I usually prefer to work on all the exciting stuff that helps to make me more money, but sometimes you just have to do the plain old boring business stuff like accounting and filing/archiving of data and paper. Yuck. I do not like those tasks too much, but they come with running a business and cannot be avoided (unless you want to get into trouble with the IRS). Since those tasks cannot be avoided really, it makes sense to work smarter not harder on them to reduce the time and efforts spend on them. I am not having an accountant at this point as I think my business volume just does not justify the expense yet, but that does not mean I am going cheap (or better: too cheap) in how I do things. I want to be most efficient as possible. Here is what I do for all my accounting and archiving of business data.

For my business accounting I use Quicken 2007 Home & Business. It’s not as complex and difficult to learn compared to QuickBooks. It’s cheaper than QuickBooks, but does everything I need for my Internet business. The only thing I wish it would have is the ability to get my data directly out of PayPal. I have to export it from PayPal first and them import it into Quicken. Quicken 2008 Home & Business is supposed to have that feature. If I get a good deal I might upgrade or wait out another year. Overall I am pretty happy with Quicken. Many people bitch about it, but often I do think these guys don’t take the time to learn the essentials and think it has to be the magic bullet that solves all the problems. You still need some basic math skills and the ability to think.
The second piece I use is a high-speed color scanner made by Fujitsu. The Fujitsu Scansnap S510 Color Image Scanner is a dual-sided scanner that can scan up to 18 pages, both sided in ~1 minute. It comes with a full version of Adobe Acrobat Standard 8 (that is the software that allows you to create PDF files and not just read them / pretty cool :)). The thing I really like is the small foot print of this scanner. You fold it open and it turns itself on. It has a document feeder so that you can just load it and let it scan. Smaller receipts - even in size of the ones you get from a gas station (=very small) go through the feeder just fine (I do those by hand and not through the main document feeder). The software that is included allows to make the PDFs searchable. This piece is awesome. If I need my receipt for Quicken, I just search the database and it finds the receipt for me. I am still in the process of scanning the paper work for 2002 to 2005, but once I am done I can shred all the paper and free up an entire filing cabinet and get rid of it. The scanner is not cheap, but the time and space I am saving is worth it. Don’t buy the Neat Receipt Scanner and software in case you heard about it. It’s not reliable enough and not as fast.

This setup for my home office works out very well for me. As long as you keep up with filing and accounting these tasks almost become a pleasure to do (no, not really, but they are less tedious now). What tools do you use that make your business life easier? Anything you can recommend?