Keeping Accounts
If you are earning money from your writing, you need to keep accurate accounts to keep the tax man happy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing this on paper but it does result in a great deal of adding up and tracing mistakes can be a tortuous process.

So why not make your computer earn its keep by doing more than just word processing? Investing in some accounting software will free you from all that number work and give you your end of year figures and reports at the touch of a button. I've used Quicken happily for several years to keep a check on our finances but I recently decided to invest in a small business accounts package which would help me keep a better check on work-related invoices and bills.

Sage Instant Accounting
My first choice was the well known Sage Instant Accounting. This came highly recommended by my accountant and, at her suggestion, I paid one of her staff to speed up the learning process by showing me how to set it up and work it. Despite her assistance and long periods on the phone to some very helpful people at Sage, I found this package extremely difficult to use.

Like all accounting systems, it allocates each payment and receipt to an appropriate category called an account. The problem for me was that each of these accounts is numbered and only the number appears on screen, not the name. Although you can find out the name by pulling down a drop down list, it's easy to make a mistake without spotting it and difficult to find the number of the account you want to use.

This numbering system determines the way the figures for the various accounts are grouped together in reports. It is possible to change the way this happens but it's difficult to do so, especially if you keep forgetting what the numbers mean. This makes it difficult to tailor the system to the way you want to work.

This is one of the few pieces of software to ever reduce me to tears of frustration. In addition to the numbering problem, I found the online help less than useful but this may be less of a problem if you already understand accounting.

QuickBooks
After battling with Sage for months, I eventually gave up, cut my losses and bought QuickBooks 2001 instead. It's one of the best things I ever did as this is a beautifully written piece of software. I had the whole thing set up and running exactly as I wanted it in just three hours with no external assistance at all.

That's mainly because the online help is not far short of brilliant, explaining everything in jargon free language that helps you understand how accounts work as well as how to use the software. As well as the main 'help' button, most windows have a 'how do I' button with drop down lists to help you locate exactly the information you need.

Like Sage, the system is based on a chart of accounts but this time there are no numbers, just names (although you can add numbers if you desperately want them). It's easy to tailor the accounts to the way you run your business. In just a few minutes, I was able to delete all the irrelevant categories, change some categories' names to ones I found easier to understand and add extra categories I needed like royalties, scriptwriting and PLR.

There's an excellent selection of financial reports available to help you see how well you are doing and gather the information you need for the tax man. You can also set the system up to remind you about cheques you haven't paid into the bank, bills you haven't paid and money you are owed by customers. As an added bonus, Quick Books can also handle more than one business so it copes happily with running The Word Pool's accounts as well as my writing ones.

Word Pool Star Rating

I purchased QuickBooks direct from Intuit with a no quibble 2 month guarantee offering my money back if I didn't like it. When I last checked, that offer was still available on the new Quickbooks 2002. You can't get much fairer than that.

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