Intuit QuickBooks 2004 review

If the statistics can be believed, more than 95 per cent of all businesses in the UK are SMEs: small- to medium-sized enterprises of up to 50 employees. These businesses do most of the trading and turn over most of the money that's floating about in our economy.

SME accounting software, therefore, has a vast market, and a product such as Intuit's QuickBooks must appeal to a very wide range of enterprises including the corner shop, local water-bottling plant, hotel, pub, builder, plumber and freelance photographer. A tall order, so what does this latest version offer for your money?

Whatever business you run, it will require the bookkeeping basics, and to this end QuickBooks delivers cash, bank and credit card account tracking, with invoicing and customer account management built-in. You also get supplier tracking for purchases and comprehensive VAT management that takes information from all the modules.

If you want more, QuickBooks Pro adds parts assembly stock control to the mix, plus very useful sales and purchase ordering - handy for the wholesaler or mail order business. Pro will also provide job tracking, which nicely caters for the builders and project managers out there, plus time tracking for self-employed professionals who charge by the hour. If you need business plan projections, forecasting and forward business planning, choose the Premier version.

So Intuit has covered a lot of bases, which inevitably leads to lots of complexity. To keep things easier for the non-bookkeeper, however, QuickBooks groups most of the features together into 'activity centres'. The suppliers activity centre, for example, enables you to record purchase orders, enter bills received, make payments to purchase accounts and so on.

Likewise, the customer activity centre deals with invoices, credit notes and receipts, while the banking centre allows you to write and print cheques, make deposits and reconcile your bank account. QuickBooks can also take quotes and estimates and assign these to your jobs, plus you can invoice jobs in stages - which is pretty much how a small business usually works.

To keep up with e-technology, the email invoicing option can even add a 'pay now' button to the email for instant online payment, although you'll have to subscribe and pay for this service just as you would any credit card merchant account.

The Premier version of QuickBooks adds a few management-accounting features such as budgeting based on prior year data and business plan creation. To help you compare your business with its peers you can also view an expert analysis of your data. So you can see statistics concerning profits, sales, borrowing and asset liquidity based on your particular business type.

New to version 2004 Pro and Premier is a six-week cashflow projector. This provides a detailed summary of all your incoming and outgoing cash, indicating what your bank account should look like over the coming weeks. The information can be edited in a wizard-based, question-and-answer session to fine-tune the result.

A new loan manager breaks down loans into interest and capital, and then works out your repayments for you; also, you can test out 'what if' loan scenarios to see which would be the best for you. If you run a company with a lot of machinery, the new fixed asset manager should make life easier for you at the end of the financial year. Everything is stored in one place, including depreciation and disposal information.

Most self-employed individuals run a car on the business books, so they can claim back the VAT on repairs, fuel and so on; for these folk, QuickBooks now offers vehicle mileage tracking as well. So not only can you bill customers for mileage tracked now, but also arrive at non-business mileage figures very easily when the time comes to fill in your tax return.