Product Description

The only official guide to QuickBooks--the number-one small business management software

Fully reviewed and authorized by Intuit, this bestselling book shows you how to create a comprehensive small business financial management system using QuickBooks 2007. All the new and updated features are covered in full detail.

You will learn to customize QuickBooks for specific business needs, enter transactions quickly and accurately, track funds, manage payroll, process invoices, and monitor inventory. You will also find out how to create budgets, develop fiscal reports, streamline bookkeeping tasks, and much more. QuickBooks 2007:The Official Guide is the ideal guide for learning how to use this powerful software.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100773 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780072263459
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author

Kathy Ivens is the author of more than 50 computer books, including the previous editions of this title. She is a senior contributing editor forWindows IT Pro Magazine.

Customer Reviews

The Practical Side of Quickbooks
Intuit products, such as Quickbooks, have excellent pull-down Help, among the best written in the software industry. Information is well indexed and clearly written with step-by-step instructions. Quickbooks also has an excellent set of video tutorials, which take about 90 minutes if you view all of them (which I recommend).

But what the Help and the video tutorials can't really do is give you advice on how to use the accounting system works in practice. How do the individual parts fit into the big picture and what are your choices, depending upon your business, for handling things like Vendor Bills, Customer Sales Receipts, petty cash, etc.? Why would you want to choose one method over another?

This is where this book comes in. Ivens answers the very practical questions that everyone has starting out. For example, should I log deposits against customer sales, or should I treat deposits as a lump sum? Why would I want choose one method over the other? This book answers this, and many other practical questions, clearly, with step-by-step instructions for each method and the rationale behind it.

I would highly recommend this book to supplement the pull-down Help and the video tutorials to answer the many practical decision that you will have to make about how to set up your system so that it will work best for you.

A Disappointing Guide
Although I haven't gone very far with the Guide, it is generally a disappointment, at least for this Mac user of Quickbooks Pro. (It is possible that the Guide is intended for Windows users, but it was sold by Amazon as a package with Quickbooks Pro for the Mac. While this difference might explain problems with suggested keyboard shortcuts and depicted windows that aren't the same as those in the application, it does not excuse the shoddy index.)

The procedural sections (e.g., Do This First in the appendix) are passible. However even here, the instructions are often incorrect. For example, in Creating Accounts, the Guide instructs the user to press CNTL-A to open the accounts window, whereas the actual keyboard shortcut is Shift-Apple-A. Moreover, the two windows shown in the book to create an account are really just one (different) window in the application.

My major problem with the Guide is my inability to use it as a reference manual for answering specific questions. For example, finding specific pieces of information (e.g., how do I enter To Do Notes as Reminders?) is impossible. Even more frustrating, entries listed in the Index are incorrect. For example, if one looks up "Accrual-based accounting, About", one is directed to p.153; unfortunately, there is no reference to accrual-based accounting on page 153.

All-in-all, for those wanting more information on how to use Quickbooks Pro, I'd recommend using the Help feature in the application or the material on Intuit's web page.

Easy to follow
I bought this book to brush up on my QuickBooks skills in the hope to enhance my resume. The book is easy to understand and begins you with starting your business on QuickBooks and walks you through every step you need to get everything on the books and squared away. I can see where there might be some problems if you begin a job that has QuickBooks and you are required to learn it, but I think with some patience and this book anyone with a brain would be able to pick up on it quick.