Which software to use for accounting?

Maybe ask your accountant if there is anything he recommends as he may have a system which he can provide at a low cost or something he is used to dealing with. Failing that try see if your bank provide any accounting software as part of the account. Failing either of those try freeagent.com - I've been using it for a few months now and find it excellent.

Depends what you need from the software. If it is just invoicing and purchases, then VT Transaction+ is brilliant but your accountant may have their own preferred software.

Speak to your accountant. See what they say. If you are not familiar with using accounting software, the mistakes you make could make your fees higher, not lower. Accounting software has a tendancy to hide data, and if you don't understand double entry, it is very easy to miss when things are going disasterously wrong under the bonnet. Producing a set of books is not simply a case of mindlessly processing invoices, it is also about making sure the accounts which the invoices get processed into reconcile at the year/period end.

Its the basic principle that prooves that accounts are (mathematically at least) correct. Why the balance sheet balances and so on. Takes accountancy trainees about 12 months to get their heads round it. Not the most complex thing to learn, but it is the most fundamental. Bit like learning to ride a bike.

From your point of view, you probably don't need to know too much about it as the accountant looks after it for you, however if you start delving into computer software there is always the potential that something could go wrong, and remembering from when I used to work in practice in another life, when it does go wrong, it gets really bad indeed.

busy said:

I cannot decide which software to use for my accounting. I have a small business. I want to get organised and produce my accounts to my accountant so his fees are as low as they can be! Any suggestions or advice on what or what not to use would be most welcome?

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As an accountant specialising in looking after new and small businesses it's a question I'm often asked and will be glad to offer some suggestions.

Can I ask first of all do you want an online or a desktop based package and do you have any specific requirements? Also what's your budget and have you used any accounting/bookkeeping software in the past?

Definitely talk to your accountant. if he has to print your output and then reinput it things will get expensive.
If you are new to book keeping try quickbboks if he will take that. when you write a cheque you fill in a form that looks like a cheque and you can change things with ease.
Accountancy programs are not so easy to change as they have tracking systems that record all changes and for a one/2/3 man band starting up they are a lot more complicated.
kashflow is also easy and highly rated

busy said:

hi there, well I have no bookeeping experience and haven't used any software before other than excel spreadsheets. I have looked at Brightpearl.com (complicated) and also freeagent.com (easier). I understand Sage 50 is the industry standard (pretty expensive). I have looked at this and also Sage Instant Plus (nice price). My main concern is not overloading myself with features which will confuse me at this early stage of learning! I would like to start with something basic, which I can maybe upgrade at a later day when my business grows and I am confident using the basics. Does that make sense? I think I would prefer a desktop package as opposed to an online package, although again I am open to learning the pros and cons of both options.

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It does indeed make sense.

I wouldn't say Sage is the industry standard any more, it perhaps was a few years ago. It's probably fair to say Sage at one time dominated the market but you have a huge amount of choice now.

If you want something really simple (and free) VT cashbook is actually hard to beat in my opinion. Its fairly simple to use, enables you to record payments and receipts, handles VAT if necessary and will produce everything your accountant needs as well as giving you the ability to produce periodic accounts yourself. The biggest downside is that you cant use it to produce an invoice or to keep track of who owes you money and who you owe money too. This is where a paid for package is advantageous.

In all honesty lots of packages will do what you want but my personal favourites - because they get great feedback from clients who use them, they are reliable, very well supported and competitively priced are Solar for desktop based and Accounts Portal for an online package.

Here's some links for you

VT cashbook

Solar

Accounts Portal

I'd take a look at them, try them out and see which you like best.

Moneyman said:

.... when you write a cheque you fill in a form that looks like a cheque and you can change things with ease.

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Cheques what are those...do people still use them

busy said:

Nicola, can I use Solar if I am Limited Company?

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Yes you can.

busy said:

Thanks Nicola I'll have a look at these. Funnily enough I don't think I really need to create invoices as my "sales" is all handled online by my website and information regarding this is recorded adequately in Sagepay which I can download etc. Clients pay up front for their service and my website does the invoicing / receipts. I guess it might be useful to have some record / logging / tracking of whom I owe money to though and when it's due....still my main aim is to find a programme I can use to produce accounting records for my accountant. I am obviously checking his opinion too...but it's great to get all this advice as well. Thanks

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If you download data as CSV files (eg PayPal etc) do take a look at the import feature offered with many online packages eg Accounts Portal - it can be a huge time saving

sunilsanap said:

Why don't you try any software design company who can develop such custom software for you.

