I wondering if there are any recommendations on accounting software, I could use for my business.

I need to keep track of sales from my shareware business and also payments from my consulting business.

So it needs to do:
Invoicing (email)
Standard Accounting.
Payroll

I currently have tried QuickBooks 2004, but it sucks bad, I hate all of the web advertisements and how all email from it has to go through Intuits servers.

Any recommendations?

The only real suggestion I had is what you've already concluded -- DON'T use QuickBooks.

Take a look at PeachTree. From some of the accountants and bookkeepers I've talked with, it's the defacto software package to use (in spite of what the guy at Office Max would tell you :) ).

I think they recently made a free demo available from their website.

Anthony

Simply Accounting Pro (http://www.simplyaccounting.com) version. It does everything you're looking for, and is pretty much a no-brainer to use. They also offer a free trial version. A couple of years ago they were even giving copies to US customers in order to break into the US market. They greatly outsell Quicken here in Cananda buy a wide margin. They're owned by Accpac (http://www.accpac.com)

That's weird. I have an old version of QuickBooks (QB Pro or something like that, one of the first versions) and I love it. It doesn't have any of the things Darrel described though, so it sounds like they went downhill. I had been thinking of upgrading, but I'll have to look at it a little closer before I do.

I'd also put my vote in for Simply Accounting. After doing some research, I bought a copy of it on eBay a few months ago and so far I'm pretty happy with it. You still have to know some basic accounting principles, but overall it's not hard to learn. Cheers!

Graeme

Originally posted by Siebharinn
That's weird. I have an old version of QuickBooks (QB Pro or something like that, one of the first versions) and I love it. It doesn't have any of the things Darrel described though, so it sounds like they went downhill. I had been thinking of upgrading, but I'll have to look at it a little closer before I do.

Hi Siebharrin,

The issues I have with it are usability ones -- in my world, Useability Is King.

Some examples of issues I have with QB Premier 2003:

The paradigms between entering an invoice, a bill, a check, a credit card bill, are different.

For example, when entering items on an invoice, I can delete individual line items. I can't on a bill -- I have to manually go over all the entries and space them out.

Oh, and don't ever do a "ctrl-d" (delete) on a form you need to keep. You can't undo deleting it.

You can give other people administrator rights to the program, so they can do all kinds of administrator things. But if you want to change any of the company settings or preferences, you have to log in as the administrator.

I'll stop, you get the picture. The program will get you where you need to go, but IMHO, it's like driving in a Pacer to get there.

Anthony

Does any of those packages (or any package you know) support IAS (International Accounting Standards) accounting and balance reporting?

I use GNUCash :D

I use Excel :)