Business Software

I think it’s fair to say that most people dream about owning their own business sometime in their life. Once you find something you love and you can make money doing it, then you’re on the right path to running your own business. However, a lot of people who have never owned their own business before don’t realize all of the different hats you will have to wear as your own boss. Especially if you start up a one man shop, which most small businesses start out as. Here is a list of the different roles a small business owner should expect to take on:

• Business Owner (that’s a no-brainer)
• The Boss – meaning that you are in charge of yourself. The good news is that you don’t have anybody else to tell you what to do. The bad news is that you don’t have anybody else to tell you what to do, so you HAVE to be self-motivated.
• Salesman – Now that you have a business, you need to get customers somehow. You need to get the word out there about your business whether that involves spending money on advertising campaigns, schmoozing with others at networking events, doing your own online campaigns with Google, cold calling and so on. A business without customers is one that is doomed quickly.
• Accountant – This is the whole reason I decided to write this post on small business accounting software. The majority of small businesses go out of business less than 3 years after they are formed. Yes, some of them were doomed from the start but most of them end up having to close their doors because the owner did not properly manage their finances. It sounds so easy like “oh yeah, I love doing finances so I can handle it” but once you have to do literally everything else for your business, it’s easy to get behind on bills, invoices, taxes, and random other fees. I will list some of my favorite small business accounting software tools below.
• Lawyer – you can hire your own lawyer to be the representative agent for your newly formed company, but that’s expensive and chances are you won’t need him. Do your own research on how you can act as your own registered agent and hire a lawyer when you really need one.
• Customer Support – If you manage multiple clients and you are only one guy, you have to treat them all the same or you will lose them quickly.

Small Business Accounting Software Review

Here is a list of the small business accounting software that I have used personally to operate my company:

1. QuickBooks – this is the gold standard for accounting for small businesses. Most certified public accountants prefer the QuickBooks format to do the end of year taxes so it’s best to get used to using it. You can enter in your revenue, expenses, taxes, invoices, bills and so on in order to keep track of the financial health of your company.

2. Freshbooks – Freshbooks is an online time tracking tool for hourly based projects. You can also use Freshbooks to manage your clients receivables, invoices, billing etc. It’s convenient because it is web-based but it does have its limitations and is not intended to be an alternative to Quickbooks.

3. Turbotax – I’ve used Turbotax to do my own business taxes over the years. It’s great if you know what you are doing but if you don’t have a clue, don’t take the risk. Hire a CPA to do your end of the year tax returns.

4. Microsoft Excel – If you don’t want to feel bothered by entering data into Quickbooks all the time, you can also use a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or even Google Docs.

5. Receipt scanner – I use a portable receipt scanner to automatically scan in my business receipts and store them as PDFs. You can get them for really cheap on Amazon so I encourage this to be one of your first business expenses.