This Just In

Working Smarter - Free Accounting Software! Did you ever wonder about all those free software that you can actually use in your home or office? Here are a couple of reccomendations. If you happen to be a soloprenuer or simply want great programs to manage your your account, both Microsoft and Intuit have free, full-version downloads of this off-the-shelf software. Microsoft has Office Accounting Express 2008.

This is great program to create invoices and quotes, email them as a PDF file, tracking expenses and paying bills. It also comes with about twenty reports as well. This slimmed down version does not calculate payroll, print checks, file tax forms or list inventory on Ebay unless you are willing to incur extra fees.

If you are a tried and true Intuit fan, you may love their free version - Quickbooks Simple Start. They have some of the same features and an almost equal number of reports. Quickbooks does however allow one to write and print checks, track customers and vendors, and receive payments. Be forewarned. This program will not be able to download bank and credit card transactions. Quickbooks Simple Start also makes it near impossible to import an excel file. It can import customer or vendor information in an Excel format, but forget about bank records.

Rest assured, the funniest thing about this program is it will allow you to convert a Microsoft Accounting file. Go figure. Both programs are great for the new business or simply getting your feet wet with an accounting program before you decide to try the bigger, full-featured versions of these programs.