QuickBooks Accounting Software
Introduction
Financial management can be a daunting task, especially for a small business. It is so because even the cost of hiring financial management staff can be expensive. Intuit Inc. understands the importance of financial management and proper maintenance of financial record and it is for this reason that the company produced QuickBooks. QuickBooks is simply a set of accounting software designed to help small business in the management of the business’ inventory, sales, assets and other needs that the small business may have. The product’s main features include integrated marketing tools, product and supplies tools, merchant services tools, and training tools. The company has two programs under QuickBooks, which include the QuickBooks Pro version and the QuickBooks Premier version. In both, additional subscription fees may be required if one need to integrate the payroll functions in the software. This paper presents the analysis of how one can complete various activities using QuickBooks (Intuit Inc., 2016).
Using QuickBooks for Profit Planning
The other term for profit planning is budgeting. However, many people in the corporate world prefer using the term profit planning to the term budgeting. Considerably, the profit planning is more forward looking at least in the minds of many people, as compared to budgeting, which many people use to mean planning one’s expenses. The notion of planning for one’s expenses is the very reason that many people do not consider budgeting important but when one includes profit planning, budgeting gains attractiveness. The section underscores the importance of profit planning and provides information how to use QuickBooks Pro or QuickBooks Premier in the process. Intuit Inc. also provides the online version of QuickBooks and this allows the customers of the product to access their accounts while on any location so long as they are connected to the Internet. Notably, the procedures herein provided do not only pertain to the use of QuickBooks by retailers but also by other types of business (Intuit Inc., 2016).
Using QuickBooks for Asset Management
Assets management is one of the important roles for any business. It involves the management of both fixed assets and the current assets. On many occasions, a start-up retailer may forget the important role that asset management play in the success of business, which is why QuickBooks exists. On the baseline, the management of currents, especially inventory, cash, and debtors happens to be much easier that the management of fixed assets. The current assets are used frequently by the organization while the fixed assets would probably be remembered at the end of the year. To manage current assets such as inventory, the vendors tab in the home page of the QuickBooks software helps in the collection of all data and information concerning the levels of inventory (Intuit Inc., 2016). Using the same tab, the user of the software can also comfortably add accounts like cash. On the other hand, the customer’s tab helps the user of the software to manage the accounts receivable while the banking section enables the user to manage cash assets. For the fixed assets, manual entry is required. The company also requires manual entry of all factors, such as depreciation on assets. Overall, asset management using QuickBooks requires the users to enter a lot of information manually by creating asset accounts on the software and inputting data for the computation of depreciation (Intuit Inc., 2016).
Using QuickBooks for Retail Budgeting
Retail budgeting is almost similar in scope with profit planning. However, retail planning entails planning for shorter planning. On the vary basic budgeting for the retail business, the accountant presents the plan for the cash receipts and cash payments that the retailer expects in a given period and uses this to determine the financing needs of the company. The company may also plan or budget for other factors including the most common that is budgeting for expenditure and most important for the capital expenditure. This is because beyond supporting the day-to-day operations, the retailer must also plan for growth, development, and expansion of the business (Intuit, 2003).
Retail budgeting on QuickBooks can be practiced using the company tab under the main menu. Under the company menu, one selects the planning and budgeting feature. A drop-down menu pops up and to determine the retail budget one is required to go to the set up budgets function. The user is asked to input the year and then one is asked to choose between creating the budget either manually or automatically using data that is already saved on the software. The set up budget differs from the profit planning function describes above by one major factor. It is a fact that using the set up budgets function allows the user to plan the budget over several months on a monthly basis and its flexibility allows the user to vary the budgeting period, as they deem favorable to themselves or to the needs of the company (O'Shea, 2011). After creating and saving the budget, the report is accessed through the report center. Under the report center menu, there is the budgets and forecast tab and from the menu of the budgets and forecast, the QuickBooks, user can generate budget overview or summary, detailed budget report, or the comparison report for the budget versus the actual. It allows the user to identify any variances in the budget items considering that the report also helps the user to take note of all variances in the items of the report (Intuit Inc., 2016).
How This New Retailer Could Use The Information Over Time To Spot Trends
The central objective of accounting is to provide information that supports decision-making in the business organization. It means that output from accounting practices would not be useful if the management does not use it to make business decisions or if the investors do not use this information in deciding on whether or not to invest in a company. For a start-up retailer, such as the one used in this case, the use of accounting trend would be used to identify spot trends in the progress of the business hence helping in determining whether the business is set for gloom or doom (Intuit Inc., 2016).
In helping the start-up retailer to account for the business, QuickBooks stores data that the user can use in identifying trends over long periods. For instance, the retailer may be concerned about getting information the business’ financial performance. This can be accesses by using the reports center function on the software. The user can also use this function to collect data on the organization’s financial performance of long period of time for instance a period of five years. Similarly, the user can use the reports function to download information on the company’s financial position at a point in time and additionally the accountant can derive information on the usage of cash by the organization. In other words, the business owner can use QuickBooks to produce annual reports and beyond the annual reports. The user can access information on other customized durations such as weekly reports or even monthly reports. Lastly, the QuickBooks accounting software allows the user to create graphical impressions of all the company data and the user can customize the graph to certain periods. By using the reports and graphs, therefore, the owner can easily spot trends in the performance of the business in various perspectives (Intuit Inc., 2016).
Conclusion
In concluding, this paper focused on discussing how a start-up retailer can use the QuickBooks Accounting Software to accomplish various functions in the organization. There are two versions of the accounting software and these include the QuickBooks Pro software and the QuickBooks Premier software. Additionally, there is an online version of the software that utilizes the concept of cloud computing; hence, allowing users to access the information on their business from any part across the world. The various functions of the software discussed here in include the use of QuickBooks in profit planning, retail management, and asset management. The report also provides details on how the information can be used spot trends in the performance of various facets of the business.
References
Intuit Inc. (2016). QuickBooks financial software. Retrieved from http://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/quickbooks/lava/movies/pro_premier_guided_tour/30476.html
Intuit (Firm). (2003). QuickBooks fundamentals. Mountain View, CA: Intuit, Inc.
O'Shea, J. (2011). QuickBooks 2011. Fairport, NY: Axzo Press.
