Advice on user friendly bookkeeping program EASIER THE BETTER!

[Petwicks]

I am a designer, creator, crafty and love arts and writing. My business is Petwicks Candles. Bookkeeping and numbers are not my strong point. I am looking for advice on an EASY to use program for bookkeeping, invoicing, inventory for the business portion of my business. I make formulas so it would be an added bonus if it had some sort of formulation program for pricing out the cost of goods per unit measurement. I am doing it in Excel currently. 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. 

Thanks all!

Colleen

[Helen]

Great question @Petwicks! I've pinned it to the homepage so other sellers can find and let you know what bookking program they're using.

Also, now that I think of it, this summer another seller asked a similar question. @techterry Were you able to find bookkeeping software? Do you have any tips for Petwicks? 

[techterry]

I ended up finding a student demo version of quickbooks and it does what I was looking for. I find while it has all the features I was specifically looking for, I do find it a bit bulky. This is probably because I'm not completely familiar with the program and I'm a little lazy getting everything entered right away.

I think I may end up buying the program when the demo ends because the online versions of accounting software that I've found dont give all the features

[Helen]

Thank you @techterry! 👍

[Petwicks]

Thanks for your reply. Does the student version have inventory ?  I am trying wave right now but it does not have inventory. 

Thanks. 

[Michael_L]

If you search for "Alternatives to Quickbooks" online you will find a number of options!  I used "Wave" for a while, it's free which is nice, but I have to admit I got lazy and stopped entering data.  It has a few nice features like phone-capture of receipts as well, and payroll options if you want to upgrade.

[Petwicks]

Thanks for your reply. I just started using Wave and I like the picture capture for the receipts. 

Im lazy too. 

What do you use to do your inventory? That’s the next hurdle.

Colleen

[Michael_L]

Sadly I have no advice here as we have no inventory; I'm a photographer so our work is mostly service-based and items like frames etc are pre-sold not stocked.

The inventory  management built in to Square isn't adequate for you?

[Petwicks]

I don't see inventory for square other than the finished product, eg candle, wax melt, spray .. I am looking for keeping product making inventory unless I am missing something?

Thanks :0)

[JustinC]

Hey @Petwicks - you're right, Square's built in inventory mgt system does not track ingredients/formula used to create your candles at this time 😓

This is a popular request we've heard before and are continuing to track but I'm afraid I don't have a timeline to share on when it will become available. We will be sure to update this thread if anything changes down the road.

In the meantime, you might be interested in a few of Square's Partnerships with more advanced inventory tracking features. Check out @eron's post on this thread.