perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can comment about the difference between quickbooks and quicken, but I have used quicken for years (literally, since 1990) and I have found it to be quite suitable for most of my needs. I do not own a business, however.

the categories in quicken can really help you identify business vs. personal expenses. I just categorize all my business expenses as such and run a report when it is tax time.

Bonny fides, obviously you can use the same bank accounts and credit cards if you wish, but you do somehow have to find a way to enter just business transactions into your books. I presume you know that "business related" is not the same as "legit business expenses". For example there are are standards for what percent of your rent is allocated to your business based on how much room your business takes up in your home. (There are also IRS standards for what is tax deductible, but these are different from cost accounting.) Umm as I said, you probably know this, but the way you phrased it made me think a reminder would not hurt.

To make your life easier, you might check with your credit card company. You know how you can a spouse or a kid or whatever to your credit card account? Some credit cards will let you add seperate card for business purposes, where transactions on that card show up differently on the statement. Also if you know what percent of your expenses are business related, you could divide your line of credit into two cards: almost any credit card company will let you do that.

For checks, I presume you have no trouble keeping track of business as opposed to personal spending in one checking account. If your business has grown to the point where this is a pain, and it is really generating substantial revenue (as in enough income to constitute anet hourly wage), you might want to check with your bank: maybe they can find a way to make a second bank account inexpensive and convenient - with one of them drawing on the other so that the combined balance is always available from at least one of the accounts.

Is there a simple strategy within accounting software to make this work?

Probably the easiest thing to do is categorize all your personal expenses as Equity Draws - money that you pay yourself as owner. They don't reduce your profits, they are what you pay yourself out of profits, if you see what I mean. If you want to track your non-business finances also, you should do that separately.

Sound advice, thanks.

Yep, I know the percentage of space issue, etc, but I never thought of having the expenses show up differently on the credit card statement. I just use the year-end statement and write little ts next to tax deductible items.

The parsing of legal biz expenses part isn't really difficult and it is beginning to seem like the way I've done it (though positively archaic) might just be okay.

I'll look into the equity draw feature. I think I saw that in the documentation. The non-business tracking isn't really an issue. Personal spending money? What's that? (at least for the moment)

I spoke to a consultant friend who uses Quickbooks but after he finished telling me that he does not use the program to do invoices or track client expense until after they are paid...that he mostly uses the program so he doesn't have to put his receipts in different envelopes by type...I began to question the value of spending time on the learning curve when there are so many other things to do!

How many bytes in a kilobyte? What is the difference between Kb and kb, etc? xkcd resolves this once and for all: [link]

Pentium F.P.U. jokes: Incredibly dated, yet somehow still funny!

bonny, I do use Quickbooks for our business, rather extensively. I'd be happy to talk with you more about the details of it, and I'll make myself available to you for any specific questions.

We are a corporation (non-profit) instead of a sole proprietorship, so there are obviously differences in how we manage our funds (and we do have separate accounts and credit cards for the business and personal lives) but Quickbooks should allow you to make the distinctions you need.

Without knowing all the details of what you're looking at, I'd make two possible recommendations. One is, you can set up subaccounts underneath your main bank account in the chart of accounts and use that to differentiate between personal and business expenses, keeping separate ledgers that total as one. For example, I have our one business checking account, but I keep a subaccount each for payroll liabilities, grant money that was designated for a specific purpose, and sales income that needs to go back out for the same project. I mark money that comes in for those purposes into that account and I mark it when it goes out for those purposes out of that account.

Secondly, if that won't work for you, or if you want something simpler, you can use something called "classes" to identify all transactions. You could set up a class for personal and a class for business. Then when you did reporting, you could separate it out by classes. The way I use classes is for broad job categories: recording, traveling music school, administration, fundraising. Then when I need to know how much of my spending is for our main program, I just call up transactions with the class "traveling music school" and I can see exactly what I'm bringing in and what I'm spending.

Then when I need to know how much of my spending is for our main program, I just call up transactions with the class "traveling music school" and I can see exactly what I'm bringing in and what I'm spending.

THIS would be hugely beneficial to me. I would love to be able to, at a glance, figure our how much I'm making/spending on doggy lama vs. the people coaching business. I doubt that I'd give one up over the other, but I am a fan of efficient use of resources. If one business is more cost effective/profitable, I'd like to focus on that...obviously.

I'll read up on the classes function. And thank you Liese, for the offer of specific help. I am grateful for your guidance!

For a moment, completely disconnected from anything else, I'd like to express my appreciation for the spicy minds, and generous spirits among the Buffistas.

And, while I'm at it, I might as well add that despite the occasional frustrations and confusions I experience with technology, I'm damn glad to have it.

Coming from a generation that knew not where we would go beyond mimeograph machines and Pong, I am thrilled by the convenience and sheer magic that is technology.

I've been dragging my feet trying to recreate a particular document...just because I really liked the original and doubted I could pull it out of my mind in as good shape. And I was dumb enough to give the last hard copy to a client because, "I'll always have it on the eMac."

Then, I recalled that I probably emailed it to someone over the last 4 years...so I searched my online, all in one communications client and found it as an attachment. For some reason, it had been translated in to a .dat file, unreadable by Word. Opened it up in text edit and then transfered the text back into Word with most of the formatting intact.

A process that took 5 minutes, versus the not getting it done at all I was stuck in.

All hail technology!

For some reason, it had been translated in to a .dat file, unreadable by Word. Opened it up in text edit and then transfered the text back into Word with most of the formatting intact.

Did you try simply changing the file name extension from .dat to .doc? You might have gotten all the formatting and saved a few more minutes!