- Joined
- Apr 2, 2006
- Messages
- 11,215
Almost ten years after retiring from a totally unrelated field, I’m finding myself in a new and somewhat unexpected role - that of a pseudo bookkeeper or accountant! In the past, my personal budgeting was minimal and didn’t even involve so much as a spreadsheet. I used spreadsheets for technical analyses at work, but - except for the most basic ones - they were generally built by others who really knew their way around a spreadsheet.
In the past few years, my husband has become the executor of not one, but two trusts. Each of the trusts includes a home held by the trust (in one case, purchased by the trust) for the benefit of a specific individual, with the trust paying for some ongoing costs. There are other heirs involved, at least one of whom has shown a tendency to be litigious, so good bookkeeping is a must. My husband also has two small rental properties. A few recent banking glitches have demonstrated that his prior “bookkeeping” routine for these rentals - two receipt books and a bag of receipts turned over to his tax preparer each year - is no longer adequate.
I have Office 2010 on my computer from my working days. I’ve been tracking expenditures etc. for the older of the trusts on an Exel spreadsheet using one of the prepared formats provided by Exel. But it’s frustrating for me because the online documentation is scanty: I think big fat physical user guides were still the norm back then. There are some built-in formulas that don’t work for us that I can’t alter, and security is questionable since I’m using it on a rather ancient Apple laptop that’s no longer getting operating system upgrades.
So I’m in the market for a new computer and bookkeeping software. Since I’m old-school, I’d prefer to just purchase the software outright, rather than using something from an online platform and paying license fees each year - but I might be persuaded to go the license route if that makes more sense. I will probably want to prepare some sort of annual summary each year, so something that ties in to a word processing program would be nice.
Any suggestions would be very welcome!
Thank you!
In the past few years, my husband has become the executor of not one, but two trusts. Each of the trusts includes a home held by the trust (in one case, purchased by the trust) for the benefit of a specific individual, with the trust paying for some ongoing costs. There are other heirs involved, at least one of whom has shown a tendency to be litigious, so good bookkeeping is a must. My husband also has two small rental properties. A few recent banking glitches have demonstrated that his prior “bookkeeping” routine for these rentals - two receipt books and a bag of receipts turned over to his tax preparer each year - is no longer adequate.
I have Office 2010 on my computer from my working days. I’ve been tracking expenditures etc. for the older of the trusts on an Exel spreadsheet using one of the prepared formats provided by Exel. But it’s frustrating for me because the online documentation is scanty: I think big fat physical user guides were still the norm back then. There are some built-in formulas that don’t work for us that I can’t alter, and security is questionable since I’m using it on a rather ancient Apple laptop that’s no longer getting operating system upgrades.
So I’m in the market for a new computer and bookkeeping software. Since I’m old-school, I’d prefer to just purchase the software outright, rather than using something from an online platform and paying license fees each year - but I might be persuaded to go the license route if that makes more sense. I will probably want to prepare some sort of annual summary each year, so something that ties in to a word processing program would be nice.
Any suggestions would be very welcome!
Thank you!
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