Books about running business financials

[Brandon G.]

Hello everyone,

I have listened to many books in the last two years that cover the real estate gamut and several business books that include generic concepts like how to manage people and structure your business however I don't have a good grasp on managing the financials and keeping books.  For example, the best ways to construct and organize invoices for customer orders, how to file and organize those invoices, keeping track of "the books," such as asset and liabilities each month, and ways to organize the parts of the business that aren't the employees or physical inventory.

Attempting to sum this into a "google-able" search has proven to be somewhat difficult, so I would appreciate your input.

Thank you,

[Daniel Chang]

Quickbooks is a software that helps you bookkeep.  It also does all the things you mentioned such as invoicing and keeping track of your assets/liabilities.  However, you really don't learn bookkeeping (GAAP double entry bookkeeping standard).  It does it in the background.  For instance, it's pretty simple to enter a bill in Quickbooks.  What you don't see is that in the background, Quickbooks Debits an expense account and Credits your Accounts Payable account.  And then when you pay that bill, it Debits Accounts Payable and Credits Cash.  

I would say that for the majority of users, actually learning bookkeeping is not required.  There is a steep learning curve with Quickbooks, but once you get it, it'll get you through 90% of what you need to do.  Then just have an accountant or bookkeeper make adjustments or do special entries from time to time.  

If you want to be a complete DIYer, you will have to learn bookkeeping.  Books like Bookkeeping for Dummies should give you the basics.  If you want to really get into it however, you'll need to check out a textbook.  This is for the 10% of entries that does not come standard "pre-programmed" and will have to be manually inputted.  For instance, returning of partial security deposit with repairs and rent taken out.  However, like I said, you can just have your accountant do these entries for you.

There are of course other softwares out there.  I personally use Quickbooks and can only speak to it.