Is There an Income Threshold Where You Should Start Using Quickbooks?

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

A few years ago I was giving a presentation about taxes and accounting to a group of business owners. One of the people in the audience asked: “Is there an income level where you should start using Quickbooks? Like $50,000?”

My answer was: there is no magical formula for determining when you should start using Quickbooks (or any other type of bookkeeping software).

It depends on your business. How many transactions you have, and whether or not you need to keep track of customers and vendors.

Some people may find they can keep their records in a spreadsheet just fine.

For example, some of my clients are consultants. Some of these consultants bring in six-figure income — but they keep their records in a spreadsheet because they really don’t have that many transactions to keep track of.

On the other hand, some businesses with a fairly small amount of revenue might still need to invest in bookkeeping software because they have a lot of transactions, or customers, or vendors to keep track of and a spreadsheet might be too cumbersome.