You can do it yourself with Quickbooks and Peachtree if you are pretty organized and you have a pretty good understanding of accounting. However, if it s not something you feel comfortable with, it s probably be in your best interest to hire someone on the outside to do it for you.
Not necessary until you have revenues. You ll have time for reporting purposes, especially if you don t pursue incorporating until well after your initial day of business opening.People start business all the time and get hung up on this subject, so it s good that you bring it up. In the beginning of your period of enterprise, you ll have countless concerns. Suppliers, inventory of supplies, equipment for packaging, maybe manufacturing, securing patent protection, continuing research and development work, hiring, organizing the work area, securing funding for the start-up period...all this can be organized later. What you must do, on the other hand, is be absolutely certain you keep fastidious records of all monies spent for various purposes. You should have little trouble coming up with reasonable names for purposes of your own understanding of how your business operates as it morphs into a larger, more nimble operation.An example of this is something I developed for myself in businesses I launched. Instead of the usual ledger and business terminology, I referred to all money I put in as seed,: a reference to seed capital. Eventually I abbreviated it to S: and never had difficulty in recognizing what I was talking about. Accountants later came along and inserted more professional terms. It was more for them than for me.Many business how-to s are out there at nominal cost that offer ways to set up your books. I never went that route, preferring to build things up to something deserving of organizing and associated accounting expenses first. When I began to generate income, I went to a CPA with one thing in mind: Make my business visible and acceptable to the IRS so I could report as required without fear.Many will probably disagree with me but I ve done it this way all my life, never ran into difficulty. I never cheated so I didn t worry about getting hurt by regulators. My books were mine and they reflected exactly what was going on. My main concern was that I was able to see the organic goings-on of my creation without difficulty.People new to business often forget they are the most important ingredient in their operations. How they relate to what they re doing is all that matters. How others approve or otherwise? It s best left for those others to worry about while you get out there to do what you want to do.Have at it and leave the worries to the worry warts.Len
