QuickBooks 2013 For Dummies

What Explains QuickBooks’ Popularity?

No question about it — you need a good accounting system if you’re in business. But you know what? That fact doesn’t explain why QuickBooks is so popular or why you should use QuickBooks. (I ignore for one moment that you probably already purchased QuickBooks.) Therefore, let me suggest to you three reasons why QuickBooks is an excellent choice to use as the foundation of your accounting system:

Ease of use: QuickBooks historically has been the easiest or one of the easiest accounting software programs to use. Why? The whole just-enter-transaction-information-into-windows-that-resemble-forms thing (which I talk about earlier) makes the data entry a breeze. Most businesspeople already know how to fill in the blanks on these forms. That means that most people — that probably includes you, too — know almost everything they need to know to collect the information that they need to do their books with QuickBooks. Over time, other software programs have tended to become more QuickBooks-like in their ease of use. The folks at Intuit have truly figured out how to make and keep accounting easy.

I should tell you, because I’m an accountant, that the ease-of-use quality of QuickBooks is not all good. Part of the reason why QuickBooks is easy to use is because ...