QuickBooks Pro 2000 - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, July, 2000 by Bonny L. Georgia

HOC RATING 12345678

** Requirements: Win 95/98/NT/2000, 16MB of RAM (32MB recommended), 85MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive ** List Price: $220 ** Manufacturer: Intuit, 800-446-8848, www.quickbooks.com

BOOKKEEPING FOR A ONE-PERSON SHOP IS mostly painless. But once you begin hiring employees or handling inventory, you'll need accounting tools up to the challenge. Intuit's QuickBooks Pro 2000 manages such tasks with ease and won't leave you with a headache.

If you're upgrading from Quicken or Quicken Home & Business, you can import balance information for bank accounts, credit cards, or outstanding bills instead of entering data by hand. You can also pull in customer and vendor contacts from Act or Microsoft Outlook. However, you must separate business accounts and contacts from personal ones before importing, and we'd have liked better documentation on how to do it.

In just a few minutes, Intuit's wizards helped us create income and expense accounts, set up categories and vendors, and fill out our inventory list. There's no pressure to do everything at once, since you can edit most lists and settings later.

The program's Company, Customer, and Vendor Detail centers put essential financial tidbits into a snaphot, like the home-page view in Quicken Home and Business. You can dig deeper by double-clicking any graph or link.

Although you get lots of accounting muscle for your money, some of QuickBooks' best features (such as the Deluxe Payroll Service) cost extra. New fee-based niceties include e-postage, credit card authorization, and Web hosting of sites created with the new Site Builder interface.

One weak point worth mentioning is inventory tracking, which doesn't support multiple purchase costs for your stock (frustrating if you comparisonshop among several vendors). But for small businesses with modest inventories, QuickBooks Pro 2000's sophisticated tools and friendly face are hard to beat.

A Straightforward setup; friendly interface

B Sharp learning curve for Quicken users; limited inventory

RATINGS

HOME OFFICE COMPUTING rates products on a scale of 1 to 10--with few 9's or 10's--based on value, performance, innovation (medals go to rare standouts in these areas), ease of use, and suitability for home offices. The A and B symbols indicate pros and cons.

Rating: 8