In Part 1 I talked about the importance of avoiding catastrophe with a hint towards regular upgrades of your key systems.

Of all the things I see small business owners hold back on in the upgrade department, QuickBooks upgrades holds the #1 spot on the “put off ’till later” list.

This isn’t a QuickBooks-only post so please stick with me on this.

I used to be astonished when I’d walk into a client’s office (that could be home office, bagel shop or high-rise office building in Manhattan) and see an ancient version of QuickBooks (2002 in the year 2008, for example) driving the entire company.

OK it’s one thing to save some money by not buying into new whiz bang technology within minutes of it hitting the store shelf time and time again. It’s a whole other matter to run your modern business on ancient software. Remember the bagel boys?

In the example put forth on QuickBooks I would have to agree it’s not necessary to dutifully upgrade QuickBooks every year. Every OTHER year will be fine.

Why?

Because in as much as QuickBooks 2003 might be working just fine for you with check writing, there are so many features in QuickBooks 2010 that you could – AND SHOULD – take advantage of.

Like what?

Things like QuickBooks logging on to your bank, downloading all your bank transactions and having QuickBooks auto-match the downloaded transactions against your check register with a single mouse click.

Accepting credit cards through QuickBooks with tight integration with your existing billing system with the added bonus of letting you email invoices and statements to clients with the client able to click a button in the email itself and pay the bill you sent them instantly via credit card. Goodbye stamps, envelopes and the waiting game. You know the waiting game – you wait for the invoice to reach the client some days later, waiting for the customer to open the envelope and even look at your bill and then wait some more after the moment of truth when the client actually signs the check and drops it in the mailbox.

I can give you dozens of other examples of why it makes sense to upgrade QuickBooks all by itself. But as stated earlier, this blog post isn’t intended to be a QuickBooks commercial so let’s move on to other examples of things you should upgrade.

Windows. If you’re running Windows 2000 or anything older you really need to jump ship now to Windows 7. Even Windows XP users (although “just” eight years old) should seriously consider upgrading to Windows 7. You’ll be astonished at the differences. It’s like going from the original Star Trek TV show to the latest Star Trek movie which became available just now.

Internet access. Are you crawling along the World Wide Web on dial up? Or even DSL? Try a day in the fast lane of high-speed cable Internet or Verizon’s FIOS and you’ll never look back.

Backup Systems. Still using a tape drive? Please say it isn’t so. Even DVD backups are so 1990s. Remembering to backup, which tape or DVD to use next, etc is pedantic and unnecessary. Carbonite will back up your entire computer automatically and continually with the added safety of off-site retention of your data for less than $5 per month.

You can’t go wrong keeping up with the times. You’ll be more productive as you eliminate frustrating hassles and take advantage of new ways to make more money.

Any user of air conditioning, television and former users of the now-obsolete fax machine would be forced to agree that technology is cool!