You can get started with bookkeeping instead of waiting. Here is an easy way to get started. Open Quickbooks or go to Quickbooks Online and start there. Create your company. You will be asked a series of questions. Take the time to answer them. Once your company is set up, you will add your checkbook. Gather the last end of year statements. If you are going to enter in 2009 transactions, you will start with the 12/31/08 bank statement. When you create the account it will ask for the balance. Use the ending balance of your 12/31/08 bank statement. The account type is bank account. After you've created the account you can open that account and put in January transactions. Once all the January transactions are entered you will need to reconcile January. Click on 'reconcile'. Put the January statement's ending balance and date in the fields. Then you will check off each of the transactions that have cleared. Once you have cleared everything, click 'reconcile'. If you are out of balance then go back and check everything you entered. Chances are you transposed numbers, forgot transactions, entered incorrect amounts or entered the wrong ending balance.

If you can reconcile your checkbook then you can work with any of the accounts.

Here at Heritage Bookkeeping and Tax we offer a variety of ways to handle payroll. It depends on how involved in the process you want to be. We like Paycycle for an easy way to integrate payroll with Quickbooks. Paycycle.com tracks your payroll and can be imported in Quickbooks. At the end of every quarter Paycycle will calculate your Form 941 (Employer's Quarterly Report) and you can pay in the payroll taxes. It's neat and tidy. It's easy and it keeps all employer's current. You also need to pay in SUTA (State Unemployment Tax) every quarter. At the end of the year you also have an obligation to pay in FUTA (Federal Unemployment Tax).

• 941 Employer's Quarterly Report
• SUTA - State Unemployment Tax
• 940 - Federal Unemployment Tax

All of the forms can be found at http://www.irs.gov/