Best / practical accounting choice for the shop / production company? - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

StairJunkie · 06-07-2009, 09:21 PM

I'm looking for the right accounting software to use for a shop type company, obvious stairs in my case, but this might be useful for cabinet/furniture shops...

My main need is to do accounting and reporting....
How much cash is on hand, where's it coming from, where's it going? Which products create the most profit? Who are our best customers? What are our most costly expenses, how have those expenses changed over a period of time compared to usage (charts/graphs)? Who owes us money, who do we owe, and how much. Budgeting... put in future known expenses like taxes and forecast how much cash might be on hand at any given point as well as financial strength of the company. T

I don't really have plans to integrate scheduling, pricing, customer management with the software as I plan to find other software for those purposes like google calendar, excel, etc.

We don't track inventory; we go by sight as estimate how much we think we have but don't necessarily keep a running tally in our current software. We probably should but haven't figured out an effective and cost effective way to do this without creating a headache for the shop and office area.

For those accounting needs though... are there any easy/obvious recommendations? Something that has good support and advices you on the best way to set up the new system would be a great plus.

Thanks for your response.

world llc · 06-07-2009, 10:01 PM

i picked up quickbooks pro plus payroll the begining of this year... it's frustrating to learn and adapt what i do and what i need into it, but for the price it'll do.
i can only assume there are better suited programs, but for the price, i'm making due

mdshunk · 06-07-2009, 10:04 PM

QuickBooks is certainly the most popular choice, but you should seriously consider using what your accountant uses. In this day and age, that's probably either QuickBooks or Peachtree. There's tremendous value in using a software package that you can ask your accountant questions about since he/she uses the same thing.

StairJunkie · 06-07-2009, 10:31 PM

Yeah our accountant actually recommended quickbooks pro or their enterprise contractor's edition for the size our current operations. Win2 is another popular choice of his customers.

We use peachtree 2005 right now but I hate it's user interface and it not that intuitive. I'm really looking forward with an update, whether it be the updated peachtree or a switch to quickbooks pro. I will try to set up the switch so that we can make the most of future accounting data.

As of right now, I'm leaning towards making a switch and giving quickbooks pro a try over the updated peachtree.

greg24k · 06-08-2009, 05:16 AM

I also been using Quick Books for many years for my construction business and for my other retail business where payroll,etc was involved. If its all set up right and you get a hang of it, it is a breeze to use

Sarah9910 · 06-08-2009, 10:18 PM

QuickBooks will do all that you are asking, Pro version would be best unless you have more than 5 simultaneous users, then enterprise.

StairJunkie · 06-08-2009, 10:27 PM

Just wondering if Quickbooks Pro would be able to sync with the Mac version? Possibly have the accounting dept use Pro input data and such but I have a Mac so if I could avoid having to buy a windows laptop at the moment just for this that'd be great

Sarah9910 · 06-08-2009, 10:33 PM

you can use QB for Windows and you can use QB for Mac but not both on the same network and no, you cannot sync the data. Its one or the other unfortunately.

You can set up your laptop to use both Windows programs and MAC programs though. Check with your IT company, there are software programs that can do that, they used to call it an emulator, but now I think it's just software.

StairJunkie · 06-09-2009, 03:48 PM

For those with multiple users, what are the permissions you guys have set for them? Or does everyone have access to everything?