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Hi Helen
I've been using QuickBooks for well over 10 years now and I think it's a really good package. It's very different from SAGE and this is why, I think, that a lot of people struggle to get to grips with it, if they're also a SAGE user. I think of SAGE as manual bookkeeping on a computer, where as QuickBooks is truly computerised bookkeeping - but that's just my opinion, I'm sure others may disagree!
I agree that £32 (plus VAT!) per month doesn't break the bank - and for this, you would get the Premier package, plus a Pro version that you can sell to recoup some of the money, plus you would get the payroll, so could have a play with this. That said, I'm not keen on their payroll and use MoneySoft myself. The desktop version has a couple of sample files that help - you can drill into transactions and see how they've been set up, this can be useful when learning.
For those that would find the monthly cost too much of a commitment initially, there's always the option of buying a version of Pro from Amazon or Ebay. This could be bought for not much more than £100 and would give you the same learning facility without too much commitment.
There is also the option of joining the Intuit ProCloud Partner Scheme - (the ProAdvisor is the desktop scheme, the ProCloud Partner is the Online scheme) This is free and gives you a free online version of the program. You can only run one business in this version, and there are no sample programs, but you can play around and delete stuff to start again if you want, in order to test things out and learn.
One thing I find about living in Telford Shropshire - there are very few other QuickBooks bookkeepers - in fact none that use it as their main package except me (that I know of.........if anyone reading this is local to me and knows QuickBooks well, please contact me!) This is probably one of the reasons that I am absolutely stacked out with work - I've been turning it away recently because I just can't take on any more work. The enquiries are nearly always people that are using QuickBooks, or that want to use software, but don't want SAGE, so this may be another good reason for sticking with it and getting to know it well.
With regards to the training - there's plenty of ProCloud Partner webinars available, not quite as many for using the desktop version, and QuickBooks have certainly come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years with offering this training. It's very good, but it's all the basic day to day stuff - non of it shows you the nitty gritty tricky stuff, you have to learn that as and when the situations crop up - then you get it off places such as the forums or the help lines - which again, as a Proadvisor and ProCloud Partner - these are pretty good now. The Dummies book for the desktop version is good for learning the basics and is UK based.
I'm probably biased, but I don't think you could go far wrong if you took the package on and learnt it thoroughly.
I hope this helps.
Carol
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