*** NEED HELP - New WholeSale Business ***

[vishal64]

Hi Gurus:
My wife and I are going to be starting our small-wholesale gift (95% finished goods) business soon and are in the process of selecting an accounting software between Quickbooks preimer or Peachtree Complete Accounting.

Our Basic Requirements:
1. Handle between 200-500 inventory items to start with. Ability to grow the inventory numbers through the years.
2. When writing up a sales order, have on hand qty, backordered items avilable.
3. Ship partial sales orders with ability to track back-orders.
4. Alerts if inventory drops below a certian qty for a particular item
5. Ease of use/support/user-friendliness/recurring changes

We would appericiate any expierences you can share with us if you are/were in the wholesale/distribution business and what drove you to choose the software you use(between Peachtree & Quickbooks) and how do you like it?

Our background:
My wife is primarily going to be heading up the business and I am going to be helping part-time as I work fulltime. I consider my self to be computer/software savy. Both my wife and I have limited accounting knowledge, but we do have access to a friend/CPA who is going to be our accountant. He uses the accountant addition of Quickbooks.

Regards,
Vishal

[vashonmm]

vishal,
on items 1-4 peach complete is fine. on item 5, for support and friendliness, you've found the spot right here. i don't know any software companies that can get as much knowledge and friendliness to the front lines as this forum. that said, i had good experiences with pt's paid support, as long as i had some patience and didn't have too obscure a question, although some of the folks there were/are exceptional. you just don't always get to them.

regarding qb, it's not good for inventory. it's best feature is ease of use which is necessary for folks who are accounting-phobic. if you're too afraid of accounting to learn enough to run your business, you might consider getting a job instead. as far as offering useful updates, it's taken qb about 10 years to offer sales orders. how can you run a business without sales orders?

my best advice is: go with peachtree, use the advice of an accountant for all things and make sure you are aiming to be a business person. if you like making gift baskets (or houses or computers or whatever), you'll find you never get to do that anymore if your business is successful. if you like marketing and selling and doing endless tedious tasks and managing people and taking lots of risks for small returns versus having a boss tell you what to do, you're on the right track.
sorry, more than you asked for. enjoy the experience!
matthew

[vishal64]

Dear vashonmm:
I just wanted to thank you for your relpy. It has been most beneficial as I decide which software to go with. Thanks for taking the time out to post a reply to my inquiry.
Regards,
Vishal.