Accounting Software - some advice?

[Jonathan White 123]

Hello,

I am currently looking for an accountancy software provider - preferably made in house, in order to use for one of my start-up companies.

Ideally I would like all my financials from various systems extracted onto one manageable system which could calculate my tax and financial statements.

I am looking for the most cutting edge technology (AI Robotics, etc.), as I am aware that as times moves on people will be going into this area and I don't want to have to change for a while.

Any advice you can give me would be great.

Thanks

Jon

 

[nahosting]

We would recommend Kashflow and use them ourselves

We even got an article written on how we use it with our billing - https://www.kashflow.com/blog/kashflow-making-billing-easy-for-nutty-about-hosting/

Let us know if you have any further questions

 

[Matt Wilkinson]

if you want information to flow in and out of other systems (export to sage, import from time clocking in machines, custom business reports, export to mobile devices, import from mobile devices, extract expenses from credit card statements), I find a custom built business database is the best option. If it's worth the investment to get precisely what your business needs.

you might want to consider having a business database built anyway because it can help reduce the amount of time spent on administration (repeat invoices, reminders, overdue, payment processing, end-to-end fast automated administration), and share data between departments.

the good thing about a bespoke option, is that you get exactly what you want. You can start off by building the highest priority features first, then add on to them later when new requirements are discovered. I just happen to do this for a living, but there are others out there.

 

[cracklepop]

if you want information to flow in and out of other systems (export to sage, import from time clocking in machines, custom business reports, export to mobile devices, import from mobile devices, extract expenses from credit card statements), I find a custom built business database is the best option. If it's worth the investment to get precisely what your business needs.

you might want to consider having a business database built anyway because it can help reduce the amount of time spent on administration (repeat invoices, reminders, overdue, payment processing, end-to-end fast automated administration), and share data between departments.

the good thing about a bespoke option, is that you get exactly what you want. You can start off by building the highest priority features first, then add on to them later when new requirements are discovered. I just happen to do this for a living, but there are others out there.

 

[ffox]

I find a custom built business database is the best option. If it's worth the investment to get precisely what your business needs.

This can also be achieved using Office 365 SharePoint on-line with the added advantage that linking, workflow and BI are largely code free and can either be completed in-house or externally at much lower cost. Another advantage is that all Office 365 functionality is available across Android and IOS devices in addition to MS Windows.

 

[Matt Wilkinson]

sorry, but SharePoint is for amateurs I wouldn't waste my time, you only have to look at the online tours to see it's all about sharing and contributing to manually created files (word, excel). I'm talking about a feature packed dynamic custom built business database, offering real and automated communication between different departments/systems at a click of a button. Dynamic reports which can do 90% of the work for a staff member at a click of a button can potentially send 3 emails formatted perfectly (no mistakes, no forgotten data), send a text, 4 barcode labels printed instantly, always prints the correct label on the correct printer in the correct office(s), displaying results on a tv screen in the warehouse, the possibilities are endless. SharePoint is web based - but so is any decent database these days.

 

[ffox]

sorry, but SharePoint is for amateurs I wouldn't waste my time, you only have to look at the online tours to see it's all about sharing and contributing to manually created files (word, excel).

That would be for the OP to decide Matt. You obviously do not know much about Office 365 and SP on-line. Look deeper and you will find.

 

[Matt Wilkinson]

I've seen enough to know it's not much fun for a software engineer

 

[ffox]

I've seen enough to know it's not much fun for a software engineer

Lol. Sorry Matt, but the object of posting here is to give good advice in response to folk who ask for it, not to tell people what is fun for the suppliers they hire.
O365 and SP on-line is about delivering a solutions platform that is largely code free, so if you write code for a living I suppose it's not much fun. However, insofar as business data infrastructure, data transformation and data delivery is concerned there is nothing to match it. And, being code free the solutions developments are rapid and therefore low in cost.

 

[Matt Wilkinson]

you're twisting my words, for cheap point scoring, but that's SP all over isn't it I meant it's not much fun when you want to achieve something in an environment where you can't. You could easily hire a 3rd Gen programming language software engineer to use SP (if you can find one willing), but you wouldn't hire an SP clown to do a real man's job.

3rd Gen programming languages and 4th gen databases are all you need. for maximum flexibility. And they offer better tool support for software engineers long term. Software engineering is the development and maintenance of software as an engineering process, it's not all about Rapid App Development, all RADs need taking further and refining for any real changing business, any business I've worked for would punch holes in a RAD in less than an hour, as an unconvincing façade "what happens if we want this, what happens if x,y,z happens?". When you get down into the devil of the detail and you get to an uh-oh moment when someone mentions a new requirement with far reaching impacts, i'd rather be in control of a 3rd Gen programming language than SP, because I know it can be sorted out.

and office365 is a load of rubbish in most situations, playing on buzz words like cloud infrastructure, selling the dream. In a simple one requirement business, on a budget based over a year it's cheaper than on-premises infrastructure, of course, if you just want cheaper and not bothered about backups, and someday transferring to on-premises infrastructure like most do. But businesses often need their own infrastructure in addition to cloud services if they have numerous systems and requirements, so just house it all on-premises from the start! It's more flexible and just as reliable, cloud does go wrong too. and in the real world when you get into some of the intricate requirements, and backup procedures, I've solved them every time with on-site infrastructure. too many restrictions in the 'cloud'. Backups; I'd rather have a backup here on-site that I can see, touch and test, than an exciting empty promise of a working backup out there in the 'cloud' behind some frontline technician, who when it all goes belly up, will just shrug his shoulders on the other end of a chat window and speel off "i'm really sorry about that, is there anything else I can help you with today my jolly good man? do you want fries with that?".

this is the best advice for anyone reading not wanting a headache, and wanting a useful and long lasting business database, with any real requirements. It's about doing things properly. Buy cheap, buy twice.

