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Turnkey Small Business Services is appointed distributor for Bookkeeper 2007 Accounting Software. In addition to software sales, they are qualified to offer training and support on the software. Read more   Barcodes are part of all phases of our lives these days. From test tubes at the hospital to candy at the convenience store, they are everywhere. We now have a low cost solution for you to design and print labels, including barcode labels, for your business. Read more   Our association as a Value Added Reseller with AvanquestUSA allows us to offer many low-cost programs that will benefit small business owners. By far, one of our Best Buys is the Smart Business Pack, consisting of 15 essential small business programs. Read more

About Me, Pete Sonon. I'm going to make this a short as possible, while at the same time giving you an overview of my trials and tribulations with bookkeeping and training others in how to do it. For most of the 70's and 80's I owned a group of auto parts stores. Started with one, grew to 4. Shortly after getting started, when it became obvious that things were going well and I needed some help in the office, I hired a young lady just out of high school. I paid for her to go to what in those days was called a "business school" to learn bookkeeping. I further paid my CPA to spend some time with her setting up a set of books specifically for my business. Everything was done by hand in ledgers. We used the "one-write" system for the checking account, receivables, payables and payroll. Things went well for a couple of years. The business grew and we were even making money. We had a number of large, national name accounts. Retailing went through one of it's nose dives and suddenly we had Montgomery Wards owning us $ 10,000 plus, with Sears and K-Mart not far behind. And Pep Boys was not paying to well, either. They were all running 60 to 90 days in paying us and things were a little tight. But, I kept paying my suppliers, even if I had to take a pay cut to do it. But then, I started getting phone calls from suppliers, wanting to know when I was going to pay them. I'd tell them I paid them weeks ago, and got told they had never received a check. So, I did some digging. It seems like the young lady who I had working as the bookkeeper thought she was the boss, as well. She'd bring me checks to sign, just as always, but because we were low on funds, she would not mail them. Frankly, that made me mad. Not that times were tight, but that she took it upon herself to pay who she wanted to. So, I fired her. Now, I didn't know much about bookkeeping. I could always look at financial statements and get an idea of where a business stood, but as far as the day-to-day posting of the general ledger and things like that I had no idea. I sure learned quickly. Prior to letting her go I had bought a $ 40,000 computer system that had all of the stores tied together so they could check stock in each other, etc. The thing also had an accounting module, but we had never used it. Well, after doing the bookkeeping myself for a few months and learning exactly what was what I decided to start using the computerized system. That's where my education really began. Unlike the bookkeeping software you buy today, all that was in that system were the mechanics of adding and subtracting. Seriously. They did not have anything set up. I learned how to actually build the financial statements. If you are familiar with seeing any, you know that they have sub-totals, and then what you might call sub-sub-totals, as well as different lines being indented so far from the left of the page. (Not so much any more, a lot of the computer programs don't pay a lot of attention to the formalities.) Well none of that was there. You could write a check or record the daily sales and the figures would show. But that was it. Just a list of figures. So, I learned how to actually build the profit and loss statement, with "total levels" and "indent levels" and all that fancy stuff. By the time I was done (a couple of months of trial and error) I could put out something I was proud to take to the bank, but it was one of the hardest projects of my life. But I sure knew bookkeeping when I was done. Maybe 15 years later, at the beginning of the 90's I got out of the auto parts business. I thought I'd found a way to make some easy money. All of my small business customers, mainly service stations, independent garages, small fleets, etc. all knew I had been computerized for many years. And they started thrusting demo disks for different auto repair shop programs at me to evaluate for them. I thought: "I can make some money with this." So I went into the business of selling, installing and training in the use of auto repair shop programs and bookkeeping programs to go with them. I can't begin to tell you how many kitchen and dining room tables I've sat at, teaching Mom how to do the books for Pop's business. Not only auto repair, for the same people who did an auto program also had one for retail stores, and one for beauty salons, etc. So, before long I was teaching all kinds of people how to do computerized bookkeeping. Virtually every one of them had never turned on a computer in their life. And none had any bookkeeping experience. They had been paying someone and liked the idea of saving that money each month. And, in most cases, the lease payments on the system was less than they were paying for a bookkeeper, so they were money ahead. During that nearly 10 years I installed and trained in over a dozen states. I've still got people calling me every once in awhile. And some still order checks and invoice forms from me. And I have seen some "how not to run a business" poster children. People with $ 100,000 plus on owed to them, with no controls. I'll never forget the tow truck guy in the metro DC area who was owed for maybe 6 months of tows by a large car dealer. I asked why he kept towing for them and he said: (and I quote) "Because they are such good customers." Someone who doesn't pay is a good customer? While I might forget one or two, here are some of the programs I sold and trained people on - OneWrite Plus (my favorite, but no longer available), QuickBooks, AccPac and AccPac Simply Accounting, Dac Easy, Cougar Mountain, PeachTree, Pacoli and several built into the specific program the people were buying, similar to the one that came with my auto parts system. Even a month ago, if someone told me I would be back selling software and training folks in bookkeeping, I'd have called them crazy. Then the subject came up on the SMC forum and I decided to check out a couple of low priced alternatives to QuickBooks. But then I saw Bookkeeper 2005 in an Office Depot and decided to contact the publisher. I explained that I had sold software before and had a group that was looking for something inexpensive to use in their businesses. I asked for a no charge demo. I must have done a good job selling myself, they sent me 4 demos and asked if I'd like to be a dealer for them. I told them let me check out the program first, no sense filling out a bunch of paperwork for nothing. So, I've played with the software. I've tried to break it, but haven't. There are some things I'd like to see improved and when I told them about my suggestions they seemed to take them seriously and gave me a reasonable reply, saying they would work them into the next version. (I don't mind letting my suppliers know what I think. I kept after one Point-of-Sale software company so hard one year they named the next version the "Pete Sonon Version" and presented me a plaque at their annual dealer meeting.) While selling the Point-of-Sale software, I also sold and installed barcode scanners, dedicated barcode label printers, hand-held data collectors that read barcodes when taking inventory, and all sorts of other computer goodies you can't buy at the local computer store. I've installed systems in school cafeterias, military installations, factories of internationally known corporations and plain old "Mom & Pop" shops of all kinds. And while selling all of that software and hardware, I also made contacts with check and invoice printing companies and label makers, as well as ink cartridges and ribbons. (Remember ribbons? A lot of receipt printers still use them.) I've got folks who bought systems from me in the early 1990's still calling for checks and labels. And one guy who calls about once a year wanting to know the password to get into the main part of his system. He tells me each year that he knows the password is my birthday, but he just can't remember my birthday.... So, with that I'll end this page. If you become a client, you are getting years of experience in not just bookkeeping, but small business in general. I own one myself; I've been selling to and advising them for 40 years and I do more than read the book to you. In fact, you'll be getting hands on experience, not "book learning".