Fantastic job and very easily understood!

__________________
Dawn Riley
A Virtual Assistant in Paradise
Our business is about making yours better

Very helpful. Thank you. Do you recommend QB over other accounting software?

QuickBooks is my program of choice because of it's user friendliness. It is one of the easier programs to learn on your own and is the most customizable. There are a lot of other good programs out there though that work just as well. Like MS Money, MS Accounting, Peachtree, MYOB, etc. Most offer a free trial, I would recommend trying a couple and seeing which one you are most comfortable with.

The main thing you should look for is user-friendliness, how easy it is to navigate, report options, etc. Personally I don't like Peachtree or MYOB, because they lack in the customization department.

There are some programs that you really have to have an accounting background to use because they require you do the double entry on your own, which means you have to know debits and credits and how entries need to flow to the Balance Sheet and Income Statement, etc. These are used mostly by large companies.

Although QuickBooks, Peachtree, MS Money are double-entry accounting programs as well, they do the double-entry behind the scenes for you, but still offer a journal entry function for the double-entry accounting.

__________________
Rebecka Melson ~ Virtual Business Services

Thanks so much for sharing, it was really clear how to do it even if you don't have Quickens, you could do this by creating your own system.

I hope you will continue to share again, your financial expertise is appreciated!

thanks,

Lara

__________________
Lara
Prairie Dog Communications Virtual Assistance LLC

Rebecka, I don't know how I missed this thread earlier, but BRAVO!! Well done!

__________________

Thank you, I was leaning towards QuickBooks.

Wow...this was great! Thank you for sharing. I'm confused, tho. If you bill for a retainer, then another bill for what they used - how is this not billing twice? How do you handle the unused portion of $100 with the client. I'm sure I wouldn't be happy about paying $100 for something I didn't use.

Originally Posted by VY925

Wow...this was great! Thank you for sharing. I'm confused, tho. If you bill for a retainer, then another bill for what they used - how is this not billing twice? How do you handle the unused portion of $100 with the client. I'm sure I wouldn't be happy about paying $100 for something I didn't use.

In the tutorial it shows billing and receiving the retainer, then creating an invoice showing actual hours used at the end of the month, you then issue a credit to apply towards that invoice for the amount of the retainer received, so you are not double-billing.

Most VAs don't rollover un-used retainer hours, therefore they keep any un-used portion of the retainer. This is up to you though, and how you have your billing polices set up. It is up to you to decide whether or not you rollover any unused portion of the retainer.

__________________
Rebecka Melson ~ Virtual Business Services

I've downloaded the software and can't wait to try it out. I thought it was a great tutorial.

The link does not work, and I would really like to view it, if possible.

Linda Melcher