 

[ffox]

you're twisting my words, for cheap point scoring, but that's SP all over isn't it I meant it's not much fun when you want to achieve something in an environment where you can't. You could easily hire a 3rd Gen programming language software engineer to use SP (if you can find one willing), but you wouldn't hire an SP clown to do a real man's job.

Oh dear Matt, you really are trying too hard here. I have been a developer since 1998, I have developed solutions in 3rd and 4th gen languages, I have developed solutions using server scripting. In fact I still do all of these things. Please learn about a subject before you denigrate it. In Office 365 and SharePoint on-line MS have provided an affordable solution to allow business owners and department managers the scope to develop their own solutions without recourse to unofficial 'shadow IT', and without the need for expensive external development resource. Most businesses will still need guidance on how to structure electronic work flow and/or align that to actual business flow, but they no longer need to spend huge amounts on development. Please accept that the world has moved on.
Business now wants the ability to work from wherever the need is, on whatever device the user needs to use. And it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg to do it.
In house and cloud makes little difference to O365, it can be configured to take data from any source, transform the data and deliver it to any other resource, with little coding involved. A job that any competent spreadsheet user can accomplish with little or no tutoring.
It doesn't go 'belly up' often, only when the developer hasn't spent enough time on the business analysis and risk assessment. Oh, that would be the same for any 3rd/4th gen language app then.

 

[Matt Wilkinson]

oh ffox s.a.k.e ing all else,
all the business analysis and risk assessment in the world won't account for logical mistakes made by a user - which can't be undone without a restore. what about corruption of dlls and things just runtime erroring for no reason (after an update or something, which doesn't undo) - or am I just imagining that these things happen with cloud servers, they must be special servers?. Let's hope the backups are working!!! atleast when you've got the backups on-premises you can test them beforehand and regularly as part of your risk assessment. try doing that on a cloud live system. without copying 450GB of data down through your 1.5MB/s broadband. You need on-premises to ensure to the nth degree that mission critical data is safe - that's what people pay me to do, because data is king. you'll always be wondering, in the back of your mind, if your data is recoverable from all cloud scenarios - and how long it would take, and how many call centres you have to go through. Maybe the industries I work for care more about their up time than some do.

on-premises always for me, cloud is flawed.

SP - you're talking about regular users with spreadsheet knowledge being able to use. that proves how inflexible it is out of the box, without 3GL coding (which you need a programmer for). flexibility and ease-of-use are fundamentally opposing forces - the more options you give people, the less easy-to-use it becomes. Fine for simple tasks, i'm sure. but not for complicated systems. you need a developer. and development environment of choice, is always going to be 3GL and 4GL. what's the point in mixing them - a 3GL can provide all the device access necessary (barcode readers, smartphones, TV screens, binoculars, pepper pig ipads) . Users want to use a system, programmers want to programme. It's customer service basics. You start mixing it up and you're forever getting support calls as to why can't I do this, and why doesn't it do what I want when I've moved this pipe flow into here via this DTS. All that should be done automatically and by system design.

We're on different planets, obviously.

 

[ffox]

We're on different planets, obviously.

No you're on a planet, I'm in the cloud. You are wrong about almost everything you say with regard to cloud and SP and if you'd like to open a new thread elsewhere to discuss I'll gladly counter you point for point. However, this is someone else's thread. The OP asked a question and advice has been given. If the OP wants to learn more he can get in touch. Nuff said.

 

[MathSpire]

I've found Xero very good and they do an introductory deal for startups if you call them.
I'm not sure why you would want AI or robotics to calculate tax and financial statements.
I think it would cost at least 10,000 times as much to develop a system of similar functionality for yourself... and then you would become an online accountancy company rather than a user of accounting services!

 

[Ian Sutherland]

If you want an accounting package provider where you can discuss your needs with the actual developers I can recommend Encore from Anagram Systems. We work with them to provide a cloud hosted application version.

 

[David@Hudman]

We can also provide this, feel free to PM me (we're the developers, around since 2005).

 

[Andy Inman]

I researched this topic some time back and concluded that the best for my needs was ClearBooks - cloud-based, they have a free trial option as you might expect. Worth a look IMHO. I haven't started using it for real yet, but plan to when I get to the point of needing something more powerful than the invoicing system I'm currently using.

 

[talksalot81]

If you want an accounting package provider where you can discuss your needs with the actual developers I can recommend Encore from Anagram Systems. We work with them to provide a cloud hosted application version.

I looked at Anagram Encore a year ago and the software looked good. I ended up elsewhere because I struggled to get demos and get a good communication going with them. My experience might not be typical, of course.

As for the question posed... We have all sorts of answers! We have a few pounds a month options suggested but I am guessing that the OP is looking for something somewhat higher end, inspite of the start up scenario. I am also guessing that the OP has more than this start up going so this might be worth keeping in mind. My thought might be to get in touch with an SAP Business One provider. Another option would be MS Nav. These are good solid systems which can be customised as needed. With add ons like Boyum Usability/Productivity packs, you can do a whole lot of customisation yourself, if you have competent people working on it.

Of course, the suitability of this suggestion will depend on your budget!