I was doing what I did because I was too lazy to do my payroll on time.
I had a liability account called Salaries Payable. I have always been my only employee. Once a month, (or whenever I got around to it) I would do my payroll and credit the net to the Salaries Payable account. Whenever I wanted money, I would write a check debited against that account. Sometimes I would go half the year before actually doing the payroll and then I would backdate all the payroll transactions to the first of all the months I missed. At the end of the year, I would look at the balance and my profits and write my final paycheck accordingly so that my net profit or loss from the C Corp was a low amount. I would always net out my Salaries Payable account to zero at year end so it wouldn't show up on my corporate tax return. I normally drew less than what I paid myself so I would normally have additional cash at year end. I know that that is lending money interest free to my corporation but it normally isn't an issue unless there is a carryover balance which I never had. I would never let the credit amount get out of hand enough to skew my quarterly tax payments, however.
I just looked at my books and after 11 years of being a C Corp, my total retained earnings are about $500. I spent many years in corporate land when I was an employee and worked a lot with budgeting at the puzzle palace (Corp Headquarters). I used to laugh at the ways that the books would get cooked at EOY to meet whatever fantasy objective they had in mind by moving expenses, sales and capital items around at EOY. I guess it rubbed off.
I have used Quicken (and like it) for as many years as MYOB and once got a trial version of Quickbooks to see if I should convert. I looked first to see if it could do what I was doing above and verified with tech support that it couldn't, so I didn't look further at it. I am also very comfortable with using MYOB and the thought of coverting my prior data was also a factor.
For it's first nine years of existance, my corp (me) did contract programming and I had many years of working 80+ hour weeks so doing the books was left to whenever I had time for it. Now in my more leisurely existance as a framer (only 70+ hour weeks), I have more time to do it properly.
I don't use an accountant and do my own corporate tax returns because I have a sufficient background in accounting. I think that MYOB could be used by just about anyone that can use QuickBooks. Some might need an accountant or bookkeeper to help with the initial setup.
I reread my initial post and it wasn't my intention to knock QuickBooks, just to recommend an alternative although it probably reads that way. Sorry.
