Quicken easy answer to solve business needs
By JAMES COATES, Chicago Tribune
Q: I have only three employees in my shop, but we sell low-cost merchandise in small lots to a great many customers. My question is what kind of computer software should I be looking for to handle my receivables, payables, payroll, inventory and taxes. I read about Peachtree and QuickBooks, Oracle, PeopleSoft and many others, but I'd like to hear your take on this.
--Steve MacKorkill, Kansas City, Mo.
A: I grew up in a family that owned a small grocery store in the beautiful but backwater town of Rawlins, Wyo., and as I sit through briefings here in Chicago from companies selling accounting software, I often realize that even low-end programs handle everything we ever needed and much more.
Your business sounds like it is the right size to computerize simply by buying the small-business upgrade of the superpopular Quicken sold to ordinary folks for their personal finances.
It costs $79 and is called Quicken Premier 2003 for Home and Business. When Quicken executives gave me a dog-and-pony show for this software, I was amazed to see that the same software that can let you bank online from home comes with modules covering every item you said you needed, Mr. M.
In fact, it goes well beyond those relatively modest needs and includes subprograms that will print your bills, create forms to track your sales, chart business graphically and advise you on the best tax strategies.
I know that telling a business that it should handle its information technology using low-price Quicken won't set well with a lot of folks. So let me suggest a fine Web site that lays out the landscape of small-business software. It is www.accountingsoftwarenews.com and is offered by a certified public accountant named J. Carlton Collins, who covers business accounting software with the thoroughness of a very fine bookkeeper.
Q: I have been thinking of networking my computers. I am tempted to use a phone line networking system. When I started checking this out, I discovered that "HomePNA" networks are about to increase their rated speed tenfold (from 10 to 100 megabits per second).
I was thinking about waiting until that happened. By Web surfing I came across references to the upgraded network systems becoming available by spring 2002, which did not happen, and also by the end of the year. Can you give me any info about when the faster speed HomePNA networks will come to market?
--Charles Gutfield, Oak Park, Ill.
A: Because they eliminate the need to string high-speed cables between walls and floors, home phone line networks remain an ideal way for small enterprises and homes to link maybe a handful of PCs into an instant local area network. But I fear someone got your hopes up regarding a 100 mbps phone line network this year, Mr. G. The so-called HPNA 3.0 specifications were approved in September, and there still must be field trials. That means no rollouts until at least next summer.
Meanwhile, the still-new HPNA 2.0 devices that deliver 10 mbps or even a tad more are adequate for any office or home that wants to share files and printers, access the Internet and play most games.
Electrical engineers are working wonders with those pokey, twisted-pair copper wires used for phones but, for my dime, squeezing to 100 mbps is like squeezing an already squeezed orange. The 10 mbps devices sold by such networking stalwarts as Belkin, Linksys and D-Link will be just fine for a long time to come.
There is a wealth of detail about this at www.homepna.org.
Q: When closing Microsoft Word, occasionally I get a screen that says something about changing the "global template, Normal." The choices are "Yes," "No" and "Cancel." I don't know what this means. What is a global template, and which is the right choice? By the way, if I choose Cancel, it just keeps popping up. Thank you. I'm sure you know the answer.
--Anna Waters, Kingsford, Mich.
A: I surely do know the answer to that question, Ms. W. It drives me nuts when I write these columns and do other work for this newspaper.
The disturbing notices get generated when you do something during the course of creating a document that changes the universal template used by Word to handle things like headers and footers, available text formats, creating frames and such. Once you do that, Word will see that the universal template has been changed and will ask you if you want to make the current template replace the stock one. The template is held in a file called normal.dot that gets opened and changed right along with a document.
It is clear that you are worried about messing up the software so it won't handle your unique requirements. So here's the trick. When Microsoft Word is run, it searches for the normal.dot file. If it can't find normal.dot, it simply creates another one with the universal template.
So next time you get the query, say "Yes," and see if everything works fine. If it doesn't, just go into the Word directory and rename the normal.dot file. The next time you start Word, it will create a new normal.dot file with all the Word settings in default mode. At least using this little trick will let you get back to work with one nagging detail fewer in your busy life.
Have a question for Jim Coates on small-business technology? Send an e-mail to askjimbiztribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column.
This story appeared on Page L2 of The Standard-Times on December 3, 2002.
|
|
