I've been pretty much managing my financials through excel workbooks. I work in an IT shop, so I'm pretty familiar with some of the advance capabilities of excel BUT I'd like to move to something else. I recently got a trial version of QuickBooks...Let me just say, my eyes were like my goodness, I didn't even know where to start. So my question is what do you use? Do I just bite the bullet and figure out QuickBooks or is there another alternative out there?
Quickbooks is definitely a much more integrated program, especially compared to Excel. I am a huge fan of Excel and all it's crazy formulas, but Quickbooks takes a lot of that work out of it. You can simply input your information, and it gives you reports, charts, helps you keep track of invoices, and much more. It may seem like a lot at first, but it may just be because you are comfortable with Excel. It is definitely easy-to-learn and easy-to-use, just takes a little bit of poking around.
My husband had bought 2005 Peachtree although its super expensive, and takes a while to learn, but so far for our photography business it has been rewarding.
Elisa