With the start of '07 I thought this would be a great time to get up to speed of all the features Quickbooks has to offer. And in the true OSP fashion, sharing my experiences with the rest of the community.

I bought Quickbooks for Mac half way through last year - and have been using the basic features to get up to speed.

Here are the things I currently do

• Set up my working bank account (separate business from personal)
• enter every check I receive
• enter every check I write

so my quickbooks checkbook matches my actual checkbook.

these are some of the things I need to know

• How to set-up my packages
• how to handle print sales
• how to handle taxes sales and federal
• how to handle client management

So if anyone has suggestions, post 'em here - otherwise I'll make additions as I figure 'em out.

Eric

I was a bookkeeper before I was a photographer for 14 years.
I used Quickbooks and still do for my business. It is pretty easy to set up but not if you are new to the program. If you have questions, you can email me.
Laura

Awesome Idea

I am switching over to quickbooks also, so I will be watching this thread to see what new info I can pick up.

this could not have come at a better time. I bought the Quickbooks for the Mac two years ago and cannot get my head around it...I'll need all your help soon!!

I have Quickbooks, but I also have a bookkeeper. Numbers just don't mix well with me...I need guidance! Seriously, if it doesn't come easy for you, you can hire a bookkeeper. They charge by the hour and mine comes to my house and keeps everything up to date. She is great! (and affordable.)

I've used QB in every business I have ever owned. People make fun of me for how picky i am about my books. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions.

Hey guys! Let's post the info on the forum so everyone can see it!
I'll be back to post some info a little later!

For those who are thinking to go QB, they just dropped the price of QB for MAC.

Eric, I would suggest talking to your accountant and ask them what they need from you. I use quickbook for all of my invoicing and price tracking. It's a pain to setup because it takes so long, but once it's done, it's done.

I just give my accountant a simple end-of-year ledger that reflects all of my earnings and expenditures.

I already use quicken, so it's nice that you can plug'n'play from that, too.

I just bought BQ 07 for Mac and found it's on sale till the end of this week...so get there quick! (oops..sorry for the pun)

One thing I find difficult is that it's not very visual. If I enter reciept of payment from somebody, it's also reflected in any invoice you set up for that customer (I think). So understand that when entering one transaction, it may also effect other parts of your bookkeeping that you can't see at the time (which is the way it's supposed to be...but unless it's all right in front of me, I have a hard time getting the big picture). Hey, am I talking in circles yet?! lol

Great to see this thread and know that i'm not the only one struggling with quickbooks!! I did figure out how to automatically import all of my credit card and bank transactions, which has made a world of difference. Most banks offer this, just ask!

I am also a faithful QB user...

Did learn alot when I tried to take my Quickbooks for Windows and convert it to Mac version! QB for Mac is about 1/4 as powerful as QB for windows(and 1/4 of the price)...so info was lost and it corrupted my poor accountant's system. Beware! QB for Mac does have a save for WIN option, which is helpful...but not perfect! I know that some accountants won't take QB for Mac b/c it doesn't have the features that the QB Win version that the accountants have...and info in missing because of that, etc! I recall reading that Becker had to by a PC for that reason alone!

I'm not there yet and hoping I never have to be.

That is why I opted for MYOB for MAC.

jessica, please do not spread dirty rumors about me. i wouldn't buy a PC if my life depended on it. i did have to buy a copy of Windows Xp, to run Quickbooks for Windows on my Intel based Mac, but one week later, QB 2007 for Mac came out and i bought that and returned the PC software (which was unopened). WHEW!

damn, close call [b]! Thought we lost you to the dark side
Parallels is as close to the PC realm as I can stand to be!
Any further and I'd start to lose my soul. Okay, that's a bit overstated...well...maybe not!

Rachel

I am also a recovering accountant. If anyone needs any help, feel free to call me. I would love to answer any questions. Getting QB setup right from the start is critical to your success in the end. It will make your foray in bookkeeping (the only word I know of with three double letters in a row) less painful. I agree with Nathan about putting the info in the thread. Although sometimes the questions are too specific to answer easily in written form.


nate
317.625.2917

if i hear one more commercial about how quickbooks takes 15 minutes to set up, i'm going to make them come to my house and set it up.

my biz partner handles this, and it's a friggin nightmare. so any advice would be appreciated. for now, we've paid our accountant a fortune, and it's still screwed up! i know quickbooks is the 'best and easiest', but whoa. i guess taxes just suck.

If only everyone had to pay their own taxes every quarter (no more witholding!)... we'd see real tax reform....

On a lighter note, my accountant cringes everytime I walk in. He knows that photography has ruined my math skills:

What's 4 doubled?

2.8

What's half of 8?

11

See what learning equivalent exposures does to you! I used to be in the smart math class. Now my 13 year old daughter goes to my wife (a scientist) for help with her math.

Any chance there are any Canadian photographers that could pipe in on the subject? My business partner and I were looking in to QB for the Mac but found out really quickly that they only have a PC version for Canada. And the guy at QB support in the States said he wouldn't even sell me a copy of the US Mac version because there isn't a heck of a lot of customizability in terms of changing the calculations for Canadian Tax Laws.

So, we are now looking at Mind Your Own Business (MYOB) for the Mac. It is still a US version but our accountant said that the necessary calculations can be changed to reflect the Taxes up here.

Anyone else have any suggestions as to programs that would suit us? We are wanting something that not only tracks the "accounting" part of things but that we can generate estimates, invoices, forecasts, budgets, etc.

