Business Software

One of the more expensive items, which normally end up being the backbone of a business, is the purchase of and your monthly payments for your software system.

Even if you do not buy the system but pay a monthly rental fee for the system, these fees can be rather expensive and unnecessary, especially the support backup.  There are a lot of packages out there for the “Hire” industry and for the normal “Retail” business.  What a lot of business owners do not know is that these packages are just a re-write of any basic accounting package that includes a few add-ons.  More importantly if one has to look at their design through the eyes of an IT professional they will more than likely find the design and code is unacceptable as most of these “packages” are designed and programmed by so-called programmers that have had no formal programming education.

Background

I have been in the IT industry for the last 20 years and have been around the block.  I did not want to accept the package we were advised to use when we started our tool hire business but we had no choice and had to use it to get up and running.  To have the use of this package we had to pay a monthly fee for a minimum of two licenses even though we were only using one.  For every telephone call for support you would be charged a minimum of a one hour call out.  If the support had to come to your premises you would be charged extra for travelling.  The more I considered at this and especially in these tough times, the more I started looking around for other options.  We then got an email informing us that they were increasing their fees by a 10 percent annual increase even though we only had their system for 6 months.  That hit the nail on the head.  I started to write my own system.

Quickbooks

I then remembered that my sister in Vancouver once told me that all their clients and their company only use Quickbooks and they are the bookkeepers.  So I started to look at Quickbooks and realised they have over 4 million Quickbooks users worldwide.  Now that has to say something for Quickbooks in itself, whether that is 4 million users or 4 million businesses, who knows – it is still a lot.  Then I realised I had been trying to “re-invent the wheel” which I had always advised against in my previous employment.  I started to test Quickbooks.  I found that it was very “user friendly” and easy to set up.  As you install it, it basically prompts you through everything.  Thereafter with a few template changes, how I added the hire equipment and set up a few accounts, Quickbooks now works for our hire business.  There is not that much you actually need to do and it is really quite simple.

Costs

Costs are minimal as you only pay once.  No more monthly payments.  Support?- there are tons of answers for almost any question you might have on the Intuit website.  I will go through how I set up Quickbooks for our company in the following articles.  I am not a Quickbooks re-seller – I just do not see why businesses should pay exorbitant fees for inferior software when there are solutions for your business out there already.  The software you use does not have to be Quickbooks either.  See more articles on this subject at our website http://www.ToolsforAfrica.co.za.

By: Gary Pitman