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3. 2010 National Women in Agriculture Educators Conference

Quicken and QuickBooks for Farm/Ranch Financial Records

Damona Doye

Summary

Quicken is an inexpensive, flexible personal finance software tool that offers many producers an easy-to-use affordable starting place for computerized records, with excellent cash flow features plus investment tracking not offered in other packages. However, an increasing number of producers and agribusiness operators have expressed interest in learning about tools with more business applications and different capabilities than offered within Quicken (some prompted by their accountants). QuickBooks is the dominant off-the-shelf package for small business accounting and is a better tool for agricultural producers who want to create invoices, track accounts payable/receivable and manage payroll. Like Quicken, it is relatively inexpensive compared to customized software and can be adapted for use in a wide variety of agricultural businesses. While Oklahoma State University has offered Quicken step-by-step instructions since 1993, complementary materials are now being developed for Quickbooks for use with agricultural producers in “hands on” workshops and for self-study guides. In this session, Quicken and QuickBooks features and user skill requirements will be compared and contrasted. Available educational resources and plans for training and local workshop offerings will also be discussed.

Details

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