Last Augusts release of Intuit’s QuickBooks Pro added true job-costing and time-billing functions to Intuit’s already well-received basic accounting system. Version 4.0 adds a number of customizing and ease-of-use features, and significantly enhances Pro’s tax-reporting capabilities.
Getting Started
Do it right, and it’s easy to start using an accounting program; do it wrong, and you may never be able to produce the information you want. During installation, EasyStep Interview asks questions about your business, the way you work, and the information you want your accounting system to provide. Based on your responses, QuickBooks is customized to meet your needs. Capabilities you don't currently need can be restored later. EasyStep Interview anticipates most problems, and in its Tell Me More sections it provides explanations of accounting procedures and suggestions for handling special situations.
Bells and Whistles
QuickBooks Pro's documentation provides special customizing assistance for your company. Clear and concise, the help files are full of suggestions for configuring QuickBooks to meet specific taxreporting requirements.
QuickBooks includes accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, payroll, estimates, and budgeting. The program enters accounting transactions on invoices, purchase orders, time slips, and other familiar forms, and there’s no debit and credit jargon. Standard reports — aged accounts receivable, accounts payable cash requirements, and income statements — are also available.
Version 4.0 offers more businessmanagement functions than previous versions have. For example, you can use customer, vendor, employee, and other lists to produce mail-merge files, address-file cards, and mailing labels. You can customize reports and forms by adding, deleting, renaming, and reordering information in headers and columns. You can even create a direct link from customer notes to the To Do list to help schedule callbacks and meetings.
However, the mail-merge function has limitations. For example, you can't automatically select all customers with balances over $10,000. And although the lists are flexible and effective, they're not WYSIWYG: it's frustrating to try to design a report without being able to see what it looks like.
Payroll reporting includes printing of Forms 940 and 941, as well as W-2, W-3, and 1099. Although not a magic solution to payroll-reporting woes (you must still reconcile tax-form totals and manually enter some information), the program is an improvement. Income tax-reporting enhancements inc1ude the ability to link revenue and expenseaccount information to the appropriate lines on your tax return, producing totals as they would appear on a tax form. The Windows version includes interactive links to Intuit's popular tax program Turbo Tax; links to MacInTax, its Mac counterpart, are unfortunately not yet available.
To use Job Costing, you identify the items purchased and expenses incurred on a particular job. When it's time to bill the client, you simply select from the list of charges, QuickBooks can automatically mark up costs by a specified percentage or charge a predetermined rate for you, or you can adjust amounts individually on the invoice. The reports compare the original estimate, actual costs incurred, and amounts billed on a job-by-job basis.
Time spent by hourly and salaried employees — and even subcontractors — is easily entered and tracked by job. Time calculations can be used to bill the client at a specified rate or simply to track profitability. You control the amount of detail that appears on the invoice — for example, totaling charges for several employees and billing them as a single item. For hourly employees, time data can automatically generate payroll checks.
On the Downside
The recording and reporting features, although impressive, come at a cost. More choices mean more decisions. And the number of decisions needed to set up and integrate the estimating, job costing, payroll, and time billing features can be overwhelming. Novice users might want to implement only simpler procedures — paying bills, making deposits, producing standard statements — and add more advanced features later.
Despite increasing requests from users, this release does not include a network version. It does, however, offer file compatibility between the Windows and Macintosh platforms* While nor an ideal solution, this allows information sharing.
My biggest gripe is that the Business Library, an excellent addition to the Windows version, is not available for the Mac. This CD-based program contains information on everything from creating a business plan, to tax-saving strategies, to worksheets that can be used to calculate and interpret financial ratios and evaluate pricing strategies, and more.
The Last Word
For functionality, versatility, and ease of use, QuickBooks Pro is hard to beat. Its estimating, job costing, time billing, and payroll features are the best in this price range, and its innovative customization program helps you take advantage of its full range of capabilities.
Gillespie, Jan. (June 1996). QuickBooks Pro 4.0. Macworld. (pg. 55).
Tested in Sheepshaver as well as a beige G3 Desktop running 9.2.2 - (yes I was able to install 9.2.2 on a beige G3 with the 9.2.2 universal .iso that has enablers for nearly every powemac) .. USB PCI card works.
Intuit, Inc.
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2020-08-04 / 
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QuickBooksr_Pro_4.0_CD.toast_.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
