Hi Christine and welcome to you!
First, I'm going to admit a HUGE bias - I work with QuickBooks almost exclusively these days. In the past I have worked with a few large, corporate-business-style accounting systems*: Timberline, FoxPro and Yardi; and before these I worked a bit with MS Access. I researched comparable products, implemented and trained 30+ staff on how to use the Yardi database, and even began writing some custom SQL-script reports for Yardi, so I was in pretty deep with these kinds of things.
That means that while I am biased, I do have
some experience outside of QB.
I have worked with QB Online, QB Mac, QB Pro, QB Premier and QB Accountant's version. (I have not yet worked with QB Enterprise.)
What I want you to know is that QB Online is, for the most part,
lousy. QB Pro or QB Premier are far more robust, flexible and comprehensive in terms of ease of use, speed and streamlining of use, sales tracking, inventory, reporting and so, so much more. Plus, if you don't need the cloud computing, buying a license (or two or three) once every three years (not including payroll which is annual) can be much less expensive. If you do need cloud computing, one option is hosting Pro or Premier through
swizznet.com. Swizznet is not cheap, but I've heard they are excellent.
As an aside, QB Mac only has part of the functionality of QB Pro, and does not have payroll available, so it's
not a great option.
One more thing about payroll. What I'm learning from my small business clients is that the QB Enhanced Payroll subscription and a bookkeeper with an affordable hourly rate are
much cheaper than most of the payroll services--meaning out-sourced payroll such as ADP or Paychex. Those darn payroll services are not exactly without errors, either!
QB Pro or QB Premier provide a lot of functionality for their price. Compared to some 4-, 5- and 6-figure systems I've worked in, they are a truly an excellent bargain. The worst annoyance about QB these days is that they are including far too many "reminders" and other ways to sell their other related products and services, but it's pretty easy to figure out how to disable these.
Excel (or google or Open Office) spreadsheets can be the most cost-effective, but if you need to produce invoices, statements, payroll, track inventory, or frequently want to look up data per customer or per vendor and aren't a pro at pivot tables, then QB will save you HOURS of time. Hours. Truly.
As for a custom-designed system, I worked for a wonderful boss who was really quite brilliant in many ways. He was designing an MS Access database to fit every accounting, tracking and reporting issue his business needed. His design had great architecture and a great start and....his business grew too much for him to ever have time to fully finish it and work out all the kinks. I don't know how many hours --easily several hundred hours-- he put into that database, but after limping along with it for a couple years, he finally scrapped it and went to QB Pro. It was a big time saver and improvement.
How much is your time worth?
I wish I knew more about farm accounting systems. I imagine they start at 4-figures, but I really have no idea. Any one else have any experience with any farm accounting software?
*Otherwise known as
enterprise accounting systems, in the generic sense, not at all meant to mean QB Enterprise, which is the QB brand of an enterprise-type accounting software.
