Accounting software features?

[nkukard]

For those dealing with accounting, and accounting for clients I have two questions...

1. What features would you find the most valuable if your accounting package had it? or which features in the package you use do you find the most valuable?

2. Where do you think the developers of your software went wrong when they designed your accounting package?

Background: I am not looking for any names of accounting packages, I have been developing accounting systems for medium to large multi-nationals for close to 20 years and am looking at a high likelyhood of developing a free, opensource, modern re-iteration of everything I've encountered and implemented in my experience.

 

[Scalloway]

The simple data entry procedure of Sage combined with decent reporting tools.

 

[Bob Morgan]

The simple data entry procedure of Sage combined with decent reporting tools.

AND
Something that deals with businesses OTHER than Retail and Inventory Based!

 

[nkukard]

AND
Something that deals with businesses OTHER than Retail and Inventory Based!

I'm assuming you mean services based?

On this topic I have 3 different types of billing for services:
- Prepaid: A service is billed and due on/before the date the service period starts (you pay for the next month of service)
- Current: A service is billed and due at the end of the service period (you pay for the current month of service)
- Postpaid: A service is billed after the service period (you pay for last months of service)

I did quite a bit of work on services based billing, one client asked for a somewhat standardized report to be imported from different systems they have which accounted for both services-based and usage-based billing.

If you're referring to something else please let me know

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I imagine most modern accounts packages cover all area's pretty well

What i do find interesting is the amount of work the e-commerce software does in giving you a fantastic amount of data in great formats making them far better at giving management information than any accounts package

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

For those dealing with accounting, and accounting for clients I have two questions...

1. What features would you find the most valuable if your accounting package had it? or which features in the package you use do you find the most valuable?

2. Where do you think the developers of your software went wrong when they designed your accounting package?

Background: I am not looking for any names of accounting packages, I have been developing accounting systems for medium to large multi-nationals for close to 20 years and am looking at a high likelyhood of developing a free, opensource, modern re-iteration of everything I've encountered and implemented in my experience.

1. As an accountant using clients records the ability to extract a trial balance and nominal ledger is all I really need which is what all accounting packages/software produce, some easier than others.

2. I don't think the developers of any software I use 'went wrong'. Accounting software has moved on a very long way in the past few years and many of the latest packages are so much better than the original market leaders.

 

[Philip Hoyle]

I prefer software that has quick and easy functionality for correcting errors, in my position as accountant for large numbers of clients who do their own book-keeping. My favourite software for this is VT as it's the quickest/simplest way to correct multiple transactions, such as where someone has posted a monthly payment consistently to the wrong account and we need to move them all in one go. The other system that comes close is Xero and lesser still is Kashflow. Quickbooks and Freeagent don't have this facility at all so you end up having to go into every individual transaction to correct it which takes a lot of time.

Another function I like is the way you can quickly enter dates in Quickbooks and VT, i.e. you can enter in different formats and the system accepts it. Unlike Kashflow, FAC which are very strict in the way dates are entered, again taking more time.

That's just from data entry point of view. I'd love a system with easy data entry like VT but with fantastic reporting like Quickbooks.