I am debating on whether to utilize Filemaker to track all of my business accounting or to default to something like quickbooks. I am very Filemaker savvy but not sure of issues that Quickbooks may have an edge on filemaker. For one thing you have the build the database as Quickbooks is ready to go. I am looking for getting the mac version of quickbooks but it is crippled compared to its windows counterpart and frankly have no desire to purchase a Windows machine. What complicates things more is Filemaker, inc. latest offering for a rebate if you buy quickbooks and filemaker. Huh?!

Thoughts??

Thanks!!!

Have a look in the Accounting area of this forum. There are a few threads there discussing QB and FM, and some sources of ready built FM accounting solutions.

Went to a seminar at Seybold when it was in NYC some years ago and they had an interesting solution - the demo was on AppleScript and the DemoDude (I don't recall his name, but he's an AS expert) showed pulling the data from FM and putting it into QB. That gives the FM flexibility with QB accounting.

I used Quickbooks 4.0 for 3 or 4 years and found it to be quite a good program, but it's decision to abandon the Mac platform caused me to migrate to Account Edge. Quickbooks is now come back on board, and I can't imagine that the new release isn't at least as robust a program as 4.0 was. As far as Filemaker vs Quickbooks, the amount of time it would take to construct anything like Quickbooks in FMP, would make the decision for me.....and I suppose has. I use FMP for the functions within my business that a generic accounting program doesn't address and the data collected within Quickbooks can always be exported to FMP.

Good Luck,