Their are so many advantage for developing custom software
1. As It will develop as per your need
2. It will save your cost.

Even try some Indian company who can provide you such software as per your need.

Best wishes
Sunil sanap
(CEo Custom Soft)

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Sounds a bit like re-inventing the wheel to me and with respect madness for a typical small business when you can buy a proper tried and tested package for less than £100

I agree. Why develop something from scratch when you can spend less than £100 and buy something off the shelf, and also get to try the software for free before you make a decision to purchase ?

Tom

Ideally you are looking for software which is easy to use and will help keep you on top of your finances

You want to be able to easily export sales reports and VAT reports to excel files which you can then forward to your accountant, this makes his job a lot easier as he can import it into sage or whatever he uses at a click of a button.

I'm trying hard to resist the shameless plug...

http://www.gooroo.co.uk

oops couldn't resist it

There is a new project that we are about to release, an open source account system with all the bells and whistles on it.
http://www.joomlafinance.com/

Might be worth a while taking a look to see if it does what you need, as it does far more than VT Accounts due to it being built for Joomla and other components bridging into it. Also what type of website are you using, you say you take payments online, what CMS is it, as this new system links in with VirtueMart on Joomla and sucks all the data in automatically or can take info in from Paypal directly through its API system.

Its also open source and free, so whereas somebody recommended having an accounts system made, this is already made and can be tailored to suit or use it out of the box.

Given my personal experience of the security issues with Joomla in terms of hackers attacking websites, I wouldn't let it, or any other open source program anywhere near my financial data. That's not to say I wouldn't use open source software on occasion, just not for finance.

Hi InPrint
The problem with most open source systems is that it is used by people trying to save money and not installed correctly as they don't know what they are doing.

We fix sites which have been hacked, and EVERY one that we have fixed is because of either one or both of 2 reasons.

• The files/directories were left on 777 permissions (Read and write for all)
• The system or an extension was out of date and known issues were in there but not fixed by updating it to the latest version.

Last week i was commissioned to update a Joomla site from an old version, i asked what version is it, he said ohh im not too sure, its ok, i just want the new features in Joomla 1.7.

It turned out to be Joomla 1.0.8 (2005 version), which is dozens or hundreds of upgrades out of date. He also didn't know what 777 meant, or what permissions the files/directories were meant to be set to. If he was hacked, he would blame Joomla, not his ignorance to the technical factors of running a site.

He couldn't find the database login details, so i "hacked" his site to get it, it took me 30 seconds or so to hack it and get a full backup of the SQL script.

The latest version is incredibly strong, in-fact far stronger than most commercial CMS systems. This is because there is a community of millions of people notifying forums and the bug squad of issues, which then dozens of people work very quickly on to fix them and release a new version. Over years of development and the evolution of different versions, Joomla is now an extremely secure, robust set of scripts.

Also the latest version of Joomla has a self upgrade option, which allows even the most incompetent person to click "Upgrade" and keep the site unto date. There are also other free systems made by companies such as Akeeba and www.joomlasitemonitor.com, which checks the site for issues such as directories with wrong permissions or out of date extensions, to keep your site bang unto date.

OpenSource systems are not what they used to be, they are incredibly strong and well made by people with PhDs and have massive commercial and academic experience. Hackers can download and see the source code, so can spend hours and days trying to hack it on their own server and once they find a way, they then use that against live sites, this in turn has widdled out all the security flaws, like a set of testers, and allowed the system to become stronger. On the other hand, hackers can't see commercial CMS systems code, so are fumbling around, but once they get in, they can see it all. So in general the commercial CMS is far less secure than the open source, but once a hacker has gained access to the commercial system, they can run riot in there, as nothing is ring fenced or secured correctly to stop them.

Surely you can't believe a system made by hundreds of programmers can be less secure than a team of lets say 7 programmers making one system?

