Actually, there are more than five. QuickBooks’ wild popularity has many causes, much advanced features that draw accountants, business owners, and bookkeepers alike towards QuickBooks can be learned quickly by taking on of the many local QuickBooks Courses and Training Seminars available in South Florida.
When QuickBooks was introduced in the early 1990s, people wondered if it could do for small business accouting what Intuit’s Quicken did for personal finance.
The answer was a resounding Yes. Over two decades, QuickBooks has taken its place in the offices of millions of small businesses. It’s been the clear market leader since shortly after it was launched, first as a DOS program, then Windows, then online.
Why did QuickBooks capture the allegiance of both small businesses and accountants alike?
- It grew slowly and carefully. In the early days, businesspeople were cautious about moving from paper ledgers to computers for their financial management. In fact, a lot of companies still are. But the early pioneers were able to move their operations onto QuickBooks a little at a time. As the software grew, so did users’ confidence. Today, QuickBooks has grown to encompass the lions’ share of financial functions that most small businesses need: accounts receivable and payable, payroll, inventory and reports. QuickBooks training courses have helped small businesses learn not only about QuickBooks, but accounting in general.
It’s easy to use. Intuit built QuickBooks so that you didn’t have to have the initials “CPA” after your name to use it. When Windows came into widespread use for PCs, it used the standard conventions that the operating system offered in its user interface and navigational scheme. Macintosh developers did the same. Intuit simplified the language of bookkeeping and integrated the individual tasks that QuickBooks performed to dramatically reduce the errors often made by duplicate data entry. Forms like invoices and purchase orders resemble their real-life counterparts, which makes the transition easier.
- Intuit offers tremendous support and QuickBooks training to accountants. No bookkeeping software could have the success that QuickBooks has without the support of the accounting profession. And QuickBooks has had that since the early days. Intuit has developed an educational certification program that offers QuickBooks training courses and other resources and support to accounting professionals. Those who pass muster are given the title, “QuickBooks ProAdvisor.”
- It’s true GAAP-compliant, double-entry bookkeeping. This is another reason that the accounting professional community backs QuickBooks. While on the surface it’s simple enough to be used by non-accountants, the core of the program is based on the centuries-old double-entry bookkeeping framework and modern-day accounting best practices. It’s compliant with the critical Generally-Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
- Accountants have easy access to their clients’ data. Small businesses may do the bulk of the bookkeeping tasks necessary, but an accountant is often needed to check their work, create reports, prepare data for taxes, etc. QuickBooks makes this easy with its built-in tools.
Accountants and their clients can easily share QuickBooks data.
I find a lot of small business owners and accountants like to share ideas about how to best learn to use QuickBooks to its full capacity and best practices they have learned in QuickBooks Training classes.