Pension Bill Will Bring Big Changes to 401(k)s – From the WSJ.

Congress Props Up Pension Plans – From Gail Buckner

Is Your College Student a “Dependent?’ It Depends! – From Gail Buckner

Q-1:

Subject: Can you recommend a traning guide for Quicken 2006

 

Dear Kerry,

 

Can you recommend a training guide/book for beginning users that do not have an accounting background.  I just loaded Quicken Premier Home & Business 2006, but have no idea how to best set it up.  I will be using it for personal finance, my real estate/business brokerage business, and my wife’s Avon business.  Neither, my wife or I, have employees now, but we may have one or two in the future.

 

Sincerely,

A-1:

Before you get too far along down the wrong path, you need to dump the Quicken program and buy a copy of the lest expensive version of QuickBooks that you can find. 

I have a lot of info on my website as to why QB is far superior to Quicken, and I say this as someone who had been a huge supporter of Quicken for small businesses for several years, before that program veered too far away from true double entry accounting and QB became much easier to work with.  With the multiple business you are running, there is no way I would feel comfortable trusting the books to Quicken.

In regard to setting up the QB data file in the most efficient manner, the best thing would be to have your personal professional tax advisor assist in configuring things so as to provide what would work best to coordinate your QB data with the tax returns s/he will be preparing from it, especially in regard to the Classes to use. 

If you don’t have a professional tax advisor, you can’t be serious about running your businesses and you need to find one ASAP.  Your self admitted lack of accounting knowledge is a cry for help from an accounting pro.  Trying to teach yourself to develop those skills would be futile and take you away from the more important use of your time, selling real estate.

Good luck.  I know this isn’t the answer you were expecting; but it is the only response I can feel comfortable in providing.

Kerry Kerstetter

Q-2:

Kerry,

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, very much.  I am so grateful.  You have saved me from making a big mistake and from spending a great deal of time

unproductively.  I will dump Quicken for QB, and hire a tax professional forthwith.

 

I found the least expensive version of QB to be Simple Start 2006, but based on information from your website, I should stay away from it.  Should I go

with QB Pro 2006 or QB Basic 2005.

 

Please let me know.

 

Thanks again,

 

Sincerely

A-2:

It is actually a bit of false advertising for the Simple Start program to be referred to as a version of QuickBooks.  It is nothing more than a Mickey Mouse too basic bookkeeping program that should be avoided as much as Quicken.

I’ve written a few times in my blog about the problems I and other users have had with QB 2005 freezing up; so I would stay away from it.  Up until a few months ago, I would have said it was okay to start out with QB 2004 Basic.  However, after having used the QB 2006 programs quite a bit in the past few months, for both our own and several clients’ books, I now believe it would be best to start out with the QB 2006 Pro.  Besides being very reliable, it will give you a full three years of supported use before Intuit abandons it.

You can buy the program from several vendors.  The lowest prices I have seen have been from sellers on eBay and from the big warehouse stores, such as Costco and Sam’s Club.

Good luck.  I hope this helps.

Kerry

 

I was working on extensions for corporate clients with fiscal years ended May 31 and realized that, normally at this time of year – in the weeks preceding August 15 – I would be busting my butt working on preparing about 100 extensions for our 1040 clients. It’s different this year, as the 4868s we sent in back in April were for six months, giving us until Monday, October 16. 

I’m sure, in spite of the sticker I added to all of our 4868s, there will still be a lot of panicky clients calling over the next few days, wondering about their second extensions.