I have tried most every major accounting and bookeeping package available on the Mac. They seemed to fall into two catergories; useless electronic checkbooks, or high end systems so complex that they took forever to set up and use.
I designed this system for use with my bike shop, but with a few modifications it should be applicable to almost any small business. It is loosely based on the IDEAL™ Bookeeping and records system, one of the most popular paper based systems on the market for small businesses.
The modules are as follows:
Cash Reciepts - An extremely basic breakdown of cash reciepts, the only categories are Sales, Sales tax, and Contributions by owners.
Sales Breakdown - This is a more detailed cash reciepts module that lets you enter your sales by department and totals your info for you. I'll explain why there are two similar modules later.
Payroll - This one is pretty obvious. Check the cells with notes in them (Red Flags) to enter percentages for deductions.
Cash Disbursements - This module tracks where all of the money goes.
Balance Sheet - All of your modules are linked to this sheet which updates its info whenever you open it. You can track your whole year to date performance on a single page. In order to link the modules correctly you should create a template from each module and then create individual files for each month, ie. 'Payroll 3/92' or 'Sales Breakdown 10/92'. The reason for having two cash receipts modules is to facilitate the keeping of "official" and "unofficial" sets of books.
Please be aware that this is not a substitute for a professional account or bookeeper. It simply makes puts an elementary paper based accounting system onto your Mac and gives you error free totals and calculations. Most of the hard work has been done for you. With a little customization it can be useful. I have been running my bicycle store for three years with these spreadsheets. I hope they come in handy to you.
Please send comments to RobMoon via E-Mail. Thanks.