...at this point, it looks like MYOB is our best option so far but I would love to get some feedback from so other experts in the field.

Thanks!
trevor

awesome that you came on here to clarify!! I heard somewhere that you had to go all the way to PC and am relieved to know that you didn't because I had great fears that I might have to myself (per the request of my accountant!!)!!! Funny, though...I did the same thing, bought Windows XP, hated every second of using it and returned it right away.

OK... You guys got me alllll confused now. I don't know whether to go for QuickBooks or Successware (by the way, I'm NOT thread-hijacking- I've read the QB/SW thread).. I still don't know which way to go, but this is my fear of buying QB... I'm a very organized person but not when it comes to anything having to do with numbers, or setting something up from scratch. Now I'm lost.. don't knwow hat to do.

By the way, Jessica, you have a PM on the way

quickbooks was not designed for photographers (those that take money in advance for service -I.e our retainers.)

If you post date your invoice (the date of the wedding ) , you have to becareful - because when you pull your profit loss for the end of the year, it's going to over report your income for 2006- and under report 2007. You have to run a special report to get the correct number for profit loss.

I've mastered this program pretty well. email me if you have questions.
There are some things I don't use like inventory.
There are also multiple ways to do the same thing.

Just remember QB is trying to find buckets for you to put things in. Once you created all your buckets (i.e - chart of accounts and items) your next step is to enter your clients.

You also can't half a$$ your book keeping, and ask quickbooks to just do one thing, and not another. Have it take care of all your book keeping and you'll be a happy camper come tax time.

Requesting QB Gurus' help:

When I'm trying to create my asset in QB using the fix asset manager for my camera gears, do i break them down into each individual accounts, i.e.
Acct#1: 17-55mm f2.8 lens
Acct#2: 70-200mm lens
Acct#3: Camera body
Acct#4: Battery Grip
Acct#5: so on and so forth?

Or should things like battery grip, flash cards, Speedlites, etc be grouped into one account like "camera accessories"?

I have been a QB fan for ever. After all I am the oldest guy in OSP. I did need to run a PC version on a Yukkkkkkkkkk PC. As soon as the MAC version saved a windows version my accountant said I could switch over. I then threw the PC in the Paific Ocean and have been a happy MAC camper ever since. PC free zone here. MAC rules. PC Drools.


Three weeks ago I upgraded to QB 2007. It is great but a strange thing happened. It might have been my fault but about a weeks worth of entries did not transfer over to 2007. I ended up thinking I had A LOT more money than I really did. I found the error yesterday after I got a call from my bank that I needed to cover some checks. I thought I had plenty. Well lesson learned. Double check all your figures when you upgrade. It does seem to be working very well now.

Why is that? It can only happen if you have you accounting set up wrong. Photography is the same business as any business out there. Your accounting method should be setup for cash and not accrual. The reason is that you want to record income at the point when you receive the payment for your services (2 weeks before the wedding, or at the wedding date). In accrual method your income will be recorder at the time you are ern it (or hired, which could be 6-12 month difference). You don't want to pay taxes on income you didn't receive yet.

I set up a retailners account which is type of liability and track my retainers/deposits at the time when they hire me. It doesn't show as an income. Since it is a liability type of account, it is your liability to provide services. I create a special invoice which show that I established a retainer account and received a payment as a deposit. I print that and send to client as a reciept for their deposit payment.
At the same time I create an invoice for the rest amount and apply the retainer amount. It show on invoices as negative number, which means they already paid that amount, so the deposit is deducted from the whole amount of the package. Then I mark that invoice as pending and set up a remainder in QB to remaind me 1 month before the wedding date to send out that invoice. Once I receive the payment I record the sale.
I use QB 2007 for Mac and their user manual was reworked for worse in this version. I still reference the 2006 user manual. It is MUCH MUCH better and explains A LOT of things how to track and setup different things. Once you set it up it works fine.

Contact me if you need help how to set up retainer/deposit tracking accounts and how to create items for retaiener. Aslo for tracking equipment, you have to set up a few accounts like cost of aquipment and accumulated depreciation if you going to do ammortization. It all described in user manual for QB 2006. Let me know and I can send you a PDF file.

Not quite like that.
Each account needs to have a tax line associated with it. In case of sope propietor it is 1040 Schedule C. You can use Schedule C-EZ if your expenses less then $5000 for the whole year, otherwise you have to use Schedule C.

For the cost of equipment less then $1000 you can just expens it. For equipment which costs more then $1000 you have to depreciate it over time. You can read QB User's Manual 2006 about how to track assets, since your equipment is your asset. And QB already has accounts to track depreciation.

Contact me if you need help to set up accounts to track you assets. I just don't remember all details. You have to refer to IRS publications to find out what are terms for photographic equipment and what is depreciation schema. For example for 3 years term it could be 33% first year, 44%, second year and 13% last year. It is not just flat.

I just talked to tax person, and you have track all your assets as separate items no matter how much they cost. But my company I work for during the day, told me that they do it like I said above. Go figure...

I was under the inpression there was a new law or rule that if the total cost of capital expenditure was less than a certain amount (forget what that amout is) but that you can elect to write off the whole amount in that tax year. Should you not retain the equipment through the useful life or the business stops to exist you have to retro back the depreciation you already took. I think it is covered under SECTION 179

Here is the right document: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p946/ch02.html