But your right for your concerns regarding security on the finance component, as it was made for my company originally and then we thought why not make it for everybody as there is a REAL need for it. This is why we spent over 12 months planning the security of the system.

The data stored for the finance component is scrambled/encrypted, and there is also 2 options within it. One is to store the data in the websites database, and the other is to store it offsite on its sister site www.joomlasitemonitor.com. So if it their site is hacked, there is no data stored there, but as the data is encrypted and also only assigned to the clients site via a token, which has no info about what site it is referring to, then even if Joomla Site Monitor is hacked, the hacker will have no usable info.

The suppliers/customers/users are stored separately to the finance data in a separate component, so if a hacker does ever get access to the system, they will just get the value of the transaction and date it happened, but won't know who it is from, so will be useless.

The other option you could do, is set it up on a local computer, which then gives them as much space as your computer has and is lightning fast as it has no internet connection to worry about, and of course is as secure as your computer is... but still free and will work on any operating system such as Mac, Windows or Linux, so your are not limited. You could even set it up on a local server so people in the company has access to it only

If you decide to go for an online solution, I suggest you try out E-conomic as well. It allows you to create invoices really easily (you go from quotation to order to invoice with just a few clicks), and since you are new to bookkeeping, I think you'll find the simple how-to videos helpful.

Your accountant or bookkeeper will get free access to your accounts - at least in the beginning, you may be more confident having someone 'look over your shoulder' to make sure that everything is done properly. Anyway, take a free trial off the website or join a webinar to find out if this is what you need.

I use wave from google chrome. It is simple to use and keeps track of everything by date, category, customer and vendor. You can also do invoices on it as well. There's an option to link in other accounts as well.

QuickBooks is one of the best small business accounting programs around others accounting softwares. Its Available in Basic, Online, Pro, and Premier editions, its a best one and feature its a user friendly.

zannaa said:

I use wave from google chrome. It is simple to use and keeps track of everything by date, category, customer and vendor. You can also do invoices on it as well. There's an option to link in other accounts as well.

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Really? Thats not an accounting software though and is being closed down now by Google.

use Free agent, I use them for my firm, and it works a treat.
They give you 30 days to try out.
If you decide to register for paid service, I can give you my 'referral code' which will get you 20% off.

I like Xero. It is very easy to use for non accountants but also powerful enough for accountants to produce final accounts from.

It has lots of great features to help you stay in control of your cash and easily reconcile your bank statement. It can also automatically download most bank statements and can download from Paypal.

It is internet based - the benefits of internet based are no upfront costs, access from anywhere and no worrying about backups or upgrades (all done for you).

In my opinion, Sage is over complicated for non accountants.

I must be the odd one out here...

I use MS Office

Word for invoices
Excel for accounts
Access for client data

Then I hand it all to my accountant to file my returns £330 a year he charges me.

Hi

Quick Book is a good software for your accounting and quite userfriendly.

Hope this helps
Sabrina

I have tried a whole bunch of these options out over the years and for the last 9 months settled on Clearbooks. I have to say it does everything beautifully and genuinely saves me loads of time. I previously used Quickbooks which now looks awful in comparison.

DDPlumbing said:

I must be the odd one out here...

I use MS Office

Word for invoices
Excel for accounts
Access for client data

Then I hand it all to my accountant to file my returns £330 a year he charges me.

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I ran multiple businesses using all these. In the beginning I wasn't even writing VBA etc.

Now I too am looking for something but I have to work on the POS system first and get agreements for that before looking at accounting software.

When looking at potential POS software it's worth checking whether it can be integrated with accounting software as it will make life a lot easier.
You can use Vend with Xero and I'm sure there are other options out there too.

ParfittTaylor said:

When looking at potential POS software it's worth checking whether it can be integrated with accounting software as it will make life a lot easier.
You can use Vend with Xero and I'm sure there are other options out there too.

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My brief is to have it all working together. Separate stand alone solutions to one part of the equation are not acceptable.

I would rather buy off the shelf rather than bespoke, even if the end result is not perfect, as I simply don't trust design and software companies to actually produce what is required on budget or take enough of the risk of not doing so on their shoulders.