QuickBooks 2005: The Missing
Manual Book Review
QuickBooks 2005: The Missing
Manual
Book Review
 By
Dale Farris, SecretaryGolden Triangle PC Club April 2005 General Overview Every company large and small wants to boost its sales, control its spending, and keep the auditors at the Internal Revenue Service happy. No company wants to waste time on more paperwork. These days, a growing number of companies are turning to QuickBooks accounting software not only to speed up their bookkeeping efforts, but manage their businesses more effectively. Organizations come in all shapes, sizes, and business models, so it's no surprise that accounting practices can be a convoluted road to travel. QuickBooks can handle many of the financial tasks companies face, but the price you pay is an overabundance of software features. To make the learning curve even more challenging, QuickBooks doesn't come with a manual. Fortunately, to help pave the road to accounting success, there's QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual, a comprehensive guide from O'Reilly that examines everything the QuickBooks Pro edition has to offer, from invoices and inventory to assets and accounts payable. With QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual, financial managers can quickly learn how to use the program's tools to implement and maintain critical accounting processes. By covering details in a friendly and light-hearted way, the book explains when and why a feature is useful, and then offers indispensable, relevant advice. Each page of this Missing Manual provides insightful tips and tricks to help readers become more efficient, sophisticated users no matter what the extent of their existing knowledge is. Whether you're interested in QuickBooks for its basic bookkeeping features or its more powerful, business planning tools, the only way to truly harness its power is to read the book that should have been in the box: QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual. Importance of the Book Many readers may already be familiar with the QuickBooks software, or its personal, home finance management software Quicken, both from the Intuit company. Intuit is well known for their superb financial management software, and when you purchase the QuickBooks 2005 software, you will receive additional startup documentation to help you with the software. However, as is the case today with most all software, companies just cannot any longer afford to produce extensive paper based user manuals, as this cost just can no longer be considered essential, mainly because this would add further cost to the software. In today's highly competitive software market, vendors are always looking for ways to add value to their program, while not necessarily adding cost to the product. Thus, in most all software programs today, the user's manual, or the help on using the software is electronic and built into the software instead of being printed on paper based books included with the program in its retail box. While this is understandable, this has also opened a market for third-party, add-on paper books from the computer book publishing industry, which is best exemplified by this large, impressive title by Bonnie Biafore from Pogue Press/O'Reilly. As is always the case with any O'Reilly title, you can depend on the material to be of high quality, well written by professionals known to be experts in their field, and of great value to readers. In the case of the QuickBooks software, Pogue Press/O'Reilly has provided an important title that will likely sell very well because of the hundreds of thousands of customers who are working with or seriously considering Intuit's QuickBooks software to help them manage their company's finances. Table of Contents The 23 chapters are organized in four parts, including the following: Part One: Getting Started Ch 1: Creating a Company in QuickBooks Ch 2: Setting Up a Chart of Accounts Ch 3: Setting Up Customers and Jobs Ch 4: Setting Up Invoice Items Ch 5: Setting Up Other QuickBooks Lists Ch 6: Configuring Preferences to Fit Your Company Ch 7: Managing QuickBooks Files Part Two: Accounting With QuickBooks Ch 8: Invoicing Ch 9: Managing Accounts Receivable Ch 10: Paying For Expenses Ch 11: Payroll Ch 12: Managing Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, and Petty Cash Ch 13: Making Journal Entries Ch 14: Working With Financial Statements Part Three: Managing Your Business Ch 15: End-of-Year Tasks Ch 16: Managing Inventory Ch 17: Tracking Time and Mileage Ch 18: Budgeting and Planning Ch 19: Tracking Your Business with Reports Part Four: QuickBooks Power Ch 20: Online Banking Services Ch 21: Sharing QuickBooks Data with Other Programs Ch 22: Customizing QuickBooks Ch 23: Keeping Your QuickBooks Data Secure In addition, the book has an additional Part Five that contains the three Appendices. Appendix A: Installing QuickBooks Appendix B: Finding Help Appendix C: Keyboard Shortcuts Target Readers In this book, you will find step-by-step instructions for using every QuickBooks Pro feature, including those you might not have quite understood, let alone mastered, including: progress invoicing making general journal entries customizing templates writing off losses To keep you productive, the book includes evaluations of features that help you figure out which ones are useful and when to use them. This book is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level. The primary discussions are written for advanced-beginner or intermediate QuickBooks users. If you are a first-time QuickBooks user, special boxes with the title "Up To Speed" provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. On the other hand, advanced users should watch for similar shaded boxes called "Power User Clinic." These sidebars offer more technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the experienced QuickBooks fan. Book Contents 608 pages; paperbound; acknowledgements; introduction; tons of tips for novices and advanced users; additional tips; figures; screenshots; appendices; index; cover colophon Author Bonnie Biafore About the Author Bonnie Biafore is an award-winning author of several books on investing, finance, project management, and software. She’s a columnist for Better Investing magazine and the author of the NAIC Stock Selection Handbook. A PMI-certified project management professional with more than 20 years experience, she also manages information technology and software development projects in a variety of industries. As an engineer, she is tenaciously attentive to detail and digests tantalizing morsels about every topic she approaches. Her sense of humor makes for entertaining, easy reading on subjects that are drool-inducing in other books. Her book, NAIC Stock Selection Handbook won major awards from both the Society of Technical Communication and APEX Awards for Publication Excellence, and she cherishes the raves she has received from beginning investors. She writes a monthly column called WebWatch for Better Investing magazine and is a regular contributor to WomensWallStreet.com. As a consultant, she manages projects for clients and wins accolades for her ability to herd cats. When not chained to her computer, she hikes in the mountains with her dogs, cooks gourmet meals, and practices saying no to additional work assignments. You can learn more at her web site, www.bonniebiafore.com and you can email her at bonnie.biafore@gmail.com. ISBN February 2005 - First Edition 0-596-00901-1 List Price $29.95 $41.95 CAN About O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media is the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies. The company's books, conferences, and web sites bring to light the knowledge of technology innovators. O'Reilly books, known for the animals on their covers, occupy a treasured place on the shelves of the developers building the next generation of software. O'Reilly conferences and summits bring alpha geeks and forward-thinking business leaders together to shape the revolutionary ideas that spark new industries. From the Internet to XML, open source, .NET, Java, and web services, O'Reilly puts technologies on the map. O'Reilly Media creates products that they
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