Here's an interesting blog post comparing Peachtree to QuickBooks a friend of mine, Brian Tankersley, recently Tweeted about.
I don't disagree with anything David Chermak wrote. The problem is that the article is from the perspective of an accountant, not a businessperson. Some of the other items are just "par for the course" in any stable accounting package.
The items listed for comparison are interesting: prepayments, payroll accounting, depreciation, tax minimization and compliance, and useful, sensible reporting. My trouble with this list is that it doesn't address the key issues that businesses generally start to look for software to solve.
Here is a list of some things that small and mid-sized businesses need: cost control, costing (of jobs or manufacturing), inventory, order tracking, shipping, purchase controls, quotes, payroll checks, lot and serial number tracking, service billing, and recurring invoicing. The blog post below seems to focus more on what Accountants need from software than what businesses need from software. Accounting records should be the byproduct of a system that makes a business money by collecting and reporting the data the business needs.
Comments (1)
I agree that the Chermak review tries to be fair. I replied in my blog (see URL) because the writer is somewhat unique. He seemed to know accounting and IT before he saw Peachtree. He also did not consider that QuickBooks sells 94% of small business accounting programs. This affects availability of local staff, local professional and web support. It also affects the add-ons, which make QuickBooks the fastest and easiest low-cost way to do almost anything for almost anyone.
Posted by Mike Block CPA | August 26, 2009 3:50 AM
Posted on August 26, 2009 03:50