What do you expect of QuickBooks? ?

The usual answer is that you want QuickBooks? to do your bookkeeping correctly. Or perhaps you want it to do only some of your bookkeeping, such as invoicing. QuickBooks? is designed to do accounting correctly. Used well, it can make a very strong contribution to the success of your business.

How big is a small business? Many people want to know how large a business can be handled in QuickBooks? The answer is very fuzzy. In some ways, it is bigger than what most people would call a small business. In other ways, it is limited, even for small businesses.

Very large dollar amounts can be handled. In a test company file, I have set up assets and income in hundreds of millions of dollars. The most limiting factor, at press time, is that QuickBooks? remains a single-user application, and there are no effective work-arounds. A multi-user program is expected in the summer of 1998.

Lists, such as customer or vendor names, or items for sale, have limits ranging from 5,000 to 16,000 entries, depending on the list. In practice such large numbers would be difficult. The number of recorded transactions is a major factor. Property maintenance companies, for example, may have hundreds of small invoices, and quickly build a large file. Company files up to 30 megabytes seem to have no problems. One user had problems that might be size-related, at 50 megabytes, but another handles a 60 megabyte file with no problems. Should you outgrow QuickBooks? , the result is not usually a disaster. It just runs slower and slower