Comments on: QuickBooks Simple Start Edition 2005

By: kc

kc — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:23:18 +0000

This is as advertised. Super simple to get started with accounting for a very basic business. It took about 5-10 minutes to load, walked me through half a dozen basic questions, and was ready to start taking bank account entries and categorize them. I was also able to set up a business credit card to track expenses there and enter things very easily.

The simplicity however comes with a real lack of flexibility for anything more involved. Within the first 30 mintues I was already noticing features missing that I would like, and found myself needing to upgrade to a more complete version of Quickbooks. For instance, expenses are only single level — you can’t have subcategories for expenses. Credit card entries can’t have memo fields to remind you what the expense was (checks can however). Etc.

I imagine if you have a business with a very limited set of vendors and customers, and you have little need to categorize your expenses in too complicated a way, this program could be sufficient for your needs. It also is an easy first step into accounting software — but I would probably start with the expectation that you’ll have to upgrade.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: Kevin P. Barbee

Kevin P. Barbee — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:45:12 +0000

I like QuickBooks basic because it does everything I need and is simple to use. It’s help feature when deciding how to categorize expenses is good. Some things are a little difficult to get the hang of (such as how to enter invoices, etc.) but it does a lot and is worth the price if you need to organize your small business finances.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: Crystalys

Crystalys — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:17:30 +0000

I downloaded this for free at the Intuit website and it is perfect for what I need it for. I use it to keep track of my son’s baseball team finances. I can create invoices and record parent’s payments, bank deposits and team expenses. If you have a regular business though, I would go for something more advanced.

Rating: 4 / 5

By: C Pellett

C Pellett — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:47:18 +0000

I got this because I use PayPal and Quicken doesn’t support importing QIF files, and I thought it would be useful to get on Quickbooks anyway. PayPal does support the exporting of Quickbooks format (iif I think) – so I figure this would be perfect.

However, Overly Simple Start doesn’t support this basic, simple task of importing data from anywhere, in any format. You are stuck typing in every transaction… And if you are getting a lot of payments on PayPal, this will cost you TONS and TONS of time.

I don’t think that this goes for other versions of Quickbooks, and it did look like I might be able to “use” the software – if I didn’t mind spending hours entering data.. And I don’t know if I can later export that to the real version of Quickbooks when I need to…

I paid $99 for this, and the only good thing I can say about the purcahse is that it can be written off as a business expense…
Rating: 3 / 5