I'm a Therapist and I Need an Accounting Package, What Would You Recommend?

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Q: I’m a therapist and I need an accounting package what would you recommend?

A:

The right fit really depends on your needs and experience; there’s no one size fits all. That said I’m going to guess that:

  • You are working alone or with a small number of other therapists who are probably 1099’s
  • You’re choosing your first package
  • You may or may not want to invoice clients, but you definitely want to track sessions and payments received
  • You don’t have many expenses, but you definitely want to use whatever you can as tax a write-off
  • You want to be able to share information with an accountant
  • You’re looking for close to the bare bones package and are not too interested in all of the bells and whistles that Intuit (the maker of QuickBooks) can sell you

You need to figure out if you want to pay for the convenience of working online (i.e. being able to access your info anytime, anywhere), being able to easily share with you accountant, not worrying about backup, etc. or if you’d prefer to save on software licensing expense and work from a physical computer.

If you’d like the online option, I’d go with QuickBooks Online Simple Start. It’s $180/yr although there are discounts at various times that bring down the cost for the first year.

If you’d like the physical option, I’d go with QuickBooks Desktop Pro which Amazon now has for $180 (Intuit sells it for $300, but often has discounts), ALONG WITH a backup service (preferably online). (This can be free and as simple as saving a backup of your file to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. after every few uses of Quickbooks using the automatic backup feature, BUT DON’T NOT DO THIS). If you don’t use any of the QuickBooks connected services, then you can use the QuickBooks program indefinitely, although Intuit stops updating it after three years.