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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week - 03/08/2006 |
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Changing your accounting software
– a Review of Quickbooks Pro 2006 It’s
odd that in the PC world, in accounting software, there’s never been an
industry standard. About 25 years ago Wordstar was the industry standard word processing program. Then Word
Perfect became the standard, and now its Microsoft
Word. In
spreadsheets, Lotus used to be the standard, they had some competition from Quatro Pro, and now its
Microsoft Excel. I can remember
the first PC accounting software program I worked with back in the late
1970’s – Peachtree Accounting. It cost $ 5000 to do basic business
accounting. Then you had to find a Basic programmer to work with you just to
get your company name on your reports. Now you
can buy Peachtree accounting at discount stores for a couple hundred bucks.
Pretty cheap. But the support is really expensive. Now accounting software companies sell their
program low, and charge for their support high. The
frustrating thing in working with a new accounting program is that you know
how to do accounting – but you have to totally relearn what you know in
order to do accounting their way. This is extremely frustrating. The basic
rules of accounting haven’t changed in thousands of years.
They’ve even brought up shipwrecks with accounting records etched in
stone. Once you
know the basics, you know it for centuries. It’s not like the computer
industry where everything you learn is useless in just a few years. So
I’ve been doing my business accounting in an old dos accounting program
designed for people who understand double-entry accounting and which I like.
I’m totally familiar with it and I can do anything in it. I can export
reports and pretty them up and make them look as nice as anything that comes
out of the new accounting programs today. But I
can’t do online banking or internet updates, or any new functions,
because this program was written before the internet. But I
have been using Quicken for windows for my personal accounting, so I thought
going to another Intuit product – Intuit is the name of the software
company who markets Quicken and Quick Books, would be easy. And the
idea of having my business and personal accounting in a single program, with
access to online banking would be a good idea. It was a
good idea – it’s just took about 10 times longer than I had
expected, and I’m still running parallel accounting systems for
reconciliation purposes. I bought Quickbooks Pro 2006 Costco for $ 160.00. It comes
in a nice looking green box, and it tells you it’s the leading choice
for fast and easy financial management. If this is fast and easy, I’d
hate to see hard and complex. I have a
fast Dell computer, and Microsoft office and other applications load quickly.
Quickbooks Pro loads – in computer terms – at the speed
of dark. The term fat bloated pig comes to mind. I find Quickbooks Pro is quite a different program than Quicken,
so knowing Quicken didn’t help me at all. Just a different mindset to
the software. I also find
Quickbooks Pro is also a radically different
program than the old Dos accounting program I’ve used for almost 2
decades. It
is an ok accounting program, but
the first term that comes to mind is “Dumbed
down ..... “, the second term is “Lobotomy level dumbed down .. “ but maybe that’s why
it’s so popular. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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