Cashflow: How To Forecast It
Last summer I taught an adult-education seminar entitled “Running a Home Business with Your Computer.” Some studens wanted marketing ideas, some business-development ideas, and one person even wanted to know which computer to buy. But there was one thing they all wanted to know–how to manage their finances.
“My business is growing fast and I want to get control of my finances before it gets too big,” said one woman, who sells health and nutrition products. The man who hadn’t yet bought a computer was fretting about his shoe box full of invoices and receipts. He wanted to scan them into his computer and let the microprocessor take over. “You’d laugh if you saw my accounting system,” he said.
I could identify with these voices, since I spent five years gearing up to automate my financial record-keeping before finally computerizing last January. Hearing the high lonesome cries of manual accountants wandering in a forest of paper, with guesstimates as their guides, reminded me that I’ve still got a ways to go myself.
I started using Quicken to write checks and record withdrawals and deposits for three reasons: (1) I wanted to keep more accurate records, …