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Yep. Have used it for the last few years. I used to use QuickBooks for many, many years but after selling my larger companies and retireing and started running our 3 online stores I knew I did not need all the cow bells and whistles of QuickBooks.
I cancelled my QuickBooks subscription and re-created my COA [chart of accounts] in Quicken, “taught it” to memorize my payees and total expense structure, very easy to do. Attached my credit cards and bank accounts, both personal and business. Now everything downloads every morning and posts to all our personal and bznz accounts. The only thing I have to do is rename any new items that are brand new vendor accounts.
I can even invoice from Quicken for other services such as some consulting I do, and I even ran the project management part of 4 houses I and my former business partner that I supervised for him.
I don’t know how it handles setting up W-2 employees and tax tables for employees but most people now days use a Payroll service instead of doing it themselves, like J&R do.
I can also call Quicken 24 hrs. / 7 days a week, get a state side rep, and these reps know accounting. As soon as they hear you are not understanding they will either ask or you can ask for them to jump on a remote access and they will log right into your account and just do the set-up for you. That is what part of your fee pays for.
Mint and Fresh books is more of just a project tracking and invoicing app. Though they are making strides but Quicken has had this down for years. As I said the most used accounting program in the world when Intuit [QuickBooks] owned them. Now, not as much, but still a great single entry bookkeeping system.
If you can’t state in the next 30 seconds why you need a double entry [General Ledger & side journals] program, then you don’t need it. Too complicated and too easy to mess up if you are not a bookkeeper. Screw up your General Ledger, then you will have to inform your CPA and he will have to make entries, or off setting entries, etc., etc. and will charge for it.
Ask Mark Tewes on here. Ask him if he thinks most online sellers operating on a cash basis instead of an accrual system need a double entry / general ledger accounting system? I would be surprised if he says yes. My CPA says no.
At year end I can furnish enough reports [.Pdf] files. Quicken also has a mileage tracker in the Deluxe or Home and Business versions. Don’t skimp on a smaller version just for a few bucks per year.
Intuit were the original owners. The QuickBooks guys had Quicken for years. It is the most recognized accounting program in the world. Intuit got more interested in Growing the Double entry bookkeeping portion of their financial interests and stopped paying much attention to the single-entry bookkeeping system used by Quicken. So, Intuit started to let updates and new growth coding fall by the wayside.
So, they Sold it to H.I.G
<span class=”ILfuVd NA6bn”><span class=”hgKElc”>Here a copy of the 2016 announcement.</span></span>
<span class=”ILfuVd NA6bn”><span class=”hgKElc”>Quicken: An Overview. QuickBooks and Quicken are two of the most widely used financial management tools in the world. Both programs were part of <b>Intuit</b> (INTU), but Quicken was sold to <b>H.I.G Capital</b> in 2016.</span></span>
Quicken is not QuickBooks and vice versus. Quicken was bought and greatly improved since Intuit lost interest and sold it. Even Microsoft started to buy quicken but developed MINT at the time. I think may MS did own it for a short period.
The Quicken staff is great. So just call them and talk with a rep. tell them how you conduct your business, how you track expenses, how you do payable [OH, OH, you can even set up to pay your bills both personal and business through Quicken], Ask them what kind of reports you can get and if you don’t know what you need let them tell you.
I used to teach on a collegiate level and the only dumb question is the one you don’t ask.
Jay has said I write “walls” of text. Well, here you go, take what I have outlined, what you see about other programs, call and talk with them. I am not afraid to question anybody for an hour or more. But I get the details I need to make an informed decision.
And as my old ending line used to say, just my opinion and that plus $1.50 will get you half a cup of coffee. But with J&R maybe 1/10th of a bag of ground up beans!
Mike at MDCFA in Atlanta
Intuit sold off Quicken a few years ago and the new company who bought Quicken! [not QuickBooks] has done a big overhaul. It is called Quicken Home, Business & Rental Property.
