QuickBooks 2004 The Official Guide [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Kathy Ivens (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0072231394 | ISBN-13: 978-0072231397 | Publication Date: November 21, 2003 | Edition: 1

“Intuit-approved and loaded with secrets, Quicken Press books provide you with recipes for financial success.” --Scott Cook, Co-founder, Intuit, Inc.

The only official guide to QuickBooks 2004, this information-packed resource teaches users of all levels how to manage their finances for business or home.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Covers QuickBooks Basic and QuickBooks Pro

Manage your small business with the only Intuit-authorized guide to QuickBooks!

This well organized, popular guide delivers all the information you need to maximize QuickBooks 2004. Learn to track customers, vendors, and inventory easily. Generate the right reports to manage your business. Understand the powerful features, and discover innovative workarounds for special circumstances. Chapters are organized to make this the ideal desktop reference for your bookkeeping tasks. Run your business efficiently and easily--even if you're a new business owner with no accounting experience--with the comprehensive coverage and easy-to-understand, expert advice in QuickBooks 2004: The Official Guide.

Inside, learn how to:

• Enter transactions quickly and accurately
• Analyze and manage finances
• Customize QuickBooks to match your own preferences
• Track money, time, mileage, and costs
• Create customized reports
• Track job costs by time and expense
• Manage employees
• Make tax preparation a breeze
• Streamline your bookkeeping tasks

Kathy Ivens is the author of more than 50 computer books and is a senior contributing editor for Windows & .NET Magazine. She uses QuickBooks to manage her own small-business finances.

About the Author

Kathy Ivens (Philadelphia, PA) has been a computer consultant since 1984, and several years ago she began writing books. She has authored, co-authored, contributed to, and ghost written more than forty volumes on computer subjects. Kathy is a frequent contributor to national magazines on computer topics, writing reviews and articles, and is a contributing editor for Windows 2000 Magazine and Windows NT Magazine.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (November 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072231394
• ISBN-13: 978-0072231397
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,131,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kathy Ivens is the author of more than 50 computer books. She is a senior contributing editor forWindows IT Pro Magazine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Treatise on QuickBooks Pro 2004, July 29, 2004

By 

Ronald W. Satz (Trevose, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: QuickBooks 2004 The Official Guide (Paperback)

Ms. Ivens writes clearly, properly, and intelligently on QuickBooks software. The screen shots are legible, unlike those in some other computer books. The index is detailed, and thus useful. I counted only two typos in the 572 pages.

My company, Transpower Corporation (a commercial and custom software manufacturing and systems engineering company in metropolitan Philadelphia), did its first QuickBooks installation in 1999. I purchased Kathy's book QuickBooks 6.0--The Offical Guide; this helped to make the installation go smoothly. It's been five years since, and QuickBooks has changed considerably. So I purchased both of Kathy's current titles, QuickBooks 2004--The Offical Guide, and Running QuickBooks 2004 Premier Editions. Both are excellent and I recommend them to all computer consultants operating in the small business space, which QuickBooks has taken over by storm. (Unfortunately, QuickBooks is not so applicable to medium or larger businesses because 1) there is a five user limit for Pro/Premiere editions and a ten user limit for the Enterprise edition, 2) it does not work with Windows Terminal Server, and 3) it allows only seven custom fields). After reading both books, I've come to the conclusion that for most small businesses the Premiere editions (with their specialization) make more sense than the less expensive Pro edition.

Kathy provides many useful tips in her books. They go way beyond what is supplied in the manuals shipped with the software.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Resource, February 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: QuickBooks 2004 The Official Guide (Paperback)

This book has the most accurate information on all the Quickbooks features, and the explanations are so easy to follow that it's like having a private tutor. No matter what you need to do, this book has instructions, even if you don't want to do things the way Quickbooks normally works. These workarounds, along with all the "insider" information and tips, make this book an incredibly useful, wonderful, guide to getting everything you need out of Quickbooks.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overall resource but has some drawbacks, January 15, 2005

By 

Alan E. Cook "Kingsley Press" (Shoals, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: QuickBooks 2004 The Official Guide (Paperback)

I decided that January 1, 2005 was a good time to start using Quickbooks Pro for my small business. I'd been using MYOB FirstEdge, but found it was rather limited in some areas. Whenever I think about starting to use new software, I browse around on Amazon for a good book on the package in question. This book stood out as probably a good resource and I was not far wrong. However, I have a couple of complaints. Firstly, the author's instructions on how to enter beginning balances is vague at best. Secondly, her discussion of complex issues such as how to set up Quickbooks for sales tax recording and reporting, is somewhat lacking. The book that came with the software actually does a better job at explaining Quickbooks' rather quirky method of sales tax accounting.

By all means buy this book. It has some really helpful material and is worth the purchase price. But don't pre-suppose that this book is ALL you will need in order to start using Quickbooks efficiently.