Keeping track of investments and expenditure is important for everyone whether it is for individual purposes or for organizations. You can do it manually or you can take of financial software for this purpose. QuickBooks and Quicken are very popular software to track income and expenditure. Though both serve the same basic purpose of accounting, there are differences between these software that need to be explained to enable people to choose one or the other depending upon their requirements.
Both Quicken and QuickBooks have been developed by the same company which is Intuit. These are software that makes learning basics very easy. They are full of advanced features that help people to record financial information in a better manner that helps in managing businesses. Quicken has been designed as personal finance software that is better suited for individual use or even small businesses owned by a sole proprietor. On the other hand QuickBooks is better suited for large businesses as it is a fully developed accounting and financial management software that contains invoices, financial statements, inventory and other records.
Of the two, Quicken is simpler with lesser number of features. It is easier to understand and is perfect for personal use, and also for small businesses. Though QuickBooks is complex and takes time to understand, it has inbuilt help feature with online support in case of any problem. There is a great variation in price with Quicken available for just $40-$60 while QuickBooks is costlier with price running into hundreds of dollars depending upon the features and version selected.
For companies that have physical stock, QuickBooks is ideal as it has provisions for inventory management. This feature is absent in Quicken as it is meant for personal finances. QuickBooks have a feature to track sales tax which is a must for all tax paying businesses. Quicken, for obvious reasons, lacks this feature. Preparing payrolls is a big problem that is made easy with QuickBooks as it has these capabilities. On the other hand, Quicken lacks this feature and one needs to purchase add-on software for payroll capabilities.
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In brief: • It is extremely important to keep records of income and expenditure both for individuals as well as organizations. Quicken and QuickBooks are software developed by intuit for this purpose. • While Quicken is simple and with fewer features, QuickBooks is complex and loaded with features • Quicken is designed to meet the requirements of a personal user while QuickBooks is better suited for businesses and large organizations.
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