Accounting
IF YOUR ACCOUNTANT SURPRISED YOU THIS tax season with a few disturbing tidbits about your numbers, it probably wasn't the first time. But with the past year of corporate scandals bringing billion-dollar companies to their knees, most business owners are realizing that not having a handle on the company's financial inner workings can lead to disastrous consequences for companies both big and small.
For most entrepreneurs, accounting is hardly a favorite task. According to an August 2002 Greenfield Online survey, one-third of small-business owners find accounting to be the most intimidating part of managing their businesses--not surprising, given that more than half reported having no formal accounting training at all.
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Three stories of self-service success - Case Studies - McData Corporation,... That's where automating properly can make a huge difference, and the latest versions of the most popular software can vastly improve your accounting IQ. The new version of Intuit's Quickbooks Pro ($300 or $180 for upgrade; http://quickbooks.intuit.com), for example, allows business owners to restrict access to parts of the program using a password system. It also lets you turn on an audit trail, which records changes to any financial transactions as well as who made the change. That's a key improvement, says Kevin Pianko, audit partner with accounting and advisory firm Eisner LLP in New York City. "In the past, you've been able to make adjustments to historical data," he says. "Obviously, that impedes the integrity of the data, which makes it useless to someone running a business."
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