Quicken or Quickbooks

June –

I noticed your book entitled Four Steps. I am wondering if the Quicken tweaks you write about in this book will suffice for my business? I am a consultant that builds eLearning and Web Applications. Well...to be accurate, I don't really build them...I work with the client, conceptualize them and then outsource all of the programming and sometimes graphics work to others (usually in India).

I work in a very project based manner. I setup a budget for each project that is based upon an estimate. I would like to be able to keep track of money going out and coming in based upon each project. I have recently installed the 300 buck version of Quickbooks and now, after seeing your book, I am wondering if Quicken will be able to do everything that Quickbooks can? I guess, to sum up my question, I am asking when you would recommend Quickbooks over Quicken and vice versa? Thank you for you insights and wisdom, I look forward to reading you book (SELF-EMPLOYED TAX SOLUTIONS)


Hi Dan,

I recommend Quicken [Q] over Quickbooks [QB] . It's easier.QB is a double-entry bookkeeping system. Accountants love it. Just plain folks find it overkill. The time you save with Q over QB will be well worth the money lost on your QB purchase.

Q has categories and subcategories and classes. The classes will allow you to separate expenses by project. Because you're computer-savvy I'll do a couple of shortcuts here. If you don't understand let me know.
For instance, take a look at this:

Supplies:Software/Project A
Supplies:Ink&Toner/General
Supplies:Software/Project B
Publications/Project B

Get the idea?

Q has a lot of bells and whistles. It allows you to set up budgets so you could compare budget to actual. I don't go into that in Four Steps. Four Steps is a basic how-to – how to make Q work for a self-employed business rather than for a family with wage earners or a small business that makes widgets.

Hope that helps.
June Walker

yeah, June, that makes sense. Now...there are a variety of Q versions. Do you recommend one over the other. Because I make widgets would you recommend the premium version or does it really not matter? With regard to project based budgeting...Q used to have a very useful Budget heads up display sort of thing that you could pull up and allow to sit on top of all Q windows. The display would show you by color (green, yellow and red) and progress bar how much you had left in your budget for a wide variety of categories. I made use of this a lot in Q ’98, I believe. Does the latest version of Q have this?

Do you know what I'm referring to?

-- Dan