At what point do you NEED QuickBooks?

Hey guys, so I do this part time now (hopefully I will expand) but I’m a small company actually a very small company. I currently just have a few storefront account. I just got some fliers printed getting ready for my first go at EDDM. Anyways I currently have QuickBooks and I’ve had it for several months. my question is do I actually need it at this point? or can I just keep my records on some sort of spreadsheet? At what point does a company take that turn we’re they actually need an accounting software? It just seems like I’m wasting money each month on a software that really isn’t getting much activity due to me being so small. The only feature I actually like is the emailed invoicing with credit card pay but I can do with out that if necessary.

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I believe quickbook self employeed has a mile tracker built in. I use MileIQ. But that’s important for tracking. I would get quickbooks when you start needing to regularly send invoices and estimates. When you’re small, avoid letting people pay with a credit card because you are throwing money away every transaction (3%). At first, I used it just to send invoices and keep track of when they paid and to send estimates. Then when I grew, I used it for what it’s really for, to keep track of your books for taxes and seeing where the money is going with the profit and loss statements etc.

So there are definitely free solutions for everything QB does, but it’s nice to have it all together in one software. QB is not a CRM or scheduling software though, so you will need additional software for that when the time comes. A lot of people use google calendar for keeping the schedule. I used a different crm that had scheduling software built in. It worked for a while, but I recently upgraded to jobber and love it. It doesn’t do everything I want it to do yet, but I’m hoping they will expand the functionality soon. I tried just about all the other softwares abailable, and found jobber to be the best for my needs.

I’m all about waiting to buy something until i need it, but I would say QB is a good first piece of software to buy, really as soon as you can. Start putting your expenses in there right away and it will make things easy at tax time.

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What Cade said…
Being organized pays off in the short run AND the long run. You need to be very organized as a business/business owner. QB’s was something I bought at the very start of my business.

ASAP. Wish we’d gotten on the ball with this sooner rather than later.

Even if you don’t have the volume to fully justify QB at this stage of your business this is a good time to get more proficient with it. I haven’t used it for years but I liked the payroll module and the automated record keeping.

You can do that with PayPal.