fijisun:  Until you decide on an accountant, you should keep record of all of your income & expenses. Both of the accountants make good points. Incorporating is only the first part of starting your business. Being incorporated gives you legal status but has little to do with your tax status. What type of corporation for tax purposes is your second set. One of the accountants asked about your "S" status. That is one type of tax status. You have the "S", "C", & LLC tax statuses to consider. Each has a different taxable status. Your accountant should ask you many questions to determine which one is right for your type of business. There is not a one size fits all status. Ask a lot of questions and make sure you feel good about the answers. Also, before talking to another accountant, purchase "Starting a Business for Dummies" at your local book store. It will help you with questions to ask the accountant and also give you a little knowledge going into the meeting.
2007-09-12 07:45:44

Donald C:  I am a Quickbooks ProAdvior and since you did not indicate what type of company you have all I can do is give you some basics. www.jumpup.com is a good place to look for information on new companies. Quicken is used basically for home use. however they do have a home and business edition. This is for sole proprietor, The Simple start is another small business start up accounting software and is ok but I prefer to guide my clients into a minimum of QuickBooks Pro. This is a large enough program that is excellant in ease of use & will give you everything you need. Premier and Enterprise are scaled (in my opinion) for the larger companies. Each edition has it's own pros cons. Quicken, simple start, pro and premier can be found at Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA if there is still one in your area, Office Max etc. You can watch for sales and get them for a less expensive price. I as many other ProAdvisors have links their web site to get soft ware with a discount and free shipping. You still pay the tax. Pro is selling for about $200 and the lower versions are even less. Not a bad price for the software. The packages do all the behind the scenes double entries for you. Then you can pull out the reports that you need for taxes etc. and give them to your accountant. Microsoft is also ok but is not as easy to use as QB, Peachtree has the thing and problem with being user friendly. Intuit, the makers of QB have come up with a program called Sure Start that will get you basically an overview of how the system operates for about $200 over the price of the program. There are several business start up sites on the web but the Jumpup is pretty good and it is to the best of my knowledge still free. As to what you should be keeping track of that is simple. EVERYTHING that is a business expense or income, the amount of money that you have invested, you automobile expenses, both mileage and actual expenses, your inventory if any, as well as payroll, office/store expense such as rent utility, fixtures. etc. For more information send me an email and I will send you my web site address. Best of Luck Don
2007-09-12 09:49:36

hollydevito777:  If you are keeping track of your finances in QB you are keeping a general ledger. It's the easiest way to do it. Don't hire an accountant to keep your books, they will charge you an arm and a leg!
2007-09-12 16:10:20