It does everything. You can create any categories you want, add them in sequence just like a customized COA – Chart of Accounts. Pull Profit and Loss statements, and on and on. for about $70 for the year. It also synchs in the cloud in case you need a back-up. You can even generate invoices if needed.
We have done extensive discussions about EAT, Quicken, QuickBooks, WonderLister, Sixbit here on SL over the years and if you search SL on those keywords you will get a lot of tips and comparisons.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.-MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Besides going the cross posting route, you might try the online auction houses like Hi-Bid, Auctionzip, etc. with a reserve bid. But there is a chance it will sell below what your expectations may be. But would think the aggressive seek and destroy private company teams will not be trolling those sights.
Thanks buddy: Appreciate that. I agree 100%.
I will tell Susan ya’ll all said Hi. Maybe make her feel better. Trying to keep depression from setting in.
mike @ MDCGFA
Hello to you also Temudgin.
Yep been about a year and a half and $330,000 after all said and done for Susan to get all the radiation, chemo-theraphy and 3 operations for stage 3b endometrial cancer. She also still has <span class=”ILfuVd”><span class=”hgKElc”>osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, degenerative back disease and now they told her she needs two knee replacements. Poor kid, I feel so sorry for her. Just pains her to move much at all these days. She hasn’t been able to work on the online businesses much for about two years.</span></span>
One of the reasons we are culling out any larger pieces from our inventory is because I can hardly run 3 online stores myself even with the 2 part time helpers. Budget restraints will also force me to probably have to drop the helpers but will keep them to help us get everything listed prior to 4th quarter. But from there on, I think it will have to be just me doing the stores and caring for Susan.
Took her out for breakfast and lunch today. It’s our 52nd anniversary and that was about all she could take.
I agree with you, that the fear of meeting at a persons house is maybe overblown. I subscribe to what is the difference between a single buyer at a yard sale and a single buyer coming for only one item. To top that off isn’t selling one item from your yard the same as selling 24 items from your yard.
I could just make sure I always advertise “a small yard sale” and always have 3 or 4 items for sale at a time and show those in photos. Then, viola’ it’s officially a yard sale, small as it may be. But I have got to move out [sell] these larger items. The large 7 piece stereo system, 2 dress form mannequins, a movie projector screen, lawn swans, pet litter boxes, metal tri-pod, large beer sign mirror, over sized framed art, and about 100 pcs. of smalls. Sounds like a yard sale to me.
Thanks for the reply.. Been following everyone on here since I last posted about 4 months ago. Everbody seems to be making sales and growing despite what curve balls Ebay keeps throwing at us.
TTFN…Mike at MDCGFA in Atl.
Hey Guys… Been over 4 months since my last post. Just a whole bunch of stuff going on that we had to put full force focus on.
Question for the group.
With wife’s health issues still lingering, we have decided to pull some of the larger items and sell them locally either in a yard sale or individually through FBMP and other local channels.
Had our helpers and us all discussing the methods. Of course everyone started talking about selling locally and the safety issues like meeting at a safe location, meeting at police station, and all the messages back and forth that comes with local selling.
So the thought occurred to me and thought I would run past the group here.
What is the difference of having a yard sale, advertising in all of the same sources, sitting in our driveway and only have one person drive up, get out and buy something or advertising a single item and having one person come to the house for a local pick-up. Why all the danger preparation, meeting off site, using cameras, and all the being afraid as compared to only one person showing up every hour and it’s a
yard sale”. Isn’t the one on one danger just the same? Same advertising sources, same people looking, and only you and one person buying and the yard sale guy knows your address also.Any thoughts on why it is better to go through all the off site stuff?
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Jay, You sure about this?
“You can not have “make offer” on an item, but still send people offers.”
Maybe I am not understanding what you are saying .. But you can have Make an Offer turned on and also still send offers out on items.
In our case, I have “Make and Offer” turned on for almost every item in our store [about 1,200 items] except for about 2 dozen special or lower priced items. And, I send offers out to watchers twice a day, morning and evening. All of those are ones that we have “Make an Offer” turned on in the regular listing, and we also usually have a % off Sale running and our daily offers to watchers go through on top of all of that.
