Small Business Checking with invoicing and tax reports

A Business Checkbook application with user interface, prints checks, manages invoices, track project time, and produces 1120 and 1099 reports using an Excel database.

This is a quick and dirty checkbook program that I wrote to replace my old QuickBooks program. I was tired of QuickBooks constantly telling me to upgrade and I didn't want to pay for the latest version. No, I'm not buying the online version either. This is NOT AN ACCOUNTING PACKAGE. It is a checkbook program. This is useful only for small business CASH ONLY business. This program is NOT a multi-user program. It is a single user program.

This program uses an Excel .XLSX file as the database. That offers several benefits:

1. The user can write their own reports in Excel or in Power BI
2. The database doesn't need a fancy database system to run.
3. It makes sharing data with other programs very easy.

This program also is able to import data from Quickbooks IIF files and exported journal report which can give you the basic lists. I thought about reverse engineering the QuickBooks transfer file (it is a compound file) but decided that it wasn't a good use of my time.

Right now, the functions include

1. Create a new company
2. Read the current database
3. Import from Quickbooks journal xlsx file
4. Manage a chart of accounts
5. Manage a customer list for projects and invoicing
6. Manage a list of payees (vendors and others)
7. Manage business information for printing on checks and invoices
8. Create and print a check
9. Create and print an invoice
10. Receive payments and mark the invoice as paid
11. Reconcile with bank statement
12. Manage projects for customers
13. Manage list of people for time sheet tracking
14. Enter timesheet data
15. Create compare this year with last year report
16. Create 1120 report
17. Create 1099 report

Here are some words to try to keep lawyer type people from coming after me for letting anyone else use this. USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!

I wrote this for my own use. Your use of this program may open you up to financial mistakes. In other words, I ain't liable for any mistakes, omissions, or bugs if you use this. I'm using it for my business. If you take this program and try to sell it, you will have to handle all the customer support issues, any legal challenges from Intuit, and the headaches of adding all the customer requests. I have no interest in handling customer service issues. I won't charge you to use this and I won't take your calls for help.

For you Intuit Lawyers with more time on your hands: BUY QUICKBOOKS! If you need an accounting package, BUY QUICKBOOKS. If you have any employees, you need an accounting package. BUY QUICKBOOKS. If you can't afford Quickbooks, you are not in business yet.

Here are many of the screens:

The menu options on the main screen at this time are:

        File                        Settings                Reconcile          Reports           Time Tracking
          New                         Chart of Accounts                          Compare Income    Manage People
          Open                        Customer List                              Federal 1120      Manage Projects
          Import                      List of Pay To's                           1099 / 1096       Enter Time Sheets
             IIF file                 Business Data
             Journal Excel file       Invoice Settings
          Save
          Export
          Exit

Main screen

Create a check

Managing Customer List

Create an Invoice

Receive Payments

Reconciliation Screen

Time Sheet Entry

Reports

This program imports lists that are exported from Quickbooks into an IIF file with the following changes:

1. Not all fields are imported
2. Vendors and "other names" are combined into "Payees"

When importing the chart of accounts from the IIF file, the accounts are not connected to the tax form fields. You will have to do that manually. If you start with a new chart of accounts, the default includes the connection to the tax form fields.

How to get an IIF from Quickbooks: Go into Quickbooks and select File -> Utillities -> Export -> Lists to IIF Files

I tried not inporting inactive customers, vendors, and other names. However, I found it easier to go into the Excel file and clear out the ones I didn't want.

This program imports a Journal report from Quickbooks that has been exported to Excel. To export the Journal report, go to Reports -> Accountant & Taxes reports -> Journal. Once you have selected the range of dates with the entries you want, go up to the top to the Excel tab and select export. Create a new Excel file. This file can be imported via the file -> Import -> Journal file.

The import validates the entries one at a time. That means that if an entry fails validation, part of the import has already happened and your ledger and invoices have been affected already. It is best to simply reopen the current ledger and start over after you have corrected the validation error.

Also when importing journal entries, I originally thought about asking if to rearrainge transaction order when a transaction isn't in order, but decided to go ahead and simply add it in the correct date & check number order. Similarly, the program adds accounts that are not currently in the chart of accounts. Once the accounts are added, then you need to manually connect those accounts to the federal 1120 fields.

WARNING: Because this program is a checking program and not an accounting program, it does not properly import payroll checks. On the Federal 1120 report, the officer compensation and employee payroll lines do not report a value. The reason is that the amounts to put on those lines are not the check values. WARNING

WARNING: When importing payroll liability checks, put the employee withholdings into a withholding account and the business portion of the check into the tax: business portion of that tax. WARNING

When importing checks, the check numbers have to be actual numbers. When I had "EFTPS" as the check number, it failed.

I thought long about adding logging to this program. I actually started adding logging. Then, I realized that with an "open database", logging is meaningless. The value of the open database is that you, as the owner, can use Excel to modify the database when you have made a mistake. There is no way to log what you do when doing such modification. Ergo, logging is useless as it can't properly capture all changes to the database.

The Chart of Accounts can be connected to the Federal 1120 form. The following are the acceptable values for that field.

1. "B:EIN"
2. "C:DateIncorporated"
3. "1a. Gross Receipts"
4. "1b. Returns"
5. "2. Cost Of Goods"
6. "3. Gross Profit"
7. "4. Dividends"
8. "5. Interest Income"
9. "6. Gross Rents"
10. "7. Gross Royalties"
11. "8. Capital Gain"
12. "9. Net gain"
13. "10. Other income"
14. "12. Officer compensation"
15. "13. Salaries and wages"
16. "14. Repairs and maintenance"
17. "15. Bad Debts"
18. "16. Rents"
19. "17. Taxes & Licenses"
20. "18. Interest"
21. "19. Charitable contributions"
22. "20. Depreciation"
23. "21. Depletion"
24. "22. Advertising"
25. "23. Pension"
26. "24. Employee Benefit programs"
27. "26. Other deductions"
28. "29. Net operating loss"
29. "29b. special deductions"
30. "33. Total Payments and credits"
31. "L1b. Cash"

Known Issues:

Quickbooks does not export long items in invoices. Therefore they are not available to import. When importing from a journal file, the pay to people are not validated. When importing from a journal file, the accounts on an invoice are not validated to make sure they are in the chart of accounts. Export not implemented yet (and might not be ever)