Quickbooks for a small city??

I have worked with one small town trying to use QB for it's accounting software. It works but there are a lot of work around situations. It's not really the right software.

Utility billing with meters is tough and most of the readings will need to be done outside QB.

Fred Marshall wrote:

When I needed software to operate small portions of a town government, I used QB...for things a day care program, where payments were collected, invoices and statements sent. Also, we set it up for water and sewer department billing, invoices and statements. Yes, there was the issue of adding meter readings and/or devising a chargeable unit, but overall QB proved very accommodating, practical and business like,...and at a significant savings. Previous attempts using Excel were terrible and QB output was easily moved to the Town Budget.

I/we liked it and the residents appreciated the invoice/statement idea.

FWIW. Joe

Thanks Joe.

I set QB up to do fund accounting using a single bank account for a museum. I was surprised and pleased to find that QB would allow one bank account to be subordinate to another. Thus the funds were easily set up.

Accounting for grants was a bit tricky to set up but worked out well.

In the City's case, for water there are only two kinds of charges:

1) the minimum charge and 2) the charge for whatever is used over the minimum allowance.

It would be great to automate the input from meter readings to get quickly to invoices but I don't know how to do that.

Fred

Fred. I too was surprised but not as much as the folks who were using previous methods. The ability to print mailing labels was also a plus. We were able to discontinue a billing service and the associated support costs for the water and sewer billing, so it really helped.

I could have fit the grant stuff on the head of a pin, so nothing was needed there and I am no longer in the position, so....

The setting up of the water/sewer minimun/usage and what was referred to as 'overage' was indeed tricky but wound up being straightforward. In fact, as I remember, the sewer billing was derived from the water usage and I wish there was a mechanism within QB to utilize that reading. However, as the vast majority of users were not commercial and therefore 'fixed cost', the commercial customers were on a short list.

QB seems to be used all over the place. I am sure groups like Little Leagues, and the like do or should use it. The damned thing actually works. All one needs to do is avoid the yearly updates unless a specific need is addressed.

Of course one needs to be a 'good and knowledgeable' user, which I am not. However, for my purposes--bank deposits, estimate, invoicing and statements--it works just fine. Someday...

Good to see your follow up post. Joe