We get a notice from Ebay all day long informing us that they have served up a list of listings we can make Offers to Watchers on. All of those already have “Make us an Offer” turned on, and are on Sale.
We usually add another 5% on top of the current sale price to provide an extra incentive to buy.
mike – MDC Galleries
Same for us SCJ: We carry every Priority box size including Regionals. Then get our Free Ebay boxes for sizes in between.
We usually can find a box the fits with an inch or so all around. We use our box Resizer tool to bring down any box if it is too high. Zip, Zip 4 times each side cut corners down to the perforated line the resizer made, fold on the perf score and cut off the extra.
We Franken Prioirty boxes all the time. Add two together, splice them, etc., etc. Just never the flat rate. We even splice a Priority box with a generic plain one. We always use Priority Pricing though. Actually almost 99.9 percent of our items just go Priority.
Box resizer is great for down sizing a box if you have a little space to spare and your box is a few ounces over the next pound up rate. Example, a box is 4 lbs. 3 ounces then either trim two of the flaps a little OR use the box resizer and just pull and inch off the box all around, zip, zip, fold, cut and now you just pulled a couple of bucks off your freight bill.
FedEx and UPS don’t give a hoot or holler about any what the boxes look like. Just no brown paper wrapping paper on anything. We use white, black or blue polyethylene plastic for wrapping boxes if we need to “hide” something.
Mike – MDC Concepts, Inc. – MDC Galleries
Sorry Julie B: but on Oct. 7, 2020 they declared bankruptcy and have closed 185 struggling stores. What they will do with the remaining ones will depend on if they can get refinanced.
<p class=”gntarbp”>Ruby Tuesday had been struggling for years with increased competition from fast-food and fast-casual companies, as well as reduced traffic to its mall-based locations and the rise of new food delivery options, Lederman said.</p>
<p class=”gntarbp”>The company specializes in ribs, steaks, seafood, chicken, appetizers and a garden bar. Based in Maryville, Tennessee, the company has about 7,300 employees, including 7,000 who have been temporarily furloughed. That only leaves approx.. 300 employees.</p>
<p class=”gntarbp”>Probably going to be hard for any potential buyers to pony up to buy the card knowing RT may not be around long enough for them to use it</p>
<p class=”gntarbp”>Mike – MDC Galleries</p>Our Sales are just slightly down but not much. Over all so far we are ahead of last year Jan. 1 to date by 15%. Sales were much stronger during the Summer months than last year.
So looking at our P&L Statement, and some projections we will be about 17% to 20% more than last year overall, maybe but that is just Ebay. Etsy has be stronger this year and item for item / dollar for dollar does about the same as Ebay [about half the total dollar sales but also about half the number of items listed.
Our own domain store is now ready to launch by the end of the year and that store domain is also linked to Instagram, Pintrest and will be also hooked up to a new FaceBook Shop all being run through SixBit as a Master Central Control dashboard. And we have a stash of larger items we will be listing on FB Market Place. So we have some good expectations for next year unless the whole country goes to hell in a hand basket, singing Kum-ba-yah.
Mike – MDC Galleries
Howdy RTWV: So are you saying if I have an 18″ x 16″ poly mailer and I slide a 14″ long x say 10″ x 8″ high box into it all I have to do is use 18″ x 16″ x say 1″ thick [thin] and the extra 8″ in thickness doesn’t matter because it’s in a poly mailer?? Seems strange unless I am reading this wrong.
Your boot example: 18″ x 16″ x ??what?? thickness do you put down? Just an inch or do you go ahead and make it 8″ thick because of the box you slide in it.
What if you fold all the loose edges down on that poly bag, tape them all up, and it can be easily seen as a rectangle box inside?? We always fold up and tape loose ends and edges of both our padded and thin poly bags.
Just wanting a little clarifycation due to long day, late evening fog brain.
