Differences between Peachtree and QuickBooks

Addresses (for companies, customers, vendors, and employees) are entered differently in QuickBooks than they are in Peachtree. In QuickBooks, you enter addresses in a free-form, four-line field. In Peachtree, you must enter each part of the address in its own field. The QuickBooks method enables you to enter the address in any format you want.

To ensure that the addresses you have entered in Peachtree appear the way you want them to appear in QuickBooks, make sure the addresses entered in Peachtree adhere to the U.S. Postal Service standard format. If necessary, you can edit these addresses after the conversion.

In QuickBooks, you can have one billing address and unlimited shipping addresses per customer (set up as different customer jobs). Peachtree limits you to nine shipping addresses per customer.

Job costing is a way to track the expenses for a job and then to compare those expenses to the job’s revenue. This comparison tells you which jobs make money and which do not.

In QuickBooks, jobs are associated with individual customers and are managed via the Customers & Jobs list. In Peachtree, jobs are managed in their own list.

If you are required to collect sales tax for the products or services you sell, you must pay it to a tax agency on a regular schedule. You must follow the rules and regulations for collecting and paying sales tax in your tax district (city, county, state).

In QuickBooks, sales tax items are used to track the sales tax rates and the tax agencies you pay. QuickBooks uses sales tax codes to track the taxable status of your customers and the products and services you sell.

In Peachtree, the sales tax rates are set up as sales tax codes. Each sales tax code is made up of at least one sales tax authority. All sales tax districts in Peachtree (whether exempt or not) are converted as sales tax items. During the conversion to QuickBooks, all Peachtree sales tax codes are converted to sales tax group items. Sales tax group items can contain one or more sales tax items (Peachtree tax authorities).

Setting up sales tax items involves these general steps:

1. Set up your tax agencies (to whom you pay your collected sales taxes) as a vendor in the vendor list.
2. Set up individual sales tax items. These items are the components of the sales tax group items. For example, you can have a state tax and a county tax that are combined to create a sales tax group item.

Each customer must be assigned a default sales tax item and sales tax code in QuickBooks. QuickBooks will select the sales tax item that matches the tax code listed in the Peachtree customer record. You will need to assign a tax code to each customer.

Note: Peachtree requires each customer to have a default sales account (typically an income account). QuickBooks does not assign sales accounts for customers.