If you are a small business owner who is not ready to cover the expense of an accountant you may want to consider using free bookkeeping software. Homeowners and people who work out of their homes may have the same needs. Churches and non-profit organizations could also benefit from bookkeeping software. However, some of the available software to handle your bookkeeping needs can be rather expensive.

There are free bookkeeping options available online. One of the best of these is made by Intuit, the producers of QuickBooks, and Turbo Tax.

Here is a website you can go to download QuickBooks Free Edition:

QuickBooks Free Edition

What do you get with this free edition of the QuickBooks software? Quite a bit, actually. With it you can write checks, pay bills, and track your money. The Free edition of QuickBooks also gives you a way to handle your payroll, and you can import data from Microsoft Excell. There are a lot of other features in the paid version of QuickBooks, but if you are looking for a free way to handle your bookkeeping, this is one of the best.

Another possibility is OpenOffice. This is a completely free software suite that has a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation program, and A image program. The software is compatible with many other Production Suite programs, such as Microsoft Office. It is not specifically a Bookkeeping program, but it can perform many of the functions of one. Here is the website for OpenOffice.

A different option is online bookkeeping. Outright offers this at their website:

Outright

Once you sign up, you will be taken to a secure site, and given access to uploading your data. Outright is mostly for tax preparation, and you won’t be able to handle payroll chores, but this way you can deal with your business taxes without hiring an accountant. You can track your business expenses with Outright.

Owl Software offers a program called, Basic Bookkeeping. With it you will be able to enter your income and expenses, into the program and it will keep track for you. If you are familiar with the “Dome” books like Simplified Monthly Accounting, this will be perfect for you. Basic Bookkeeping also will print expense checks from within the program. With the program you can also keep and print out mileage reports, among others. This program in not strictly fee, it is Shareware. If you like it and intend to keep using it, the programmers would like you to pay $49.99.

Specific organizations may have very specific bookkeeping needs. Churches and Non-Profits for example might not need the same type of accounting software as a small retail store. One free solution for churches is Church Bookkeeping Software and Web Solutions.

Church Management Solotions -Bookkeeping Software

This software allows one to track membership, Contribution, Attendance, Outreach, Ledger & Payables, and Payroll. With the software you get a free website for your church.

If free is what you want, be aware that you will not have the full range of services in a scaled down version of bookkeeping software. The old saying, ‘you get what you pay for” comes to mind.