Mike – MDC Galleries
Check with them and ask do they even have a PO Box first. Then if they do I believe the PO Box will supercede the street address.
So in example, if they do have a PO Box but the person who ordered online has their street address being used for their account, then the Ebay label will print out the street address but when it arrives locally, someone in the back puts a notice in the PO Box.
We used to have a PO Box and that is what they did here. If any bills, letters, packages, etc. did have our street address on them they were circumvented from carrier delivery and went into our PO Box.
I think the Post Office pre-assumes the reason you have a PO Box is because you don’t want things delivered to your house. Even if your home address AND a PO Box is listed on a second line, it usually gets routed to the PO Box.
Maybe one of the SL members who is a USPS Employee will chime in or you can go to the USPS web site and do some research yourself in the section about PO Boxes, renting them and how they work.
Check it out with them and if so they probably need to make sure that anything they have online accounts with has their PO Box on their account.
Just some food for thought.
MIke – MDC Galleries
OK Jay.. Sit down, grab the Bongo Drums and a strong cup of coffee and let’s go!!!!
Sing along with me..
Work all night on a drink a rum
(Daylight come and me wanna go home)
Stack banana till the morning come
(Daylight come and me wanna go home)Come mister tally man tally me banana
(Daylight come and me wanna go home)
Come mister tally man tally me banana
(Daylight come and me wanna go home)Bang those “skins” Jay!! Make a recording of you and Ryanne singing a duet.
You and Ryanne are living the high life!
LOL 🙂 Mike – Atl.
FedEx SmartPost packages do go to the USPS for what is called ‘last leg delivery”. FedEx does not fo out and do the one on one delivery of SmartPost but pays the USPS to do it. So they are in and out of the USPS Offices frequently.
There has been a few posts here on SL but years ago, good luck finding it, but if I remember, USPS will take the package to FedEx so it gets scanned in the FedEx system, so tracking number will be late, but then, FedEx will fly to closest hub and then take to the closest USPS hub for the last leg.
Unsure on the other classes of shipments other than SmartPost or Home Delivery.
There is a local phone number for most local USPS offices. Go to this link:
Then put in your zip code and select Post Office for “Type” and then select a distance from you and “Go”. You will get a list of every PO within that radius, what their hours are, milage from you, a local phone number and what services they provide. AND as you said if it is your local PO, just drive down and pop in.
I also suggest the following as a good business policy. I made sure I went to my local PO years ago, asked for the local Post Master or Senior Staff, introduced my self, told the m what I do, how best for them to handle my volume of boxes, informed them of Ebay policies that we required as Top Rated Sellers Plus Power sellers. They listened, made suggestion and we all became friends. We now have a special counter space inside where any Pre-Paid packages from any online seller can by pass any lines, walk right up front to that counter and place all our packages on the large counter. And at periodic intervals when any of the clerks get a free moment, they step down to the end of the counter and scan stacked packages there and drop them into a large canvass rolling cart. When full they pull that into the back and bring out a new, empty one.
Also now, we have a great relationship with the field carrier [Beth] and all we do is clip a laminated sign we keep inside our roadside mail box that says “Packages on the Porch” and for the occasional subs, it also says “Please scan here as our Ebay Discount Depends on It”.
Since we talked to and become friends with the Post Master and discussed this with her, she approved of this practice. The PO also does Hard Counts several times a year and having more packages on a residential route actually helps the PO place a value on the route.
Don’t forget, the USPS is your business partner. It is a big part of “your shipping dept.”. You are also a “customer” of theirs. So don’t ever be afraid of contacting them and discussing your business. They are a vendor of yours. You are sub-contracting part of your business to them.
I strognly suggest you go see them in person. Ask about your particular situation and then discuss other questions you have, even if you already know the answer, ask for their opinion. Build that “Vendor Relationship”, they work for you.
Good luck on your main focus. I think they will be able to tell you where it is and what to expect.
Mike – MDC Galleries
