbook program. Not sure how it is with business accounts but, makes investment (stock) tracking and loan tracking (both when I make loans and take out loans) easy and understandable for me.

Stay away from MS Money. I tried it for awhile and HATED it.

[Eliz]

My big question at this point is; would it be wiser to use Quickbooks for billing students or is it better to use a third party billing company? My book keeper say I could use the software to set up accounts for all my students and have quickbooks debit their bank accounts or credit cards and deposit straight into my business account.
Advise anyone?

Depends. I have known school owners to do their own collections and it can get pretty time consuming and nasty.

Other school owners I know do not worry about collections. They will never bar entrance to a student who is in arrears, but they will hold back on promotion until the student is caught up.

I only know of one franchise that uses 3rd party billing and I have heard it can pretty messed up at times. I do not have any direct experience with it.

Have you checked the disc itself? Often you can find the manuals on the disc in PDF format.

When I loaded the program nothing came up about that. I will load it here at home and see what happens. Literally all that came with the disc (besides the oversized box) was a little paper advertisement for the online help and the purchase of the books.

I do not have the internet at work. Another dilemma as I rent an office from another company and the existing company fire walls are a huge issue. I haven't decided if it is cost effective to bring in [cable, dsl, etc] an outsider - or if I just get off my lazy butt and walk 2 blocks to the courthouse where it is free.

[Huntley]

I use Quickbooks. Great software.

[DragonMind]

I'm with Eliz. There is a version called Quicken Home & Business that is perfect for small businesses. Quickbooks is overkill and will just cause you heartburn. Quicken is full double entry accounting without all the CPA lingo. You'll have no trouble setting up your books (it has very nice templates available). Save the money for more important things.

[wingchundo.girl]

My big question at this point is; would it be wiser to use Quickbooks for billing students or is it better to use a third party billing company? My book keeper say I could use the software to set up accounts for all my students and have quickbooks debit their bank accounts or credit cards and deposit straight into my business account.
Advise anyone?

We use a third party billing company and do billing ourselves for certain students. When we first started the business, the instructor was the only employee and did everything. It's really different when at first you have been teaching privately to a small group and then open a school and the business starts to grow. In the beginning students would bring in their tuition but it would be hard to keep track of them, especially when they would pay him during a middle of a class or just before it started. He would then forget who paid him if they paid by cash.

The wisest choice was to go third party billing at that time because he really didn't have the time to learn how to use the Quickbooks program and with most students signing up for electronic funds transfer, it just seemed the better way to go. Plus it allowed him to be perceived strictly as "instructor" to his students instead of "bill collector".

Years later now that he has help with the office, we took over the billing of those students that wanted to pay us monthly by coupon book, but left the electronic withdrawals to be done by the billing company. Maybe one day we will get around to learning how to do the billing totally ourselves, but your time may be better spent learning how to market and manage your business and curriculum at this point.

You have to determine if the billing company's fees are worth the time you save. The trick is to make sure the time you save is spent doing something more worthwhile and meaningful for your business.