Small Business Accounting

Quickbooks Premier is significantly more expensive than Quickbooks Pro, but Premier has many features that may be important to your small business. Before purchasing Quickbooks, take a look at the features that are available in the Premier addition.

Note: Amazon has some of the best prices on all versions of Quickbooks. So, whichever version of Quickbooks you decide to buy, be sure to check their prices. Click here to see Amazon’s current prices on all Quickbooks products.

Quickbooks Premier has all of the features of Quickbooks Pro, plus the following additional features:

Easily create a business plan
Build a professional business plan quickly by answering step-by-step questions. QuickBooks fills in the numbers based on your QuickBooks data. You can export the projections to Excel for further analysis or save it as a PDF file.

Forecast sales & expenses
Click a button to create a forecast of income and expenses for the coming year, based on your existing QuickBooks data. Increase or decrease line items by any percentage to adjust for future changes.

Create industry-specific reports and install industry features
Access over 150 industry-specific reports in QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise Solutions such as: Profitability by Product for manufacturing and wholesale businesses, Job/ Project Costs for professional services firms & contracting businesses, Donor Contribution Summary for nonprofit organizations, Sales Tax Liability for retail businesses.

Document and track change orders
As a job changes, simply enter change orders into the estimate so that you can keep track of the changes, and the impact on the bottom line. Change orders are included on documents you print for your customer so that there are no surprises at the end of the job.

Track subcontractor General Liability
Easily track all liability and workers compensation insurance expirations.

Progressively bill clients by job phase
Track and bill clients in the way that works best for your unique business, whether it be by time & material, job phase, and percentage completion.

Track job costs as you pay suppliers, subcontractors & employees
Customized job cost reports allow you to see a job’s profitability on a detailed, task-by-task level. You can even see the projected cost to complete a job.

Job Costing Center quickly shows job costs & profitability
Check the Job Costing Center for an instant reading of how you’re doing on your current jobs. See a summary of key information for your jobs including which jobs are most and least profitable, all in a single window.

Manage inventory & costs
With our inventory management tools, always know where your inventory stands and when reorders are required. Easily set-up an item list and track reorder points. Track inventory as it is being purchased, stocked and sold.

Track customer orders
Easy to use sales order features will allow you to track pending orders without affecting your accounts receivable accounts, prioritize open sales orders and manage partial fulfillment.

Manage Pending Builds and Assemblies
Create Bill of Materials that can track material costs, overhead costs, and labor. During the manufacturing process, mark assembly items as pending to see work in progress.

Buy & sell the same item in different units
If you deal with raw materials that come in different sizes or weights, QuickBooks will allow you to set multiple units of measure for each inventory item to track the amount of material used and available. With a click, you can instantly convert from cases to pallets, or whatever units of measure you define. The correct units are then printed on invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, pick lists, and packing slips.

Demonstrate financial accountability to your Board of Directors with the Statement of Financial Income & Expense
Demonstrate financial accountability to your Board of Directors with the Statement of Financial Income & Expense and 990 form. Give your Board an overview of your organization’s financial status with the Statement of Financial Income and Expense.

Track donations and pledges
QuickBooks Non-Profit ready to use templates allow you to easily track pledges and donations

Complete your 990 form with one report
Make it easy for you or your accountant to prepare the IRS Form 990 by letting QuickBooks total and organize all your finances according to IRS requirements. The Statement of Functional Expenses 990 matches the IRS Form 990. Just transfer the totals to the form and you’re done.

See program budget status in an instant
Once you’ve set up your budget, you can compare it to your actual performance with almost no effort – just open the budgets versus actual reports from the Report Center and see where you stand.

See all your unbilled time and expenses in one view
Now you can decide who to bill by seeing all clients with unbilled time and expenses on a single screen. Instead of creating an invoice from scratch, simply open the Invoice for Time & Expenses screen and select the client and job combination. Outstanding billable time and expenses are transferred directly to an invoice.

Set different billing rates by employee, client, & service
Pay and get paid the right amount by being able to quickly and easily set different billing rates for your employees, clients and services.

Analyze profitability by project with Project Costing Reports
Reports like Billed vs. Proposal by Project, Cost-to-Complete by Job, and Job Costs by Job and Vendor help you stay on top of which projects are most profitable.

Allow employees to enter billable & non-billable time online, from anywhere with an internet connection
Time Tracker for QuickBooks, an optional subscription service, is the fastest, easiest way to collect and record billable and non-billable hours into QuickBooks Pro and Premier for accurate invoicing, payroll and reporting purposes. No more paperwork! Employees or contractors only need an internet connection to submit billable hours. Download timesheets right into QuickBooks with one click.

Easily track sales results
Track sales results easily, accurately and flexibly with the Sales Summary Form. Enter total payments and taxable/non taxable sales for the day, week or any time period you choose.

Reconcile end-of-day sales total and calculate sales tax liability automatically
QuickBooks Retail Edition calculates your sales tax liability automatically and makes it easy to spot cash drawer over/under discrepancies for easy end-of-day sales reconciliation.

Analyze sales trends and profitability
The customized reports available in QuickBooks Retail Edition make it easy to analyze sales trends and track profitability.

Use work orders to create invoices with one click
Turn any work order into a purchase order with just one click. No need to retype line items or even vendor information – Premier Retail Edition fills it in for you. Just edit quantities, if needed, and print. Or turn the PO into a PDF, and e-mail it right from QuickBooks.

Where to buy: Amazon.com typically has very competitive prices on all of the versions of Quickbooks. Click here to see Amazon’s current prices on all Quickbooks products.

Quicklinks to Quickbooks on Amazon.com:

QuickBooks Pro 2011
QuickBooks Pro 3-User 2011
QuickBooks Premier 2011
QuickBooks 2011 for Mac