Counting and Accounting: Tech Tools for Your Money

Last month, we began a short series on technology and you, the laundry owner. The response has been overwhelming, and we thank our readers for their input. This month, we continue along exploring how to put technology to work for the laundry owner, this time by looking at banking and books.

It’s hard to think of something more important to the operation of any business than its financial records. Due diligence allows you to see where you’ve been and where you are going, and makes for rational and informed decision making. And even though many laundry owners and operators pay a professional accountant at tax time, and for things like calculating payroll and withholding, every business owner still needs the day to day ability to know what their money is up to.

More than likely most of you already use some type of computer program to keep your books, and we know many of our readers also take advantage of the convenience of on-line banking.

There are many programs available to track your money in fact many PC’s ship with some version of Quicken installed on them. While Quicken is a pretty handy tool for individuals and families to manage their money, it is probably not the best choice for heavy duty bookkeeping.

Its big brother, QuickBooks (and their even bigger… and more expensive sibling QuickBooks Pro) are the most common small business accounting tools in use.

Although not quite as simple as Quicken, the QuickBooks family is not too difficult to learn, comes with excellent documentation, is easy to find additional learning resources for at your favorite book store, and this might be most important of all: QuickBooks is very likely in use by your accountant or CPA firm. So providing your Tax preparer or other financial professional quick and easy access to your books is about as easy as it gets.

Plus, QuickBooks is available on Mac or PC, and in fact information is easily shared between computers running Windows, and computers running the Mac OS. So if you run a PC at your coin or card laundry, but your kids pressured into getting an iMac at home, you can use QuickBooks, open and change records, from either machine.

QuickBooks, and in fact all the bookkeeping software we examined, allows the user to view a variety of reports: receivables and payables, both with aging, account balances, interest paid and earned, balance sheets and income statements, budgeting and more. For the truly brave, you can also prepare your own taxes and file and print the necessary forms, so you could go ahead and fire your accountant, at least in theory.

In our opinion, tax laws are a complicated and ever changing beast, and there are some things a paid professional is just better qualified to deal with than a computer program.

The fact that no computer will stand with you during an IRS audit and your CPA will should be reason enough.

QuickBooks is not without its drawbacks, though. As we first mentioned a couple of summers ago the last time we talked about this topic, the QuickBooks folks send a lot of junk mail, and even try to sell you on additional QuickBooks features and functionality from within the program. We use QuickBooks here at the NEWS, and feel this is both unnecessary and annoying.

Also, although as we mentioned, QuickBooks is pretty easy to learn and use, should you ever find yourself in need of technical support, you will be talking to someone on another continent. Luckily the program is stable, so needing to make one of those calls should be a pretty rare experience.

MYOB, makers of Premier Accounting for Windows and Account Edge for Mac, may just offer the best thought out small business accounting programs around. Their interface is polished and nimble, and they also have simple and straightforward methods of tracking things like employee’s accrued sick leave and vacation time.

Both programs integrate well with calendar and contact information on your computer, with Outlook on your Windows XP or Vista computer, and with the Mac’s Address Book and iCal for users of Account Edge.

We found very little not to like about the accounting software from MYOB, although they are a little weak in the design of custom forms like invoices. And of course there is the fact these programs aren’t in as widespread use in the world of the professional CPA, so sharing information with your accountant is a little more tedious. There is a third program, Microsoft Money that is pretty well known and used by a lot of small business owners.

Since MS Money has been around a while, there are users who will either love it or hate it. The consensus on Money is that it seems less intuitive and easy to use, and does not handle receivables or payables as well as the other accounting programs.

What MS money does offer is an ease of use with On-line banking services. More and more individuals and small businesses are taking advantage of the convenience of On-line banking. If you are one of those die hard computer users who’s plugged in to everything from Microsoft, then MS Money is not a bad choice to make.

What’s more important than the software you run, is the fact that keeping good records where your money is concerned is absolutely essential. The U.S. Treasury, and every State, County and City in the United States collect millions of dollars in fines, penalties and late fees every year that are generated by nothing more than sloppy or inattentive financial record keeping. They don’t care if your tax bill is late because you forgot to post the bill.

So first and foremost, make sure if you use any accounting program in the running of your Card or Coin Laundry operation, learn it and use it consistently. Develop good, steady habits and stick to them. If you do that, both your accounting software and your accountant will serve you well. Unless you’ve already fired him or her, that is.

 

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