Business Software Advice

[Mile High Mania]

I wanted to see if any of you had some inexpensive ideas for my father-in-law. He's getting into a small business and is looking for a software package to do the following:

-Accounting module to capture fees collected, expenses, etc.
-A module to track customers and deal packages.
-Module to maintain participating dealership information, names, email, www, addresses, etc
-Ability to scan in sales packages under a name or number
-Reporting of historical data.

I know this is kind of specific and odd, but thought I would ask. I don't think they'll have more than 5-7 employees.

Thanks,

[jspchief]

Without really understanding the scope of his needs... I'd suggest Quickbooks. It's relatively inexpensive, user friendly, and broad enough that it can be customized to fit almost any small business.

I've been using it for about 7 years, and really like it.

[KC Jones]

I wanted to see if any of you had some inexpensive ideas for my father-in-law. He's getting into a small business and is looking for a software package to do the following:

-Accounting module to capture fees collected, expenses, etc.
-A module to track customers and deal packages.
-Module to maintain participating dealership information, names, email, www, addresses, etc
-Ability to scan in sales packages under a name or number
-Reporting of historical data.

I know this is kind of specific and odd, but thought I would ask. I don't think they'll have more than 5-7 employees.

Thanks,

Have him hire a small time IT cosultant with strong references who does this stuff for small businesses all the time. That guy will help him pick software, hardware, etc. I haven't used quickbooks in years but it can probably do a lot of that stuff. Someone with modest technical talents could whip up a DB schema using MS Access, PostgreSQL, or any small/free RDBMS for a lot of this, or you could even look at open source offerings - gnuCash is a full double ledger accounting package that's quite flexible.

If your uncle plans to have a small network of PCs for the 5-7 employee's he ought to look at either MS Small Business Server, Clark Connect, or Novell's Suse Linux for small business. Any of those will give you a lot of things you'll want right out of the box.

[jAZ]

When I bought my business I looked at both Quckbooks, Peachtree and MYOB (along with a couple more expensive alternatives).

We went with MYOB. It was easy to use, and is well designed with more features for less money than QB or Peachtree.

I'd recommend it for anyone doing small business stuff.

The one issue might be the "scan in sales packages". I'm not sure what this means, so I can't say for sure that MYOB will support that.

You can download trial versions of all 3 products (or at least I was able to a year ago).