Every year, there is at least one new version
of QuickBooks from which to choose, each more expensive than the one prior.
What I have found is that the least expensive
Basic version is good enough for just about everyone. I have the top of the
line Premier Accountant version and have never even had a need to export data to
Excel or Word or any other program.
There are an increasing number of other
software companies designing their software to interchange data with
QuickBooks. For that capability, you need at least the Pro version of
QuickBooks. I actually have several programs that supposedly can share data
with QuickBooks, but haven't seen any benefits to doing so. I would recommend
that anyone starting out with QuickBooks buy the Basic version of the newest
update, which is currently QuickBooks 2005.