Home Forums The Art Business Center General Art Business Which version of Quicken (or QuickBooks) for multi-genre artist?

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  • #992366
    BothHands
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        I’m a sole proprietor, a self-employed individual artist. I’m involved in three genres simultaneously, which I think of as “departments”:

        Painting, Sculpture and Digital Arts.

        I want to be able to track the expenses and income from each department separately, so at any time I can compare the ‘Painting’ expense-and-income to that of ‘Sculpture’ and ‘Digital Arts’.

        My primary focus is just keeping Income Tax records. A single, unified Profit & Loss Statement and Balance Sheet would do as long as they present income-and-expense from all three departments.

        I would like to assign simple codes to each income and expense item within each of the three ‘departments’.

        I want to use the simplest, least expensive software that will accomplish this. I’ve used Intuit QuickBooks in the past, but would like to find something less involved and less expensive. I hope some version of Intuit Quicken will do, but I haven’t figured which version (if any) is right… Or will I have to bump up to QuickBooks? That seems like overkill as I’m just a self-employed individual.

        #1213312
        BothHands
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            I called Intuit / Quickbooks and asked them some questions. Man, have they changed, and NOT for the good.

            I remember when Intuit was a family-run business with a reputation for being very serious about Ethics. Based on my recent conversation with a very ‘results-oriented’ sales rep, Intuit and Quickbooks now force the customer to either a) buy an expensive software package with features far beyond the needs of most small entities (certainly beyond the needs of any sole proprietor) or b) force you to pay (and pay and pay) for an endless online subscription.

            FORGET THAT. They know that once you begin using a particular bookkeeping system, you’re likely to stay with that system indefinitely because it’s just too big a headache to switch to other software later on.

            :evil: === :evil: ===:evil:===:evil:===:evil:

            Since I’m “just me” and am involved in just a few endeavors, I’m going with a simple spreadsheet built in MS Excel, based on the book (and spreadsheets) by Robert Roy Reed entitled Your Art is Your Business: A Guide for the Working Artist (Volume 1).

            That said, I just discovered something odd. I ordered his book from Amazon a half hour ago. When I reviewed the link for Mr. Reed’s website–just now in anticipation of posting that link–it appears his website is offline. I hope not forever…

            The website let you download Mr Reed’s basic bookkeeping spreadsheets, which I downloaded a week ago. I may modify them to suit my own circumstances, but they appear to be pretty much in line with my needs, as is.

            I’ll keep an eye on Mr. Reed’s website, and will post here if/when it comes back online. The notice there says his domain name (yourartisyourbusiness.com) expired on Nov 12. I’m hopeful that he’s simply reorganizing under a new/different website. :crossfingers:

            Timing is everything, yes?

            #1213313
            BothHands
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                I wrote to Mr. Reed to inquire about his website being off-line: YourArtisYourBusiness.com

                He was surprised, and advised having received no notification whatsoever from his website hosting provider regarding the interruption in services.

                I just checked, and Mr. Reed has already returned the website to full functionality.

                Compared to buying some overpriced Intuit software product, I think I’ll learn a lot (and save a lot of money) by reading and working through Mr. Reed’s system as presented in his book and website.

                The book sells for about $18 on Amazon, and the Amazon “Look Inside” previews are very encouraging.

                HERE’S A LINK TO THE BOOK.

                :thumbsup:

                #1213310
                BitsOfNature
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                    I certainly don’t have enough sales to warrant any formal software program but given with my frustrations with Quicken for my household accounts I would sure turn a skeptical eye towards them for a full set of business books.

                    Instead I also use a spreadsheet, home grown/built. I have tabs for Income, Expenses, Stock (raw photo image details), Inventory (actual physical prints on hand), Price List, Order Details (so I can track detailed costs of various orders from various printers) and finally Competitive Analysis — prices charged by what I looked at as comparable artists.

                    On the Income tab, besides the obvious Date, Description, Amount, I have indicators to show if an item was taxable and compute that accordingly and any gallery commission, all totaling to the net sale amount. You could add a column for the “Department” and do totals based on that (pivot).

                    For Expenses in addition to Date, Description, Payee, Amount and Method (credit card, cash, PayPal) I have a Category and Subcategory fields. Categories are COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), Marketing, Operating, etc. (whatever you want) and Subcategories as well. For me, Subcategories are by the type of product — Art Prints, Art Cards, etc. Again, a pivot breaks this out for me.

                    You can then take yearly or quarterly totals and reference them for a P&L tab (which I haven’t bothered with yet, because unfortunately the L outstrips the P).

                    Regards,
                    Dale

                    Dale Hoopingarner
                    Scanner Photography Artist
                    http://www.BitsOfNature.biz
                    http://s3.amazonaws.com/wetcanvas-hdc/Community/images/23-Feb-2007/102085-sig-bitsofnature468x60.gif

                    #1213311
                    coolside
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                        Have you looked at GnuCash? http://www.gnucash.org/ Open source, free, and with an enthusiastic community for help. I use it for the bookeeping for a nonprofit and it’s great.

                        #1213314
                        BothHands
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                            I also use a spreadsheet, home grown/built. I have tabs for Income, Expenses, Stock (raw photo image details), Inventory (actual physical prints on hand), Price List, Order Details (so I can track detailed costs of various orders from various printers) and finally Competitive Analysis — prices charged by what I looked at as comparable artists.

                            […] [COLOR=Red]You could add a column for the “Department” and do totals based on that (pivot)[/COLOR].

                            For Expenses in addition to Date, Description, Payee, Amount and Method (credit card, cash, PayPal) I have a Category and Subcategory fields. Categories are COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), Marketing, Operating, etc. (whatever you want) and Subcategories as well.

                            You can then take yearly or quarterly totals and reference them for a P&L tab (which I haven’t bothered with yet, because [COLOR=Red]unfortunately the L outstrips the P[/COLOR]).

                            Dale ==

                            Thanks a lot. That’s very concise and helpful overview.

                            QUESTION: What’s a “pivot“? I’ve been thinking in terms of performing a “sort” based on the spreadsheet’s “Department” column. That will work, but if a pivot is something that’ll work better, I’d like to know more.

                            Unfortunately the L outstrips the P. :D HA! Very good. FWIW, I was reading recently about how IRS will only allow that to happen for three consecutive years before they categorize your business as a “hobby”. Uh-oh…

                            #1213315
                            BothHands
                            Default

                                Have you looked at GnuCash? [URL]http://www.gnucash.org/[/URL] Open source, free, and with an enthusiastic community for help. I use it for the bookeeping for a nonprofit and it’s great.

                                WOW. Thanks a lot, coolside. I visited the GnuMoney link (thank you) and that looks like what I was searching for in the first place. And the fact that there’s a helpful user community is a big, big plus. I’ll research it more.

                                I will likely work with an Excel spreadsheet per Rob Reed’s book, at least at first while learning his methods, but since that spreadsheet is likely to “sprawl” enough to confuse me, I may end up applying Rob Reed’s methods and concepts to the GnuCash bookkeeping software. I’ve read the Amazon “Look Inside” pages for Your Art is Your Business, and I think I’m going to be very well served by what I learn from that book.

                                A very helpful post by you. Thank you.

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