Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way supporting QuickBooks setups.

1. Spend some time getting your baginning balance sheet and income statement balances correct before attempting to put them into QuickBooks.

2 Start with a QuickBooks chart of accounts, then add detail payroll liability accounts, advertising, and any other accounts you’ll need for your business. You can add accounts on the fly, but payroll accounts are a big hassle to add later.

3. Input the detailed transactions back to the last year end. You won’t regret it. You’ll want your history if you’re serious about managing your business. This is basic bookkeeping from high school.

4. If you’re pretty technical, import transactions into QuickBooks. QuickBooks will import some things from Excel. There are also utilities for getting data into QuickBooks from Karl Irvin, Bay State Consulting and Big Red Consulting. If data manipulation and importing isn’t for you, call us. We can help.

5. Spend some time learning how to use the program as it was designed. QuickBooks isn’t like any other accounting program you’ve ever used. It’s good software, does what it says it will do and is reliable, but there’s a learning curve. The help file is great. The manual should be recycled. The Sleeter Group, www.sleeter.com, produces great books on QuickBooks products.

6. If someone tells you to adjust accounts receivable, accounts payable or payroll tax liabilities with a journal entry, you need new help: they are not your friend. If you use job costing, the same goes for sales and cost of goods sold.

7. The Pro version of QuickBooks costs less than $200. You can spend a lot more and get a lot less. There are many integrated applications available to run beside and link to QuickBooks that will probably do what you want. Some of these are klunky kludges and some are elegant well-performing applications. We can help you sort out the differences.

8. A payroll tax table from Intuit costs $200 a year. When you sell the software for $200, you have to make it up someplace. It’s worth the money. Payroll is a real headache and QuickBooks with the tax table takes the pain away. Learn how to run your own payroll.

9. When you’ve finished setting up the software, opening balance equity should be zero and should remain zero. If it’s not, you have an error to find. Setup isn’t for the faint of heart. The key is to get help before you do it incorrectly.

10. There’s no substitute for time, attention and work. You’ll get out of this what you put into it.

11. Never put your personal transactions into a business QuickBooks file. This is a recipe for disaster. Many entities must report a business balance sheet on the tax return. If the personal entries are in the file, QuickBooks calculates an incorrect balance sheet for reporting.