Accounting Software

[Firehouse Mike]

For the pro guys out there, what are you using for software / data bases for invoicing, customer data / taxes, scheduling, ect....

I've been using various Excel sheets so far, but I'm getting busy enough I'm thinking I need to move up to something a bit more business professional. I was looking at Quickbooks Online, but I'd like a few more options and opinions.

What say you AG Family?

Thanks
Mike

[GSKR]

As far as scheduling I write everything down.when it comes to taxes and payroll,my acct takes care of all that I have 2 corps and personal.in exchange of him doing it for free I take care of his car biweekly.He saving me about 3k and it's been working out great for the past 4 years doing my taxes and such.

[Autofanaticdetailing]

As far as accounting I just do written invoices but for scheduling I use an app called setmore. Great for making appointments, includes a calendar and reminders as well as a url link you can place on your website to take you straight to the booking page. It may have an accounting portion but I will have to check.

[Stevedotmil]

Doesn't Square do that stuff as well? I have been toying with the app and trying to figure it out. I know it sends receipts to your customers via email and saves them in your archive. You can then break them down by day/week/month.

[cardaddy]

For basic billing and invoices though, Square is great to have considering no monthly fee. (Albeit a bit higher processing of course.)

For pure accounting software, QuickBooks is hard to beat. Used it for 20 years for 3 different businesses. Having the integration with TurboTax makes it a no brainer as well!

Not sure how it'll work these days as contact management, which is where I prefer a CRM based platform.

Way back when... as in when CompuServe was THE place to go for tech support, manufacturer supported forums, and tons of user interest forums I was a forum Sysop for a couple different forums, (Audio as well as Video & Home Theater) and the forum sponsor managed to get me free software from a little company called Chaos Software. They have a nice CRM based platform that'll do all sorts of scheduling as well as e-mail of course. They have Time and Chaos that I used for years, then ended up with Intellect (it was free) which actually is the same thing, just has a business e-mail feature that T&C doesn't.

Of course these days you can get all sorts of (pay) options like cloud hosting, Outlook, Google, and Desktop sync options... and several other plug-in options.

But the one I use for my phone, and LOVE is Deja Office!

The modules are stunning in their ability to link, search, and find literally anything you could EVER want.

For instance...
Say you are looking for a professional building, or say a doctors office to setup an appointment. As soon as you start typing in the name of the place it'll pop up similar contacts as you type. Then when you move to "Location" and put in the name, it'll not only find it (generally just by the name) but it'll pull up a thumbnail from Google Maps, WITH a street view of the building! If it doesn't find the place by name, then just insert a comma, then put in the first letter or two of the city and you'll get a list which probably has what you're looking for.

To test just now, I put in Autogeek and got three listings. Autogeek.net, Autogeek, and Autogeeks (in Waterford NJ). Then switched it up a bit and put in Animal Kingdom and instantly got Disney Animal Kingdom, then put in Lodge, and got Animal Kingdom Lodge, complete with a photo and map thumbnail. Click on the thumbnail and you can open Google maps to navigate there, or add the location as a new contact.

Pretty kewl!

Another thing that's cool about Deja Office is whenever you get a phone call on your cell, if you don't have that number as a contact it'll ask you to add it. Really like that feature as well.

Deja Office is FREE too, which makes it all that much better!

It will sync with pretty much all popular CRM platforms, from Google, to Outlook, and yes, even Time and Chaos.

Depending on what phone you're using, and what CRM, the sync cost(s) are different. Like with Outlook to Android I think it's a $49.95 one-time fee, or $14.95 per quarter. To sync with Chaos software it uses their cloud service which is also $14.95 per quarter. Most are the same, but a couple are a bit more.

[Calendyr]

Still using Excel. If this year gets bigger I will very likely try to find an accounting software.

For me, the billing is really easy so there is no real need for an acc. software just for that. What I would like is to have integrated client database, ability to send mass emails to clients from that database and the ability to generate tax information automatically.

I don't do account payable or receivable. I pay everything upfront and clients pay me immediately after the detail is done. I guess if I was to add fleet services then account receivables would be needed but that is the only situation I can see needing that.

I use Square. It does offer some information but it's really limited. I have not found a way to email clients from it even though they enter their email address when they pay so they can receive a receipt.

[NuthinFancy]

Quickbooks

[roguerobot]

Freshbooks is good

[jrs1418]

I use a combo of a retail point of sale, and Square.

POSE - Point of sale $49/month - Keeps track of all my customers and their purchase histories, discount groups, taxes, reporting, stock & inventory, and more.

Square, Charge credit cards, send invoices and request money via Email.

Homebase - Employee timeclock and scheduler

Google Calendar - Keeps my appointments, and I can sync the calendar onto my employees phones so they can see what appointments and jobs we have scheduled at any time.

[WashEngineer]

If you're looking for free software

For accounting I'd go with Wave: https://www.waveapps.com/ ...It's fairly simple and easy to use.

For CRM I use Zoho https://www.zoho.com/crm/zohocrm-pri...c=crm-home-top ...if you scroll down the page, you'll see their free edition which is free for up to 10 different users to use at the same time but a huge amount of customers. This is helpful if you have someone or multiple people helping you with this side of the business.