Allow me to explain about the glass studio business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. So what do we do? Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. How? I don't know. It's a mystery.
I finished in the studio at 11:30 tonight and celebrate with another glass of sauvignon blanc which will undoubtedly be finished before I head up to the shower so I'll have to get another one with which to share the shower steam. It was definitely a two-glass-of-wine day.
Becky the bookkeeper finished up my 2010 books in her Quickbooks 2011 for Windows last evening just in time for my meeting with my accountant this morning. She sent them to me about 9:30 am so I could import them back into my Quickbooks 2009 for Mac (from whence they originated). Already you know this isn't going to end well...
Though I could go on for several scathing paragraphs filled with blistering invective about the absolute ethical impoverishment of the Quickbooks products and Intuit's customer service, it's already all been said (ad nauseum) elsewhere on the web. If they didn't hold all our data hostage, we would have risen up and skinned and eaten every last Intuit employee long ago. Bottom line for me is that after spending *eight hours* trying to get to my own business data (does everyone remember that it is theoretically tax season?), I am still unable to even find out how much I made/lost last year.
Those eight hours were filled with entertaining anecdotes including the story of how I had to upgrade my Mac's OS from Leopard to Snow Leopard (the LAST thing you ever want to hear when you are having an application problem is that you'll need to upgrade your computer's operating system in order to run the version of the application that will fix your problem--especially when it doesn't). They were enlivened by having to spend $174 for a new version of QB for Mac (2011). But the REAL frosting on the experience was Becky being told by pro tech support at Intuit (she PAYS them in order to receive service as an accounting professional--she's not just some schmo [like me] calling in) that we would have to pay $750 for them to expedite them fixing my file which is broken due to a bug in the software. Laugh? Cry? You tell me. Pay $750? I think not.
Now, as I finish my first glass of wine, I am undaunted, of good cheer and stout heart, and slightly more mellow than I was earlier today. I taught a class tonight, unloaded yesterday's monster kilns loads, loaded all four kilns with new fuse loads, and am home in the same day I left the house. It's a Good Thing. Helen, my accountant is meeting me for breakfast Saturday morning at 9:00 to take my finished books and turn them into a business tax return. Becky is lending me her Windows laptop from tomorrow morning through Saturday morning so I can enter my last 2010 data (mileage, expenses paid from personal accounts, etc.) into Quickbooks for Windows prior to dumping the whole mess in Helen's lap.
I should get my glass order in to Bullseye now, but that's going to have to wait till first thing tomorrow. I'm too tigh-tigh. Night all!
4 comments:
I'm not going to comment on Mac vs. Windows, it's low-hanging fruit...
Uhm...are you going to absolutely scream if I suggest running a Windows emulator for the dumber classes of software (like Intuit's)? Some companies are never gonna get cross-platform, and that's about that.
But yes, Intuit and I parted company about three years ago, strangely enough during tax season, and over a Windows issue, not a Mac issue. At some point they're going to look around, see dwindling sales...and blame the marketing people.
Actually I did initially use Parallels desktop when we moved to Mac as there were several applications that just didn't have (good) Mac versions. I had an old copy of Windows 2000, and it was good enough for what I needed so I loaded it up. Over the years I managed to migrate all my apps to Mac and let the Parallels languish.
However when this problem came up with QB, my first solution was to upgrade my windows version (from 2005!) to 2011. Unfortunately it also required an OS upgrade (to at least XP and preferably Vista or the new one), and I just couldn't face either buying or installing another Windows OS. We had a family pack for Snow Leopard and though it took a lot of time to do, the OS upgrade went smoothly.
So Cynthia, what do you use now for accounting?
I have also left Quickbooks behind (Pro 2007) after a lot of headaches. I found some huge errors in the bookkeeping side and the inventory side made me crazy too. So now I've gone back to Quicken which is so simple, does the job and will export my books right into Turbotax...
and I've started to use Bead Manager Pro as of 12/1/10 to track inventory and print invoices. It is a very reasonable program, $147 I think for the new version 5 that just came out. I'm able to put in parts/labor/cost for a finished piece, and the parts are actually taken out of inventory when the piece sells whoopeee!!! It gives me alerts when I'm running low on a part or piece. There are a few bugs that the fella is working on, and Version 5 may have addressed it.. when I sell multiples of the same item on one invoice, it only takes out the cost of one item rather than the multiple on a profit and loss report. I ran a new report with the V5 software, and it looked like it was taking out the multiple cost per item, to give me a total sales and a net sales report. What you actually make from each item sold is kind of an eye opener to say the least! Here is the link, http://www.beading-software.com/
even tho it's for jewelers, I had no problem putting in all of my items, stained glass, supplies, scopes, jewelry etc.
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