Financial Software for Your Business Don't know which accounting software package to purchase? Check out these options.

What do homebased business owners look for in business andfinancial accounting software? In a word, dependability. In anotherword, simplicity. The last word? Affordability.

Fortunately, there's no shortage of productive options forhomebased business owners looking for a good deal in financialsoftware. It's about time, too--financial management andaccounting software vendors have finally gotten around to buildingtop-notch applications for the home office set.

Here are a few financial software tools worth mulling over:

BigBusiness: Advertised as a "complete management systemfor growing companies," Big Business might find a home on yourdesktop if your company buys and sells a lot of wholesale,distribution and retail products. That's because Big Businessis one of the few financial software packages that allows growingcompanies to merge their sales, marketing and financial objectivesinto a single program. In addition to performing all accountingfunctions, Big Business automates sales, order entry, marketing,inventory tracking and Web site creation.

That's a boon to homebased business owners who fit the aboveprofile and who may be using an entry-level bookkeeping productlike Quicken--software packages that are single-user,after-the-fact, data-entry and calculation tools.

Business owners can start with the single-user version of BigBusiness and move up to the client/server version as their companygrows. The best feature, in my humble opinion, is thesoftware's ability to share information about any contact,transaction or item in the system, thus making planning anddecision-making among several people easier.

QuickBooks: Quicken's big brother, QuickBooks,is a huge hit with the SOHO set. Sure, some home office users makedo with Quicken, which handles a lot of basic bookkeeping taskslike bill paying and electronic banking. But QuickBooks goes awhole lot further in helping you manage your business finances.

I like QuickBooks because it does so much for you automatically.The software helps you fill in familiar forms with customer andvendor data, so you never have to enter information twice. Itprovides a bundle of features that you may have been doing inseparate applications like Excel or Microsoft Word, includingestimating, time tracking, job costing and integration with keybusiness applications like Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook andSymantec ACT. Like Big Business, it's also multi-user ready,with simultaneous access for up to five people on your network.

Other features I like about QuickBooks include:

• Easily tracks time. Enter employee hours on weekly formsor single activity forms. Time information flows automatically toinvoices and paychecks. An onscreen timer allows you to record timespent on projects easily.

• Creates professional estimates fast. Start typing acustomer name or service; QuickBooks fills in the rest, thuscreating an editable invoice from the estimate with just aclick.

• Shows job profitability 11 different ways. Estimates,invoices, timesheets and expenses all flow automatically toreports. Compare estimated job costs to actual costs to see ifyou're making or losing money.

If you have to choose between Quicken or QuickBooks, don'tsweat it. After all, if you started your homebased business withQuicken, you'll understand the basics of using QuickBooks.Download free trial versions of QuickBooks and QuickBooks Pro forWindows at www.quickbooks.com.

Additional Choices

Other financial software packages that a home office user mightappreciate? For the PC-only crowd, Peachtree offers apricey but effective accounting package for small businesses thatcomes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, which I like. Thesoftware includes general ledger, accounts receivable, invoicing,accounts payable, job/project tracking, payroll, custom formsdesign and a report writer.

Another contender in the business accounting software arena forboth the Mac and PC is M.Y.O.B. Designed for businesses with less than $5million in annual revenues, M.Y.O.B integrates general ledger,checkbook, sales, purchasing, inventory, card file and optionalpayroll functions in an effective format. In my experience, M.Y.O.Bis slightly complicated to use, so if you're a technophobe,stick with QuickBooks.

Price-wise, current home office accounting packages retail foranywhere from $40 to $200. Anything less won't do the job, andanything more is usually a luxury you won't need. But then,your new financial software package should tell you that.

Brian O'Connell is a Framingham, Massachusetts-basedfreelance business writer. His most recent book, B2B.com(Bob Adams Media), is available this September. His earlierbooks, Generation E: How Young Entrepreneurs are Changing theCorporate Landscape (Entrepreneur Press) and The 401(k)Millionaire (Random House/Villard), are available in bookstores.A frequent contributor to many national business magazines, he canbe reached at Bwrite111@aol.com.