For my third, and final post for the series “How to Manage Your Business Finances” (Part 1 - Part 2), I’ll discuss the current system that I use to manage my affiliate business finances.

I want to be upfront that what I use does cost a monthly fee (~$20 US) and is not for the faint at heart. If you’re just getting started in this business, I recommend that you wait a little while before jumping into this option.

To manage my income, expenses, taxes, and payroll I use a service from Intuit called QuickBooks Online. If you’re familiar with Intuit’s or QuickBooks’ other products, then you’ll already know that they are top-notch.

Why Do I Use QuickBooks Online?

First, a brief description of what QuickBooks Online is: it’s an online bookkeeping software package that allows you to track income, expenses, tax liability, and generate reports for your business.

It is very user friendly and doesn’t require you to be familiar with accounting jargon such as “debits” and “credits.” I especially like the fact when I log in that I’m presented with a graphical interface that makes it easy to navigate to different sections of the program.

Most importantly, bookkeeping software of some type is indispensable for those operating their business as a company. I must have detailed records of income and expenses for tax filings and in case of an audit.

Why Not Buy a Desktop Version and Pay a One-Time Fee?

To me, getting the online version was the only option. Most of my business is set up to be managed from any location and from any computer with a basic Internet connection. I didn’t want to be tethered to only my home PC to use my bookkeeping software.

I can literally logon to my QuickBooks Online account from just about any computer and view my business finances. However, one pet peeve I have is I can’t use FireFox with the program. To use the program online, I need to download a one-time ActiveX file, which only works with Internet Explorer.

In addition, I value the backups of my data, which QuickBooks online does automatically.

What All Can I Track With QuickBooks Online?

Just about everything! Here’s a couple of the core features I utilize, but there are many more.

• Income - I can easily add, by vendor, any payments I receive from companies such as Google Adsense, Clickbank, CJ, Linkshare, etc. This automatically updates my account balances and allows me to monitor how much money I have on the books to spend.

  In addition, I can configure it to track data for 1099-MISC purposes.

• Expenses - Any time I pay a bill I can record it in QuickBooks Online, or even print out a check using special check paper.
• Reports - I love this feature as I can go in a see my Profit, Ledger Balances, Cash Flow, and dozens of other reports for various time frames. It’s great for getting a general snapshot of how things are going.

One other issue with QuickBooks Online is that if you really want an easy way to manage your payroll, tax remittance, state/federal deposits, etc. you’ll need to subscribe to an additional monthly service for about $20 more a month. QuickBooks themselves just recently debuted an online payroll service that ties into QuickBooks online, but I use a service called PayCycle which has been available longer.

Both of these services allow you to issue checks to your employees and track information related to this, but also export this data automatically into QuickBooks online without manually typing in the data twice.

While I could track this data myself on my PC or on paper for less than $40 total a month, I place a value on the service. It saves me time, energy, and avoids arithmetic errors.

If you’re interested in learning more about QuickBooks online, I highly recommend that you check out the sample account they have set up. You can go in a see all of the features of the system and input/change data of a fictitious company. Also, I believe you can try it out free for 30 days if you like.

And stay tuned for a demo from me with video screen captures and a voice over walking you through the various features of QuickBooks online.

I really didn’t intend for this to turn into a promo for QuickBooks Online. I’m just excited that I have this tool for managing my business. It’s ideal for Internet business owners - a true match made in cyberspace.

Learn more about it by clicking here.