A mature and capable accounting package, Quickbooks manages to bridge the gap between the occasional user and financial expert, making it a popular small-business solution.

It’s also well supported, and not just by developer Intuit, which offers both technical and accountancy help, but by third-party service providers and certified professionals able to offer specialist advice.

Quickbooks is already known for straightforward setup and use, and the 2006 release is aimed at making the product even simpler, especially for those users who only spend a few hours a week using the package.

To this end, a new resource area has been added, providing a one-stop shop when looking for help or access to the various add-on products and services available.

Plus there’s a revamped Getting Started guide that has removed a lot of tiresome jargon and is a huge improvement over previous editions.

The new guide is particularly useful when it comes to the biggest hurdle new users have to overcome – setting up the accounting software to suit their particular business.

The terminology here can be hard to follow and mistakes at this stage can be difficult to rectify later. Another key feature of Quickbooks is its simple, interview-style setup routine, which helps demystify the process and highlight the potential pitfalls.

The only drawback is the time needed to complete the interview, but it really does help and more experienced users can skip this step if preferred.

Users of Quicken can convert existing company files, plus it’s possible to import existing product, customer and supplier lists to save the re-keying of such data.

All the expected accounting functionality is there in each of the different versions of Quickbooks, starting, naturally, with customer management and invoicing, complete with a neat graphical document design tool and facilities to generate and email pdf invoices, statements and so on.

VAT accounting and stock-control tools are also built in, with facilities to manage bank accounts and produce a wide range of financial reports.

Plus there’s an optional payroll service (£99.95 inc VAT per year for updates) to automatically calculate employee tax and NI deductions, with the Intuit software fully accredited with HM Revenue and Customs for online filing of PAYE and other returns.

A service to allow customers to pay by credit/debit cards is another recent addition, although it’s not particularly cheap. On the Pro version we looked at there’s support for payments through BACS, although this is, again, a chargeable extra.

Still, you don’t have to buy into these services, and smaller companies that don’t need them, or the multi-user support available with Quickbooks Pro, can opt for the cheaper Regular edition (£129 inc VAT) with an even cheaper cutdown version called Simplestart (£39.95), aimed at one-man bands looking to replace spreadsheet-based accounting systems.

Finally, for accounting professionals, there’s Quickbooks Accountant, which in the 2006 release includes a new financial statements designer.

Of course, a knowledge of book-keeping will help to get the most out of the Quickbooks package, but it’s not essential and you don’t have to be a financial genius. Nor do you need to be a computer whizz-kid, with tasks such as backups and software updates all handled for you.

The add-on services are also worth investigating, in a package likely to pay for itself in a very short time indeed.

System requirements:
PC with 200MHz Pentium processor (350MHz Pentium II or above recommended)
64MB Ram (96MB recommended)
350MB hard disk space
SVGA monitor
Windows 98 or later
Office 97 components for Microsoft integration